In medieval Japan and Europe, it was the elite classes who served

I think it been us retarded infantry doing the fighting for most of human history. The upper class were only written about because they were generals and whatnot and could pay people to write shit.

>>34154629
But the aristocracy weren't just talking heads. They actually took swords into battle and fought. Even in WW2, the Jap commanders still did seppuku rather than surrender. Can you imagine General Patraeus or Colin Powell driving a blade into their bellies if they lost a battle in Iraq?

>>34154634
I don't want to be in this thread anymore.

>>34154634
I lost a battle, better throw away years of experience and institutional knowledge and millions of dollars in training.

>>34154673
I didn't say it was a good idea. I'm just using it as an example of how the upper ranks used to be more than just POGs. They used to be invested in the fight. Today's generals don't give a damn about winning battles. They only care about advancing their careers and playing office politics.

It's not unique to Japan either. English barons bore arms against King John to get the Magna Carta signed.

The bureaucratic state and modern state army destroys this idea.

Nowadays it's all about the money and the papers, there's no more responsibility, no more nobless oblige.

There were different ranks of Samurai, most Samurai were of only slightly higher rank than peasants and still came from farming backgrounds.

Also a lot of Japanese foot soldiers were peasants employed by Samurai.

>>34154701
True, but the samurai class was the cream of the crop. So were knights of Europe. Nowadays, we don't have any patrician fighters unless maybe airplane pilots count.

>>34154716
Nowadays patricians just mean blue blood hipster kids, it's not like ye olden times where they are bred to be stronger than peasants.

>In medieval Japan and Europe, it was the elite classes who served as the best soldiers

But that's not true in the slightest... knights and samurai were basically mercenaries who over generations made a code of honor to follow

>>34154716
That's literally a meme. Jizamurai of little land who had to enlist to provide for their families were far more common than your noble warrior class stereotype.

Knights as a class is an extremely difficult concept to wield due to the sheer historical range we apply that word to. We're talking everything from shitty backwater forest owners with a wiry horse to a trained-from-birth Warriors. The stereotype that only the latter existed is not true for the majority of the history of the word Knight.

Furthermore, in almost all these circumstances, the commanders weren't frontliners. Pre-Segoku Jidai generals mostly just stayed in their command pavilions. The ones that engaged in combat were mostly due to the enemy fucking their army up so bad that Command was under threat.

You're making a false equivalency between Knights and the Upper Warrior Class and modern Command.

A more apt comparison considering unit composition and intended roles would be to say that a Samurai who fought on the frontlines as a kind of Senior NCO who either led Ashigaru or formed their own units.

>>34154621
You have to understand first of all that there are different levels of aristocracy even with the samurai caste.

For the record though, they spent most of their time as mounted calvary (much like European knights) and we're much less at risk than your average foot soldier.

>>34154726
Knights and samurai definitely were not mercenaries, I mean you got actual mercenaries band and ronin for that.

Knights got fief, samurai got a lord to serve.

>>34154737
A cavalry job is much more riskier than a foot soldier though.

Cavalry charge is the bloodiest shit in the battlefields until musket.

>>34154742
Let me clarify, the actual fighting samurai did so mostly as mounted archers.

>>34154621
I think that prince harry would like to have a word with you.

>>34154753
It's a gross simplification, samurai basically serves as any role that they excel as, including spearmen, archer, swordsmen or mounted cavalry.

There are many warfare schools and these samurai are trained in these arts.

Ashigaru were only meant to follow the samurai.

>>34154621
>are guns going away anytime soon?

You merge two aspects of pre-modern warfare into one. Warrior class was equivalent to upper middle class of today, people that have skills that take entire life to build and money that comes from their skills (doctors etc.). Back then this sort of money would buy you top war equipment of the day, but today you wouldn't be able to buy and support MTB with that sort of money.

Elites being part of military structure no longer being a thing comes down two factors.

Modern army is hundred times more meritocratic than armies of past.

