NS Military Realism Consultation Thread #6

[Yukonastan]

What's the whole deal with the morality discussion anyway? You win wars by playing dirty, you know. Same reason the US nuked Japan, if you look at it broadly. The nukes dropped on Japan were meant to bring the war to a rapid conclusion, with a relative minimum of casualties, which they did. Was it dirty, yeah. Did it win a war? Yeah. Many instances like that. That Chinese proverb about the archers and honour, the poor sod who gives up the second shot to let the other one shoot.

Although I consider chemical weapons from drones a little too far. If you're shelling the poor fuckers with sarin at least they can shoot back, if you're on a drone, they can't do anything to you.

Besides, it's a lot easier and quicker to use the cannon, plus you can send more sarin downrange.

[The Akasha Colony]

What's the whole deal with the morality discussion anyway? You win wars by playing dirty, you know. Same reason the US nuked Japan, if you look at it broadly. The nukes dropped on Japan were meant to bring the war to a rapid conclusion, with a relative minimum of casualties, which they did. Was it dirty, yeah. Did it win a war? Yeah. Many instances like that. That Chinese proverb about the archers and honour, the poor sod who gives up the second shot to let the other one shoot.

Although I consider chemical weapons from drones a little too far. If you're shelling the poor fuckers with sarin at least they can shoot back, if you're on a drone, they can't do anything to you.

Besides, it's a lot easier and quicker to use the cannon, plus you can send more sarin downrange.

Guise, we're done with this.

[Themiclesia]

He died a happy man, having suffered an injury to his thigh during the battle.

"No b*stard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb b*stard die for his country." - Gen. George S. Patton.

He placed his moral conviction over his state, his greatest possession.

[Padnak]

If only we knew to stop while we were ahead we'd never run into any problems

the only germany has been ahead is when it hasnt been fighting a serious major war

*grumbles about how we curb-stomped all of central Europe then got greedy and fucked the whole thing up*

[Padnak]

Although I consider chemical weapons from drones a little too far. If you're shelling the poor fuckers with sarin at least they can shoot back, if you're on a drone, they can't do anything to you.
.

Didn't I say that a while ago...

[The Kievan People]

Seriously, stop.

[Yukonastan]

Although I consider chemical weapons from drones a little too far. If you're shelling the poor fuckers with sarin at least they can shoot back, if you're on a drone, they can't do anything to you.
.

Didn't I say that a while ago...

You did, that's where I got it from. I knew SOMEONE said it, couldn't remember who, sorry.

[San-Silvacian]

[The Soodean Imperium]

Not really noticeable.

If you go to 16.2x108mm however... Massive difference.

I was thinking of replace all of the vehicle mount 13mm with 15mm light cannons. Would that A) be a sound idea and B) provide as the same performance as the 16.2x108?

At 15mm, you're not looking at a particularly worthwhile level of explosive packed into each round. Solid armor-piercing ammunition would, however, perform better than 12.7mm against lightly armored vehicles. But remember that with a larger round, ceteris paribus you're carrying less ammunition in all, and will have to expose yourself to reload the gun more often.

EDIT: What would be a good % of the population to have in the military? I have about 750M people and a military population of about 8 million, not including contractors and non military functions like accounting. Does this seem reasonable? Keep in mind I'm going for a military-industrial state with a strong science program.

As I like to say, this is better thought of as a matter of "supply" and "demand."

While a "military-industrial state" can likely support those numbers, the real question is whether you need them. What are your government's national security objectives? What sorts of potential threats (insurgency, border dispute, imperialist invasion, attacks on allies abroad) are you most likely to face? How many soldiers do you need in order to protect yourself against these potential threats, or in order to stand a credible chance of setting out and defeating them?

Only when you've answered these sorts of questions should you move on to determine how much of that desired force you can afford to support.

[Das-husland]

I'm thinking of obtaining 4 Akula class subs for my navy. Survivable second strike capacity for nuclear war, and I am also assuming they could use ICBMs fitted with any sort of warhead?

[Questers]

I'm thinking of obtaining 4 Akula class subs for my navy. Survivable second strike capacity for nuclear war, and I am also assuming they could use ICBMs fitted with any sort of warhead?

They can fire cruise missiles, but not ICBMs. The range/payload is comparatively limited.

[Imperializt Russia]

I'm thinking of obtaining 4 Akula class subs for my navy. Survivable second strike capacity for nuclear war, and I am also assuming they could use ICBMs fitted with any sort of warhead?

The Akula is an attack submarine, not a ballistic missile submarine.
SLBMs are relatively limited in range compared to "true" ICBMs for a number of reasons, primarily space limitations aboard.

[The Akasha Colony]

I'm thinking of obtaining 4 Akula class subs for my navy. Survivable second strike capacity for nuclear war, and I am also assuming they could use ICBMs fitted with any sort of warhead?

The Akula is an attack submarine, not a ballistic missile submarine.
SLBMs are relatively limited in range compared to "true" ICBMs for a number of reasons, primarily space limitations aboard.

Of course, given that they can sail quite close to the enemy, even this restriction is rather minimal.

