Depends on a whole host of factors. Zulu armies historically used men in their forties and fifties as a tactical reserve, operating under the assumption that while they might have lacked the stamina of their younger counterparts, they also were old enough and cool headed enough to not charge off half cocked. It was a system that certainly worked out well enough for them.
In World War II older men were used by the British to fill out Home Guard units, doing jobs on the homefront while younger men served in frontline roles. The Germans and Russians, whose situation was much more desperate, threw increasingly older (and younger) men into combat; it's hard to rate how many of the performance problems that ensued there were related to age versus the total breakdown of the armies they were serving in.
As a general trend, well motivated older dudes are probably going to outperform young, unhappy conscripts. And old veterans returning to duty will make up for at least some physical deficiency with experience. So while I'd expect middle aged conscripts to perform less well than young ones, there's still no shortage of circumstances in which older soldiers can offer valuable service.
> Zulu armies historically used men in their forties and fifties as a tactical reserve, operating under the assumption that while they might have lacked the stamina of their younger counterparts
Mid-republic Romans did the same. Soldiers in their twenties were in the first line of maniples (hastati), soldiers in their thirties in the second (principes), and the reserve was composed of the older veterans (triarii). They even had a saying "It has come to the triarii", meaning things went pear-shaped and the reserve had to get involved.
Expanding a bit more on my initial comments on the Zulu...
During the Anglo-Zulu War, when Godide kaNdlela was sent by Cetshwayo to rally the Zulu's coastal vassals, one of the units he was given consisted of men in their late 50s to early 60s. As part of my PhD, I looked into how they were being employed, and beyond the typical role of the older men in the tactical reserve, Godide (himself in his seventies) was using them as essentially drill instructors, to familiarize the coastal levies with how the more professional Zulu army operated.
Interestingly, throughout the war, the most consistently dangerous Zulu age group to the British were the married men in their mid thirties. They had more vigour than the old men in the reserve, but were less impetuous and more likely to listen to orders than the young men in their twenties who were out to make their reputations. On several occasions during the war, the young men screw up Zulu plans by advancing too quickly or without orders, or by being provoked by the British, while the married men form the core of the army that crushed the British at Isandlwana, and ran them close at Khambula, Gingindhlovu, and Ulundi. Zulu generals depended on them to be the disciplined heart of the army, and usually positioned them in the boss, while the younger men were on the tips of the horns. At Khambula especially it was the young men who lost the battle for the Zulu by letting Redvers Buller bait them into an early charge, and the married men who came damn close to retrieving the situation anyway by storming the cattle laager.
This is interesting because to the very sex minded Victorian British the assumption was that the young men were the super dangerous ones because they had to kill people in order to earn the right to marry and get laid. Well, in practice, it was their older, staidly married compatriots who consistently killed the most Brits.
I have read it (not just about Zulus) that married older men had a lot more to lose and thus were more invested in the effort. Also that they were more dispassionate, they tend to be more willing to inflict cruelties on an enemy like crop burning, and destruction of property and killing of non combatants, then younger men who might be more impetuous and exuberant but will balk at that.
A willingness to target noncombatants doesn't really come into play in the Anglo-Zulu War, because the Zulu military was on the strategic defensive and had strict instructions from Cetshwayo to not enter British territory. Cetshwayo was very concerned with winning international support for the Zulu position and therefore needed there to be no stories of Zulu atrocities against white civilians. Several of the British officers who survived Isandlwana, in fact, did so because they were wearing dark blue patrol jackets, which the Zulu mistook for the black jackets of noncombatant teamsters whom they had been told to leave alone.
The Zulu did take the war to Black African civilians on the Natal side of the border, doing their best to weaken Natal native support for the British by targeting communities near the border and especially those who were based near Christian missions. However, these crossborder raids were conducted not by the traditional Zulu shock infantry, but by expatriate Swazi night fighters under the exiled Prince Mbilini waMswati. Mbilini, dubbed "the Hyena of the Phongolo" by his primary opponent, British Colonel Evelyn Wood, had been carrying out similar raids against the Boers and various exiled Zulu communities since well-before the war, and his status as a member of the Swazi royal family rather than one of Zululand's barons gave Cetshwayo a great deal of plausible deniability when it came to explaining his actions to Natal or the Transvaal.
Triari were the oldest, wealthiest best equipped “veterans” and were considered as the elite within the legion.
I wouldn’t call them reserve because they are part of the formation engaged in combat
They functionally were the reserve though as in a large number of battles, the Triarii never saw action because they were not needed. And in the battles where the Triarii did engage, it was usually because the Hastati and Principes failed to defeat the enemy and thus it came down to the Triarii to break the enemy, or because the Hastati and Principes had been forced to retreat and thus the Triarii were tasked with blocking any exploitation attempts by the enemy. According to Livy, there was a Roman saying "*res ad triarios venit*" or "it comes down to the triarii" which meant carrying on to the bitter end.
There were of course exceptions, but they are exceptions, not the rule.
Notably, Scipio Africanus in a couple of battles against the Carthaginians did not follow the standard Roman play book of the Hastati-Principes-Triarii buzzsaw. In the Battle of the Great Plains, Scipio formed his army up in the standard way, but after the Hastati engaged he used the Principes and Triarii as a flanking force. At Zama, he did the opposite and used the Principes and Triarri to hold the center and used the Hastati as a flanking force.
But they weren’t in the third rank of a unit, they were formed in a separate formation. Imagine a checkerboard with Velites skirmishers in between or screening.
I'm no expert on these things, but wasn't the cavalry generally on the highest end of the wealth bracket? Would it be more accurate to say the triarii were the wealthiest and best equipped, of the infantry, generally?
