The General Staff Archives

Europa Games and Military History

Month: March 2026

The Online Doctrine Library grows a shelf

March 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

One of our side projects has been expanded in the past days, and we thought we share:

We recently found 340+ FMs published between 1976 and 1980 on google books, each defining a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), setting skill levels and knowledge expectations for a solider in a defined role on the battlefield. These files have been cleaned up and uploaded onto a separate google site, which can be be found here: https://sites.google.com/view/us-army-mos-fms

Besides the FMs defining MOS skill levels and knowledge, the new cache also yielded a large amount of FMs from between 1940 and 1982. Full statistics again on the About page, but we now haver 80% overall of all field manuals which we know of.  There are again slight discrepancies between out bookkeeping, the number of locally saved files, and the number of files online, but we*re working on that.

The new ones often were just better scans of existing files, but there are about 60 new  manuals in the library, with beauties such as FM 8-24 Community Health Nursing in the Army (1980) and FM 10-26 The Army Food Advisor (1977), but also key documents like FM 17-36 Divisional Armored and Air Cavalry Units from 1965 and FM 17-95.

Remnants and Additions

March 10, 2026 / / 0 Comments

This is the second part of the large update announced yesterday. Bsides the FMs defining MOS skill levels and knowledge, the new google books cache also yielded a large amount of FMs from between 1940 and 1982, which enabled us to full some gaps. Full statistics again on the About page, but we now haver 80% overall of all field manuals which we know of.  There are again slight discrepancies between out bookkeeping, the number of locally saved files, and the number of files online, but we*re working on that.

The new ones often were just better scans of existing files, but there are about 60 new  manuals in the library, with beauties such as FM 8-24 Community Health Nursing in the Army (1980) and FM 10-26 The Army Food Advisor (1977), but also key documents like FM 17-36 Divisional Armored and Air Cavalry Units from 1965 and FM 17-95 The Armored Cavalry Regiment from a year later. You’ll find them, as always, on the drive.

The new lords can do without serfs this time

March 9, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Google Books scanned a large amount of books from the New York Public Library, amongst them hundreds of FMs. However, since machines are now more important than humans, the scans were simply dumped into the cloud – all named identical, often several volumes clustered together in single files, no keywords, no categories, nothing. Humans might stumble on these by accident, but the AIs read them in full and build their own content representations from them. The overlords do not need humans to read anymore.

Among the volumes scanned we found 340+ FMs published between 1976 and 1980, each defining a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), setting skill levels and knowledge expectations for a solider in a defined role on the battlefield. These files have been cleaned up and uploaded onto a separate google site, which can be be found here: https://sites.google.com/view/us-army-mos-fms

The irony of using googles infrastructure while bashing their AI ventures is not lost on us, and preparations are under way to move everything onto our own hardware, should the need arise. For now, we hope you enjoy the addition to our little collection. 

Oh, and this collection also profited from the new content, since there were several FMs interspersed that were on out missing list, so some more updates about these coming in the next days.

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