Depends, the Israelis used Lebanese Falangists to help with their war and occupation. However they became a PR disaster as they carried out multiple terror attacks on Palestinian/Muslim targets.
As shown by Ukraine in this war, yes when you treat them well and treat them like you should a force that is meant to be a light, unconventional, infantry force that is meant to be in reserve.
Also whats the story with that picture, why do they all have .22 caliber AKS
weren't they actually better than the IRA in the first 2 or so decades of the Troubles? The IRAonly started gaining the upper hand in the late 80s and 90s.
The SS only became effective after they essentially turned into a full-time army. Their early performance was utterly abysmal and they had to bring in retired Heer officers to completely restructure it.
The SA was moronic, not the SS. And once the SS became integrated into the German government upon the Nazis taking over, the Waffen SS was formed as a subgroup within the greater SS as a whole, which was good and stayed good throughout the prewar and during the war. There were definitely shit units but for the most part the waffen SS divisions were good.
Saying they were shit and only got good once the Wehrmacht got involved smells an awful lot like post war revisionism from resentful Wehrmacht officers who didn't like the concept of a separate Army from the main army in the first place.
The waffen SS only saw major combaat beginning in 1941, before then, they were mainly rear security.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Not true, they fought on the frontlines in France and took heavy casualties. They committed at least one massacre of POWs because they were incensed at the heavy losses they took.
By the end of the war it would be hard to consider them para military. They were essentially just a second military to Germany by 1945. Hard to call them a paramilitary group by the strictest definitions. Not calling them ineffective at all just don't know if they are really valid in the conversation as being paramilitary
Probably the worst modern example of where it didn't work is the Sudan. They let the paramilitary force get so powerful they decided to stage a coup and now the country's going through a civil war.
Better than nothing I guess. But obviously if you have the choice it's better totake those men and have them (re?)trained and under an integrated and formal chain of command
I'd be interested to see a model for encouraging local militias in order to give a country a system for rapidly-scalable military forces. Something vaguely like the pre-1903 U.S. militia system or Franc-tireurs, but with the goal of creating a pre-evaluated and partially-trained pool of potential recruits rather than complete units that can be called into service. I'm imagining something that works more like a government-sponsored competitive sports league themed around marksmanship, fitness, and other relevant stuff. Keep records on members' individual performance and use those to help find recruits in wartime. I'm not aware of anything that works quite like this in modern times, at least not among western countries.
>Switzerland
Do they use competitive events and rankings like that? I was under the impression that they have mass conscription for training and short service in a standing army, then a longer period in reserves.
https://i.imgur.com/3F92txu.png
>Everyone is too comfortable. Nothing ever happens.
You should be glad being too comfortable is what you're worried about.
[...] >I'm imagining something that works more like a government-sponsored competitive sports league themed around marksmanship, fitness, and other relevant stuff.
Dual-use stuff. Drones. That can be a big one. Like imagine state militia drone teams competing with each other with high-speed racing drones.
Disaster relief (this is becoming increasingly a problem to deal with). SAR. Plugging holes in the border. Helping little old ladies cross the street. That's an intriguing idea. I think it could be like souped-up state guards (more money, support, benefits) and have the different states compete with each other. Some military haveservers don't like the state guards LARPing like they're the military so I don't know if I'd drop the camo for plain-colored uniforms to differentiate them from the N.G.... but that might do... could look like the Israelis. Would keep the decorations though. Bit of a "people's army" idea but under the authority of the governors, with some social responsibility involved (it has a social function in addition to practical functions), and which can appeal to people across the broad political spectrum.
Drone combat paintball would be interesting, and something I hadn't thought of before.
Wouldn't work, military is more than just running around in the woods and being a decent shot. Most of the training on equipment and tactics requires lots of people so may as well just train a whole unit.
Stuff worked like that back then because they were just laying prone and shooting at people a mile away.
I wasn't imagining it as a substitute for real military training. More a basis for a military that actually scales up when really needed and down quickly afterward rather than having a big standing force backed up by a large trained reserve. Part of the reason is to discourage politicians from pursuing unnecessary foreign wars by denying them convenient tools.
Wouldn't work, military is more than just running around in the woods and being a decent shot. Most of the training on equipment and tactics requires lots of people so may as well just train a whole unit.
