XPost: or.politics, sci.military.naval

On 12/22/23 10:07, hal lillywhite wrote:

On Friday, December 22, 2023 at 9:34:59 AM UTC-8, a425couple wrote:

from
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4371673-the-navy-needs-a-yorktown-plan-for-submarines-to-defeat-china/

The Navy needs a ‘Yorktown Plan’ for submarines to defeat China
BY WILLIAM TOTI, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 12/21/23 3:00 PM ET
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A crew sits on the deck of U.S. Ballistic Missile Submarine USS Kentucky
anchored in Busan Naval Base on July 19, 2023 in Busan, South Korea.

There is an old saying in war that amateurs talk about strategy while
professionals talk about logistics.

I never heard that nonsense before, and it is nonsense. What I have heard, and this does have value, is that company grade officers (lieutenants and captains) worry about tactics, field grade officers (majors and colonels) worry about strategy and

general officers worry about logistics. All are important and they must all be effective if you want to win the war. There are many examples of forces with smaller numbers or less weaponry winning against technically superior forces.

Quote by Joseph Stalin: “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Quantity has a quality all its own. - Joseph Stalin - Goodreads
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https://www.goodreads.com › quotes › 795954-quantity-...
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Quantity has a quality all its own”
Posted on September 16, 2016 by Mathias Klang
Quantity has its own quality – The quote is often falsely attributed to Stalin. It was used in this great article by Will Self: The awful cult
of the talentless hipster has taken over

Aside from the great article it got me thinking about the quote which
then led me to find out a examination on Quora written by Nils Barth
it’s worth repeating:

Presumably Thomas A. Callaghan Jr., influential US defense consultant of
the 1970s and 1980s and director of the Allied Interdependence program
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, arguing for
increased spending on weapons.

Earliest result I could find is “Quantity has a Quality All Its Own,” Allied Interdependence Newsletter No. 13, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 21 June 1979 (which Callaghan produced and
presumably authored), cited in Naval War College Review, “How much is
not enough? The non-nuclear air battle in NATO’s central region”, Volume 33, March-April (1980), footnote on p. 77, quotation on p. 68, echoing
similar sentiments by Sam Nunn (“At some point numbers do count.”). This looks like the origin of the phrase.

The phrase has been popular in the US defense community since the 1980s, sometimes acknowledging it as a US coinage, but often misattributing it
to Clausewitz, Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev, but mostly to Stalin.

The general principle that quantity begets quality is a key tenet of the Marxist theory of dialectical materialism, as formulated by Marx and
Engels, phrased as the law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes. This in turn is attributed to Hegel (Science of
Logic), who in turn attributes it to Ancient Greek philosophers, notably
the paradox of the heap Eubulides: a quantitative change in the number
of grains of sand leads to a qualitative change in being a heap or not.
While Marx and Engels are quoted by various Marxist and communist
authors, including Stalin, this formulation is not found in their work
or in English translation. (Re: “Quantity has a quality all its own” source?, Tim Davenport, H-Russia, April 5, 2010)

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