"Here they come again!"

 

The rioters have been removed from Capitol Hill, the tear gas, pepper spray, and fire extinguisher residue is being cleaned away, and individuals on all sides are looking at the lessons learned – emphasis on “all” sides.  The defenders have less than nine days to prepare for the next assault which will itself be informed by what the terrorists learned on January 6.

Adendorff:  “They’re counting your guns.  Can’t you see that old boy up on the hill?  He’s counting your guns.  Testing your fire power with the lives of his warriors.”

In addition to time, the preparations face other obstacles.  The theft of laptops and the access to Capitol Hill computers and communication systems during the occupation of the building means that these systems are compromised.  Those responsible for Capitol Hill security may want to consider avoiding these systems and dig out some old IBM Selectric III typewriters, use hand carried messages and typewritten documents.  Going old tech in this fashion enabled the Germans to surprise the American troops in the Ardennes Forest in the Battle of the Bulge.  Our codebreakers never caught a serious whiff of the planning.

My last century National Guard training and ‘related’ experiences emphasized the importance of the display of potential force but exercising it with restraint.  This was a missing element on January 6.  There were no reserves on hand and none on call.  Military history is replete with examples of mistaken reliance on poorly placed reserves too far away to be able to execute a timely and effective intervention.

The element of surprise will be crucial to the coming events, for both defenders and any hopeful terrorists seeking to act out their delusions.  Surprise can take many forms.  Years ago I was the officer in charge of a small overseas State Department post.  Local police informed us that a local student youth group intended to occupy our premises later that day.  The authorities would post a police presence at the entrance to the building in which we were located.  For ourselves, we had a small suite of offices which were secured against the public by a counter barrier topped with bulletproof glass and doors secured by Simplex locks.  I advised our one local hire security officer of our expectations and asked him to take one additional precaution – change the combinations to our Simplex locks and change not just the numbers but the pattern used.  We enjoyed a quiet day at the office and our security officer reported (with enjoyment) watching one individual trying to open the doors but failing because he did not know the new number combination or pattern.  Surprise!  Capitol Hill Police and their supporting agencies will definitely want to be able to ‘run some new plays’ leading up to January 20.

Musings on Grunts In Space

When you look at the history of war on a continuous timeline from the past into the future, you can sometimes see things you hadn’t picked up on before.  These observations were inspired by recent discussions about war and warfare in space and how it might reflect the history of war and warfare even in this new environment.  My thanks to the USS Pershing Officers Club page on Facebook and the related History Department at Star Fleet Academy for contributing their time, thoughts, and experience to the conversation – but any errors in this posting are strictly my own.

Historically, battlefields are defined by two factors –

1) the effective range of the most numerous projectile weapons;

2) the ability of the army commander to communicate his wishes to his troops by voice or by signaling with drums, horns, banners, field phones, radios, etc.; and, 

3) the population density of a battlefield reflects the PK (percentage of kill per shots fired) of the most common projectile weapon modified by the rate of fire.  The greater the chance of not being killed by enemy fire, the greater the number of combatants that will crowd the battlefield.

As technology advanced the battlefield expanded, became more complex and less densely populated.  A major driver of this was the increasing range and accuracy of indirect fire weapons.  The trend was further reinforced when the air space over the battlefield itself became a combat zone and technology now enabled weapons a world a way to directly impact the battlefield. 

Historically, battles have been fought in extremely hostile environments.  One such environment was the North African desert in World War II; others were the Alps between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I; more recently the Himalayas between India and China; the North Atlantic almost anytime; and the Murmansk convoy routes in World War II.  However, none of these environments were as deadly as outer space, where everything will kill you.

Humans require a completely artificial environment such as a specially designed space suit, ship, or station just to be there.  The quickest way in space to render an enemy “combat ineffective” is to destroy their supporting environment’s capability to support life.  This vulnerability suggests that there is probably still a place in the space infantryman’s kit for bladed, edged weapons or even tools (the Russians traditionally use entrenching tools or shovels) which can open a suit or a soft environmental shell, or damage external life support fittings.

