Irbis wrote:And, speaking seriously for a moment, I can see modern "IRA"/Al Quaeda/whatever disgruntled fighter cell try such approach, maybe not to the point of voting in combat, but to exchange communications instantly, discussing best approach, and directing reserves to where they are needed. Even the 'medics' don't need to be that skilled - in combat, wounds can be roughly divided into three groups, and you need qualified surgeon to patch only the most serious group, for others field tending will usually suffice.
It also helps if the individual 'soldiers' are indifferent to their own lives, which would be almost necessary for this to work well. You need people who can consistently vote for strategies that are likely to get
them killed, not just the ones that get someone else killed.
That said, while I can see a cell of fighters doing it, or even net of cells, building regular, big set-piece battle units larger than company might not work well with this concept, due to before-mentioned issues with vision and overall command in combat.
The average human being's span of command is something like... what, three to six units in combat? Trying to keep track of much more than that is difficult. In a democratic army, everyone is trying to keep track of every other unit- so you are at once doing a colonel's job, a sergeant's, a lieutenant's, and so on up the chain. Or you need to be a superhuman entity that can fight, keep track of dozens of other fighters, and
talk to those fighters all at once, without benefit of subordinates to manage the details.
madd0ct0r wrote:Simon_Jester wrote:I can imagine a society that would produce people that could do this. But they'd have to come 'pre-hiveminded:' with the psychology and attitude of eusocial insects. No trying to protect their own interests at the group's expense, enough likemindedness that even when people disagree they'd be close enough together that you could work out a compromise without conscious leadership. Things like that.
I'm pretty sure people weird enough to do this wouldn't be human anymore.
You mean like suicide bombers, soldiers willing to risk death to protect their mates, most riots without conscious leadership?
Humans aren't far removed from it. EDIT - although going beyond 'tribal' limits might make it difficult to field a full army.
Suicide bombers are willing to die but have to be
talked to- they don't automatically all agree on what to do or what to blow up. Not unless you point them at a very obvious target ("blow up that tank or we all die" to the point where any bonehead can see it). War is not always obliging enough to provide very obvious targets and courses of action.
Riots can fight without conscious leadership, but they also react predictably and stupidly. The only thing that makes riot control a challenge is that police are usually trying not to kill the rioters.
PainRack wrote:So far, the novel seems to treat each army as the ultimate guerilla army, and the British Army is entirely unable to contain them.
Oddly enough, it seems to me that the easiest way to counteract such a guerilla army would be to instill some real oppression and registration of movement/ID.
Yeah. Also to have people infiltrate their network for screwing around online. Creating fake accounts and
pretending to be willing to do something heroic so that you wind up getting a bunch of them killed when they think 200 people have signed on to do something and 100 of them are fake ringers comes to mind...
