Ep 061 "The Mountains of Madness: Military Defeat and Terrain Part I"

Mar 31, 2025

53:28

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Episode notes

This CG episode got the complete audio upgrade and revision to achieve the cleanest sound ever for the podcast series effective 22 June 2025 using the new technology at Chris Williams' Podsworth.

With Western conflict possible in Yemen and Iran, I discuss the vagaries and verities of mountain warfare. The special hell of high altitude and colder temperatures and their effect on fighting and warfare.

I assess how the RMAs rapidly displacing centuries-old conflict norms are going to look for the remainder of the century.

Buppert’s Law of Military Topography:

“Mountainous terrain held by riflemen who know what they are about cannot be militarily defeated.”

References:

Points of Resistance and Departure: An interview with James C. Scott

Lester Grau and Charles J. Bartles Mountain Warfare and Other Lofty Problems: Foreign mountain combat veterans discuss movement and maneuver, training and resupply (Helion Studies in Military History)

Lester Grau The Bear Went Over The Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics In Afghanistan [Illustrated Edition]

Lester Grau The Other Side of the Mountain: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War

Mark Thompson The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919

James C. Scott The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia

Sun Tzu The Art of War

Carl von Clausewitz On War