Comment by yborg
2 days ago
I wonder when the use of 'culminate', v. "reach a climax or point of highest development" for "cease to be effective" became the standard in military-related writing when trying to sound smart. The original usage in the specific context of an army's advance or offensive coming to an end made some sense but it's now used as basically a wordy synonym for "stops" in any context.
Not to mention the closing paragraph of the article essentially says the same thing 8 times - for such a well written paper the closing paragraph was a real disappointment in my eyes. Overall though, good write up.
I'm also loving their phrase "on a nonlinear battlefield"
... not sure what a linear battlefield would be
Static (relatively, at least) battle lines? Think of WWI: you knew where the danger was, and where it wasn't.
Not that I know anything in particular about this piece of military jargon, but that's my contextually-informed supposition.
I think a linear battlefield is one in which there is a "front line", which was a given for prior wars but maybe not as much anymore. Future wars might see adversarial forces mixed among each other spatially more than in the past.
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