DPRK Military Tactics

CardSharp · Nov 3, 2011

MwRYum said:
Your logic is getting nowhere...what do you want to imply exactly?

Talking about war without political context is as nonsensical as asking how Angola would do in a war against Sweden. The temptation for guys who are into hardware and tactics is that they base their hypothetical situations on the stuff they like with and ignore everything else.

The article I posted before delves a bit into the political side of things and plawolf thinks its not relevant to the topic and prefers to talk about omg A would totally steamroll B if they went to war because A has cooler stuff to fight with.

solarz · Nov 3, 2011

vesicles said:
The environment where the CCP was in was not as friendly as you would think. Many Chinese helped the Japanese for their own interests. And no matter what, stealing is never a reliable source of anything, while the Japanese had the normal manufacturing base and transportation and supply line. No matter how much of that can be disrupted by a few bands of guerrilla fighters, the normal supply line is always more effective than the stealing done by the fighters.

If the stealing can be effective, why would China spent so much time and energy and sacrifice so much to build and keep the Yunnan-Burma highway open? The purpose of the highway was to keep the supply line open. According to your theory, the Chinese could simply forget about any opening to the outside world and start stealing from the Japanese. However, they didn't do that. They fought hard to keep the Burma highway open (search "the Chinese expeditionary force). Later when that failed, thousands of pilots gave up their lives to air-drop supply into China. If stealing can be effective, why did they sacrificed so much to do anything other than stealing?

The 8th army and the new 4th army were pretty much a joke. They might be there from the beginning, but they had done almost nothing. The ONLY battle that the CCP was involved in the WWII was the so-called "hundred-regiment battle" and the CCP had about 1 or 2 regiments in the whole engagement. That was it. All the 4th and 8th armies did was blowing up a couple check points, pretty much what the Iraqi insurgents are doing now. It's a joke. We are hearing so much about how "brave" the CCP armies were because the CCP eventually won the civil war and the CCP propaganda is extremely powerful and effective. remember that the history was written by the victors.

If you look at the casaulties in the WWII, you'll find that the CCP had almost none while they hide and gather forces while Nationalists suffered most of the casualty when they took the Japanese head-on. Starting from 1941 and all way to the end of the war, the Nationalists fought the Japanese to a stalemate in some of the biggest and most ferocious battles fought in the entire WWII.

Many of the old PLA veterans interviewed in a documentary about the Chinese civil war mentioned that at the beginning of the civil war in 1947, the PLA was consistently and decisively defeated by the Nationalists because PLA seriously lacked battlefield tactics. Su Yu (one of the 4-star generals in the PLA and one of the most famous generals in the PLA) said this:"they (the Nationalists) were so much more superior in battlefield tactics, fighting skills and discipline while we (the PLA) had only one thing, our courage." Why did the PLA lack fighting skills? Because they did not fight in the WWII while the Nationalists gained huge amount of experience when fighting the Japanese. Thus, the 4th and 8th armies were simply there doing nothing.

It was the 1930's when the CCP first started doing guerrilla warfare because, well, they got nothing else left. As I said before, they were almost completely wiped out by the mid 1930's. Mao started using guerrilla warfare in the mid and late 1930's, which made him famous. However, no matter what, the CCP did not win the war with guerrilla warfare, but with PLA. And they did it by engaging in major battles, not by stealing a few guns and cannons.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with you completely. The article I linked to above said clearly that the Japanese were unable to profit from their occupation of NW China due to Chinese resistance.

It's also wrong to put the KMT and the CCP armies in the same category. The Burma supply route was of benefit to the Nationalists, who were incapable of carrying out the kind of guerilla campaign that the 8th Route was engaged in, for the simple reason that the KMT armies were charged with defending against Japanese advances, while the 8th Route was operating behind enemy lines!

Since the issue at hand is the effectiveness of guerilla warfare, it's pretty irrelevant to bring up the Nationalists and the Burma supply route.

As for the effectiveness of the CCP forces in the Sino-Japanese War, we can continue that discussion in the appropriate thread. However, I would like to say that it's pretty wrong to say that the CCP forces were a joke because they favored small-scale skirmishes over large engagements.