We have yet to see actual combat in space, but we have endless imaginings of what it might look like via books, graphic novels, television shows, and movies.  I am old enough to remember watching 1950s space shows and old B&W movie serials rerun on TV – Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Commander Cody, etc., then First Men in the Moon, and Forbidden Planet.  More recently, Dr. Who has offered several visions of combat in space and on the surface of numerous and varied planets.   These days, favorites include Battle for Los Angeles for its depiction of the grit of infantry combat against alien invaders; the original Star Wars trilogy for its space battles (stolen liberally from the WW2 movies I grew up on); Starship Troopers, which has a good feel for the surface combat even as it flaunts its political messaging to the point of satire.  The more recent “Firefly/Serenity” and “The Expanse” universes have offered some small scale combat as well.  The conversations that I noted above with the USS Pershing crew and the Star Fleet Academy History Department focused primarily on weapons used by and against the Federation, usually only by ‘away teams’, landing parties, and an occasional raiding party, and rarely depicting major ground combat  operations.

The most serious challenge in space is providing sufficient energy to power everything.  In space, energy is the coin of the realm and governs everything you do.  Everything that keeps you alive in space consumes energy, and that’s before you start traveling around at whatever speed your propulsion system can achieve.  Your weaponry, whether projectile or energy beam or energy pulse, and any possible shielding against enemy weapons, consumes more of that energy.  The energy sources currently available to us, or even foreseeable to us, are barely capable of letting us putt-putt around near space.

In our speculative fictional depictions of space combat, hand and/or shoulder weapons usually fire either a form of energy beam or pulse, or a physical projectile.  In some cases, a projectile weapon uses a recognizable cartridge containing a propellant (such as gunpowder) and a projectile or bullet.  Ignited by the striking of the hammer against the cartridge case when the trigger is pulled, that explosion sends the projectile down the barrel much as in today’s firearms.  This basic system can be adapted to function in space (where it would be prudent for this explosion to consume both the propellant and its cartridge case container as some of our contemporary weapons do minimizing waste).  Projectiles might also be launched by physical mechanical means (as with crossbows, for example) or by technical means such as an electromagnetic field as used for rail guns.  However, while space is a vacuum, the projectile will still be subject to whatever gravity fields are present and whatever other dust, particles, or other objects might be in its path to its target or beyond.  In the event of a miss though this may still result in it having a greater range than if fired in Earth’s atmosphere.  There is also the matter of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction thus affecting both the projectile and the firer (suggesting an additional use for those ‘magnetic’ boots).  These laws do also apply in space but with variations in gravitational fields and attractions from what we are accustomed to on Earth.  There is also the question of whether the energy beam or pulse fired from a small arm has Mass thus generating an opposing reaction when that Mass is fired towards a target.

Beam weapons (laser pistols, phasers, disrupters, etc.) draw upon an internal power source to generate a beam or burst of energy which is then directed (“aimed”) at an enemy individual/target.  In some variations the weapon can be adjusted to render the targeted individual unconscious or ‘stunned’ or alternatively to completely destroy that individual and leave no remains (with an as yet undiscussed impact upon casualty reporting and the activities of graves registration units, unless there is some form of electronic ‘dog tag’ or tracer link that would register the individual as wounded or killed).

Having identified a suitable new energy source (we will magic away the details for now), we still need to find efficient and effective ways to use it in multiple applications.  For much of the history of firearms, soldiers have carried a load of 100-200 additional rounds in order to be able to quickly reload while remaining on the battlefield.  Thus, for hand held weapons, we need a rechargeable portable power pack to act as a ‘magazine’ or ‘clip’. 

·         How many powerpacks would be needed to enable the user of these handheld weapons to do likewise?

·         Can these power packs be safely and successfully stored fully charged or should they be held empty and only charged soon before issue to personnel?

·         How long would it take to charge these energy packs simultaneously or sequentially?

·         Given this energy source – is it better for space ships to have an armory in which these weapons can be stored and transported versus the energy expenditure and time required for Star Fleet style replicators to produce weapons as needed?

·         Would the replicated weapons need to then be charged or can the system handle the burden of replicating fully charged weapons?

·         Then there is the matter of replicating additional power packs.

In most depictions of such weapons the beam effectively identifies the shooter’s position every time the weapon is fired (as Sergeant Murphy said, “Tracers work both ways”).  The effective range of energy beam weapons is rarely discussed though:

Star Fleet Academy Historians note that “the M2265 [phaser pistol] was limited in range precisely because it was a perfect direct fire system. The beam could maintain coherence for thousands of meters at perfectly straight trajectory with absolutely no deviation due to gravity or wind resistance. This meant the curvature of planetoids would start to become a significant problem [for targeting].  However, in practice, the weapon was rarely used at those power levels, especially because there was no way the average humanoid could fire a handgun accurately even with optical targeting assistance at ranges beyond 150 meters.”

