RWDT XX: The System Is Kapp Putsch

[Novus America]

While I think threat inflation is a neolib meme used to cut military spending, I think that is, ever so slightly, an exaggeration of the threat. It runs on the assumption that the Chinese will have the element of surprise AND that they will know our movements.

No- our planes are pretty concentrated at a few known areas (a few bases in the Japanese home islands, Okinawa, Guam). Even if we start the war and have them all in the air when it breaks out, they can still just pound those bases into rubble when our guys land. Our carrier strike aircraft have shorter ranges than a lot of Chinese missiles, and obviously aerial refueling might be difficult in contested airspace.

What we need are some good ol' IRBMs and long-range supersonic cruise missiles.

Again the EFFECTIVE range of an anti ship missile is constrained by the sensors.
Sticking a thousand NM range anti ship missile on a ship is pretty pointless without air superiority, as the ship can only see as far as its horizon, some 25NM.

Our ships have the huge advantages because it is actually damn hard to find a ship at sea. I was in the Navy, we played this game. Basically you draw a football field like box in the ocean using coordinates. Each ship starts in their own end zone.
The objective of the game is simply to find the other ships coordinates before they find you.

It is actually a very hard game to play that even in a fairly small box usually takes hours, if the opponent is skilled.
Especially when the box is full of islands.

But I do agree we need IRBMs and improved cruise missiles though really we already have SM-6 which despite being designed as a SAM actually is probably the best supersonic anti ship missile out there.

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

US can hide its carriers pretty effectively on the approach. Sea lanes in that part of the Pacific are highly congested, finding a carrier in the open sea let alone inside civilian shipping lanes is difficult especially without the relevant aircraft and sensors. China's best chance of interdicting US fleet in the pacific is with its submarine force, its "ballistic anti shipping missile" is basically just a technology demonstrator and not a serious weapon (unless they have a firing solution on a stationary carrier in port...)

the problem for US carrier group is what it does on arrival. To penetrate China's integrated air defence it needs to launch air attacks, but China has a huge littoral fleet and a lot of air stations, so that makes the task more difficult. While US can strike Chinese air force on its coastal stations, which are big, immobile targets, China can also attack US bases in the Pacific with ballistic weapons, as they are big immobile targets.

Somehow I doubt any US conflict with China will proceed as "carrier battle group move to Chinese coast and bomb them" as this doesn't fulfill any serious objective for either side. Warfare with China would probably be fought at the strategic periphery before either side has a realistic chance to strike at each other's centre.

[Nap the Magnificent]

The invention of gunpowder was a mistake

Bring back the phalanx.

The Macedonian phalanx was better than the maniple, change my mind.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Bring back the phalanx.

I see your phalanx, and I raise you a repeating crossbow

Counterpoint: phalanxes with repeating crossbows

[Washington Resistance Army]

Bring back the phalanx.

The Macedonian phalanx was better than the maniple, change my mind.

Unironically I agree. With a proper commander I'd argue Macedonian infantry and cavalry were the pinnacle of pre-gunpowder warfare.

[Genivaria]

I see your phalanx, and I raise you a repeating crossbow

Counterpoint: phalanxes with repeating crossbows

Ancient Pike and Shot.
OP pls nerf.

[United Muscovite Nations]

Radio as a military innovation also made things worse imo. I love radio and what it's done for us, but I also think it's terrible that "leaders" can now guide military operations from the safety of the Pentagon, or the Kremlin, etc. etc. without ever stepping foot on a battlefield.

[Senkaku]

I see your phalanx, and I raise you a repeating crossbow

Counterpoint: phalanxes with repeating crossbows

i'll allow it

Counterpoint: phalanxes with repeating crossbows

Ancient Pike and Shot.
OP pls nerf.

Just get yourself some war elephants instead of normal horse cavalry

[Imperium Romanum Sanctis]

Bring back the phalanx.

The Macedonian phalanx was better than the maniple, change my mind.

It's all fun and games until the Latins vanquish your impenetrable wall of spears by literally going around it.

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

re targeting acquisition for naval warfare, anyone who is vaguely interested can read this excellent article by Andy Pico who was the air warfare controller on US carrier in the 1980s. This is an elementary introduction to the problems of modern naval warfare.

