Actually not similar, only the shape is similar. The trick with the "trace italienne" is that each tower (edge of the star) can reach and attack people below the other towers, so each tower is protected by its neighbors.
As far as I can tell, Fort Bourtange never had towers for defense but rather relied on it's walls to protect it enough.
Nothing anachronistic about it; this is likely an optimal design when considering how to maximise the effective coverage of guns. This is good design for a fortification that is meant to be held.
This design is relatively quite modern and is a direct response to the introduction of artillery to warfare. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder#Changes_t... . It is a difficult fortification to crack. In fact it has a long history of use in colonial expeditions according to Wikipedia.
It's anachronistic in the sense that it was largely made obsolete by artillery advances during the 19th century, replaced by polygonal forts (which could even adapt to high-explosive payloads, and actually proved their worth in both world wars), as well as the more modern bunkers & fortified emplacements.
It makes a lot of sense when unlikely to face artillery and bombers though, as it's pretty straightforward and cheap to build and operate.
But it is a throwback to something which has largely become decorative in the lands or originate from.
The decorative aspect is actually a major piece of it's function here. It's intended to be highly visible, and maintaining a highly visible military presence is part of counterinsurgency tactics.
Your assertion is simply wrong. "Star forts" is what you get when you optimize a defensive structure where you want to maximize line of sight from loop holes, minimize blind spots, and ensure that if the enemy overruns parts of their defensive structure they can't use it to shield themselves from loopholes in other parts of your fortification.
It seems you're missing the point. The point is that bastions are prove to be effective as defensive structures (it minimizes blind spots in a battlefield) in scenarios where the enemy carries mostly light weaponry.
The design is also effective to conduct psychological warfare for some of the reasons that they become tourist attractions in Europe.
What point did I miss exactly? I explained why the article would call the design anachronistic (which is what GP complained about) as well as — expecting your sort — why it made perfect sense anyway.
Why it's anachronistic is interesting. The bastion was dropped because attackers soon learned they could get artillery fire into the bastion, and ricochet shot in there.
Newer fort designs seem to be about accepting that explosions will happen inside of the walls, and avoiding reflections?
> Nothing anachronistic about it; this is likely an optimal design when considering how to maximise the effective coverage of guns.
I guess what makes it slightly anachronistic is that these "pointy" designs look like they are somehow designed with fluid or aero-dynamics in mind, and back in the days I guess they were when an amassing army would literally try and storm the walls. In that situation, you want the opposing army to be forced against a point rather than a flat wall so that every flat wall they attack, they are flanked by another one right next to it, creating a "kill zone".
While I'm sure the design is by no means "useless" by today's standards, I have to wonder if the original intent of the design makes sense in an era of air strikes and tanks. But then again, if you're up against a less advanced adversary, maybe "storming the gates" is literally what they'll be forced to attempt.
Am I missing something or is this article very short on photos? I can see only three of the actually fortification under discussion, none of them particularly enlightening.
What I gleaned from the article was that the French only released a handful of non-security-compromising photos (eg, closeup of a flag raising), and the author padded out the remainder of the article with drawings and pictures of other forts.
Other nations built castles in Afghanistan using the same HESCO bastion [1] techniques shown in the article, don't think they were as interesting shapes though.
Yeah they were usually just a boring circle.
But there was a time around 2007 in Iraq I traveled through a combat outpost that was made with 15 meter high concrete walls and had turrets (which also held guns) on 4 sides. It was a proper little castle.
Though the enemy in Iraq did have a lot of mortars so the patrols stationed did see causalities from indirect fire.
Yes our patrol base in Afghanistan was made partly of these and partly of the adobe mud walls of the compound we were in. This shape would've been really useful, as on more than one occasion people were able to sneak up by utilising the visibility dead-zones
On the same vein, US embassy in Tunis is closer to a fortification than to a diplomatic building. It even has a turret. It seems that other US embassies around the world became fortifications after 2001.
Diplomatic buildings have often been strong points designed to keep staff safe in uncertain times. This is true even in safer locations; the new US embassy in London is very much a fort although the defensive features (like the water-filled moat/pond, and bollards hidden in the hedges) are well integrated into the landscaping.