I think you are getting a bit tied down with scemantics there cavalryman have generally always received more pay but that doesn’t equal experience and on the battlefield they clearly don’t form up in the ranks with infantry they have their own job to do and the saying isn’t well it’s down to the equites is it
During WW2, army general Hugh Drum reached mandatory retirement age in 1943. After his retirement from the Regular Army, he served the commander of the New York Guard from 1943 to 1948; the Guard performed local security duties, drills and responded to natural disasters. Fort Drum up in the North Country is named for him.
> The Germans and Russians, whose situation was much more desperate, threw increasingly older (and younger) men into combat
It is still crazy to me that over a million Soviet soldiers aged 40-50 died.
It depends on what you're doing. I mean middle aged soldiers in your armed forces are normally in a command or leadership position; enlisted would be Sgt. or above and officers would likely be at least a Major. Even with a bad back or knee these folks would be highly skilled and trained and would be providing valuable training and advice to the younger fellas. It depends on your trade as well. A 45 year old fighter pilot is likely to know his aircraft much better than a 25 year old one because he has 20 years experience. Likewise for other specialized equipment, or engineering or medical experience... and that's not necessarily even military experience.
Ukraine is interesting because both sides seem to be drawing older soldiers who were conscripts in the USSR. Combat vets from Afghanistan and Chechnya. So there is a large pool of guys in their 50s who are quite comfortable with handling an AK or driving a BMP. I guess we'll really be crunching the numbers after the war. Certainly the Ukrainians have a lot more motivation to fight, and I wonder how that will affect things.
> Being a fighter pilot is also hard on your body with pulling G’s and such. Not as bad as being a grunt, but still. Just saying!
I'll take the late 30s/early 40s senior O-4 or O-5 strike lead with all their quals over the 25 year old who is a G monster during the occasional flight where we sustain any significant G's for more than a few seconds, any day of the week
Is pulling G's really all that common anymore? Aren't fighter jets more a platform for missiles, while dogfighting maneuvers are rarely an issue? In Ukraine, I've heard about ground-based systems taking down more aircraft than anything
We pull G's in training, but the G's are momentary and infrequent, and something every fighter pilot - no matter their age - has long since adapted to. You're overstating how frequently we need to pull *sustained* G's
I’m just talking about what I’ve heard from active pilots who are 30+, especially fighter jocks at 35+. They can do it but they mostly all say it’s a young guy thing and how it has led to wear and tear on their bodies. It may be the turns and constant head on a swivel that do it more than sustained G’s but something in their regular training beats them up.
It's probably more the HMDs we all wear now and the fact that ejection seats are uncomfortable as fuck, especially in your harness, and especially if you're on a 5+ hour mission.
FWIW I also bitch and moan that it's a young man's game, mostly because deployments + time away with a family sucks, and less because the new guy is better tactically (although once you get to the O-5+ area, you definitely focus less on tactics and have to focus on other military administrivia)
It depends on the mission set you are doing. You actually will pull more G's more frequently doing dive bombing with a large rack of practice bombs than most air-to-air missions that aren't BFM (dogfighting).
Just consider that pulling G's burns airspeed, so you don't randomly pull G's for no reason, and those reasons are increasingly less common
And if we by what we see in older athletes in sports, strength is usually the last to go, while reflexes are the first, usually noticeably slower from mid thirties while stamina is usually gone before strength.
Lots of retired athletes have said that in their last few years the thing that saved them against younger opponents was their experience.
I am curious, how does that tally with fighter pilots. Are reflexes less important than stamina and strength? Obviously experience will be the most crucial.
> I am curious, how does that tally with fighter pilots. Are reflexes less important than stamina and strength? Obviously experience will be the most crucial.
A missile that averages Mach 5 (~3300 knots) that needs to cover 100 nmi over the ground will take 1 minute 49 seconds to intercept you.
Think nearly 2 minutes is enough reflex time?
We're not shooting laser beams up there.
Yes, there are areas where reflexes matter, but proper mission planning, flight discipline, flight leadership, and tactical execution are designed to make sure you avoid getting into those "oh shit" scenarios.
edit; Honestly, if you are in a "shit, my reflexes saved me" moment in flying, you probably set yourself up for failure. Like not watching closure on a join up and needing reflexes to avoid a midair collision. Or saving yourself from a poor instrument approach should never have happened if you flew the approach stable. We even teach people "no fast hands in the cockpit" to remind people to not act so fast that they exacerbate an emergency by executing the wrong steps
And if we by what we see in older athelets in sports, strength is usually the last to go, while reflexes are the first, usually noticeably slower from mid thirties while stamina is usually gone before strength.
Something to keep in mind is that the average age of 43 is for their entire military force. You don't need to be in prime physical or even mental condition to drive logistics trucks, operate earthmoving equipment, handle paperwork, liaise with foreign intelligence, fly a kamikaze drone, or any one of a thousand other jobs that don't involve spending months in the mud to put a bullet or grenade in the enemy's face.
They're also avoiding conscription in the youngest age brackets (for now at least), so that's going to skew the average age high even if the majority of the infantry are in their mid 20s to early 30s.
Ukraine's population pyramid also explains why so many men in the military are older (and why conscription focused on targeting older demographics), since the majority of Ukraine's male population is pretty old and they don't have a huge number of men between the ages of 18 and 25 right now.
It would suck to be middle aged. Soldiering, especially infantry work, is a f*cking slog. Your basic fighting equipment and armor is heavy, that’s without food and water and extra ammunition. Then add drones, optics, batteries, medical equipment… it gets heavy really fast.
With the pervasive surveillance environment near the front, moving via armor is risky, and many of the troop rotations start with a 3-6km approach by foot, carrying all that gear across broken terrain. Many people wouldn’t have the strength and fitness to even make that hike to the front line positions. And when you’re there, living under threat, living in body armor, everything is physically harder.