[Genivaria]

Counterpoint: phalanxes with repeating crossbows

i'll allow it

Ancient Pike and Shot.
OP pls nerf.

Just get yourself some war elephants instead of normal horse cavalry

Iirc Alexander's pikes actually slaughtered the Persian elephants with smart tactics.
They basically opened up holes in their line at the last moment and gave the elephants a 'safe' route to charge through and were then trapped and surrounded by pikes.

[Senkaku]

No- our planes are pretty concentrated at a few known areas (a few bases in the Japanese home islands, Okinawa, Guam). Even if we start the war and have them all in the air when it breaks out, they can still just pound those bases into rubble when our guys land. Our carrier strike aircraft have shorter ranges than a lot of Chinese missiles, and obviously aerial refueling might be difficult in contested airspace.

What we need are some good ol' IRBMs and long-range supersonic cruise missiles.

Again the EFFECTIVE range of an anti ship missile is constrained by the sensors.
Sticking a thousand NM range anti ship missile on a ship is pretty pointless without air superiority, as the ship can only see as far as its horizon, some 25NM.

Our ships have the huge advantages because it is actually damn hard to find a ship at sea. I was in the Navy, we played this game. Basically you draw a football field like box in the ocean using coordinates. Each ship starts in their own end zone.
The objective of the game is simply to find the other ships coordinates before they find you.

It is actually a very hard game to play that even in a fairly small box usually takes hours, if the opponent is skilled.
Especially when the box is full of islands.

But I do agree we need IRBMs and improved cruise missiles though really we already have SM-6 which despite being designed as a SAM actually is probably the best supersonic anti ship missile out there.

Interesting- I had been under the impression the Chinese were also improving their sensors, rather than just building better and better (and increasingly useless) missiles

re targeting acquisition for naval warfare, anyone who is vaguely interested can read this excellent article by Andy Pico who was the air warfare controller on US carrier in the 1980s. This is an elementary introduction to the problems of modern naval warfare.

ty

The Macedonian phalanx was better than the maniple, change my mind.

It's all fun and games until the Latins vanquish your impenetrable wall of spears by literally going around it.

this is why you need repeating crossbows

[Senkaku]

i'll allow it


Just get yourself some war elephants instead of normal horse cavalry

Iirc Alexander's pikes actually slaughtered the Persian elephants with smart tactics.
They basically opened up holes in their line at the last moment and gave the elephants a 'safe' route to charge through and were then trapped and surrounded by pikes.

Wait that's so upsetting ;_; poor elephants

[Washington Resistance Army]

The Macedonian phalanx was better than the maniple, change my mind.

It's all fun and games until the Latins vanquish your impenetrable wall of spears by literally going around it.

Hence my bit about a good commander. Alexander would have crushed the Latins.

[Genivaria]

It's all fun and games until the Latins vanquish your impenetrable wall of spears by literally going around it.

Hence my bit about a good commander. Alexander would have crushed the Latins.

Alexander was also charismatic and might've recruited some latins into his army, Epirus failed to do that if I'm remembering right.
...Epirus wtf.
Pyrrhus of Epirus. *facepalm*

[Novus America]

Actually our ships are safer. People seem to have the assumption the sea is flat. It is not because the earth is round, (okay technically a very slightly oblate spheroid but whatever).

As such you can only see as far as the horizon, and only shoot at things that are not over the horizon from your sensors (although OTH radars exist the are too inaccurate to target a specific shop, the can only be used fore early warning an being absurd huge, “loud” and immobile easy to counter). The striking range of their missiles (against ships airbases obviously can be shot at with a simple geolocation system as they cannot move) is as only as as long as their sensors.

So ships have the advantage over land based airbases.

Oh, I don't think it's a foregone conclusion (yet) that they'd manage to sink all our ships, at least enough to stop us from bombing the shit out of parts of the mainland. Their ballistic missiles are much vaunted and very impressive, but it's not yet clear they can hit a moving ship at sea (and obviously hitting Okinawa or bases in the Home Islands would bring Japan into the war on our side, which'd be nice). But given the improvements they've made to their navy and air force, as well as their missile forces, I think it's safe to say that an American carrier group in the East China Sea is going to be in some very hot water.