Transformation from aristocracy to plutocracy.

>>34154727
>A more apt comparison considering unit composition and intended roles would be to say that a Samurai who fought on the frontlines as a kind of Senior NCO who either led Ashigaru or formed their own units.
This.

The same for the so-called knight as well. I hope you don't believe the monarchs were having peasants leading peasants.

>>34154634

I don't know how it is in the USA, but in the UK Sandhurst (the army college) is absolutely heaving with officer candidates who went to a private school and come from the "right" background. Leading a platoon or small formation will mean they are very much on the front lines.

>>34154621
Pre-modern warfare were much more limited affairs whose outcome depended on the nerves of individual soldiers and their commander rather than technology.
Having nobility serving as the warrior caste made more sense then than it does today, especially now that war is more about winning hearts and minds than killing the enemy.
Nobody does bayonet charges anymore, there is no need for the kind of honor code that made them possible.

The modern day knight is the fighter pilot. The infantryman is the peasant with a pike.

>>34155673
>peasant
Not as many armies used peasant levies as you would think, if your peasants are out marching and dying who's growing your crops to feed your army and citizenry?

>>34155673
Either the tank, fighter or helicopters.

Americans always call for support when shit gets rough.

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>>34154629
How many goats have you killed?

>>34155673
Chevaliers du ciel.

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>>34154629
>I think it been us retarded infantry doing the fighting for most of human history.
I'm with this guy.

>>34154621
>it was the elite classes who served as the best soldiers, samurai and barons.
Because they had enough gold to buy their equipment and buy the post they wanted to serve in. Just because you hold a fancy title doesn't mean you can't still be a useless piece of shit.

>>34154634
>Even in WW2, the Jap commanders still did seppuku rather than surrender.
That was their culture.
>Can you imagine General Patraeus or Colin Powell driving a blade into their bellies if they lost a battle in Iraq?
Here's a zinger for you. Imagine if these guys were waging gruesome close combat against another peer force like the Russians.

>>34154742
>Cavalry charge
A mount must be smarter than the cavalryman, but the mount must not be allowed to know this.

Saying that a cavalry charge is riskier than an infantry charge is akin to saying that crashing a car into a wall is safer than running into the wall.

Some of you chuckle fucks seem like you might be pretty well "educated" on your military history and all that. But the obvious absence of life experience in this thread with which to apply context to this stuff is atrocious.

>>34155971
>Saying that a cavalry charge is riskier than an infantry charge is akin to saying that crashing a car into a wall is safer than running into the wall.
...but crashing a car into a wall is closer to cavalry charge than running into a war? The speed, the momentum, the elevation.

>Some of you chuckle fucks seem like you might be pretty well "educated" on your military history and all that. But the obvious absence of life experience in this thread with which to apply context to this stuff is atrocious.
Experiencing any cavalry charge lately?

>>34154621
>Will we ever see the return of the patrician warrior, or will the wars of the future continue to be fought with armies of lower class cannon fodder.

/his/ here:

Most actual soldiers in the western military tradition were actually peasant levies or mercenaries drawn from non-noble classes.

Think of knights and barons, etc, as being the officer's corps. Even into the early modern period, this actually was the distinction between officers and enlisted in certain european countries - officers held a noble title, enlisted didn't.

Even today, officer corps retain a distinction between what our society considers "plebeian" and "patrician" -- education. Officers must have a 4 year degree in order to be officers.

I don't know all too much about the japs' historical military organization, but it seems they too relied on peasant levies (called ashigaru) to fill the bulk of the ranks, samurai being again, akin to an officer corps.

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>>34155990
>...but crashing a car into a wall is closer to cavalry charge than running into a war? The speed, the momentum, the elevation.
My bad, I meant to say "is more dangerous*".

>>34155990
>Experiencing any cavalry charge lately?
I'm a life long equestrian athlete and Nasty Girl paratrooper of 11 years in real life. So I've got a pretty good perspective on what a cavalry charge would be about with out having to actually crash into a line of men with pikes. Crashing into trees, fences and crowds of unarmed people are well enough to get the idea.

