NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Type 08

[Auroya]

I had a go at calculating APFSDS penetration for my Not!Rooikat. Assuming its 90mm gun could be made to throw ammunition at 1,700m/s, and that the projectile was 700mm long with a diameter of 2.5cm, and that it had a terminal velocity of 1,400m/s, I got ~540mm RHA penetration at 4000m.

Does that seem vaguely reasonable or did I do something really wrong?

Compare it to other 90mm ammo http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index ... tion_Data#
Its achieve able but there are two problems that could emerge. The penetrator could shatter on impact and at high velocity HE rounds become less effective.

Ah, thanks. Perhaps I ought to issue both those rounds and lower-velocity rounds. Would that be a good choice?

[Inyourfaceistan]

AA/AD is infantry's best friend.

Artillery units cant protect you from pesky aircraft and enemy missiles.

wow this is so true artillery are a bunch of dumb losers wow why do modern armies even mess with artillery anymore they should just invest in air defense stuff

Yeah b/c planes and helis arent a thing screw them we should just invest in the big guns and not worry about anything else.

[Inyourfaceistan]

On a serious note; here is my tank that I drew up.
Thoughts? Any visual issues with its design?

[Eldslandet]

Compare it to other 90mm ammo http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index ... tion_Data#
Its achieve able but there are two problems that could emerge. The penetrator could shatter on impact and at high velocity HE rounds become less effective.

Ah, thanks. Perhaps I ought to issue both those rounds and lower-velocity rounds. Would that be a good choice?

Well its not the round thats the problem as much as its the gun. If you lengthen the barrel then you have high muzzle velocity but HE round become less effective. Honestly this may be over kill but have a high velocity gun and have a co-axial grenade launcher in the turret or something. But I think low velocity ammo with less explosive charge may work>

[Mitheldalond]

i keep running into RPers that try to pull numbers like 34k war ships or 2M aircraft. Would it be good to try to make a rule list that forces players to start with a set amount of resource units to make a starting army and then over several turns "a turn being 1 post from everyone in a cycle" increase size of their army as well as a unit cap?

I just want to see if anyone else thinks this is a good idea or simply to controlling.

The simplest solution is to just not RP with people who do that. If you're the one starting the RP, you can certainly establish rules limiting troop deployments to reasonable numbers, though I would shy away from the whole concept of a "turn"; ridged structuring like that doesn't mesh well with the more free-form RPing of NS. You can give it a try, but I think you'll want to find a better solution.

The best way is to just find a group of people you enjoy RPing with and play mostly with them. You can still play with others of course; either way, you're the one who decides who you RP with, and how you RP. You're certainly welcome to just give yourself thousands of ships and millions of planes if it suites your fancy, though most of the better role players out there won't be willing to play with someone with such ridiculous numbers. But that doesn't matter as long as you're having fun.

Sky cancer doesn't get an opinion. :>

Just knock down their trees and make a prayer to Garbad.

And then pray to the tank gods that it's not a bloody FV304.

artillery is infantry's best f(r)iend. 'nuff sed.

AA/AD is infantry's best friend.

Artillery units cant protect you from pesky aircraft and enemy missiles.

Excuse me while I go develop anti-aircraft munitions for 155mm SPHs.

[The Akasha Colony]

i keep running into RPers that try to pull numbers like 34k war ships or 2M aircraft. Would it be good to try to make a rule list that forces players to start with a set amount of resource units to make a starting army and then over several turns "a turn being 1 post from everyone in a cycle" increase size of their army as well as a unit cap?

I just want to see if anyone else thinks this is a good idea or simply to controlling.

It gets too technical. If people want to play an RTS, or a TBS, they'll just play one. Or they'll just try to claim individual unit superiority or something (e.g. my tanks are better!). It leaves just as many holes as it tries to close, and doesn't address the fundamental issue that you have people who are trying to powergame, and they will do that regardless of what the rules are.

On a serious note; here is my tank that I drew up.
Thoughts? Any visual issues with its design?

(Image)

Hull looks way too long, and it almost certainly needs more roadwheels (at least for that length).

[Stahn]

On a serious note; here is my tank that I drew up.
Thoughts? Any visual issues with its design?

(Image)

It is interesting but there are too few roadwheels and the gun would have no downwards traverse.

[The Soodean Imperium]

i keep running into RPers that try to pull numbers like 34k war ships or 2M aircraft. Would it be good to try to make a rule list that forces players to start with a set amount of resource units to make a starting army and then over several turns "a turn being 1 post from everyone in a cycle" increase size of their army as well as a unit cap?

I just want to see if anyone else thinks this is a good idea or simply to controlling.

This is more of an RP-rules question than a Military Realism question, but there are a few ways to address it.

The easiest solution is to just set a limit on the number of troops a player can deploy - say, no more than 1 million personnel - to a given conflict. This is pretty common on "international incidents" RPs, at least last I checked, but that was admittedly a long time ago.