The real "joke" is the Nationalist Commanders who kept resorting to throwing numbers against the Japanese war machine and losing battle after battle.

vesicles · Nov 4, 2011

solarz said:
The article I linked to above said clearly that the Japanese were unable to profit from their occupation of NW China due to Chinese resistance.

It is hard to believe that anyone who is directly involved in a war can profit from the whole thing. And the lost suffered by the Japanese was not caused by Chinese guerrilla stealing from them, but by normal consumption of the war machine, such as feeding the soldiers, use of weapons on the battlefield, etc. So you can't use that as evidence of effectiveness of the guerrilla fighting.

solarz said:
It's also wrong to put the KMT and the CCP armies in the same category. The Burma supply route was of benefit to the Nationalists, who were incapable of carrying out the kind of guerilla campaign that the 8th Route was engaged in, for the simple reason that the KMT armies were charged with defending against Japanese advances, while the 8th Route was operating behind enemy lines!

Since the issue at hand is the effectiveness of guerilla warfare, it's pretty irrelevant to bring up the Nationalists and the Burma supply route.

I simply used the Burma theater to demonstrate the importance of maintaining supply line and to show you that simply stealing cannot be used as a reliable source for supporting a war.

solarz said:
As for the effectiveness of the CCP forces in the Sino-Japanese War, we can continue that discussion in the appropriate thread. However, I would like to say that it's pretty wrong to say that the CCP forces were a joke because they favored small-scale skirmishes over large engagements.

I am not questioning the effectiveness of the small scale guerrilla fighting, but questioning the magnitude of the effectiveness. It has its use, but has been VASTLY over-estimated by the CCP propaganda machinese after they took over China. No war in the history of mankind has been won by guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla fighting can prevent the losing side from completely losing, but it is not something you can use in hope of actually winning the war.

solarz said:
The real "joke" is the Nationalist Commanders who kept resorting to throwing numbers against the Japanese war machine and losing battle after battle.

Actually, I think it's disrespectful to say it is a joke when hundreds of thousands of young soldiers knowingly and willingly throw themselves in front of enemy machine guns and sacrifice their young lives only in hope of slowing down their enemy a bit. I don't think anyone, commanders and soldier, who would want to lose so many lives on the battlefield. Especially that time in China when most of the commanders considered themselves warlords and their troops as their livelihood for their own future. If they had any other options, they would not throw their own troops into the mouth of Japanese war machine. That would mean destroying their own dream of wealth, fortune and power. As a matter of fact, many Chinese commanders had been known to pulling back and preserving their troops. And these commanders were eventually considered as cowards and selfish. The point I'm trying to make is that the Chinese commanders at the time thought extremely highly of their own troops as these troops were almost uniformly considered as the private properties of the commanders. With far inferior weapons and little fighting experience, they had no choice. that's the best they could do at the time.

AND it was because of these selfless sacrifices, the Japanese was slowed down enough that the Nationalists could have the precious time to regroup and learn from previous experience and eventually were able to mount effective offenses and push the Japanese back. So you canNOT simply say all the sacrifices made by Chinese troops in the beginning of the war were a useless joke. It was critical to halting Japanese offenses in China, which forced the Japanese to change their strategy and start attacking the Southeast Asia.

solarz · Nov 4, 2011

vesicles said:
It is hard to believe that anyone who is directly involved in a war can profit from the whole thing. And the lost suffered by the Japanese was not caused by Chinese guerrilla stealing from them, but by normal consumption of the war machine, such as feeding the soldiers, use of weapons on the battlefield, etc. So you can't use that as evidence of effectiveness of the guerrilla fighting.

I simply used the Burma theater to demonstrate the importance of maintaining supply line and to show you that simply stealing cannot be used as a reliable source for supporting a war.

I am not questioning the effectiveness of the small scale guerrilla fighting, but questioning the magnitude of the effectiveness. It has its use, but has been VASTLY over-estimated by the CCP propaganda machinese after they took over China. No war in the history of mankind has been won by guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla fighting can prevent the losing side from completely losing, but it is not something you can use in hope of actually winning the war.

Vietnam and Afghanistan are examples of wars won by guerilla warfare.