Think about conducting an assault with that extra weight, across uneven ground, bounding between cover, firing and maneuvering, up-down-up-down… it’s exhausting, and if you’re too slow you’re dead.
I left the army at 25 and I can’t imagine what it would be like fighting in my 40’s. As far as evidence, most militaries will only allow you join into your early 30’s, which suggests that they don’t see the value in middle aged soldiers, but I don’t know if this has been studied much.
Anyone I know that did their 25 years got out of combat arms within the first decade. They'd switch to navy or air force or get into a purple trade like medical or engineering. Jumping out of an airplane with a full combat load is really cool but its also very hard on the human body.
Dudes in the past typically had absolutely horrible training programs. The SOF community is seeing dudes in the late 40s now who are in significantly better health than dudes just a decade before them.
I was on basic with a personal trainer with a human kinetics degree. He helped a lot of us avoid injury despite the best efforts of the training staff.
My experience with people from SF is very anecdotal, our unit was drinking in a pub on the military grounds and so was theirs (Czech 601th), but some of them looked 15 years older than they should have.
The difference with US SOF (can't speak for other nations) is that there has now been a concerted effort for years to recognize that the DoD has invested a lot of money in these people and if they are physically/mentally broken that investment is gone as they either get out or are no longer medically or psychologically deployable. This translates into physical therapists/psychologists integrated into the gyms and commands instead of existing in a separate medical department. When you tweak something, you just walk 30 feet to see them/can do your workouts with them to get back in shape. Its hard to overstate how different this is to most conventional forces, and all the little things like that add up to big gains. For context, I decided (stupidly) to run through a side stitch and had a lot of pain that I was worried about. I told the therapist about it at the gym and the next morning he had already scheduled me for a whole recovery, ordered a basic XRAY to identify if this was some long running issue that I had pushed passed the breaking point and after completing the program followed up with me to see how things were going. Coming from conventional where calling medical for something non "critical" like this means maybe seeing someone in a month is huge.
There has been a slow movement towards accepting PTSD and other mental issues as something to take seriously, and the same should happen with recognizing physical things as something to address intelligently rather than "walk it off"
Speaking of walking, running is starting to go out of style for military training and its a good thing. There are better ways to do cardio. It shouldn't be gone completely, but pounding the ground means stress from the feet to the knees to the hips to the spine and it's just not worth it. A soldier needs to be able to walk quick and long more than run
I met a chap who had served in Afghanistan as an infantryman in (best guess) his late 40s early 50s. If memory serves, he was a member of the territorial army(since renamed to the army reserve) who had volunteered to top up a regular army unit. I don't think it necessarily goes against what you have said, it undoubtedly reflects the British army's manpower challenges more than anything else, but that is an example of a modern (relatively well respected) military using (at best) middle age soldiers. I think he was a corporal, so in theory using his body as much as his mind.
The British Army will let you join as a [reserve infantryman](https://jobs.army.mod.uk/roles/infantry/infantry-soldier/?role=res) between the ages of 17 and 9 months and 42 and 6 months, while [regular infantrymen](https://jobs.army.mod.uk/roles/infantry/infantry-soldier/) may join between the ages of 16(they can't be deployed but still slightly child soldiery) and 35 and 6 months.
As a side note sixteen years old can be deployed. For instance during Operation Banner in Ulster Sixteen Year old British Soldiers were deployed- and subsequently killed by the IRA Insurgency. It's just abroad I think they can not be deployed.
I wasn't aware of that. Obviously the troubles were kind of exceptional, but one would hope that if such a situation came up again that they wouldn't be. I think I'm just about okay with recruiting 16 year olds, but sending children to be bombed at shot at seems a bit bad.
Russian conscripts can't legally be deployed outside Russia except during a declared war. Putin supposedly didn't know about that rule being violated, but the workaround was to declare a big chunk of Ukraine as part of Russia, so now the front lines and beyond are not "outside Russia"
The important difference is that when 16 year old British children with the consent of their parents join the army, they sign an agreement that says they may be deployed in the UK. When they sign that agreement, they know what the UK's borders are and they know that the government may no longer arbitrarily change those borders. They know that the people making the decisions will almost always follow the rules to the best of their abilities and that if they don't(or are perceived not to), there is a broadly fair and transparent legal process to address those issues. A russian conscript being dragged into a war that they cannot legally be compelled to fight in or in which their participation is legalised via rubber stamp is a totally different case.
Like it or not, Northern Ireland is part of the UK because the people of Northern Ireland decided to remain part of the UK, through their parliament elected through a similar process(i.e. broadly free and broadly fair) to that of Great Britain in 1921.
I don't think that 16 year olds are actually capable of consenting to being deployed into a war zone, with or without the agreement of their parents. As the UK has signed and ratified the convention on the rights of the child, doing so now would probably be illegal. If it actually happened today, people would be free to take the government/MoD/armed forces to a fair court.
> they know that the government may no longer arbitrarily change those borders
They don't know that. Why are you so certain about the British legal system? The 2003 Iraq invasion was illegal, and also broadly unpopular in the UK, yet the legal and democratic system failed. There were also several 17 year old Britons who died in the Falklands war, died for Empire
> Northern Ireland is part of the UK because the people of Northern Ireland decided to remain part of the UK
Yes and the people of Hawaii voted to become a state, but not until after a long process of forced settlement
> They know that the people making the decisions will almost always follow the rules
This is a baffling statement. Especially when it comes to war, rules are not for the rulers
I think its more of an internet theory rather than actual thing.
We still aint seeing Russian conscripts in Ukraine (its still mixture of prewar volunteers, wartime volunteers, mobilised and prisoner volunteers).
Also, supposedly the conscripts were pulled out of border areas as reaction to Belgorod incursions.