Stuff worked like that back then because they were just laying prone and shooting at people a mile away.
The only nations that don't crack down hard on paramilitaries in their territory (even those "loyal to the cause") are those that can't actually get rid of them.
A paramilitary is an armed organization that has the strength to ignore your orders (which can frick with strategy or lead to atrocities and bad PR being associated with you) and turn its barrels on you, that's walking on thin ice for obvious reasons.
The only time a nation might say "we may need paramilitary groups" is when this nation is destroyed in all but name and needs to crowd-source an armed force who's at least hostile to the attacker to act as guerrilla warfare cells.
Nations allying with foreign paramilitaries is a bit different because at least you can be pretty certain they're not going to be in your territory once the war is over.
The aforementioned risks still apply but there's a clear way of at least cutting ties with them.
Best response imo. Using paramilitaries is very risky and comes from a point of desperation unless the paramilitary exists as security force by the government
Best response imo. Using paramilitaries is very risky and comes from a point of desperation unless the paramilitary exists as security force by the government
It's almost as if that's the whole point of the 2nd amendment so that the government never becomes too powerful or something idk.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to call an armed population a paramilitary group, more like the threat of an armed militia forming if you go too tyrannical.
A classic example of a main army being supplemented with a paramilitary group is Lebanon and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is essentially the only force actively fighting Israel from Lebanon and they're arguably more effective than The Lebanese army could be.
But that situation didn't arise because the Lebanese government wanted it to, they just couldn't get rid of Hezbollah with its foreign backing and stable support base in southern Lebanon, best they could do is reach an agreement with them that they'll only fight Israel.
So Lebanon is in a position where its government has absolutely no control over hostilities with its neighboring enemy and whether Lebanon is in peace or war is controlled by a militia group that has no reason to bend its knee to the government.
And there's no way to undo this situation without a civil war, which would be something any country would bend over backwards to avoid, let alone one so fractured and scarred by two relatively recent civil wars.
Never paid attention to Lebanon but I saw a documentary on the conflict and ive been amazed by how big of a clusterfrick the whole conflict became (still is?).
Still is, the stable Christian-Muslim balance was ruined in the 60s-70s when the country was flooded with refugees from Palestine resulting in the shit show it is today.
I'd say "still is" is an apt description, it's on an indefinite pause.
Lebanon was formed as a safe haven for the Christians living there, and that results in ethnicity being a big fricking deal in Lebanese politics.
Positions of power are literally restricted to people of a specific ethnicity.
The president can only be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister can only be a Sunni Muslim and the speaker can only be Shia Muslim.
There's a built-in bias in favor of Christians which in and of itself creates ethnic tensions, made worse by the fact that as time went on the Muslim population was inching closer and closer to overtaking the Christian population (which would put the whole system into question), Lebanon dealt with the issue by just not doing a census as soon as it became obvious the Muslims would become a majority.
It's hard to imagine how there WOULDN'T be a civil war there, and to this day the people of Lebanon are VERY divided by ethnic lines and who they're loyal to.
That's why Lebanon is such a textbook example for this thread.
Clearly it failed miserably. Guns are a pacifier and "conservatives" will keep retreating and redrawing the 'no-passing' line until they've been exterminated. Everyone is too comfortable. Nothing ever happens.
>Everyone is too comfortable. Nothing ever happens.
You should be glad being too comfortable is what you're worried about.
I'd be interested to see a model for encouraging local militias in order to give a country a system for rapidly-scalable military forces. Something vaguely like the pre-1903 U.S. militia system or Franc-tireurs, but with the goal of creating a pre-evaluated and partially-trained pool of potential recruits rather than complete units that can be called into service. I'm imagining something that works more like a government-sponsored competitive sports league themed around marksmanship, fitness, and other relevant stuff. Keep records on members' individual performance and use those to help find recruits in wartime. I'm not aware of anything that works quite like this in modern times, at least not among western countries.
>I'm imagining something that works more like a government-sponsored competitive sports league themed around marksmanship, fitness, and other relevant stuff.
Dual-use stuff. Drones. That can be a big one. Like imagine state militia drone teams competing with each other with high-speed racing drones.