By comparison, according to The Star Fleet History Department, there are two weapons beyond the hand held lasers/phasers used by Star Fleet:

“The TR-116 projectile rifle is a prototype weapon developed by the Federation for situations where conventional energy weapons might be rendered useless by damping fields or other countermeasures. It is essentially a conventional rifle, but with a rather futuristic visual style. It is introduced in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Field of Fire", where it is used in conjunction with a micro-transporter and a visual scanner headpiece to create an extremely potent sniper rifle. With the scanner, the shooter can precisely target people hundreds of meters away and through solid matter with no difficulty. Using the transporter attached to the barrel, the slug can then be transported during motion at full velocity, thus capable of traveling through walls and materializing within point-blank range of the target.”

It would be interesting to test the TR-116 to measure what velocity the projectile in fact had as it materialized close to the target.   I would also interpret the use of a micro-transporter to in fact mean that the projectile does not actually ‘fly through’ any obstacle since it presumably enters the transport process on the near side of any obstacle(s) and is then transported from that point to a point on the far side of those obstacle(s).

Unless the beam or energy burst is completely dissipated in the process of destroying a target, these weapons appear to risk inflicting blue on blue casualties if not carefully placed and used on the battlefield (possibly affecting even friendly atmospheric or space craft in the line of fire?).  Is there a special need to avoid friendly fire from weapons that in space have essentially infinite range?  Finally, I have to believe that any useful model of such an energy based weapon would have some form of indicator to tell the person carrying the weapon how many potential shots are left in it, something that is not clear with regard to various depicted beam weapons.

In Earth history, from the first introduction of firearms until the First World War, an entire infantry unit usually all carried the same weapon.  As technology improved during the 20th Century, infantry units down to the squad level were given increased firepower in the form of semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons – light machine guns, supporting heavy machine guns as well as a standard rifle.  Further support was provided by heavier and frequently indirect fire weapons such as grenades, mortars, and rocket launchers for use against armored vehicles or fortified enemy positions.  Extremely accurate long range projectile weapons in the hands of trained snipers were also used against high value enemy individuals such as officers and radiomen.

The History Department also identified plasma mortars used as far back as the early 23rd Century but these have been rarely seen since:

 

The weapon presumably has a system for launching the projectile from the tube independently of the round itself so that the bomb flies in a parabolic arc to impact on the intended target.  Given the probably variations in gravity, etc., in which the weapon might be deployed, it would be sensible for the weapon to incorporate sensors that would measure all important parameters so that the firer of the mortar has simply to indicate the target.

In fact, give that reserves of manpower, munitions, weaponry, etc. are likely to either be minimal or quite distantly remote from the battlefield, all deployed weapons need to be enhanced to the achieve the highest levels of accuracy, performance, and PK (percentage of kill per rounds expended).  During the “Desert Storm” war with Iraq that liberated Kuwait, the accuracy of precision guided munitions launched from aircraft marked a dramatic change in PK from World War II or even Vietnam.  That technology is now reaching down to the infantry’s weapons and is likely to continue to be applied to weapons deployed in space where logistical limits will place further demands on not wasting a single shot.  The battlefield commander is unlikely to have the luxury even of George Armstrong Custer whose last message read, “Benteen.  Come On. Big Village. Be quick. Bring Packs.  P.S. Bring packs. W.W.  Cooke.”

The Anti-Slavery War of 1834 - An Alternate History Thought Experiment

 

The interactions this summer of the political scene and the pandemic presented the 4^th of July to me differently this year.  I found it difficult to carry on with my annual watching of the film musical “1776” knowing that it would meaning watching the Southern colonies hold American Independence hostage to their ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery.  Which sent my mind to work on a thought problem exercise of “What if the Continental Congress failed to agree upon the Declaration of Independence?” 

Historian Niall Ferguson wrote in “Virtual History” that in doing alternate history, it is important to make the smallest possible alteration that will lead to the greatest changes.  Guided by that thought, the simplest possible change from which to launch this thought experiment is -   

·         The Continental Congress rejects the proposed Declaration of Independence over the issue of slavery in early July, 1776.  The Southern delegates begin withdrawing from the collapsing Congress and returning home beginning with the two Carolinas.  Georgian, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware reluctantly complete this withdrawal during August as the British Army drives Washington out of New York.