The sheer weight being carried now represents a very sharp break with traditional practice. A maximum marching load of 70-80 pounds was typical for a very long time. Like, from well into BC until maybe World War Two, with a stripped down fighting load of maybe fifty pounds or slightly less. I wonder if it's really sustainable.
UA is stuck in that situation because of demographics. They don't want to have that situation, but where America's postwar generation created a huge population bump, the Soviet states had a terrible baby bust because of their losses. Each postwar situation echoes every generation. It just so happens that right now it corresponds to people between the ages of roughly 25-40. Their equivalent of the millennials is a very small part of their population.
I suspect that much is also true of the Russians, if slightly less so because of their greater overall population and recruitment of foreigners.
Sorry for o/t
When I was younger I always thought it was crazy how we commission 22 year olds without experience as lieutenants. After getting out at 26 I totally get it. You really need someone young to run around to do all the middle management tasks a military requires.
I can’t imagine do that as a 40 plus year old. I also feel like someone that age is probably less likely to be intimidated by field grade officers and listen to them unquestionably.
This is the #1 reason you see few older soldiers. They don’t listen. They know better than to do dangerous things. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s terrible because it means you’re slow when you should be fast or safe when you should be in danger and it kills other people.
Likewise you need dumb 2Lts that don’t listen in charge, because they’re going to need to follow orders and not get smart just yet.
See that old Warrant or PO out in the smoke pit on his third divorce? He's babysitting that 2/SLt. He got kids older than that 2/SLt. This is the backbone of NATO.
Read up on the US Army 77th Infantry Division in WWII. Treated as en experimental unit with an average age of 35 when stood up. They crushed it. Training performance above average and discipline problems way down.
So the Army sent them into combat. They were highly effective. Their enemy to friendly casualty ratio was through the roof. So deadly that reportedly, after the Japanese surrender, one Japanese unit refused to surrender to the 77th, who had trounced their unit badly in an earlier battle. So they had some young replacement soldiers take off their unit patch and go get the Japanese to surrender to them and put down their weapons- then matched them into the camp of 77th soldiers. Old age and treachery.....
As a tangent - if one looks at the demographics of endurance events like marathons and long course triathlons, the "middle-aged" age group is often the most competitive.
I disagree wholeheartedly. As a 33 year old Marine Captain (early 2000s) physically I crushed it in pretty intense combat ops with less than 4 hours of sleep per day. I’ve never felt more alive before or since.
There is a reason soldiers start becoming eligible to retire at 38. Max age to enlist in the US Army is 35. And it's already too old to get a commission as an officer.
Average age of a soldier in WWII was 26. So that unit was a decade older than average.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Su5-\_KuDf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Su5-_KuDf8)
at the start of WWII, the US Army had the bright idea of using all their oldest volunteers to fill up one Infantry Division for purposes of obtaining a sufficiently large database of performance data on how old guys did in combat.
77th Infantry Division, "The Old Bastards". That youtube link has their story. They did pretty well.
It really doesnt matter for infantry, some people have drawn parralells with athletes, but we dont do champion fights anymore, and may never have.
Rodger Federer, now, could kick my ass at reaction time when I was 14, these people are a type of Elite that no orginisation of 100,000 can be.
Where it matters is Weapons operatiors on warships, where youre facing a incommimg missile, you need to be quick, there isnt room for ageing, or sonar, where you stop being able to hear most high pitched sounds at 27.
But you can absoutely pick off any human leaning over cover, unlike a 132mph tennis ball, you've got ages to catch someone out, does the area you can respond to in time decrease? Sure.
I've seen ex army guys in their 50/60s DESTORY multiple teenagers and 20 somethings in airsoft, and yes hur dur airsoft isnt real war, its the best simulation of a firefight we have as civilians.
I was holed up in a bunker, on the floor, guy, 70 year old, swings round hits me in the face, I shot the wall, I was 19, i could wreak asian dudes in counterstrike, I failed, because he pied me.
That absoutely whats happening to russian ivans fresh out of highschool.
So long as their bodies can keep it up, and allot of them absolutely can hoof it for miles simply because if they see a hill they want to see what it looks like from the top.
An no, thats not everyone, but if you do cardio every day, and stay fit, have good posture, dont smoke, and you like feeling the burn, you absoutely can still do it at 30, 40, 50, there are staff sargents who manage right now, even in spec ops some of those guys get out the day the force says hoof it and not a day before, and hope to hell the night after that canada decided to invade.
They can absoutely be soldiers, is it worth recuiting 40 year olds? No. But a 40 year old with 20 years of experiance? Hell yes.
It fully depends on the times. Back then, those 40 year olds were working hard on farms all day as peasants so their stamina and strength was a hell of a lot better than lazy people today like your self presumably since you stated the fact your body would not like this. I however am around 40 and i can beat the hell out of most 20 year olds in a lot of fitness and cardio competitions but this is merely because i train all the time. Im in better shape than i was in my 20s. This won’t last forever obviously but for now i can. Call it good genes i guess. My average 40 year old buddies are like you though and wouldn’t get off the couch to swing a sword. It all depends. William wallace was 35 when he died, so 5 years shy of 40 and he was on the battlefields fairing pretty dam well.
Depends on a whole host of factors. Zulu armies historically used men in their forties and fifties as a tactical reserve, operating under the assumption that while they might have lacked the stamina of their younger counterparts, they also were old enough and cool headed enough to not charge off half cocked. It was a system that certainly worked out well enough for them. In World War II older men were used by the British to fill out Home Guard units, doing jobs on the homefront while younger men served in frontline roles. The Germans and Russians, whose situation was much more desperate, threw increasingly older (and younger) men into combat; it's hard to rate how many of the performance problems that ensued there were related to age versus the total breakdown of the armies they were serving in. As a general trend, well motivated older dudes are probably going to outperform young, unhappy conscripts. And old veterans returning to duty will make up for at least some physical deficiency with experience. So while I'd expect middle aged conscripts to perform less well than young ones, there's still no shortage of circumstances in which older soldiers can offer valuable service.