Disaster relief (this is becoming increasingly a problem to deal with). SAR. Plugging holes in the border. Helping little old ladies cross the street. That's an intriguing idea. I think it could be like souped-up state guards (more money, support, benefits) and have the different states compete with each other. Some military haveservers don't like the state guards LARPing like they're the military so I don't know if I'd drop the camo for plain-colored uniforms to differentiate them from the N.G.... but that might do... could look like the Israelis. Would keep the decorations though. Bit of a "people's army" idea but under the authority of the governors, with some social responsibility involved (it has a social function in addition to practical functions), and which can appeal to people across the broad political spectrum.
The main problem with paramilitaries is funding. Even with goverment backing there will be areas where they are lacking and they will try and find another revenue stream. Also because this a semi-independent group trained to use violence and military lateral thinking this usually resorts in crime or infrastructural sabatoge to get a cash flow. Both the IRA and the UVF succumbed to such issues during the troubles with racketeering, drug smuggling, armed robbery and maintaining an absolutely booming black market industry. Something which northern ireland is still trying to recover from. It seems almost obvious when you look to the middle east and virtually all paramilitaries/terrorists do the exact same thing, it is not exclusive to that region.
iirc wasn't there a group like the IRA, that leaned heavily catholic, but they basically became a cartel as the Troubles progresses, before being put down by the IRA?
Sounds like the euros used them to half decent effect pre ww1 to train and foster rifle skills. Ian and Mathius have mentioned it. Idk what terms to even use to find out more.
As for the general concept of paramilitaries dont over think it.
ie
Your get out what you put in.
HL compared to plain civies.
I wouldn't say so because they don't have the same strict regulations. They're more likely to commit war crimes and do downright stupid shit since they lack proper training. You'll be cleaning up their messes and dealing with the blowback of their actions.
Seems like it would be a reasonably good idea for nations with smaller militaries and few reserves, but it doesn't come without its drawbacks. If you're the tinpot dictator of a banana republic with an unstable government, the paramilitary might just try and depose you. And, as we just saw with Russia, even countries with relatively strong armies can run into trouble with private military organizations if they decide to turn coat.
Depends, the Israelis used Lebanese Falangists to help with their war and occupation. However they became a PR disaster as they carried out multiple terror attacks on Palestinian/Muslim targets.
>as they carried out multiple terror attacks on Palestinian/Muslim targets.
The ethnic cleansing was the plan from the start.
That is the primary function of paramilitaries. In fact many of the members committing these war crimes are just regulars in civilian clothes.
>Lebanese Falangists
Isn't that a Spanish thing?
The Lebanese soccer team went to the 1936 Berlin olympics and took some ideas back with them. Don't worry about it, it's all very normal.
Can you show us an example where it worked and an example where it didn't work.
As shown by Ukraine in this war, yes when you treat them well and treat them like you should a force that is meant to be a light, unconventional, infantry force that is meant to be in reserve.
Also whats the story with that picture, why do they all have .22 caliber AKS
In Ukraine right now.
Ulster loyalist paramilitaries
IRA larpers
weren't they actually better than the IRA in the first 2 or so decades of the Troubles? The IRAonly started gaining the upper hand in the late 80s and 90s.
Where it worked
>azov brigade (to the extent that it was an effective pain in the ass for Russians since 2014)
Where it didn’t
>Iraqi Republican Guard
Waffen SS but unironically.
The SS only became effective after they essentially turned into a full-time army. Their early performance was utterly abysmal and they had to bring in retired Heer officers to completely restructure it.
The SA was moronic, not the SS. And once the SS became integrated into the German government upon the Nazis taking over, the Waffen SS was formed as a subgroup within the greater SS as a whole, which was good and stayed good throughout the prewar and during the war. There were definitely shit units but for the most part the waffen SS divisions were good.
Saying they were shit and only got good once the Wehrmacht got involved smells an awful lot like post war revisionism from resentful Wehrmacht officers who didn't like the concept of a separate Army from the main army in the first place.
the early war SS was definitely moronic anon, the SA never lived long enough to hit the battlefield.
SA had a top tier parachute unit for göring iirc
Start listing battles where the SS were notably effective before ~1941.