The new site is probably considerably harder to assault than their old building, even though that looked more like a military building. The Grovesnor Square building was so ugly that even the official picture on the US Embassy website tries to hide it from view behind some trees!
Some people are unable to recognize great architecture when they see it. Saarinen's building is applauded as one of the finest modernist structures in Britain and is rightly Grade II listed.
Some people are unable to recognize awful architecture when they see it. I like a lot of Saarinen's work, especially his furniture, but even Homer nods, and his Grosvenor Square building looks like a cinderblock with a grudge.
The vocabulary he chose to express this building is rather ungraceful in concrete, quite unlike his curvilinear works. The main issue is that the post-beam elements in the facade are poorly scaled. I haven't seen the plans, nor the section, so possibly the 'masterpiece' is inner beaty, but on the outside, it is a jumble of poorly scaled elements.
Also to call this, as the (know-it-all) Economist does, a "modern classic" is wrong. This is a pseudo-brutalist work, hardly high modernism. The contemporary Seagram's building (1958) is Modernism.
Another contemporary work relevant here (Paul Rudolph's Yale School of Architecture, 1963) shares some of the vocabulary of this work. And Rudolph knew how to design rectilinear concrete buildings. Saarinen clearly didn't.
[p.s. It is possible that the scale distortions in the front are (building) program driven, to address security considerations. The crit remains.]
Canberra is an isolated, artificial city, where everyone who lives there works for the Government or provides services to those workers. Inside Canberra itself, the embassies are all clustered together. Its secure by design.
> a 18th century Georgian style colonial townhouse
Not sure where you're reading this... it was built in the 1940s. I mean Canberra itself wasn't founded until 1901 and the oldest building is from 1845... so not sure how you think there was a townhouse there in the 18th century.
And it's inside a secure compound. And someone rammed the gates not long ago.
Saint Barbara is entirely appropriate for a sapper[1] regiment, but it's disappointing their motto is "Sapeur suis, para demeure" instead of "Bâtis ou crève" ...
Nous croyions nous aimer pour la vie
Mais hélas les beaux jours sont si courts
[1] would their work be considered uncivil engineering?
Please don't let the fact that you didn't bothered to read the article you're commenting on stop you from accessing the information you never bothered to search.
For those interested, you can look up "Vauban" or "Vauban fortifications", in reference to Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, an important military figure under Louis XIV.
If you're ever in the Florida Keys Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas National Park is a (never completed) fort in the same style and definitely worth visiting on a day with good weather.
This article doesn’t mention the months of protests in Mali which culminated in a coup d'état on the 18th forcing the president to resign. Yes, it’s a cool construction, it likely does serve Operation Barkhane but I think there are some unmentioned colonial interests.
How practical are these against modern weapons? Couldn't some modern explosives just destroy a fortress wall, thus rendering its inherent purpose of withstanding a siege impossible? It's an interesting sight and architecturally curious but I'm wondering what the purpose of such an effort is.
lobbing explosive shells into that need's at least a mortar, which at least needs rudimentary setup, which means you are dead a short time after firing your shell.
Assuming "modern weapons" means light arms carried by modern infantry: These are different from a castle. If the enemy makes a mad rush for the breach, they're going to get cut down by your guns, so the walls are more to provide cover from enemy fire than to physically keep them out.
Assuming "modern weapons" means bombers, tanks, cruise missiles: this is not going to stop them at all.
They're basically the most effective, quick defence to put up (a somewhat long but informative British army video on the effects of small arms on various walls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j31Crn-y6tM)
They'll withstand most SVBIED (Suicide Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Devices) attacks. And incase one Hesco barrier is not enough, several are usually used to create sufficient thickness.
So for a counter-insurgency war such as this in Mali, yes you couldn't get better
I guess that fort is build with the threat of the Al Quaeda/ISIS groups in mind, which are mostly equipped with firearms and a few RPGs and such but nothing too advanced. It's not intended to take on a full siege by a regular army.
Typically they're shaped differently, but US forces in Iraq / Afghanistan use the same type of structures built from dirt-filled barriers. They're highly effective if the enemy does not have artillery and / or air power.