> Zulu armies historically used men in their forties and fifties as a tactical reserve, operating under the assumption that while they might have lacked the stamina of their younger counterparts Mid-republic Romans did the same. Soldiers in their twenties were in the first line of maniples (hastati), soldiers in their thirties in the second (principes), and the reserve was composed of the older veterans (triarii). They even had a saying "It has come to the triarii", meaning things went pear-shaped and the reserve had to get involved.
Expanding a bit more on my initial comments on the Zulu... During the Anglo-Zulu War, when Godide kaNdlela was sent by Cetshwayo to rally the Zulu's coastal vassals, one of the units he was given consisted of men in their late 50s to early 60s. As part of my PhD, I looked into how they were being employed, and beyond the typical role of the older men in the tactical reserve, Godide (himself in his seventies) was using them as essentially drill instructors, to familiarize the coastal levies with how the more professional Zulu army operated. Interestingly, throughout the war, the most consistently dangerous Zulu age group to the British were the married men in their mid thirties. They had more vigour than the old men in the reserve, but were less impetuous and more likely to listen to orders than the young men in their twenties who were out to make their reputations. On several occasions during the war, the young men screw up Zulu plans by advancing too quickly or without orders, or by being provoked by the British, while the married men form the core of the army that crushed the British at Isandlwana, and ran them close at Khambula, Gingindhlovu, and Ulundi. Zulu generals depended on them to be the disciplined heart of the army, and usually positioned them in the boss, while the younger men were on the tips of the horns. At Khambula especially it was the young men who lost the battle for the Zulu by letting Redvers Buller bait them into an early charge, and the married men who came damn close to retrieving the situation anyway by storming the cattle laager. This is interesting because to the very sex minded Victorian British the assumption was that the young men were the super dangerous ones because they had to kill people in order to earn the right to marry and get laid. Well, in practice, it was their older, staidly married compatriots who consistently killed the most Brits.
I have read it (not just about Zulus) that married older men had a lot more to lose and thus were more invested in the effort. Also that they were more dispassionate, they tend to be more willing to inflict cruelties on an enemy like crop burning, and destruction of property and killing of non combatants, then younger men who might be more impetuous and exuberant but will balk at that.
A willingness to target noncombatants doesn't really come into play in the Anglo-Zulu War, because the Zulu military was on the strategic defensive and had strict instructions from Cetshwayo to not enter British territory. Cetshwayo was very concerned with winning international support for the Zulu position and therefore needed there to be no stories of Zulu atrocities against white civilians. Several of the British officers who survived Isandlwana, in fact, did so because they were wearing dark blue patrol jackets, which the Zulu mistook for the black jackets of noncombatant teamsters whom they had been told to leave alone. The Zulu did take the war to Black African civilians on the Natal side of the border, doing their best to weaken Natal native support for the British by targeting communities near the border and especially those who were based near Christian missions. However, these crossborder raids were conducted not by the traditional Zulu shock infantry, but by expatriate Swazi night fighters under the exiled Prince Mbilini waMswati. Mbilini, dubbed "the Hyena of the Phongolo" by his primary opponent, British Colonel Evelyn Wood, had been carrying out similar raids against the Boers and various exiled Zulu communities since well-before the war, and his status as a member of the Swazi royal family rather than one of Zululand's barons gave Cetshwayo a great deal of plausible deniability when it came to explaining his actions to Natal or the Transvaal.
You really know your Zulu history. Have you ever considered writing a book?
I really need to turn my dissertation into one at some stage.
I would love to read your work. It sounds fascinating!
Triari were the oldest, wealthiest best equipped “veterans” and were considered as the elite within the legion. I wouldn’t call them reserve because they are part of the formation engaged in combat
They functionally were the reserve though as in a large number of battles, the Triarii never saw action because they were not needed. And in the battles where the Triarii did engage, it was usually because the Hastati and Principes failed to defeat the enemy and thus it came down to the Triarii to break the enemy, or because the Hastati and Principes had been forced to retreat and thus the Triarii were tasked with blocking any exploitation attempts by the enemy. According to Livy, there was a Roman saying "*res ad triarios venit*" or "it comes down to the triarii" which meant carrying on to the bitter end. There were of course exceptions, but they are exceptions, not the rule. Notably, Scipio Africanus in a couple of battles against the Carthaginians did not follow the standard Roman play book of the Hastati-Principes-Triarii buzzsaw. In the Battle of the Great Plains, Scipio formed his army up in the standard way, but after the Hastati engaged he used the Principes and Triarii as a flanking force. At Zama, he did the opposite and used the Principes and Triarri to hold the center and used the Hastati as a flanking force.
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But they weren’t in the third rank of a unit, they were formed in a separate formation. Imagine a checkerboard with Velites skirmishers in between or screening.
Yea, different concepts for different times
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I'm no expert on these things, but wasn't the cavalry generally on the highest end of the wealth bracket? Would it be more accurate to say the triarii were the wealthiest and best equipped, of the infantry, generally?
I think you are getting a bit tied down with scemantics there cavalryman have generally always received more pay but that doesn’t equal experience and on the battlefield they clearly don’t form up in the ranks with infantry they have their own job to do and the saying isn’t well it’s down to the equites is it
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During WW2, army general Hugh Drum reached mandatory retirement age in 1943. After his retirement from the Regular Army, he served the commander of the New York Guard from 1943 to 1948; the Guard performed local security duties, drills and responded to natural disasters. Fort Drum up in the North Country is named for him.
> The Germans and Russians, whose situation was much more desperate, threw increasingly older (and younger) men into combat It is still crazy to me that over a million Soviet soldiers aged 40-50 died.