Sure, it is not a slam dunk easy game, but given Tomahawk has a 1000+ NM range and JASSM ER some 600 NM (random tangent but we need to stop giving missiles stupid letter salad acronym names, JASSM ER just sounds stupid. Call it the Dominator II or something) and I would expect at least early on we would keep considerable distance until their land based airbases, missiles and sensors had be severely degraded.

[United Muscovite Nations]

Hence my bit about a good commander. Alexander would have crushed the Latins.

Alexander was also charismatic and might've recruited some latins into his army, Epirus failed to do that if I'm remembering right.
...Epirus wtf.
Pyrrhus of Epirus. *facepalm*

Pyrrhus couldn't have recruited Latins because he was there to defend the Greeks. Also Pyrrhus was one of the greatest commanders of the ancient world and crushed the Romans in two successive battles.

[Senkaku]

Oh, I don't think it's a foregone conclusion (yet) that they'd manage to sink all our ships, at least enough to stop us from bombing the shit out of parts of the mainland. Their ballistic missiles are much vaunted and very impressive, but it's not yet clear they can hit a moving ship at sea (and obviously hitting Okinawa or bases in the Home Islands would bring Japan into the war on our side, which'd be nice). But given the improvements they've made to their navy and air force, as well as their missile forces, I think it's safe to say that an American carrier group in the East China Sea is going to be in some very hot water.

Sure, it is not a slam dunk easy game, but given Tomahawk has a 1000+ NM range and JASSM ER some 600 NM (random tangent but we need to stop giving missiles stupid letter salad acronym names, JASSM ER just sounds stupid. Call it the Dominator II or something) and I would expect at least early on we would keep considerable distance until their land based airbases, missiles and sensors had be severely degraded.

ok... but what about... no more war with china. the world has progressed past the need for war with china

[Washington Resistance Army]

Pyrrhus was a solid commander. for sure. He wasn't an Alexander, but he was solid.

[Fahran]

Pyrrhus was a solid commander. for sure. He wasn't an Alexander, but he was solid.

In spirit, he was the successor who was most like Alexander, though he seems to have been more pleasant and magnanimous. He behaved how a descendant of Achilles would have been expected to behave, courageous, mighty in arms, and virtuous in his rule. The issue with Pyrrhus is that the Latins had the man-power to continue fighting even after two crushing defeats whereas he began to lose beloved companions and talented officers, and didn't have the means to replace them given the small population of Epirus and the mediocrity of his allies.

We have to remember that Hannibal listed Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus of Epirus, and himself as the three greatest commanders of antiquity. Of course, he was spiting Scipio when that alleged answer was given but it's not complete nonsense either.

[Imperium Romanum Sanctis]

It's all fun and games until the Latins vanquish your impenetrable wall of spears by literally going around it.

Hence my bit about a good commander. Alexander would have crushed the Latins.

Eh, I wouldn't be so sure.

Pyrrhus was a pretty competent commander in his own right, but ultimately failed to conquer Rome (or even prevent its conquest of mainland Italy, for that matter). The Romans were stubborn as all hell, and any invading army would have been resisted to the last man. I doubt the famously impatient Alexander would have been able to deal with them.

[Novus America]

Again the EFFECTIVE range of an anti ship missile is constrained by the sensors.
Sticking a thousand NM range anti ship missile on a ship is pretty pointless without air superiority, as the ship can only see as far as its horizon, some 25NM.

Our ships have the huge advantages because it is actually damn hard to find a ship at sea. I was in the Navy, we played this game. Basically you draw a football field like box in the ocean using coordinates. Each ship starts in their own end zone.
The objective of the game is simply to find the other ships coordinates before they find you.

It is actually a very hard game to play that even in a fairly small box usually takes hours, if the opponent is skilled.
Especially when the box is full of islands.

But I do agree we need IRBMs and improved cruise missiles though really we already have SM-6 which despite being designed as a SAM actually is probably the best supersonic anti ship missile out there.

