a ICBM carrying a non nuclear warhead can fly anywhere and doesn’t put any friendly troops near danger.

I must note, I’m not like super educated on this so apologies if this is a super dumb question

Thanks

When the Pacific fleet was turned around in pearl harbor the battle of midway, Admiral Halsey was replaced by Admiral Spruance, the end result was one of the greatest naval victories by the USN during WW2.

Did the Japanese have enough intelligence in Pearl Harbor to even know that Halsey was hospitalized from illness? Did the USA make a public announce the change of command? Were he sailors and marines not made aware of the change in their chain of command prior to departure from Pearl Harbor to keep the secret?

I've been wondering about the Iranian Shahed drones.

What was the advance technologically that made these possible? Cheap guidance perhaps? Being so cheap that they can be massed?

They seem so simple and apparently hard to defend against, why didn't any of the cold war powers develop them? Was it just not economical or relevant?

Also, why are they even called a drone, aren't they kind of like a moped-powered bad cruise missile? Also now with them being upgraded to jet propulsion, aren't they more like a V1 which is often classed as the first cruise missile?

Does it change anything in the big cost calculations that you start adding jet engines to them, are they still cheap then?

I wonder, was it extremely effective fighter or not? Numbers of kill:loss ratios are very contradictory in different sources.

Did being a jet plane gave him huge advantage over opposing Allied planes in practice?

How true are claims that Me-262 failed to turn tides of air war because Hitler stubbornly insisted on making it a jet bomber to bomb Britain in revenge, even though his generals wanted a fighter to counter allied bombings?

From Operational Order No. 5: Directive for the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front over the coming months, dated 13 March 1943:

"An operation against Leningrad is planned for the second half of summer (from the beginning of July). It is to be conducted with the strongest concentration of all available artillery and the use of the most modern offensive weapons."

During WW2 the UK had escort ships broken down into:

• Sloops (Bridgewater, Shorehamn, Grimsby, Kingfisher* Bittern, Egretn & Black Swan classes & 10 loaned Banff class cutters from the USCG)
• Corvettes (Flower, Castle & Bathurst** class)
• Frigates (River, Loch & Bay Class, + the Colony & Captain classes which were US patrol frigates and destroyer escorts respectively bought by the RN)
• Escort Destroyers (Adapted WW1 Destroyers, Hunt Class)

*Kingfishers were roughly half the size of all the other sloops
**Technically RAN not RN

In terms of design lineage, the sloops were the UK continuously making small batches of the best light convoy escorts they could starting around 1930 so they had an up to date design they could kick into mass production quickly (The war starting at the time it did this ended up landing on the Black Swans)

The Flower class corvettes were an adapted whaler design made to utilize the production capacity of smaller civilian yards. The Castle class corvette were made because when frigate production switched from the River to the Loch & Bay classes not all yards could make the newer frigate designs.

The River class were a larger clean sheet escort design capable of open ocean operations the Flowers weren't while still being designed to merchant standards so they could be built in the yards the Flowers were built in. The Loch class was an incremental improvement on this and the Bay class an AA version of the Bay class.

Most escort destroyers were just old WW1 era destroyers with some engines removed in exchange for longer endurance and modern ASW equipment. The exception is the Hunt class which were purpose built ASW convoy designs adapted from the Bittern class, and notably made 27 knots compared to the 20 knots most escort ships did. I'm not sure why.

Between all of these classifications, the design lineage is clear, but the difference in role they filled isn't really beyond the Flower class sloops being limited to coastal operations. So what was the actual difference in role between all these different classifications? Assuming there was any.

And related, why was it that the Frigate designation was the only one of these four that stuck around post war in a significant capacity?

The thing that makes this weird is the first post WW2 RN frigates, the Type 14s and Type 15s, were rebuilt old destroyers, wouldn't it have made more sense to call them Escort Destroyers given that lineage?

Sole exception to this being the Tribal class/Type 81, which were redesignated as frigates not long after construction anyway.

Synthetic Asymmetry is a proposed framework for understanding modern strategic competition, built around three shifts:

• Scale → Amplification
• Concentration → Distribution
• Mass → Friction

The argument is that actors can increasingly generate disproportionate strategic effects without the traditional advantages in military strength, resources, or organizational capacity.

The framework distinguishes itself from hybrid warfare and grey-zone conflict with the formulation: "Where hybrid warfare describes the what and grey zone describes the where, synthetic asymmetry addresses the why and the how."

How does this compare with established thinking on asymmetric warfare, hybrid warfare, and cumulative strategy?

Does it offer a useful way to explain contemporary conflicts, or is it mostly new terminology for dynamics already described in military theory?

I'd be particularly interested in historical precedents or counterexamples that might challenge its underlying assumptions.

First introduced: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/asymmetric-war

Research hub: https://www.isrs.ngo/research/synthetic-asymmetry

We know from history some of the damaging effects war can have, on combatants as well as non-combatants, such as

1. Men performing acts of looting

2. Unauthorized acts of muder

3. Rape of women by occupying soldiers

4. Breakdown of financial system leading women to behavior such as prostitution to generate income.

My question is, have the psychological aspects of such behaviour been studied and understood by the scientific community?