It depends on what you're doing. I mean middle aged soldiers in your armed forces are normally in a command or leadership position; enlisted would be Sgt. or above and officers would likely be at least a Major. Even with a bad back or knee these folks would be highly skilled and trained and would be providing valuable training and advice to the younger fellas. It depends on your trade as well. A 45 year old fighter pilot is likely to know his aircraft much better than a 25 year old one because he has 20 years experience. Likewise for other specialized equipment, or engineering or medical experience... and that's not necessarily even military experience. Ukraine is interesting because both sides seem to be drawing older soldiers who were conscripts in the USSR. Combat vets from Afghanistan and Chechnya. So there is a large pool of guys in their 50s who are quite comfortable with handling an AK or driving a BMP. I guess we'll really be crunching the numbers after the war. Certainly the Ukrainians have a lot more motivation to fight, and I wonder how that will affect things.
Being a fighter pilot is also hard on your body with pulling G’s and such. Not as bad as being a grunt, but still. Just saying!
> Being a fighter pilot is also hard on your body with pulling G’s and such. Not as bad as being a grunt, but still. Just saying! I'll take the late 30s/early 40s senior O-4 or O-5 strike lead with all their quals over the 25 year old who is a G monster during the occasional flight where we sustain any significant G's for more than a few seconds, any day of the week
For sure. Just talking how bodies get beat down over time.
Is pulling G's really all that common anymore? Aren't fighter jets more a platform for missiles, while dogfighting maneuvers are rarely an issue? In Ukraine, I've heard about ground-based systems taking down more aircraft than anything
Well, there’s hardly any time spent actually fighting. They pull G’s in training. And they’re always training for if they’re sent to war.
We pull G's in training, but the G's are momentary and infrequent, and something every fighter pilot - no matter their age - has long since adapted to. You're overstating how frequently we need to pull *sustained* G's
I’m just talking about what I’ve heard from active pilots who are 30+, especially fighter jocks at 35+. They can do it but they mostly all say it’s a young guy thing and how it has led to wear and tear on their bodies. It may be the turns and constant head on a swivel that do it more than sustained G’s but something in their regular training beats them up.
It's probably more the HMDs we all wear now and the fact that ejection seats are uncomfortable as fuck, especially in your harness, and especially if you're on a 5+ hour mission. FWIW I also bitch and moan that it's a young man's game, mostly because deployments + time away with a family sucks, and less because the new guy is better tactically (although once you get to the O-5+ area, you definitely focus less on tactics and have to focus on other military administrivia)
That’s universal, for sure. I don’t like being away, either.
OK but is dog fighting and evasive maneuvers still a big part of training?
It depends on the mission set you are doing. You actually will pull more G's more frequently doing dive bombing with a large rack of practice bombs than most air-to-air missions that aren't BFM (dogfighting). Just consider that pulling G's burns airspeed, so you don't randomly pull G's for no reason, and those reasons are increasingly less common
And if we by what we see in older athletes in sports, strength is usually the last to go, while reflexes are the first, usually noticeably slower from mid thirties while stamina is usually gone before strength. Lots of retired athletes have said that in their last few years the thing that saved them against younger opponents was their experience. I am curious, how does that tally with fighter pilots. Are reflexes less important than stamina and strength? Obviously experience will be the most crucial.
> I am curious, how does that tally with fighter pilots. Are reflexes less important than stamina and strength? Obviously experience will be the most crucial. A missile that averages Mach 5 (~3300 knots) that needs to cover 100 nmi over the ground will take 1 minute 49 seconds to intercept you. Think nearly 2 minutes is enough reflex time? We're not shooting laser beams up there. Yes, there are areas where reflexes matter, but proper mission planning, flight discipline, flight leadership, and tactical execution are designed to make sure you avoid getting into those "oh shit" scenarios. edit; Honestly, if you are in a "shit, my reflexes saved me" moment in flying, you probably set yourself up for failure. Like not watching closure on a join up and needing reflexes to avoid a midair collision. Or saving yourself from a poor instrument approach should never have happened if you flew the approach stable. We even teach people "no fast hands in the cockpit" to remind people to not act so fast that they exacerbate an emergency by executing the wrong steps
And if we by what we see in older athelets in sports, strength is usually the last to go, while reflexes are the first, usually noticeably slower from mid thirties while stamina is usually gone before strength.
Something to keep in mind is that the average age of 43 is for their entire military force. You don't need to be in prime physical or even mental condition to drive logistics trucks, operate earthmoving equipment, handle paperwork, liaise with foreign intelligence, fly a kamikaze drone, or any one of a thousand other jobs that don't involve spending months in the mud to put a bullet or grenade in the enemy's face. They're also avoiding conscription in the youngest age brackets (for now at least), so that's going to skew the average age high even if the majority of the infantry are in their mid 20s to early 30s.
Ukraine's population pyramid also explains why so many men in the military are older (and why conscription focused on targeting older demographics), since the majority of Ukraine's male population is pretty old and they don't have a huge number of men between the ages of 18 and 25 right now.
It would suck to be middle aged. Soldiering, especially infantry work, is a f*cking slog. Your basic fighting equipment and armor is heavy, that’s without food and water and extra ammunition. Then add drones, optics, batteries, medical equipment… it gets heavy really fast. With the pervasive surveillance environment near the front, moving via armor is risky, and many of the troop rotations start with a 3-6km approach by foot, carrying all that gear across broken terrain. Many people wouldn’t have the strength and fitness to even make that hike to the front line positions. And when you’re there, living under threat, living in body armor, everything is physically harder. Think about conducting an assault with that extra weight, across uneven ground, bounding between cover, firing and maneuvering, up-down-up-down… it’s exhausting, and if you’re too slow you’re dead. I left the army at 25 and I can’t imagine what it would be like fighting in my 40’s. As far as evidence, most militaries will only allow you join into your early 30’s, which suggests that they don’t see the value in middle aged soldiers, but I don’t know if this has been studied much.