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Speak for yourselves.

>>34156153
Props to him for doing it, he seem like a legit great lad but can you imagine how much of a headache it must have been for everyone else?
Nobody would have risked having some royalty getting killed or captured by hadjis, imagine the time and resources spent making sure it couldn't happen.

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Patrician here. You have the shortage correct, but you fail to recognize the modern samurai/knight equivalent.

In those days horses, armor, and weapons like swords were prohibitively expensive for most of the population and one had to either inherit these things or win them from participation in feudal institutions. Simply owning a charger was like riding through some peasant town in a Mercedes. Today's equivalent are fighter and bomber pilots. They have college degrees denoting advanced education and are removed from the dirtiness of ground warfare, killing with near impunity those on the ground or fighting against peers in the sky. Other officers embody this to a lesser degree as career administrators.

The issue isn't that those roles don't exist in the modern military, the issue is that the military cannot draw in or keep enough of them and that's the piece of the puzzle that's hard to place. I think that it started around the Vietnam War era where a combination of things happened that led to the idea of military service being necessary to be seen as a credible leader becoming voided. Today less than 1% of Ivy League students join the military, and only three children of Congressmen serve in the military. Most of the fledgling elite go straight into the private sector with a small few who are disproportionately following family tradition enter the military or various civilian services like the CIA.

Why are patricians choosing to work at Google or Credit Suisse instead of doing time as fighter and bomber pilots? Because it's cushier and there is no expectation that they do otherwise, with the latter reason being a bigger incentive.

>>34156153
>>34156373
Falklands. One of the British royals, piloting a chopper, played decoy for Exocets.

>>34156153
Do you really think he was treated equally to the others?

He probably chilled at the base all day and had his accomplishments exagerated. Or, if he did go out it was after the grunts cleared the area. There's no way he was just "one of the guys"

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Even in Imperial Japan, the Navy command and some of the Army command was pretty much entirely high class aristocrats, many descended from former Samurai families

>>34156503
Being Royalty obviously facilitated his career in some ways but he really did his bit and served along with grunts until the press leaked his location.

> He said: "There's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country."
> Harry was scheduled for deployment in May or June 2007, to patrol the Maysan Governorate. By 16 May, however, Dannatt announced that Harry would not serve in Iraq; concerns included Harry being a high-value target (as several threats by various groups had already been made against him) and the dangers the soldiers around him would face should any attempt be made on his life or if he was captured.

> This was confirmed in February the following year, when the British Ministry of Defence revealed that Harry had been secretly deployed as a Forward Air Controller to Helmand Province in Afghanistan.
> It was later reported that, while in Afghanistan, Harry helped Gurkha troops repel an attack from Taliban insurgents, and performed patrol duty in hostile areas.

> In October 2008, it was announced that Harry was to follow his brother, father and uncle in learning to fly military helicopters.
> On 7 September 2012, Harry arrived at Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan ... to begin a four-month combat tour as a co-pilot and gunner for an Apache helicopter
> On 10 September, within days of arriving in Afghanistan, it was reported that the Taliban threatened his life. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid spoke to Reuters and was quoted as saying; "We are using all our strength to get rid of him, either by killing or kidnapping," and "We have informed our commanders in Helmand to do whatever they can to eliminate him."
> It was announced on 21 January 2013 that Harry was returning from a 20-week deployment in Afghanistan

He sincerely wanted to serve but in this day and age, his presence was a liability more than anything else.

>>34156721
Because it's not like they resort to suicide attacks and doing whatever they can to eliminate any person whatsoever.

>>34156721

>When the media isn't content with killing just your mother

>>34156721
If half what I read about Gurkhas in /k/ is true, they would love becoming a high priority objective for the towelheads.
And a Royal shall always have a foreign guard after all.

>>34156440

this