How to make war
by James F. Dunnigan · first published 1982
8mentions
3recommended by
3HN commenters
2009–2019first – last mentioned
100% recommend
This is the wrong title. The book is about the systems of county parks, not about how to make war.
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…/ graphics capability to do that in real time, at least not in our lifetime :-). While I never finished my efforts (-1 for me I guess) I learned so much along the way, I bought Dunnigan's excellent 'How to Make War' book which was the bible for wargames at the time (and to some extent still is) and tackled path finding algorithms, and automated forces deployment, and strategic evaluation with limited vision, and…
on “A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game” ↗…piece, the US equipment would accomplish the same functionality in about 3/4ths of the parts, but the Soviets would undercut them by another 3 or 4 parts. James Dunnigan discusses this in his classic _How to Make War_. Being the follow-on competitor is actually a great way to avoid overengineering.
on “A Classic of Soviet Engineering - The Typhoon-class sub” ↗Not a very well developed thesis on Artillery. If the author is reading, please get a copy of Dunnigan's How to Make War which describes in detail how to calculate the various effectiveness of different artillery strategies. I've got a dog eared copy of the 2nd edition I was using while writing my 'ultimate replacement…
on “Artillery Practices by the Major Combatants of WWII” ↗…battles, maneuvering is slow so its difficult to line up behind a ship like it is with a plane. Even so, if this test system works I expect there would be a matching version on the stern. Frank Dunnigan's "How to Make War", which is putatively about how to develop war games, goes into some depth of comparing offensive versus defensive impact of various weapon systems. It makes for an interesting read.
on “Mysterious Laser Turret Appears on US Navy Destroyer USS Dewey” ↗Defense Analyst James Dunnigan, in his highly influential book How to Make War, argued that late in the war, the blockade and mining of Japanese Shipping had by far the largest effect on the Japanese ability to wage war. Given enough time, the Japanese military machine would just…
on “The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan” ↗…the people who read Sun Tzu to learn how to better manage their sales team and etc. The best book I know of in the "detailed stuff, like how to use tanks, planes and so on" area is James F. Dunigan's "How to Make War". It's a little cold-war oriented but still pretty applicable, and the first chapter is helpfully titled "How to Become an Effective Armchair General". Given that wars are usually massive economic…
on “Ask HN: good books about military strategy?” ↗This one: http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Fourth-Edition-Comprehensive/... Called "How to Make War" and it describes the mechanics, the theory, and the variables that impact the prosecution of warfare. The Wargames book was, in my opinion of course, a derivative which attempted to re-contextualize…
on “A developer who spent 13 years making his childhood game” ↗Mostly this seems to advocate the US adopting the Trophy system from Rafael although it does mention there are other vendors in the picture. The fundamental point, which is also made in Dunnigan's "How to Make War" is that the cost of fortification goes up faster than the cost of attack capability, so you can only match scale if you use two attack systems. Or to put it in terms of this article, if you added 50…
on “New US Army Tech Instantly Destroys Enemy Fire” ↗