The waffen SS only saw major combaat beginning in 1941, before then, they were mainly rear security.
Not true, they fought on the frontlines in France and took heavy casualties. They committed at least one massacre of POWs because they were incensed at the heavy losses they took.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhoudt_massacre
This. The SS officers LTC and above were all cops who served in the SS during the 30s. Maybe okay at cracking skulls, but no operational art.
Check out GS Graeber.
By the end of the war it would be hard to consider them para military. They were essentially just a second military to Germany by 1945. Hard to call them a paramilitary group by the strictest definitions. Not calling them ineffective at all just don't know if they are really valid in the conversation as being paramilitary
They were more of a "parallel army" thats common in dictatorships
yeah
Is black tar heroin good for you?
For me yes
Depends on the ratio of how much you want to be able to deny what they're doing vs. how much you want to control what they're doing.
Probably the worst modern example of where it didn't work is the Sudan. They let the paramilitary force get so powerful they decided to stage a coup and now the country's going through a civil war.
Paramilitaries are usually a sign that your country is unstable and is sliding towards, if not already having, civil war
Better than nothing I guess. But obviously if you have the choice it's better totake those men and have them (re?)trained and under an integrated and formal chain of command
I'd be interested to see a model for encouraging local militias in order to give a country a system for rapidly-scalable military forces. Something vaguely like the pre-1903 U.S. militia system or Franc-tireurs, but with the goal of creating a pre-evaluated and partially-trained pool of potential recruits rather than complete units that can be called into service. I'm imagining something that works more like a government-sponsored competitive sports league themed around marksmanship, fitness, and other relevant stuff. Keep records on members' individual performance and use those to help find recruits in wartime. I'm not aware of anything that works quite like this in modern times, at least not among western countries.
Is this not the reserve system Switzerland has?
>Switzerland
Do they use competitive events and rankings like that? I was under the impression that they have mass conscription for training and short service in a standing army, then a longer period in reserves.
Drone combat paintball would be interesting, and something I hadn't thought of before.
I wasn't imagining it as a substitute for real military training. More a basis for a military that actually scales up when really needed and down quickly afterward rather than having a big standing force backed up by a large trained reserve. Part of the reason is to discourage politicians from pursuing unnecessary foreign wars by denying them convenient tools.
Wouldn't work, military is more than just running around in the woods and being a decent shot. Most of the training on equipment and tactics requires lots of people so may as well just train a whole unit.
Stuff worked like that back then because they were just laying prone and shooting at people a mile away.
Generally no. Paramillitaries often turn into armed gangs without some kind of oversight.
The only nations that don't crack down hard on paramilitaries in their territory (even those "loyal to the cause") are those that can't actually get rid of them.
A paramilitary is an armed organization that has the strength to ignore your orders (which can frick with strategy or lead to atrocities and bad PR being associated with you) and turn its barrels on you, that's walking on thin ice for obvious reasons.
The only time a nation might say "we may need paramilitary groups" is when this nation is destroyed in all but name and needs to crowd-source an armed force who's at least hostile to the attacker to act as guerrilla warfare cells.
Nations allying with foreign paramilitaries is a bit different because at least you can be pretty certain they're not going to be in your territory once the war is over.
The aforementioned risks still apply but there's a clear way of at least cutting ties with them.
Best response imo. Using paramilitaries is very risky and comes from a point of desperation unless the paramilitary exists as security force by the government
It's almost as if that's the whole point of the 2nd amendment so that the government never becomes too powerful or something idk.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to call an armed population a paramilitary group, more like the threat of an armed militia forming if you go too tyrannical.
A classic example of a main army being supplemented with a paramilitary group is Lebanon and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is essentially the only force actively fighting Israel from Lebanon and they're arguably more effective than The Lebanese army could be.
But that situation didn't arise because the Lebanese government wanted it to, they just couldn't get rid of Hezbollah with its foreign backing and stable support base in southern Lebanon, best they could do is reach an agreement with them that they'll only fight Israel.
So Lebanon is in a position where its government has absolutely no control over hostilities with its neighboring enemy and whether Lebanon is in peace or war is controlled by a militia group that has no reason to bend its knee to the government.