And the Japanese were unable to use NW China as a *supplemental* supply source due to CCP guerilla actions and the hostile locals. Instead, they were forced to funnel money from Japan to NW China in order to keep it productive. That's what the article was saying, and that's what demonstrates the effectiveness of CCP's guerilla tactics.

As for Burma, just because it was useful for the Nationalist doesn't mean the 8th Route couldn't supply themselves with raids. Those are two different situations.

Actually, I think it's disrespectful to say it is a joke when hundreds of thousands of young soldiers knowingly and willingly throw themselves in front of enemy machine guns and sacrifice their young lives only in hope of slowing down their enemy a bit. I don't think anyone, commanders and soldier, who would want to lose so many lives on the battlefield. Especially that time in China when most of the commanders considered themselves warlords and their troops as their livelihood for their own future. If they had any other options, they would not throw their own troops into the mouth of Japanese war machine. That would mean destroying their own dream of wealth, fortune and power. As a matter of fact, many Chinese commanders had been known to pulling back and preserving their troops. And these commanders were eventually considered as cowards and selfish. The point I'm trying to make is that the Chinese commanders at the time thought extremely highly of their own troops as these troops were almost uniformly considered as the private properties of the commanders. With far inferior weapons and little fighting experience, they had no choice. that's the best they could do at the time.

AND it was because of these selfless sacrifices, the Japanese was slowed down enough that the Nationalists could have the precious time to regroup and learn from previous experience and eventually were able to mount effective offenses and push the Japanese back. So you canNOT simply say all the sacrifices made by Chinese troops in the beginning of the war were a useless joke. It was critical to halting Japanese offenses in China, which forced the Japanese to change their strategy and start attacking the Southeast Asia.

This is should really be in a thread of its own.

I did not say the soldiers who sacrificed their lives were a joke. I said the KMT military commanders' performance were.

China is a vast country that dwarf Japan both in territory and in population. The fact that young Chinese were willing to sacrifice their lives to defend their country is indisputably heroic. However, the fact that the KMT military performance was such that slowing down the Japanese was the best they could manage is rather pathetic.

The 29th Army was one of the most heroic band of soldiers in the war, but Chiang refused to equip and support them properly, even though they achieved some remarkable victories against the Japanese.

In the defense of Shanghai, Chiang ordered his troops to hold the city at all costs, exposing them to devastating Japanese naval artillery. Had he ordered his troops to a more defensible position instead of trying to defend his own seat of power, the Nanjing Massacre might not have happened.

You mention the inferior weapons and lack of fighting experience of the Chinese as a factor of their performance. However, remember that China and Japan had been fighting since 1931, when Japan invaded and occupied NW China. So it wasn't a lack of experienced soldiers. It was a question of bad politics and administration that wasted the experience of those veterans.

As for inferior weaponry, compare the KMT performance against the Japanese with the performance of the PVA against the US-led UN forces in the Korean War. If anything, the disparity of weapons was greater during the Korean War!

delft · Nov 4, 2011

Just a technical remark: People tend to exaggerate the role of battles in war. When in 1568 the man known as William of Orange and William the Silent started his campaign to remove the Spanish power out of the Netherlands he hired mercenaries and invaded the countries ( there were 17 of them ). In four years time there were several invasions in which the Spanish generals nearly always avoided battle. In those cases the invasion ended when William of Orange ran out of money. In the others Williams armies were defeated. The tide turned when what were seagoing guerrilla's, to most people of course pirates, captured the town of Brielle and were able to keep it.

plawolf · Nov 4, 2011

solarz said:
You mention the inferior weapons and lack of fighting experience of the Chinese as a factor of their performance. However, remember that China and Japan had been fighting since 1931, when Japan invaded and occupied NW China. So it wasn't a lack of experienced soldiers. It was a question of bad politics and administration that wasted the experience of those veterans.

Well, fighting long wars is actually extremely devastating for a military force's experience when you are on the loosing side. Just look at the state of the German and Japanese militaries in 1941 compared to 1945.

Wars are won as much, if not more, by the preparations and training before battle as it is by the performance on the field of battle.