Washington’s attempted Christmas attack at Trenton is a dismal failure.  The General is killed trying to rally his rear guard covering the shattered army’s attempted retreat to its boats.  General Henry Knox drowns attempting to get the American artillery back across the river under fire.  After action criticism focused upon too complicated a battle plan and reliance upon militia against professionals with both Hessian and British reinforcements.

In January, a Commission is mandated by the Crown to offer the American rebels pardons (with some exceptions including John Adams), to allow judges to serve on condition of good behavior, and to promise to discuss colonial grievances (except the Quebec Act) in exchange for a cease-fire, the final official dissolution of the Continental Congress, the re-establishment of the pre-war (traditional) colonial assemblies, the acceptance of Lord North's Conciliatory Proposal and compensation for the Loyalists adversely affected by the war. 

Patrick Henry – exiled (friends in Virginia, which stays loyal, intercede)

Samuel Adams – arrested and brought to London for trial and execution (hanged, drawn, and quartered)

John Adams – arrested and brought to London for trial (hanged, drawn and quartered – after his brother Samuel)

Thomas Jefferson – arrested and brought to London for trial and execution (hanged, drawn, and quartered, the last of all)

Benjamin Franklin – eludes capture (rumored to have been engineered by friends in Britain) and lives out his days in Paris

Thomas Paine – eludes arrest in the American colonies, reaches Europe and by staying on the move, eludes arrest until 1789 when he is arrested in France and imprisoned.

This leaves the 13 American colonies under British rule.  Crown policy limits them to the area between the Atlantic and the main crest of the Appalachian Mountains.  The territories beyond the mountains are reserved for the various Native American tribes.  The colonies continue to see immigration though less than in our timeline because there is less available ‘free’ land.

Without the debt burden incurred in supporting the American struggle for independence and without the example of that successful revolution, France does not face the pressures leading to revolution in 1789 – buying it some time.

Now we begin to run into what I call ‘the multiple body problem’ – the farther removed we are from our point of alteration in history, the more unknowns accumulate. 

Unanswered Questions:

·         Without a French Revolution and the following wars between France the rest of Europe, what conflicts may have occurred in Europe and on what scale?

·         What further reforms might France’s Royalist Army introduce (not to mention the French Navy)?

·         The Holy Roman Empire survives and it and Russia are both eyeing the weakening Ottoman Empire’s holdings around the Black Sea and in the Balkans. 

·         What revolutionary movements might emerge where in Europe and with what degree of success?

However, we can anchor our alternative timeline on two other points from our history:

1 May 1807 – The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not abolish the practice of slavery, it did encourage British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades and it would require an end to the trade between Britain’ slaveholding colonies in North America and the Caribbean and their African sources.

The invention of the Cotton Gin in 1794 by the Colonial American inventor Eli Whitney supported the expanded cultivation of cotton in the southern colonies, sustained by the supply of labor in the form of enslaved Africans brought to the colonies and sold to the growing number of planters.  The trade is in part financed by investors and speculators throughout the colonies (concentrated in New York and Boston) who have few other outlets of investment in the colonies.  Financial investment activity in the American colonies tended to follow patterns established in London but focused almost entirely on the colonies including some investment in the trade with the African coast until 1807. 

With Spain still holding Florida and the Gulf Coast to Louisiana as well as all lands west of the Mississippi River, Spain and Portugal became unofficial beneficiaries of the ongoing slave trade, needing the profits to support their respective wars as they attempted to hold on to their colonial empires in the Americas.  Slaves from Africa are shipped through Florida and the Gulf Coast up to and around New Orleans and then sold to planters inland.  Cherokee efforts to adopt “civilized” ways meant that they too are adopting plantation agriculture using enslaved Africans for manpower.

From 1776 then through 1807, we come to 1833:

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) abolished slavery in parts of the British Empire, effective 1834 – one year after passage. This Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807 and made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company" including Saint Helena.

