I think you may have gotten those two mixed up...

wait what

are you still talking about the v1/2 issue?

Germans had Vampir, the first infantry night-vision, a really crazy idea at the time.
The first jet fighter, Me-262, that was insane for it's time
Me 163 Komet, a rocket-powered plane with photo-cells and a cannon mounted facing up, that would blitz past under enemy planes and the cannon would automatically fire when the photocell got blocked, as human reaction speed was nowhere near good enough to hit, a crazy idea in and of itself
"Silbervogel", a project never finished that would have sent a 100 ton plane shaped like a flying wing, carrying liquid oxygen and oil mixed with powdered aluminium as fuel, fly West skipping (like you skip a rock on water) on the denser layers of the atmosphere once you get higher up, technically reaching space, eventually reaching the states where it'd drop a 10 ton bomb, and continue going West to where the pilot would hopefully be able to slow down and parachute to safety in Japan
Of course the V1 and V2 that laid the groundwork for both the US and Soviet space programs
Patterned camouflage
And a ton of other crazy stuff

how much of this actually worked?

i know military researchin and experimenting was very high so alot of stupid shit got approved aswell

all of those worked, except Silbervogel which would have needed more heat shielding to not burn up (as they were mostly guessing what the atmosphere would be like)

Komet worked, but wasn't very successful

Vampir worked, and was a nightmare for those facing it, but it saw too limited deployment and of course has very niche uses to begin with
Me 262, the jet fighter, revolutionized air combat overnight and jet fighters have been the norm since. Patterned camouflage is used by almost every military across the globe, and the children of the V1 and V2 project took us to the moon and gave us things like satellites

also the stg

I wasn't counting that one as the idea isn't crazy, it's sensible and they were just the first to do it properly. No doubt people elsewhere analyzing the war accounts in hindsight would figure out something between the infantry rifle and the SMG is needed and it makes a lot of sense to make the two one and the same

it wan't a radical invention like the rest, more of a stepping stone in the evolution of infantry weapons... Or maybe it just looks that way in hindsight... A lot of people were making infantry weaponry with sights all the way out to 1000m for a long, long time...

There are no new ideas left, only now we are better able to execute ideas, some of which couldn't work in the past because of limiting factors.

Regarding EMP
https://survivalblog.com/real-world-emp-effects-on-moto/
Just a person's summary of what looks to be good data, TL;DR **30 kV/m** is slightly annoying for a tiny fraction of unshielded civilian cars

https://www.qsl.net/pa2ohh/jsvpm.htm
Calculator I used
With:
- 80 MW (80 000 000 W. Portable garage generators typically go for around 10 000-20 000 Watts, so around 4000 of those, or batteries holding all that power if you're shooting one pulse at a time with a reload time inbetween)
- a Gain of 50 dBi (which you can only get from a well-directed, very large dish antenna that you have to aim... not gonna calculate exactly *how* big it needs to be and what the wavelength of the EMP needs to be)
- a range of 500 meters

You get just over that **30 kV/m**, enough to knock out some civilian cars

this is what the absurdity of EMP looks like, instead of that several meter wide dish and the truck-sized generator you could deploy an entire line of machinegunners. Or automated machinegun drones or whatever. the only real risk we have of EMP is from the sun, which obviously can't be weaponized, or with a high-altitude nuke, but then you're wasting a perfectly good nuke to fry some electronics

but hey, if you use THIS
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/The_Arecibo_Observatory_20151101114231-0_8e7cc_c7a44aca_orig.jpg

with a diameter of 300 meters, and a dBi of 80, you only need 100 KW to make the dashboard flicker on that car 500 meters away!

But the dream of knocking out all the lights in an enemy city is as old as wars against cities.

but knocking out lights doesnt need an emp

how many people have a backup generator in their house

let some fireteam capture the nearest powerplants and turn of power

still it hypothetical and it doesnt take out everything as building zones will probably have lights but it can definitly disrupt the city

There were stories of mythic figures begging the god to snuff all the lamps and fires in the enemy city so they may take the city in darkness and the people would wake to them having taken over. It was a pipe dream that we are all ways looking for a better way of doing.

i would say its rather humane dont you think? next to no fighting plus you wake up and the combat is already over

only difference is that we have become those gods

Well there wouldn't have been fighting, just murders.

probably less death overall

I would prefer a thousand casualties of honorable warfare than a single murder.

well good luck finding a thousand people who agree with you

but if they dont you can always kill them in honorable combat

I was about to say. War is never honorable when you get down to the gritty man-to-man

honourable combat does not exist anymore

and never really has

just people trying to survive by any means necessary

war is messy and doesnt have any winners

A soldier has an expectation that his life is at risk on the battlefield.

His death does not have an equivalence to that of a civilian shot in his bed.

there is no honor in war or killing someone

I respectfully disagree.

"Veteran: One who signed a blank check to his country for his limb, life and soul but survived."

there is honor in besting someone physically like there is honor in besting someone mentally

but war isnt fair