Can someone explain who's the retard that convinced modern '''leaders''' to not build fortresses and defensive borders around their cities?
Now any army can march to any city and cause havoc.
>>2550671
>>2550671
Artillery makes forts useless.
Also, urban combat is hell.
Gdje si bio 91.?
>>2550671
>spend billions building walls to keep out enemy
>they fly over the wall and drop bombs and paratroopers
Great plan. You should be head of strategy training at West Point
>>2550671
If we have ordnance these days can destroy bunkers twenty meters underground, what the fuck is the point of having an aboveground structure? In any conventional war between two modern powers, walls are useless. Static defensive warfare has been outmoded since WW2 and the days of air superiority.
>what is mobile warfare
you can go around any line or penetrate it at one point encircling the rest
they still use strongpoints though
>>2550671
Today's modern weapons say otherwise.
>>2550671
often the economies behind the walls expire before the true justification of the option to build the static defences compared to other options is reached
>>2550671
with the introduction of gunpowder, castles and fortresses were coming increasingly useless.
but innovations in fort defense still went on, with designs like the Star Fort with sloped walls to mitigate the impact of cannon fire, but after the Seven Years war with fortresses falling rather easily to improved artillery, they were phased out.
nowadays it's almost preferable to lure enemy forces inside a city and tear them apart in urban combat, where grand strategy and planning is largely thrown out the window for close quarters room-to-room fighting.
In OP's defense, fortresses still proved use in the Syrian civil war. Rebels lost countless of lives and resources in Allepo, trying to take regime position held on that place.
>>2551058
Also in Afghanistan's civil war. Afghan compund houses are built like tiny fortresses for their shitty little tribal wars.
I suppose if combatants in the war all informal armed forces like Militia cunts
Despite all the meme answers that inevitably crop up when this question is asked, >>2551058 is right in noting that a lot of the belligerents in today's wars are irregular/paramilitary groups, which rely heavily on light Infantry tactics and modified civilian vehicles and are therefore likely to have a lot of difficulty with traditional fortifications.
>>2550918 has the actually correct answer. Even in underdeveloped places of the world, urban sprawl is far too rapid and unpredictable to justify spending heaps of money on a wall that will be within the inner city in a decade.