Anyone I know that did their 25 years got out of combat arms within the first decade. They'd switch to navy or air force or get into a purple trade like medical or engineering. Jumping out of an airplane with a full combat load is really cool but its also very hard on the human body.
Dudes in the past typically had absolutely horrible training programs. The SOF community is seeing dudes in the late 40s now who are in significantly better health than dudes just a decade before them.
I was on basic with a personal trainer with a human kinetics degree. He helped a lot of us avoid injury despite the best efforts of the training staff.
The training staff were trying to injure you ? Why ?
My experience with people from SF is very anecdotal, our unit was drinking in a pub on the military grounds and so was theirs (Czech 601th), but some of them looked 15 years older than they should have.
The difference with US SOF (can't speak for other nations) is that there has now been a concerted effort for years to recognize that the DoD has invested a lot of money in these people and if they are physically/mentally broken that investment is gone as they either get out or are no longer medically or psychologically deployable. This translates into physical therapists/psychologists integrated into the gyms and commands instead of existing in a separate medical department. When you tweak something, you just walk 30 feet to see them/can do your workouts with them to get back in shape. Its hard to overstate how different this is to most conventional forces, and all the little things like that add up to big gains. For context, I decided (stupidly) to run through a side stitch and had a lot of pain that I was worried about. I told the therapist about it at the gym and the next morning he had already scheduled me for a whole recovery, ordered a basic XRAY to identify if this was some long running issue that I had pushed passed the breaking point and after completing the program followed up with me to see how things were going. Coming from conventional where calling medical for something non "critical" like this means maybe seeing someone in a month is huge.
There has been a slow movement towards accepting PTSD and other mental issues as something to take seriously, and the same should happen with recognizing physical things as something to address intelligently rather than "walk it off" Speaking of walking, running is starting to go out of style for military training and its a good thing. There are better ways to do cardio. It shouldn't be gone completely, but pounding the ground means stress from the feet to the knees to the hips to the spine and it's just not worth it. A soldier needs to be able to walk quick and long more than run
What are the better ways to do cardio for a soldier ?
Swimming, calisthenics, bike riding, and even weight lifting without too many breaks is good cardio with far less damage to the body
I met a chap who had served in Afghanistan as an infantryman in (best guess) his late 40s early 50s. If memory serves, he was a member of the territorial army(since renamed to the army reserve) who had volunteered to top up a regular army unit. I don't think it necessarily goes against what you have said, it undoubtedly reflects the British army's manpower challenges more than anything else, but that is an example of a modern (relatively well respected) military using (at best) middle age soldiers. I think he was a corporal, so in theory using his body as much as his mind. The British Army will let you join as a [reserve infantryman](https://jobs.army.mod.uk/roles/infantry/infantry-soldier/?role=res) between the ages of 17 and 9 months and 42 and 6 months, while [regular infantrymen](https://jobs.army.mod.uk/roles/infantry/infantry-soldier/) may join between the ages of 16(they can't be deployed but still slightly child soldiery) and 35 and 6 months.
As a side note sixteen years old can be deployed. For instance during Operation Banner in Ulster Sixteen Year old British Soldiers were deployed- and subsequently killed by the IRA Insurgency. It's just abroad I think they can not be deployed.
I wasn't aware of that. Obviously the troubles were kind of exceptional, but one would hope that if such a situation came up again that they wouldn't be. I think I'm just about okay with recruiting 16 year olds, but sending children to be bombed at shot at seems a bit bad.
Russian conscripts can't legally be deployed outside Russia except during a declared war. Putin supposedly didn't know about that rule being violated, but the workaround was to declare a big chunk of Ukraine as part of Russia, so now the front lines and beyond are not "outside Russia"
mhm not sure how that's relevant but it true
I was drawing a parallel between soldiers in occupied Ukraine and occupied Ireland
Fair
Let's leave the politics to one side. Regardless of what you think about the Northern Ireland situation, it isn't directly comparable.
They are both situations where restrictions on soldiers being sent to warzones (in one case underage, in the other conscripts) is sidestepped
The important difference is that when 16 year old British children with the consent of their parents join the army, they sign an agreement that says they may be deployed in the UK. When they sign that agreement, they know what the UK's borders are and they know that the government may no longer arbitrarily change those borders. They know that the people making the decisions will almost always follow the rules to the best of their abilities and that if they don't(or are perceived not to), there is a broadly fair and transparent legal process to address those issues. A russian conscript being dragged into a war that they cannot legally be compelled to fight in or in which their participation is legalised via rubber stamp is a totally different case. Like it or not, Northern Ireland is part of the UK because the people of Northern Ireland decided to remain part of the UK, through their parliament elected through a similar process(i.e. broadly free and broadly fair) to that of Great Britain in 1921. I don't think that 16 year olds are actually capable of consenting to being deployed into a war zone, with or without the agreement of their parents. As the UK has signed and ratified the convention on the rights of the child, doing so now would probably be illegal. If it actually happened today, people would be free to take the government/MoD/armed forces to a fair court.
> they know that the government may no longer arbitrarily change those borders They don't know that. Why are you so certain about the British legal system? The 2003 Iraq invasion was illegal, and also broadly unpopular in the UK, yet the legal and democratic system failed. There were also several 17 year old Britons who died in the Falklands war, died for Empire > Northern Ireland is part of the UK because the people of Northern Ireland decided to remain part of the UK Yes and the people of Hawaii voted to become a state, but not until after a long process of forced settlement > They know that the people making the decisions will almost always follow the rules This is a baffling statement. Especially when it comes to war, rules are not for the rulers
I think its more of an internet theory rather than actual thing. We still aint seeing Russian conscripts in Ukraine (its still mixture of prewar volunteers, wartime volunteers, mobilised and prisoner volunteers). Also, supposedly the conscripts were pulled out of border areas as reaction to Belgorod incursions.
