Colonel Peter Mansoor

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“What Would You Say Are The Top 3 Most Important Battles In The Known History Of Man?”

January 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Colonel (Retired) Peter Mansoor, who served under Colonel David Petraeus during the surge in Iraq and has been an outspoken critic of Donald Rumsfeld, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. Two exchanges below, one about history and one the future.

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Question:

What would you say are the top 3 most important battles in the known history of man?

Colonel Mansoor:

Tough question, since there are at least a dozen that significantly impacted the course of history. But here are three:

  • Salamis (480 BC) – The Athenian navy defeats the Persians at sea, turning back the Persian invasion of Western Europe. What would our world look like today without Greek civilization?
  • Saratoga (1777) – The American victory over the British brought France and Spain into the war against Britain, and globalized what had been a regional conflict. The world today would look a lot different had the British defeated the colonists.
  • Moscow (1941) – The Red Army turns back Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union and turns WWII into a two front struggle in Europe that Germany had no hope of winning from that point onward. The world today would be a dark place indeed had the Wehrmacht succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union.

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Question:

What do you think the next big evolution in warfare will be (apart from drones)?

Colonel Mansoor:

Drones are actually part of an ongoing trend that will impact war dramatically in the future – robotics. We will witness that evolution on the ground as well as in the air. If you look at drones, as advanced as they might seem, we are actually at the point where nascent air forces were in 1916 during WWI. Aircraft were first used for reconnaissance, then someone figured out how to drop bombs from them, then fighter aircraft were developed to attain air superiority, then aircraft were used for transport and strategic bombing. The same evolution will occur with drones, and we are at the leading edge of that evolution.

Robotic ground vehicles will also be developed in the future, as well as exo-skeletal suits that will dramatically improve the capabilities of infantrymen. It sounds like sci-fi, but it will happen.•

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