And there's no way to undo this situation without a civil war, which would be something any country would bend over backwards to avoid, let alone one so fractured and scarred by two relatively recent civil wars.
Never paid attention to Lebanon but I saw a documentary on the conflict and ive been amazed by how big of a clusterfrick the whole conflict became (still is?).
Still is, the stable Christian-Muslim balance was ruined in the 60s-70s when the country was flooded with refugees from Palestine resulting in the shit show it is today.
I'd say "still is" is an apt description, it's on an indefinite pause.
Lebanon was formed as a safe haven for the Christians living there, and that results in ethnicity being a big fricking deal in Lebanese politics.
Positions of power are literally restricted to people of a specific ethnicity.
The president can only be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister can only be a Sunni Muslim and the speaker can only be Shia Muslim.
There's a built-in bias in favor of Christians which in and of itself creates ethnic tensions, made worse by the fact that as time went on the Muslim population was inching closer and closer to overtaking the Christian population (which would put the whole system into question), Lebanon dealt with the issue by just not doing a census as soon as it became obvious the Muslims would become a majority.
It's hard to imagine how there WOULDN'T be a civil war there, and to this day the people of Lebanon are VERY divided by ethnic lines and who they're loyal to.
That's why Lebanon is such a textbook example for this thread.
Clearly it failed miserably. Guns are a pacifier and "conservatives" will keep retreating and redrawing the 'no-passing' line until they've been exterminated. Everyone is too comfortable. Nothing ever happens.
>Everyone is too comfortable. Nothing ever happens.
You should be glad being too comfortable is what you're worried about.
>I'm imagining something that works more like a government-sponsored competitive sports league themed around marksmanship, fitness, and other relevant stuff.
Dual-use stuff. Drones. That can be a big one. Like imagine state militia drone teams competing with each other with high-speed racing drones.
Disaster relief (this is becoming increasingly a problem to deal with). SAR. Plugging holes in the border. Helping little old ladies cross the street. That's an intriguing idea. I think it could be like souped-up state guards (more money, support, benefits) and have the different states compete with each other. Some military haveservers don't like the state guards LARPing like they're the military so I don't know if I'd drop the camo for plain-colored uniforms to differentiate them from the N.G.... but that might do... could look like the Israelis. Would keep the decorations though. Bit of a "people's army" idea but under the authority of the governors, with some social responsibility involved (it has a social function in addition to practical functions), and which can appeal to people across the broad political spectrum.
The main problem with paramilitaries is funding. Even with goverment backing there will be areas where they are lacking and they will try and find another revenue stream. Also because this a semi-independent group trained to use violence and military lateral thinking this usually resorts in crime or infrastructural sabatoge to get a cash flow. Both the IRA and the UVF succumbed to such issues during the troubles with racketeering, drug smuggling, armed robbery and maintaining an absolutely booming black market industry. Something which northern ireland is still trying to recover from. It seems almost obvious when you look to the middle east and virtually all paramilitaries/terrorists do the exact same thing, it is not exclusive to that region.
iirc wasn't there a group like the IRA, that leaned heavily catholic, but they basically became a cartel as the Troubles progresses, before being put down by the IRA?
Sounds like the euros used them to half decent effect pre ww1 to train and foster rifle skills. Ian and Mathius have mentioned it. Idk what terms to even use to find out more.
As for the general concept of paramilitaries dont over think it.
ie
Your get out what you put in.
HL compared to plain civies.
>Are paramilitaries a good idea?
No, one military is enough.
>Are paramilitaries a good idea?
How much money do you have?
>pic
It's just Canadians wym?
Your joking right anon?
I wouldn't say so because they don't have the same strict regulations. They're more likely to commit war crimes and do downright stupid shit since they lack proper training. You'll be cleaning up their messes and dealing with the blowback of their actions.
al qaeda bad
Seems like it would be a reasonably good idea for nations with smaller militaries and few reserves, but it doesn't come without its drawbacks. If you're the tinpot dictator of a banana republic with an unstable government, the paramilitary might just try and depose you. And, as we just saw with Russia, even countries with relatively strong armies can run into trouble with private military organizations if they decide to turn coat.
What AK variant is that? The magazine looks like .30 carbine or something of similar cartridge length