ISIS whenever they launched attacks in Syria or Iraq against some army base or prison structure they filmed it with drones and put it on youtube. Their strategy was multiple suicide trucks or cars filled with explosives (some were decoy vehicles) that had to survive the speeding attack to the walls to blow themselves up for a breach where the foot soldiers could come in and raid, so these were mad max looking vehicles covered in makeshift armor, coming in from all directions hoping to exploit a blind spot in the structure's defenses. So in other words having no blind spots seems like the best defense against that kind of enemy or one that tries and lobs mortars at you while you have clear sight of them doing so.
No, it's still perfectly possible to build a fortification impervious to most or all firepower. What changed in WWII is it became possible for the entire enemy army to simply drive and fly past your fortresses; the Maginot Line is an infamous example. Against an enemy without armor or aircraft, a bastion like the one from the article is an appropriate defense.
The latest edition of the Economist had an article about the recent coup in Mali, and about the (rather obvious) need for institution-building rather than pure military interventions by European powers: https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2020/08/19/...
Mostly unrelatedly, whenever I see these types of forts I am reminded of the forts that workers build in Civ 5, which are equally useless
If those institutions are completely staffed and run by Europeans, protected by European security forces, you will jumpstart the development of the country by several decades.
If you want to frame your outrage, Africa is a continent. This is mainly about Mali and its fight against Al Qaida/ISIS.
France sent troops in with UN support in 2013 after a plea for help from the Malinese government (1)
That government was overthrown by the "National Committee for the Salvation of the People" very recently (2) so it's hard to say what the future holds, and if they should remain there. Most of the west (including the US) is not too excited about the new leadership though.
Mali and the surrounding countries were a French colonial territory for about 80 years from the late-19th through mid-20th centuries.
France has maintained relationships with its former colonies in West Africa, and frequently performs counter-terrorism operations there.
Some local West Africans are OK with it, others are not. A 2016 attack on a beach resort in Côte d'Ivoire was claimed by the attackers (AQIM - Al'Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb), to be directly because of the foreign presence in West Africa, and the beach resort was targeted specifically because it is popular with foreigners (4 of the 19 killed were French).
France's history in West Africa is complicated but it's probably because of that history that they continue to operate there.
I don't know what he means exactly but the main consequence is that the Franc CFA is pegged to the Euro. It has a big impact but I wouldn't call this "managing their economy".
The Economist has lots of coverage of the Sahel and the ongoing developments in Mali. It’s one of the few mainstream publications with significant coverage of that issue available in the US.
They’ve got a bunch of podcasts that largely cover the content of their articles, with the voices of reporters and occasionally primary source recordings mixed in, all available for free. Worth checking out for sure.
Now I’m wondering, does anyone else have good resources for coverage of the Sahel or other international interests outside the US’s 24-hour news cycle?
It’s interesting that the most socialist states pursue exactly the same objectives that the most capitalistic states pursue outside their national borders, often involving war, violence and exploitation.
The discourse internally is however one of solidarity, fraternity and equality.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Bourtange
As far as I can tell, Fort Bourtange never had towers for defense but rather relied on it's walls to protect it enough.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/musee-des-plans-reliefs-...
Nothing anachronistic about it; this is likely an optimal design when considering how to maximise the effective coverage of guns. This is good design for a fortification that is meant to be held.
This design is relatively quite modern and is a direct response to the introduction of artillery to warfare. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gunpowder#Changes_t... . It is a difficult fortification to crack. In fact it has a long history of use in colonial expeditions according to Wikipedia.
It makes a lot of sense when unlikely to face artillery and bombers though, as it's pretty straightforward and cheap to build and operate.
But it is a throwback to something which has largely become decorative in the lands or originate from.
It's also a very French thing to do.
Decorative doesn't mean highly visible, it means the only value is in the looks.
Star forts in europe are purely decorative, they don't have any function aside from looking rather neat (and the historical context /value I guess).
Your assertion is simply wrong. "Star forts" is what you get when you optimize a defensive structure where you want to maximize line of sight from loop holes, minimize blind spots, and ensure that if the enemy overruns parts of their defensive structure they can't use it to shield themselves from loopholes in other parts of your fortification.
The design is also effective to conduct psychological warfare for some of the reasons that they become tourist attractions in Europe.