Interesting- I had been under the impression the Chinese were also improving their sensors, rather than just building better and better (and increasingly useless) missiles

re targeting acquisition for naval warfare, anyone who is vaguely interested can read this excellent article by Andy Pico who was the air warfare controller on US carrier in the 1980s. This is an elementary introduction to the problems of modern naval warfare.

ty

It's all fun and games until the Latins vanquish your impenetrable wall of spears by literally going around it.

this is why you need repeating crossbows

Actually that is one reason why the panic over the US Navy seeming to lack a supersonic anti ship missile is somewhat misplaced. The US has a long history of using anti ship missiles to shoot enemy ships going back to Talos (again bring back cool names, SM-6 is an awesome missile but wilt a stupid name, should be called Hellcat II).

Of course the PRC has been working to improve their sensors. But the curve of the earth is a physical problem that cannot be easily overcome.
Simply making a better sensor does not resolve the issue unless OTH radars can be made small and accurate enough.

Although both the US and PRC are experimenting with mounting a OTH radar on a carrier strike group (they are so damn huge they would half to be mounted in pieces on many ships) such a radar would actually almost certainly be even less accurate than a land based one, and thus still unable to target a ship.

Also the US has been working aggressive to improve our ability to jam an spoof enemy sensors as well. Sure it is an ongoing competition, not a guaranteed win for either side. But the talk of aircraft carries being obsolete is absurd because the ocean is curved, and thus the only way to really win a naval battle is via aircraft.

In that game I mentioned if the other side has an aircraft and you do not you are pretty fucked.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Pyrrhus was a solid commander. for sure. He wasn't an Alexander, but he was solid.

In spirit, he was the successor who was most like Alexander, though he seems to have been more pleasant and magnanimous. He behaved how a descendant of Achilles would have been expected to behave, courageous, mighty in arms, and virtuous in his rule. The issue with Pyrrhus is that the Latins had the man-power to continue fighting even after two crushing defeats whereas he began to lose beloved companions and talented officers, and didn't have the means to replace them given the small population of Epirus and the mediocrity of his allies.

I actually agree with this take tbh. Pyrrhus for Megas Basileus.

[Bienenhalde]

Is there a realistic alternative? Maybe we should have done something different in the past, not gotten involved in some war or whatever; but we are here now, and there is no undoing history. If the United States were to retreat from it's position as the world police, then other nations would surge in to try and fill that gap - most concerning, our enemies.

Maybe America as an Empire isn't the best possible outcome, but it's the world we live in. Certainly, from this American's standpoint - it's far better that we run the show, then letting our enemies. The Rubicon has been crossed, and there is no going back to the Republic now. Embrace imperium, Embrace Pax Americana

Well short of dismantling the military industrial complex and giving up all faustian ambitions towards Imperium that are slumbering, no not really. This course has been set ever since World War II. And to pick up the analogy from the previous post, the ring has it's own mind. It always wants to return to his master.

In this case it means also that the American Empire would in the end ultimatively loose its last connections to the christian and constitional past and become something else.

The USA wasn't founded as a Christian nation to begin with, the founding fathers were liberal Deists. If anything, the Cold War made the US government more pro-Christian, not less.

[Nap the Magnificent]

Pyrrhus was a solid commander. for sure. He wasn't an Alexander, but he was solid.

In spirit, he was the successor who was most like Alexander, though he seems to have been more pleasant and magnanimous. He behaved how a descendant of Achilles would have been expected to behave, courageous, mighty in arms, and virtuous in his rule. The issue with Pyrrhus is that the Latins had the man-power to continue fighting even after two crushing defeats whereas he began to lose beloved companions and talented officers, and didn't have the means to replace them given the small population of Epirus and the mediocrity of his allies.

We have to remember that Hannibal listed Alexander the Great, Pyrrhus of Epirus, and himself as the three greatest commanders of antiquity. Of course, he was spiting Scipio when that alleged answer was given but it's not complete nonsense either.

What did all three have in common? Phalanx+cavalry. The Romans were lucky that in the Macedonian Wars, the Greeks had spent over 150 years of near constant fighting which depleted their ability to invest into combined arms. The phalanx was never supposed to be the tool that won battles for the Greek armies, but the anvil to keep the enemy in place for the hammer (cavalry, missile troops, and mobile infantry later on such as the thureophoroi and thorakitai).