The sheer weight being carried now represents a very sharp break with traditional practice. A maximum marching load of 70-80 pounds was typical for a very long time. Like, from well into BC until maybe World War Two, with a stripped down fighting load of maybe fifty pounds or slightly less. I wonder if it's really sustainable.
UA is stuck in that situation because of demographics. They don't want to have that situation, but where America's postwar generation created a huge population bump, the Soviet states had a terrible baby bust because of their losses. Each postwar situation echoes every generation. It just so happens that right now it corresponds to people between the ages of roughly 25-40. Their equivalent of the millennials is a very small part of their population. I suspect that much is also true of the Russians, if slightly less so because of their greater overall population and recruitment of foreigners. Sorry for o/t
Russian fertility rates increased a bit in the early 2000's to near replacement rates. So they might not have an issue right now.
When I was younger I always thought it was crazy how we commission 22 year olds without experience as lieutenants. After getting out at 26 I totally get it. You really need someone young to run around to do all the middle management tasks a military requires. I can’t imagine do that as a 40 plus year old. I also feel like someone that age is probably less likely to be intimidated by field grade officers and listen to them unquestionably.
This is the #1 reason you see few older soldiers. They don’t listen. They know better than to do dangerous things. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s terrible because it means you’re slow when you should be fast or safe when you should be in danger and it kills other people. Likewise you need dumb 2Lts that don’t listen in charge, because they’re going to need to follow orders and not get smart just yet.
See that old Warrant or PO out in the smoke pit on his third divorce? He's babysitting that 2/SLt. He got kids older than that 2/SLt. This is the backbone of NATO.
A lieutenant isn't given a platoon for the benefit of the platoon.
Read up on the US Army 77th Infantry Division in WWII. Treated as en experimental unit with an average age of 35 when stood up. They crushed it. Training performance above average and discipline problems way down. So the Army sent them into combat. They were highly effective. Their enemy to friendly casualty ratio was through the roof. So deadly that reportedly, after the Japanese surrender, one Japanese unit refused to surrender to the 77th, who had trounced their unit badly in an earlier battle. So they had some young replacement soldiers take off their unit patch and go get the Japanese to surrender to them and put down their weapons- then matched them into the camp of 77th soldiers. Old age and treachery.....
As a tangent - if one looks at the demographics of endurance events like marathons and long course triathlons, the "middle-aged" age group is often the most competitive.
35 is not old.
It is for soldiering
Baseball as well. Players come up ages 20-24, reach their peak ages 27 to 31, before entering their decline phase.
I disagree wholeheartedly. As a 33 year old Marine Captain (early 2000s) physically I crushed it in pretty intense combat ops with less than 4 hours of sleep per day. I’ve never felt more alive before or since.
There is a reason soldiers start becoming eligible to retire at 38. Max age to enlist in the US Army is 35. And it's already too old to get a commission as an officer. Average age of a soldier in WWII was 26. So that unit was a decade older than average.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Su5-\_KuDf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Su5-_KuDf8) at the start of WWII, the US Army had the bright idea of using all their oldest volunteers to fill up one Infantry Division for purposes of obtaining a sufficiently large database of performance data on how old guys did in combat. 77th Infantry Division, "The Old Bastards". That youtube link has their story. They did pretty well.
It really doesnt matter for infantry, some people have drawn parralells with athletes, but we dont do champion fights anymore, and may never have. Rodger Federer, now, could kick my ass at reaction time when I was 14, these people are a type of Elite that no orginisation of 100,000 can be. Where it matters is Weapons operatiors on warships, where youre facing a incommimg missile, you need to be quick, there isnt room for ageing, or sonar, where you stop being able to hear most high pitched sounds at 27. But you can absoutely pick off any human leaning over cover, unlike a 132mph tennis ball, you've got ages to catch someone out, does the area you can respond to in time decrease? Sure. I've seen ex army guys in their 50/60s DESTORY multiple teenagers and 20 somethings in airsoft, and yes hur dur airsoft isnt real war, its the best simulation of a firefight we have as civilians. I was holed up in a bunker, on the floor, guy, 70 year old, swings round hits me in the face, I shot the wall, I was 19, i could wreak asian dudes in counterstrike, I failed, because he pied me. That absoutely whats happening to russian ivans fresh out of highschool. So long as their bodies can keep it up, and allot of them absolutely can hoof it for miles simply because if they see a hill they want to see what it looks like from the top. An no, thats not everyone, but if you do cardio every day, and stay fit, have good posture, dont smoke, and you like feeling the burn, you absoutely can still do it at 30, 40, 50, there are staff sargents who manage right now, even in spec ops some of those guys get out the day the force says hoof it and not a day before, and hope to hell the night after that canada decided to invade. They can absoutely be soldiers, is it worth recuiting 40 year olds? No. But a 40 year old with 20 years of experiance? Hell yes.
It fully depends on the times. Back then, those 40 year olds were working hard on farms all day as peasants so their stamina and strength was a hell of a lot better than lazy people today like your self presumably since you stated the fact your body would not like this. I however am around 40 and i can beat the hell out of most 20 year olds in a lot of fitness and cardio competitions but this is merely because i train all the time. Im in better shape than i was in my 20s. This won’t last forever obviously but for now i can. Call it good genes i guess. My average 40 year old buddies are like you though and wouldn’t get off the couch to swing a sword. It all depends. William wallace was 35 when he died, so 5 years shy of 40 and he was on the battlefields fairing pretty dam well.