brian ross wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 7:30 pm
I will amend my statement, "not used in modern war".
"modern war"
https://www.google.com/search?q=modern+ ... e&ie=UTF-8
What is the first modern war?
It has been something of a commonplace to describe the American Civil War as the first modern war. Following the First World War, military theorists such as J.F.C. Fuller began to argue that the manner in which the Confederacy had been crushed foreshadowed the methods of 20th-century warfare.
For clarity's sake >
Modern warfare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_warfare
Modern warfare is warfare using the concepts, methods, and military technology that have come into use during and after World Wars I and II. The concepts and methods have assumed more complex forms of the 19th- and early-20th-century antecedents, largely due to the widespread use of highly advanced information technology, and combatants must modernize constantly to preserve their battle worthiness.[1] Although total war was thought to be the form of international conflicts from the experience of the French Revolutionary Wars to World War II, the term no longer describes warfare in which a belligerent use all of its resources to destroy the enemy's organized ability to engage in war. The practice of total war which had been in use for over a century, as a form of war policy, has been changed dramatically with greater awareness of tactical, operational, and strategic battle information.
War in modern times has been the inclusion of civilians and civilian infrastructure as targets in destroying the enemy's ability to engage in war.[disputed – discuss] The targeting of civilians developed from two distinct theories.[citation needed] The first theory was that if enough civilians were killed, factories could not function. The second theory was that if civilians were killed, the enemy would be so demoralized that it would have no ability to wage further war.[citation needed] However, UNICEF reports that civilian fatalities are down from 20 percent prior to 1900 AD to less than 5 percent of fatalities in the wars beginning in the 1990s.
With the invention of nuclear weapons, the concept of full-scale war carries the prospect of global annihilation, and as such conflicts since WWII have by definition been "low intensity" conflicts,[2] typically in the form of proxy wars fought within local regional confines, using what are now referred to as "conventional weapons," typically combined with the use of asymmetric warfare tactics and applied use of intelligence.
More recently, the US Department of Defense introduced a concept of battlespace as the integrated information management of all significant factors that impact on combat operations by armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including information, air, land, sea, and space. It includes the environment, factors, and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission. This includes enemy and friendly forces; facilities, weather and terrain within the operational areas and areas of interest.[3]
brian ross wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 7:30 pm
As the examples you provide (and there is considerable doubt about the utility of smallpox infected blankets ...
It's documented fact the Brits don't deny. The American Indian tribes had sided with the French (thus the introduction of scalping as proof of kill for payment). The Brits organised a peace offering with the potential for a truce. During the meeting the Brits as a supposed sign of good will gave the Indian chiefs woollen blankets. In reality it was a double cross ploy as the blankets had come from hospital patients infected with small pox. Within 6 months the relevant tribes had been reduced to a fraction (20 or 30% .. I forget) of their original population. This episode is cited as the first use of biological warfare, but I read about Chinese catapaulting plague infected body parts from ships over Italian fortress walls centuries earlier. So what was the 1st use of bio agents I don't really know.
brian ross wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 7:30 pm
and the US efforts in Korea were basically Communist black propaganda)
No mate, I watched a doco many years ago where a high ranking US officer stated the US used B52s to spray Chinese and North Korean troops with biological and chemical weapons. If the yanks hadn't done it, they'd deny it to this day.
brian ross wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 7:30 pm
The Japanese efforts in China amounted to nought.
No mate, the cholera worked. I don't know how effected the plague infected flees were, but I know they did it.
I read 2 volumes of the war crimes trial the Russians held on Japanese officers involved.
brian ross wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 7:30 pm
Biological agents are fragile and invariably will only infect and kill about 30% of a population into which they are introduced.
30% of a population is a fair whack of people, particularly in a war of attrition.
brian ross wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 7:30 pm
Interestingly, the Japanese with their
Unit 731 in Manchuria were at the end of WWII the most advanced at producing biological agents. The commander of that unit Shirō Ishii was given immunity from prosecution in return for his revealing the secrets he had developed during the war. Australian soldiers were amongst his victims - indeed their claims under (now) Department of Veterans Affairs was the first Australia heard of it in the 1960s.
I'm surprised you discovered this. I knew about it because my overtly communist grandfather who idolised Lenin and Mao and demonised the Japs had 2 volumes of war crimes trials specifically relating to the 2 biological testing grounds the Japs had - 1 in China and 1 in Manchuria. One was indoors and the other out doors. Russian captives were the most used to see the effects on Caucasians. But most used over all were Chinese.
At the indoor facility captives were injected with bio agents and put in a cell to see what happened.
At the out door facility captives were strapped to posts with their vital organs protected. Then a bio agent infected bomb was detonated so the guinea pig would be hit with infected shrapnel, and then placed in a cell to see the results.
I was unaware the commander got immunity, but not surprised.
I read the 2 volumes of war crimes trials in the late 1970s.
I appreciate your willingness to be corrected, but I'm not a trusting soul and assume you're just trying to save face over pretence of expertise.