How's military science supposed to be an actual science?
It feels like there's always just some big flavour of the decade idea that's not actually based on anything that the military thinkers just decide to go with until real world experience has shown it to be hot garbage, or until someone comes up with the next big idea.
Shit's worse than gender studies.
do you actually know what you're talking about at all?
or did you just feel compelled to add some more text to the internet
>How's military science supposed to be an actual science?
Just like with any other [insert name] science – by applying scientific methodologies when studying, researching and evolving the subject matter.
>It feels like there's always just some big flavour of the decade idea that's not actually based on anything that the military thinkers just decide to go with until real world experience has shown it to be hot garbage, or until someone comes up with the next big idea.
That's how it works in the domain of theories. Practical application is a completely different matter that doesn't concern academia that much. Just to give you an idea, something like realtime ray-tracing and neural networks were just a meme in computer science during the previous century, but with today's hardware advances both started to only recently apply practically on a large scale.
>It feels like there's always just some big flavour of the decade idea that's not actually based on anything that the thinkers just decide to go with until real world experience has shown it to be hot garbage, or until someone comes up with the next big idea.
This is academia in general. Scientific fields change their consensus one death at a time, when some old, respected authority finally kicks the bucket and everyone can move on to what's actually viable instead of what gets you funding.
Basically string theory in a nutshell.
It has not been able to provide any empirical evidence for itself, so everybody that's reputable have moved on except for the morons that have their entire lives works based on it.
ahh, a fellow loop quantum gravity homie
frick strings lol
>t feels like there's always just some big flavour of the decade idea that's not actually based on anything
In my experience, this is how science works as well, at least for the last 30 years that I have been in it
>How's military science supposed to be an actual science?
Well it's just theory and practice, isn't it? You come up with a hypothesis based on previous experience and then test it and see if reality matches the theory, and if reality diverges from theory, then the theory is wrong. It's a constant evolutionary loop.
>Shit's worse than gender studies.
I never took any gender studies classes but creative types can have more fun with it than they're given credit for around here, the question of "how do men respond to changing roles?" as something to study for example is pretty relatable as a topic.
I kinda want to watch Barbie now...
The scientific side of it concerns logistics and timetables, mostly.
Man hours and calories to push forward a line of ammunition bunkers.
Can you supply X-sized operation with Y-number of trucks and roads?
If this attack goes poorly, does your arithmetic say your guys can withdraw safely on their own or would you need to commit even more forces just to cover the retreat of tje broken forces?
Let's game out the ripple effect of a disaster here, or there.
Do we have the means to support a local tactical advance, or would advanced troops get pinned without forthcoming reinforcement? Maybe it's best to just sit pretty in that sector even if an opportunity preaents itself momentarily. Let's crunch some time, distance, and quantities...
Stuff like that.
You've just explained every social science. The goal however, is to promote the study of the art writ large, so that theories can be developed, implemented, tested, modified, and tested some more. A functioning academy should be an iterative, feedback driven process, not dogmatic indocrination.
FYI, West Point does not teach Military Science. That is an ROTC thing.
West Point teaches History of the Military Art.
https://courses.westpoint.edu/crse_details.cfm?crse_nbr=HI302&int_crse_eff_acad_yr=2022&int_crse_eff_term=1
That’s why West Point teaches winners. Pic very related.
See the drones the Ukies are using? Military scientists are actively studying the war to adapt the lessons learnt. Grunts only need to know how to operate and maintain their weapons. Officers need to be on the cutting edge of technology, tactics and strategem. Your "winners" are grunts. There's a reason the US Military has strong ties with Technology companies and academia. Remember, nukes, jet engines, radar, AI were all "academic" in the past.
Of course there’s science in the military field, just like there’s science in cooking. Also like cooking, there’s too many variables to call it an exact science. You have to feel the battle space the same way a great chef feels food when cooking.
Its an art.
