NS Military Realism Consultancy Thread Mark IX Spitfire

[North Arkana]

Then you're in a region where you're using weapons of minimally improved performance over conventional main guns. The problem with these supertanks is there is too much being crammed into a single vehicle. Someone wanted to make a tank which can do everything, but inevitability, if they were willing to admit it rather than wanking it, such designs end up with trade offs. Even if reasonably successful as a design, the VMK wank-Tiger would be absurdly expensive, absurdly difficult to keep in combat ready condition with all the subsystems, and training crews would mean training them to be tankers AND whatever else they've stuck onto the tank.

It's the kind of tank where the cost of killing it with an airstrike every time you see one is worth it because of the cost required to build, maintain, and train their crews.

This could all be true, except tanks are a pittance.

They start to rise above a pittance when do much extra crap is tacked on.

[Questers]

You know the VMK Tiger tank? I read about it's armor and looked around, but I am not sure what size gun can defeat it and with how many shots.

Anyone have an idea?

A 120-mm gun is an effective weapon against all NS MBTs. Rumours of requiring 140-mm or above from the 'Artillery Tank Lobby' are misfounded.

[North Arkana]

You know the VMK Tiger tank? I read about it's armor and looked around, but I am not sure what size gun can defeat it and with how many shots.

Anyone have an idea?

A 120-mm gun is an effective weapon against all NS MBTs. Rumours of requiring 140-mm or above from the 'Artillery Tank Lobby' are misfounded.

Especially with the love for guns big enough aim down and shoot through with a "mere" 120mm round.

[New Vihenia]

Alternative, did find this which outlines good points about LEU. Pretty much, it's Admiral Richardson (cool guy, btw), being like, "Oh, God, I have to explain all of the absolute basics to these people. What the hell was it they taught us back in Power School?"

Well i brought it because of nice table on how much enrichment a ship nuclear fuel may have.

[Stralend]

http://www.nationstates.net/nation=stra ... /id=555846

Could someone take a look at these guns for me?

[North Arkana]

http://www.nationstates.net/nation=stralend/detail=factbook/id=555846

Could someone take a look at these guns for me?

This:

Definitely does not have a 5 inch barrel.

[Allanea]

A 120-mm gun is an effective weapon against all NS MBTs. Rumours of requiring 140-mm or above from the 'Artillery Tank Lobby' are misfounded.

Only if you ignore the existence of Lyran Arms tanks and things like Nakils.

[North Arkana]

A 120-mm gun is an effective weapon against all NS MBTs. Rumours of requiring 140-mm or above from the 'Artillery Tank Lobby' are misfounded.

Only if you ignore the existence of Lyran Arms tanks and things like Nakils.

When dealing with vehicles of purely arbitrary power in terms of armor and armament, of course not.

[Allanea]

Only if you ignore the existence of Lyran Arms tanks and things like Nakils.

When dealing with vehicles of purely arbitrary power in terms of armor and armament, of course not.

Ignoring the jab for a moment - the premise of the original question was that such vehicles exist.

[HMS Vanguard]

Plenty of countries voluntarily abandoned fixed wing carrier aviation in the late postwar era, basically around the time nuclear submarines took over the sea control role and carriers became land attack weapons. Here is a brief list of the ones I remember from the top of my head:

Netherlands
Australia
Canada
Argentina

Maybe there are others.

I wouldn't say carriers became purely land attack weapons. The Argentinians planned to launch Skyhawks at the Hermes and Invincible, but in the end decided not to risk their surface fleet at all. If SHTF in the Indian Ocean in ten years' time, a carrier battle between the Indian Navy and the PLAN is not inconceivable, nor is one between the latter and the JMSDF's de facto CVLs converted to use F-35Bs if that business in the Senkaku flares up.

They're not purely, but primarily land attack weapons. Bear in mind that Argentina did not just spontaneously decide not to risk its surface fleet. It decided that risking the surface fleet was not worth it in the face of a superior sea control weapon to which they had no answer: the nuclear attack submarine.

[HMS Vanguard]

Plenty of countries voluntarily abandoned fixed wing carrier aviation in the late postwar era, basically around the time nuclear submarines took over the sea control role and carriers became land attack weapons. Here is a brief list of the ones I remember from the top of my head:

Netherlands
Australia
Canada
Argentina

Maybe there are others.

My nation isn't one of those countries, as I don't see a military being dominated by naval policy and interests abandoning over 70 years of fixed wing carrier aviation especially not after it lobbied so hard to have a new type of Supercarrier constructed. If this was RL you'd basically be asking/telling the USA to stop all future design and construction on its Ford Class, as well as start the decommissioning process on all the CVN Carriers it already has in service.

I'm pretty sure the US Navy would outright revolt after it got over its seizure induced shock that anyone had the seriousness to actually propose such a policy plan.

Put another way, you’re basically asking my politicians to commit political suicide.