[Das-husland]

Are we talking about the same thing (largest soviet sub ever made, with 20 BMs and 2 nuclear reactors)

[Kouralia]

Are we talking about the same thing (largest soviet sub ever made, with 20 BMs and 2 nuclear reactors)

Nope.

In other news - superior Akula.

[Imperializt Russia]

Are we talking about the same thing (largest soviet sub ever made, with 20 BMs and 2 nuclear reactors)

I think you're thinking of the Typhoon-class.
Typhoon is being superseded by the more modern Borei-class, with its new SLBMs.

[The Soodean Imperium]

Are we talking about the same thing (largest soviet sub ever made, with 20 BMs and 2 nuclear reactors)

I think you're thinking of the Typhoon-class.
Typhoon is being superseded by the more modern Borei-class, with its new SLBMs.

Aha! But this depends on what "Akula class subs" is referring to.

In Western/NATO nomenclature, "Akula" was the codename applied to the Pr. 971 class of nuclear-powered attack submarines, known in the USSR as the "Shchuka." In the past, NATO had named Soviet subs according to letters of the military phonetic alphabet - Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf - but after Yankee and Zulu, they ran out of letters and started over again from "A" with Russian terms for fish ("Akula" meaning "Shark").

Purely by coincidence, however, "Akula" was also being used in Soviet nomenclature - but in reference to an entirely different submarine. This was the famous Pr. 941 class, known in Western/NATO nomenclature as the "Typhoon."

[The Akasha Colony]

Are we talking about the same thing (largest soviet sub ever made, with 20 BMs and 2 nuclear reactors)

I think you're thinking of the Typhoon-class.
Typhoon is being superseded by the more modern Borei-class, with its new SLBMs.

Typhoon is the NATO reporting name, and Das-husland is referring to it by its Soviet name. I figured that was the intent when he mentioned SLBMs, but we usually used the NATO reporting name for the sake of clarity.

[Das-husland]

Yeah, I was watching a doco about a Typhoon-class being taken apart. Quite an interesting watch. With the SLBM's, can they have alternate payloads other than nuclear (say thermobaric, or conventional explosives)

Also, with weaponising plagues, you would have to introduce vectors for the plagues to actually use to achieve their target. Or could airspray of airborne viruses achieve the same end (I was thinking agent orange type oversprays).

[New Vihenia]

Are we talking about the same thing (largest soviet sub ever made, with 20 BMs and 2 nuclear reactors)

Nope.

In other news - superior Akula.

I REJECT this abomination. Meh..sorry i'll be honest EA KILLS the CnC series by this...

[The Akasha Colony]

Nope.

In other news - superior Akula.

I REJECT this abomination. Meh..sorry i'll be honest EA KILLS the CnC series by this...

RA3 was a valiant effort, and IMO much superior to the abomination that is Tiberian Twilight.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

Nope.

In other news - superior Akula.

I REJECT this abomination. Meh..sorry i'll be honest EA KILLS the CnC series by this...

You do realize that EA has produced C&C since literally the very first game, right?
I'm pretty sure they had nothing to do with something as as peripheral as unit designs, especially not at the point of the thirteenth game in a highly successful series.

[Connori Pilgrims]

I REJECT this abomination. Meh..sorry i'll be honest EA KILLS the CnC series by this...

You do realize that EA has produced C&C since literally the very first game, right?
I'm pretty sure they had nothing to do with something as as peripheral as unit designs, especially not at the point of the thirteenth game in a highly successful series.

1.) RA3 was at this point meant to be largely silly; hell early on the "Allies vs. Soviets" track of C&C games was already well into parody territory anyway (starting with that RA1 expansion that had giant ants in one mission).

2.) Tiger Kingdom is right in the sense that up until RA3 EA management had played the standard role of distributor for these games; any design decision comments should be directed to either Westwood (up until 2002) or EA Los Angeles (from 2002 until 2010).

3.) That said, EA as a whole screwed up after RA3 by intervening in the next game, since they wanted to boost sales, giving rise to that... that... thing Akasha dared mention.

4.) On the design of that submarine in question. Yeah its ugly, no doubt. Served its purpose in the game though particularly with its alpha torpedo strikes.

Yeah, I was watching a doco about a Typhoon-class being taken apart. Quite an interesting watch. With the SLBM's, can they have alternate payloads other than nuclear (say thermobaric, or conventional explosives)

They could have alternate payloads, but as is there's no point because the accuracy for those warheads IIRC are measured in the hundreds of meters CEP. Of course you could issue better guidance (the US Navy has a concept for it called Prompt Global Strike where they use GPS-guided non-nuclear warheads delivered by Trident II D5 SLBM).

The main problem with using SLBMs with conventional payloads is that no one can tell if they're conventional automatically. This poses the thorny political problem of making you look like a psycho state beginning to nuke everyone, which will invite retaliation from any nuclear power who isn't a weakling naive hippie.

[Das-husland]

Yeah, but results are everything.....heheh

[Auroya]

Is it possible to create an earthquake glide bomb? I'm thinking of using such a weapon for strikes against hydroelectric power stations, with the hope that the tremors created will be enough to bust the entire dam open.