Your troops learn the vast majority of their skills in training, and combat experience is as much about overcoming mental barriers as it is about learning additional skills. Although even that may be less relevant these days.

A US study showed that only 15-20% of American soldiers discharged their weapons in combat during WWII. Incorporating psychology tricks to overcome this instinctive aversion to killing other humans has raised that figure to about 55% in Korea, 90% in Vietnam, and probably higher still in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is almost certainly to be one of the causes of increase psychological disorders in veterans, but I am getting sidetracked.

The point is that real combat only adds a limited amount to the knowledge of a soldier, since military planners and leaders normally try to incorporate as much of the lessons learned in past wars in standard infantry training as possible anyways.

What really degrades a military force is continuous, high intensity, high casualty combat over a long period, as more and more of the soldiers who had the most training pre-war will inevitably be lost through attrition, to be replaced by greenhorns with far less training because they would likely have been rushed through basic because of the manpower demands of the war.

A long period of war is also especially debilitating for a military force that is not self reliant on arms and imports much of it's best weapons as China did in the 30s, because it becomes increasingly difficult and unlikely that advanced weapons would be easily and timely replaced because they had to be imported. So inferior alternatives had to be found, which would further degrade the fighting capabilities of the military.

A lot of painful lessons were learnt during the Anti-Japanese War, and many of them continue to shape and influence PLA policy today, like China's absolute insistence on self-reliance of all mainstream weapons systems - the PLA would never want to be in the position of the Nationalists whereby the equipment lost during the first engagements of the war were actually the best equipment they ever had with only inferior replacements readily available for the rest of the war.

But I think we are really starting to get sidetracked here.

vesicles · Nov 4, 2011

solarz said:
Vietnam and Afghanistan are examples of wars won by guerilla warfare.

Again, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars were not won by guerrilla warfare, but politics. If the occupational forces in both cases were willing to spend the money and time, the two nations would never "win" the war.

solarz said:
And the Japanese were unable to use NW China as a *supplemental* supply source due to CCP guerilla actions and the hostile locals. Instead, they were forced to funnel money from Japan to NW China in order to keep it productive. That's what the article was saying, and that's what demonstrates the effectiveness of CCP's guerilla tactics.

There were a large Nationalist presence in the NW China. So any disruption in manufacturing could be caused by conventional fighting between the Japanese and the Nationalists.

Also, NW China was never a priority for the Japanese, who focuses heavily on Eastern and central China. So it is possible that the Japanese troops stationed there were not even given a fair share of the budget in the first place. Many reports have shown that the most elite Japanese troops were placed in either NE China or East/Central China, never NW.

solarz said:
As for Burma, just because it was useful for the Nationalist doesn't mean the 8th Route couldn't supply themselves with raids. Those are two different situations.

Well, no one wants to go to guerrilla warfare if he has a choice. the CCP had no choice but to use it, while the Nationalists had much better options.

Again, no one can supply themselves effectively with raids. Please remember that stealing things can never be a good source of supplying yourself.

solarz said:
China is a vast country that dwarf Japan both in territory and in population. The fact that young Chinese were willing to sacrifice their lives to defend their country is indisputably heroic. However, the fact that the KMT military performance was such that slowing down the Japanese was the best they could manage is rather pathetic.

The 29th Army was one of the most heroic band of soldiers in the war, but Chiang refused to equip and support them properly, even though they achieved some remarkable victories against the Japanese.

In the defense of Shanghai, Chiang ordered his troops to hold the city at all costs, exposing them to devastating Japanese naval artillery. Had he ordered his troops to a more defensible position instead of trying to defend his own seat of power, the Nanjing Massacre might not have happened.

It's always easy to be an armchair general and speculate "what coulda, shoulda, woulda". The commanding generals on the Chinese side were some of the most brilliant combat commanders and what they achieved was the best one can hope for given the resources they had and the geopolitical situation at the time.

solarz said:
You mention the inferior weapons and lack of fighting experience of the Chinese as a factor of their performance. However, remember that China and Japan had been fighting since 1931, when Japan invaded and occupied NW China. So it wasn't a lack of experienced soldiers. It was a question of bad politics and administration that wasted the experience of those veterans.