You asked what was the optimum number of carriers for your strategic situation, a situation which you described as "defensive-oriented", with "non-interventionist neutralist polices".

I think I have given you a correct answer to that question.

The US is a world hegemon and an interventionist expeditionary power, which faces no credible naval threat to its own territory. Your situation is completely unlike that of the US. The optimum number of carriers in your situation is not the same as the optimum number of carriers for the US.

If your position is that you want more carriers than optimal, because carriers are prestige objects, then that is your business but that isn't the question you asked.

[Nachmere]

Going to side step the whole "are nsmt 1400 etc gun tanks realistic" debate and reply simply:

1) In a universe that assumes they exist (In which I RP) they should be attacked the same way RL tanks are - with similar guns. So yes, we assume in NSMT that like modern MBT can be knocked out by it's own 120mm gun, a NSMT MBT can be knocked out by it's own 140mm ETC.

2) As was mentioned due to natural dispersion hitting the same spot twice with any degree of reliability remains beyond the current technology and probably will for some time.

3) Repairing tanks -usually- takes hours not days. A track can be put back on in 5-20 minutes depending how fucked up it got. An engine replaced in 30-45 minutes. A main gun in an hour or two if I remember correctly.
The problem is not so much the time it takes to do the work, it is getting the tank to the repair area or getting the mechanics and parts to the tank in the field.
I have personally replaced 6 tank engines either as a crew member or tank commander. It never took longer then 50 minutes to actually do it. Unplug all the electrical connections, close the fuel lines and disconnect them, disconnect the transmission from the drive wheels, unbolt the engine and lift out. Than repeat in reverse. 4 crew members with 2-3 mechanics and a fitter truck do it in no time. BUT it always took the truck hours to bring the new engine in. Because the truck is slow and the terrain was always shit....

[Gallia-]

This could all be true, except tanks are a pittance.

They start to rise above a pittance when do much extra crap is tacked on.

Except they don't. The cost of a tank is in using the tank, not in the initial investment, and compared to a warship or a plane, a tank battalion or a single tank are dirt cheap to run anyway. Tanks are cheap. Their costs lie in fuel and ammunition and other expendables, which are pretty typical across the board for AFVs, and way outpaced if we look at comparisons with operating fighter jets or something, the latter are generally more expensive across the board.

Most, if not all, tanks cost less than $10mn to procure and operate. Compare this with a plane that might cost $100mn, or a boat that costs $1,000mn. Crew costs, fuel costs, ammunition costs add up, but they never surpass the costs required to keep a fighter pilot proficient in flying his plane or a warship in operation. They might be perhaps the cheapest of all weapons, besides small arms like machine guns.

You know the VMK Tiger tank? I read about it's armor and looked around, but I am not sure what size gun can defeat it and with how many shots.

Anyone have an idea?

A 120-mm gun is an effective weapon against all NS MBTs. Rumours of requiring 140-mm or above from the 'Artillery Tank Lobby' are misfounded.

Well any IRL tank can eat a 120mm across the frontal arc.

You want to kill out to horizon ideally. ):

[HMS Vanguard]

It doesn't much help that a tank costs 1/10 as much as an aircraft if you need 10x as many.

[Laritaia]

It doesn't much help that a tank costs 1/10 as much as an aircraft if you need 10x as many.

One modern ish strike fighter doesn't even come close to the firepower of 10 tanks. plus aircraft can't occupy positions, they come in, drop their 2-4 bombs and fuck off back to base.

[HMS Vanguard]

Abrams carries 42 round each weighing about 10kg, for total payload of ten tanks of 4,200kg. By comparison:

F16 - 7,700kg
Eurofighter - 7,500kg
F35 - 8,100kg

Perhaps you had some other metric in mind. Anyway, my point isn't that an aircraft is better in every circumstance than ten tanks - clearly tanks and aircraft have different roles and neither can fully substitute the other - but that countries tend to operate more tanks than aircraft such that total cost of tank procurement isn't necessarily lower than that of aircraft procurement. Rifles are categorically different in that you can give every man in your armed forces a rifle and not significantly affect your procurement budget; the cost of a rifle is considerably less than the annual wage of the operator which is not true of a tank.

[Imperial States America]

Just as a generalization what are your opinions on the Stingray Light Tank and the XM2001 crusader?

[Roborea]

In my nation's history, a war between a mixed Russian-Aleut population in the Far West of Russian Alaska broke out in the 1780s when the trapping companies continued to make several attacks on their property. By the time the war broke out, the people who had "gone native" had established a modestly-sized community and garnered the support of many of the local tribes. What kind of odds would they face, and how could they win? Would Imperial Russia send in proper military forces to push down the revolution? Any help on the matter would be great.

[Nachmere]

They start to rise above a pittance when do much extra crap is tacked on.