Newer fort designs seem to be about accepting that explosions will happen inside of the walls, and avoiding reflections?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygonal_fort
I guess what makes it slightly anachronistic is that these "pointy" designs look like they are somehow designed with fluid or aero-dynamics in mind, and back in the days I guess they were when an amassing army would literally try and storm the walls. In that situation, you want the opposing army to be forced against a point rather than a flat wall so that every flat wall they attack, they are flanked by another one right next to it, creating a "kill zone".
While I'm sure the design is by no means "useless" by today's standards, I have to wonder if the original intent of the design makes sense in an era of air strikes and tanks. But then again, if you're up against a less advanced adversary, maybe "storming the gates" is literally what they'll be forced to attempt.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion
Though the enemy in Iraq did have a lot of mortars so the patrols stationed did see causalities from indirect fire.
The new site is probably considerably harder to assault than their old building, even though that looked more like a military building. The Grovesnor Square building was so ugly that even the official picture on the US Embassy website tries to hide it from view behind some trees!
https://uk.usembassy.gov/our-relationship/policy-history/rcg...
https://www.economist.com/prospero/2017/09/26/the-american-e...
Yes because taste is totally not subjective...
Why not just share that you think it's beautiful instead? Does everyone have to agree with you?
Also to call this, as the (know-it-all) Economist does, a "modern classic" is wrong. This is a pseudo-brutalist work, hardly high modernism. The contemporary Seagram's building (1958) is Modernism.
Another contemporary work relevant here (Paul Rudolph's Yale School of Architecture, 1963) shares some of the vocabulary of this work. And Rudolph knew how to design rectilinear concrete buildings. Saarinen clearly didn't.
[p.s. It is possible that the scale distortions in the front are (building) program driven, to address security considerations. The crit remains.]
Photo: https://au.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/canberra/
Not sure where you're reading this... it was built in the 1940s. I mean Canberra itself wasn't founded until 1901 and the oldest building is from 1845... so not sure how you think there was a townhouse there in the 18th century.
And it's inside a secure compound. And someone rammed the gates not long ago.
And noone is asking what the french are doing there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_the_Maghreb_(200...
It's just a "military effort" by France in Africa. They're fighting terror! Please don't ruin everybody's fun with facts and historical context.
Assuming "modern weapons" means bombers, tanks, cruise missiles: this is not going to stop them at all.
They'll withstand most SVBIED (Suicide Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Devices) attacks. And incase one Hesco barrier is not enough, several are usually used to create sufficient thickness.
So for a counter-insurgency war such as this in Mali, yes you couldn't get better
Mostly unrelatedly, whenever I see these types of forts I am reminded of the forts that workers build in Civ 5, which are equally useless
France sent troops in with UN support in 2013 after a plea for help from the Malinese government (1)
That government was overthrown by the "National Committee for the Salvation of the People" very recently (2) so it's hard to say what the future holds, and if they should remain there. Most of the west (including the US) is not too excited about the new leadership though.
1) https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35863/the-french-army-...
2) https://www.voanews.com/africa/france-keeping-close-eye-mali...
France has maintained relationships with its former colonies in West Africa, and frequently performs counter-terrorism operations there.
Some local West Africans are OK with it, others are not. A 2016 attack on a beach resort in Côte d'Ivoire was claimed by the attackers (AQIM - Al'Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb), to be directly because of the foreign presence in West Africa, and the beach resort was targeted specifically because it is popular with foreigners (4 of the 19 killed were French).
France's history in West Africa is complicated but it's probably because of that history that they continue to operate there.
They’ve got a bunch of podcasts that largely cover the content of their articles, with the voices of reporters and occasionally primary source recordings mixed in, all available for free. Worth checking out for sure.
Now I’m wondering, does anyone else have good resources for coverage of the Sahel or other international interests outside the US’s 24-hour news cycle?
type those doi numbers into sci-hub to read them, also this is the 'real' economist: https://academic.oup.com/ej like their study on mandatory conscription and criminal behavior afterwards https://academic.oup.com/ej/article/129/622/2522/5490322?sea... when released from the military these groups find no upwards mobility, so use their skills for crime.
The discourse internally is however one of solidarity, fraternity and equality.