Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfish
IMHO laying mines is the most cowardly tactic apart from taking hostages.
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"Cowardly"...? What century are you living in...?
Its effective. War has a different set of needs and logic than peace. Apply peacetime moral to war situations, and you loose every single time.
Battle of Azincourt, 1415. Peasants dressed as English Longbow archers lined up on the battlefield and mowed down France's elite knights cavalry, a total generation of its finest, from distances unimaginable before, defeating their heavy plate armour due to their Bodkins arrowheads, and certainly not in ("honourable") fight man versus man, but by swarms of
drones arrows. At that time many demanded that every caught archer of the enemy should not be pardoned but executed for his cowardly, dishonourable way to fight.
It did not matter. The Englishmen won. Or better: they served the French their bottoms on silver plates.
The Americans preferred night attacks
when possible in the Gulf war, due to their night vision gear and thermal displays giving them decisive advantage over the Iraqi's practical night blindness. How unfair! Same for NAOT over Sowjet troops in Cold War turning hot war: it was expected that NATO would counterattack in the night and defend in the day.
Ukrainian tanks from Sovjet era with mine clearing equipment attached to them, can sustain 3-4 mines exploding before the kit is destroyed and must be replaced. The russians reacted to that and now place two mines over each other, reducing the longevity of mine clearing erqipment on such tanks by one half. Plus they have started already weeks ago to close every breach in the minefields by artillery delivered mines and also scattering anti personnel mines into their tank obstacles and anti-tank minefields so that engineers have a harder time breaching them.
Thats not cowardly. Thats clever and shows military competence. Even the US officials admit that Russia has build a formidable set of defences in WW1 style now. And so far the Ukrainians have a miserable time in trying to deal with them, it slows them down by many factors and brought them close to getting bogged down completely. They admit that they totally underestimated the mine problem, so did the West. That's the purpose of the exercise, isnt it? Delaying the attacker, channeling his movement into kill zones.
We could have the same discussion on cluster ammunition. Flame throwers. But it would be pointless. War has its own needs and its own logic.
If we do not like them to lay mines,
then we must hinder them. But just weeping helps us not.