Except they don't. The cost of a tank is in using the tank, not in the initial investment, and compared to a warship or a plane, a tank battalion or a single tank are dirt cheap to run anyway. Tanks are cheap. Their costs lie in fuel and ammunition and other expendables, which are pretty typical across the board for AFVs, and way outpaced if we look at comparisons with operating fighter jets or something, the latter are generally more expensive across the board.

Most, if not all, tanks cost less than $10mn to procure and operate. Compare this with a plane that might cost $100mn, or a boat that costs $1,000mn. Crew costs, fuel costs, ammunition costs add up, but they never surpass the costs required to keep a fighter pilot proficient in flying his plane or a warship in operation. They might be perhaps the cheapest of all weapons, besides small arms like machine guns.

A 120-mm gun is an effective weapon against all NS MBTs. Rumours of requiring 140-mm or above from the 'Artillery Tank Lobby' are misfounded.

Well any IRL tank can eat a 120mm across the frontal arc.

You want to kill out to horizon ideally. ):

You want many things. But you should really just expect killing one tank with it's counterpart at contact ranges or 2,000 meters and less. Possibly with the really heavy western tanks 800 and less.

[Laritaia]

practical air to ground warload for both the F-35 and F16 is a pair of 2000lb(1000lb on the F-35b) bombs or 4 1000lb bombs on the F-16 if it uses the BRU-55

Thats 2-4 bombs or in laymens terms 2-4 targets. now 1000lb bombs are massive overkill against most things in this age of PGMs.
So best case you will be able to kill 4 things super dead before having to leave, unless you want to dick about trying to hit things with your 20mm (which massivly increases the chance of your 150-250million dollar aircraft getting bent)

swaping those bombs out for something like Brimstone or SDB only increases that to 6-8 stowed kills per sortie.

10 tanks as you so helpfully pointed out can carry upwards of 420 maingun rounds and tens of thousands of rounds of MG ammo.
a 120mm round is going to mess up most things short of another MBT in 1 shot. Assuming that the tanks miss two times out of three and rounding down to the nearest 100 because the tanks are unlikly to continue fighting till they have zero ammo left, that's 100 stowed kills.
(numbers completly fudged, you may engage pedantry as much as you like)

If it were about how much weight you can drop on something in one go the Schwerer Gustav would have been the final word in firepower.

it wasn't.

[Gallia-]

Except they don't. The cost of a tank is in using the tank, not in the initial investment, and compared to a warship or a plane, a tank battalion or a single tank are dirt cheap to run anyway. Tanks are cheap. Their costs lie in fuel and ammunition and other expendables, which are pretty typical across the board for AFVs, and way outpaced if we look at comparisons with operating fighter jets or something, the latter are generally more expensive across the board.

Most, if not all, tanks cost less than $10mn to procure and operate. Compare this with a plane that might cost $100mn, or a boat that costs $1,000mn. Crew costs, fuel costs, ammunition costs add up, but they never surpass the costs required to keep a fighter pilot proficient in flying his plane or a warship in operation. They might be perhaps the cheapest of all weapons, besides small arms like machine guns.



Well any IRL tank can eat a 120mm across the frontal arc.

You want to kill out to horizon ideally. ):

You want many things. But you should really just expect killing one tank with it's counterpart at contact ranges or 2,000 meters and less. Possibly with the really heavy western tanks 800 and less.

A 140mm gun would kill anything ever out to 3,000 m rly.

Just staple a slightly longer bustle onto the Leclerc and you're done.

Ultimate tank.

[Gallia-]

It doesn't much help that a tank costs 1/10 as much as an aircraft if you need 10x as many.

I don't think any country in the world has ten times as many tanks as they do jet aircraft, though. It's closer to 1:1. Canada, Germany, Britain, Australia, France, etc. all have comparable numbers of fighter jets in service to tanks anyway. Perhaps even the US Army and USAF are comparable.

[Laritaia]

You want many things. But you should really just expect killing one tank with it's counterpart at contact ranges or 2,000 meters and less. Possibly with the really heavy western tanks 800 and less.

A 140mm gun would kill anything ever out to 3,000 m rly.

Just staple a slightly longer bustle onto the Leclerc and you're done.

Ultimate tank.

didn't the 140mm Leclerc proposal only carry something like 23 rounds?

[Gallia-]

A 140mm gun would kill anything ever out to 3,000 m rly.

Just staple a slightly longer bustle onto the Leclerc and you're done.

Ultimate tank.

didn't the 140mm Leclerc proposal only carry something like 23 rounds?

Who_knows.

It had the same number of ready rounds. I don't know about the non-ready magazine.

[Nachmere]

It doesn't much help that a tank costs 1/10 as much as an aircraft if you need 10x as many.

I don't think any country in the world has ten times as many tanks as they do jet aircraft, though. It's closer to 1:1. Canada, Germany, Britain, Australia, France, etc. all have comparable numbers of fighter jets in service to tanks anyway. Perhaps even the US Army and USAF are comparable.

1980s Israel says hi.