China and Japan did not enter war until 1937. The first official battle between the two sides occurred in Taierzhuang. Anything before that was only small skirmishes. Also, Chinese armies pulled out of the NE China without firing a single shot when Japan entered NE China. So China and Japan did not fight a single battle until 1937 when Japanese troops attacked Beijing.

Well, to come back to our initial argument, NK will never be able to win a war using guerrilla fighting. To win a war, one has to occupy strategic locations and eventually all locations in a territory. You need a large conventional force to do that. Without proper supply and manpower, a few bands of guerrilla fighters can never hope to do any of that. Guerrilla warfare can be used on a tactical stand point, to slow down the enemy and disrupt the enemy, thus giving the conventional force time to regroup. If the conventional force in NK has been all destroyed, there is absolutely nothing the NK can do.

solarz · Nov 4, 2011

vesicles said:
Again, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars were not won by guerrilla warfare, but politics. If the occupational forces in both cases were willing to spend the money and time, the two nations would never "win" the war.

By that definition, all wars are won or lost through politics. War is an extension of politics by other means, and all that. I think you're focusing too much on the narrow definition of guerilla warfare. Of course no war is won by guerilla warfare alone, just like no war is won by airstrikes or cavalry alone. It doesn't mean that guerilla warfare couldn't play a pivotal role, which is the crux of the issue here.

There were a large Nationalist presence in the NW China. So any disruption in manufacturing could be caused by conventional fighting between the Japanese and the Nationalists.

Also, NW China was never a priority for the Japanese, who focuses heavily on Eastern and central China. So it is possible that the Japanese troops stationed there were not even given a fair share of the budget in the first place. Many reports have shown that the most elite Japanese troops were placed in either NE China or East/Central China, never NW.

That true, but the Nationalists also had magnitudes more troops than the Communists. The 8th Route suffered massive losses during the reprisal campaigns by the Japanese, but they survived and grew even stronger.

It's always easy to be an armchair general and speculate "what coulda, shoulda, woulda". The commanding generals on the Chinese side were some of the most brilliant combat commanders and what they achieved was the best one can hope for given the resources they had and the geopolitical situation at the time.

The Nationalists did have some of the most brilliant military commanders, but they were in the minority, and they had two debilitating handicaps. First, as demonstrated during the Civil War, they lacked unity. There were a lot of in-fighting among the top commanders. Second, they were stuck with bad politicians, Chiang being chiefest among them.

China and Japan did not enter war until 1937. The first official battle between the two sides occurred in Taierzhuang. Anything before that was only small skirmishes. Also, Chinese armies pulled out of the NE China without firing a single shot when Japan entered NE China. So China and Japan did not fight a single battle until 1937 when Japanese troops attacked Beijing.

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MwRYum · Nov 4, 2011

Whoa, you lads are that eager to call in the fat pilot here, ain't you?

Red___Sword · Nov 9, 2011

MwRYum said:
Whoa, you lads are that eager to call in the fat pilot here, ain't you?

Freaking indeed! Look where the thread started and where it leads now, great debate, ok, but what the F when dragging WWII era CCP into this topic helps to better insight what N.K.'s stance in the near future?

Let's not emotional, China, and US, would try (not necessarly collaborate) hard to disassemble the war-machine, (or better choice of word "war-mechanism") - before options runs out.

Don't emotional, someone throw up an article says the united forces of S.K and uncle sam can not put down a heavenly force of N.K marching through the corpus which try to deny the holy cause; (OR, heavenly force of S.K can wipe out all the living souls that considering "that's close enough!" for the consequeces of its advancing) - and better yet, you can not prove or dis-prove the scenario, unless hit the arena pit for real - so that you are pissed and actually going to the pit.

It is an insult to ALL, to underestimate the wisdom, will and resolve, of the power-coutries, to avoid clash.

- It is by THAT, the original article is trash.

DPRK Military Tactics

CardSharp

New Member

solarz

Brigadier

vesicles

Colonel

solarz

Brigadier

delft

Brigadier

plawolf

Lieutenant General

vesicles

Colonel

solarz

Brigadier

MwRYum

Major

Red___Sword

Junior Member