The Act provided for payments to slave-owners. Historically, the amount of money to be spent on the payments was set at "the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling” to pay out for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. In 1833, £20 million amounted to 40% of the Treasury's annual income or approximately 5% of British GDP at the time. To finance the payments, the British government took on a £15 million loan, finalized on 3 August 1835, with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore; £5 million was paid out directly in government stock, worth £1.5 billion in present day. The money was not paid back by the British taxpayers until 2015, when the British Government decided to modernize the gilt portfolio by redeeming all remaining undated gilts. The long gap between this money being borrowed and its repayment was due to the type of financial instrument that was used, rather than the amount of money borrowed.

Historically, half of the money went to slave-owning families in the Caribbean and Africa, while the other half went to absentee owners living in Britain. The names listed in the returns for slave owner payments show that ownership was spread over many hundreds of British families,[28] many of them (though not all) of high social standing. For example, Henry Phillpotts (then the Bishop of Exeter), with three others (as trustees and executors of the will of John Ward, 1st Earl of Dudley), was paid £12,700 for 665 slaves in the West Indies, whilst Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood received £26,309 for 2,554 slaves on 6 plantations. The majority of men and women who were paid under the 1833 Abolition Act are listed in a Parliamentary Return, entitled Slavery Abolition Act, which is an account of all moneys awarded by the Commissioners of Slave Compensation in the Parliamentary Papers 1837–8 (215) vol. 48.

Here is another point at which our history and this alternate history collide.  In our history, there were over 2 million slaves in 1830.  At rates approximately the same as noted above – this could cost the British Crown thirty million pounds.  Such an expense might

1) stop the abolition movement in its tracks;

2) result in less generous payments to the owners of slaves, possibly bankrupting some owners; or,

3) a determined Government in London could seek another process for abolition of slavery.

But even with the fullest historical rate of compensation, the planters in the southern American colonies might consider resisting the Crown.  After all, they seceded in 1861 with even less a definitive threat of abolition.

In this timeline they are not facing the might of the British Empire that defeated Napoleon, but a military power relatively little changed from that which defeated the attempted American rebellion just over 50 years earlier – with some technological improvements.  I see this as a conflict much on the scale of our timeline’s War of 1812 with armies made up of brigades.  Native American allies for both sides would number perhaps a 1,000 total, parceled out in 2-300 hundred per “field army” and used as scouts and screens against the other side’s scouts.

It would not be unreasonable to suppose that a coalition might emerge between genuine abolitionists in the other colonies and those individuals in the ‘northern’ colonies who still hold grudges against the southern colonies for sabotaging independence in 1776.  Such a coalition might offer strong support to the Crown in a conflict aimed at eliminating slavery in North America. 

My personal casting of the Major Characters for this drama follows:

Commander in Chief, British Forces – (London) – General Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill

Colonial Secretary (London) – Sir George Murray (1772-1846)

Governor-General of British North America and Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada – General the Right Honorable The Lord Aylmer (1775-1850)

Commander, Royal Naval force for the North American Expedition (sailing from Cork) – Admiral Thomas Cochrane

Commander, British Expedition to North America – General Sir Charles James Napier (1782-1853)

Commander of American Colonial forces - General Winfield Scott (June 13, 1786 – May 29, 1866) senior American militia commander, he served as a general in the United States Army from 1814 to 1861, most experienced member of British forces of American birth (Virginia).

John Quincy Adams (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as Royal Governor of Massachusetts from 1825 to 1835.   He was the eldest son of John Adams (executed after the failure of the American Revolution in 1777).  His widowed mother, Abigal Adams, was determined to see that John Quincy’s prospects would not be tarnished by his father’s fate and lobbied diligently on his behalf until her death in 1818.  His career was further facilitated by evolving British attitudes towards both the failed revolution and by the economic growth of the colonies.  This changing attitude reflected in part the influence of the romanticized version presented in the novels of James Fennimore Cooper, often called “the American Sir Walter Scott”.  Adams was a key figure in supporting the abolition of slavery after the 1833 act, rumored to be in part driven by a desire to punish the Southern slave states for their ‘betrayal’ of his father in the Continental Congress.

Candidate for command of the Southern rebels:  Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American soldier and statesman born in the colonial Carolinas.  Here I am considering geography and an altered life experience in this alternate timeline as leaving Jackson more amenable to being a defender of slavery even if this Jackson chooses to consider the struggle to be one against the overreaching parliament across the Atlantic versus the ‘yeoman farmers’ of the Americas.