>a science, but not an exact science, like cooking
Yeah... yeah that sounds about right...
Deeply neglected and underrated post
Cooking isn't a science.
>Cooking isn't a science.
If you mean "how to make good food", then I agree. However, everything that's related to cooking is fundamentally chemistry. There's also molecular gastronomy, which is basically nerds thinking up cools ways of doing shit to food.
>molecular gastronomy
used to mean using chemistry and physics to understand what precisely happens when food is cooked, which was previously only intuited by generations of chefs
this is how, for example, the Maillard reaction was discovered, studied and applied
it was pretty cool back then
nowadays however the term is used and misused for all that pointless fancy showbiz shit fine dining restaurants do to squeeze more dollars out of eating, like smoke effects
Don’t you have more dicks to suck and automatic promotions to brag about on linkedin ringknocker
A (You) for your imperial hubris, Magna Strategos.
It's never a major of field of study that I've ever seen. It's just the generic term for AROTC classes that is standardized in every college catalogue. There are only like 24 hours of coursework total, would not be possible to get a degree in it.
>Shit's worse than gender studies.
you have no idea what you're talking about, and i hope you realize that when you're body gets completely mutilated by things beyond your comprehension.
What is Tungsten Rain but small, spherical scalpels creating neo-veganas across a variety of surfaces?
Barbie is a love song to exploitation and privilege cloaked in a paper-thin veneer of second-wave feminism.
Its not. Butter sticks are just as moronic as privates.
In a prefect world only enlisted sergeants should be able to have the privilege of attempting to be an officer.
The problem with pulling your officers from only enlisted pools is 1. The age issue on E-6+ means they’ll often get out by the time they leave the platoon level for good instead of growing as they progress higher into the ranks and 2. Although mustangs are awesome and will tell a commander to suck his balls some of them still think like an NCO and occasionally drift out of their lane from old habits
>The problem with pulling your officers from only enlisted pools is
you now have to pay ALL your junior officers an extra 3 years' seniority, or they will quit
Start by reading Jomini. He's exactly the kind quantized autistic babyfood dorks like you need to see before admitting anything is legitimate.
>Jomini
He was one of Napoleon's favs. You call him autistic babyfood, yet he was one of Nappy's favs. Bar was set much lower back then?
If you suggest Jomini as a starter, would you also suggest the Kriegspiele of Reißwitz and Tschitschwitz?
I'm not OP, but if you're well-read I'd like your impressions.
Seconded
Military science is closer to old-school engineering in how it isn't technically empirical by its nature: take for instance, the statement that a 13.2×92mmSR Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr anti-tank rifle could penetrate armor 1 inch thick at a range of 250 yards. Armor quality varies wildly now and then, so in reality a Mauser might go through up to two inches of shoddily-made late war German pot metal or deflect if attempting to punch a hole through quality HY-80 as was used by the US in ship building. A 37mm gun might punch a hole through the side of a badly-cast Panther's turret or hardly so much as scratch it if it was built earlier in its line, so the statement such weapons couldn't penetrate a Panther weren't so much scientific as they were a friendly suggestion not to test your luck.
>It feels like
you're a moron
oh, it's wholly empirical, just with massive significance issues
this
social science (and thus military science by extension) gets a bad rep, because unlike natural sciences, human beings react back.
>It feels like
that sure is a scientific way to spout your opinion
>It feels like there's always just some big flavour of the decade idea that's not actually based on anything that the military thinkers just decide to go with until real world experience has shown it to be hot garbage, or until someone comes up with the next big idea.
Yeah thats science. Welcome to science.
Science means repeatable results, which you can do in training but can hardly do that in combat. Fortunately, we live in an age where most things can be recorded and should be recorded so they can be studied. But you CANNOT learn warfare in a classroom, if you could then grunts could just sit and watch power points all day. In combat sports you know how you get good at something? you fricking practice it. I could get into the differences between training and practice but I think my point is made.