If you mean at a nation-wide scale within a region or RP group, it's possible to set a limit on the percentage of a country's population that can be in the military (i.e., 2-4% in active service), but this is a very superficial solution because it misses the point of that percentage. A more thorough solution here would be to remind people not to make any more ships or troops than what they need. You may notice that I've included a section in the OP of this thread about determining military size, it might be worth clicking to page 1 to have a look at it.

At the end of the day, though, this is less about realism and more about being bad at RPing in general. If someone is teleporting 3 million soldiers into an overseas country overnight, or is claiming to have two million F-22s, that's something you'll have to take up with that player.

On a serious note; here is my tank that I drew up.
Thoughts? Any visual issues with its design?

(Image)

The hull shape looks rather strange; it's either too long in the front, or too low overall, depending on what the scale is. Those five road wheels look too small and widely spaced, and the gun looks rather strange, lacking a thermal jacket or bore evacuator.

I'm also doubtful that the top MG would be able to cycle with the bullets fed in that close to the back. I'm no gun expert, and it's possible there's some high-hipster firing mechanism which could do it, but it certainly isn't typical.

wow this is so true artillery are a bunch of dumb losers wow why do modern armies even mess with artillery anymore they should just invest in air defense stuff

Yeah b/c planes and helis arent a thing screw them we should just invest in the big guns and not worry about anything else.

It's almost as though all these different weapons are supposed to support each other in a way that balances their advantages and disadvantages...

[Mitheldalond]

On a serious note; here is my tank that I drew up.
Thoughts? Any visual issues with its design?

(Image)

Unless it has a front engine, the front section is too long. Not nearly enough road wheels. Too much space between the front road wheel and the front drive wheel (or whatever it's called), and too little between the rear ones. It seems to be lacking in ground clearance.

I'm also not sure what's going on with the front of that turret.

[The Kievan People]

I had a go at calculating APFSDS penetration for my Not!Rooikat. Assuming its 90mm gun could be made to throw ammunition at 1,700m/s, and that the projectile was 700mm long with a diameter of 2.5cm, and that it had a terminal velocity of 1,400m/s, I got ~540mm RHA penetration at 4000m.

Does that seem vaguely reasonable or did I do something really wrong?

I don't think it is totally impossible, but it is an extraordinarily powerful 90mm gun. Comparable to IRL 120mm.

It might be difficult for a wheeled platform to handle it.

[The Kievan People]

Snip

OK let me get my spergy hat...



A contest between modern symmetrical opponents would be a lot like eating an orange. And by orange, I mean onion. And like an onion it would have layers, or levels. And like a onion there is more than one way you could divide it up. This is mine.

1. Information Battle
2. Aerospace Battle
2. Non-Contact Battle
3. Contact Battle

The higher level creates the conditions for success in the lower level. But only the lowest level, the contact battle, is assured to produce a decisive result. Why? Because until you go and shoot them there is no guaranteed way to force an adversary to do battle and by doing so expose their assets to destruction. They can always run and hide. And unless you possess enough firepower to destroy everything (aka nuclear warfare) everywhere you must expose the enemy before you can defeat them.

The role of maneuver on a modern battlefield is to smoke out the hidden adversaries (those which are not hidden will probably be dead) and fix them for destruction by any and all means. In doing so it can achieve decision as there will literally be no where left for the adversary to run.

What I agree on is that the relationship between the levels is unidirectional. You must win at the higher level before you can contemplate winning on the lower level. From information superiority flows air superiority, from air superiority flows artillery superiority, from artillery superiority flows successful maneuver. And that this relationship does not reverse in most cases. But I would add that victory at the lower level is not an automatic consequence of victory at the higher level and that you are writing off the importance of the lower level too quickly. It is still possible to lose in the contact battle if you win at all the higher levels, especially if you neglect your capabilities at this level.

It was precisely the fear that they could still be defeated, or only win at great cost, in the contact battle that spurred the US Army to make air mobility central to the Future Combat System. Their wargames showed them that even if they established decisive superiority in information, air power and stand off firepower dug-in static defenders still could not be uprooted from a safe distance. The only way to reliably defeat them was to close in for the kill and this often came at an unacceptably high cost. The FCS tried to solve this dilemma by achieving such a high level of mobility that the battle could be fought and won before the defender could establish a hardened defense, negating they hoped the need for a bloody close battle at all.

Obviously the FCS did not pan out there was an important kernel of wisdom in there: Even under fully modern conditions the close or contact battle is both inescapable and necessary. And within the scope of this level of combat effective maneuver remains a key capability. A force which cannot, as you said, leverage maneuver to produce a tactical advantage in close combat is seriously disadvantaged at this level. And if a force cannot achieve dominance at this level as well as all other levels there remains a real possibility that its adversary can force it to a stalemate.

[New Vihenia]

hmm so we have those "Heavy MLRS" Like SY-400 with 400 Km range...What make this system any different or cheaper compared to full fledged Battlefield short range ballistic missile like say.. Tochka-U, ATACMS or Iskander ?

[Immoren]

Border guard?

[Imperializt Russia]

hmm so we have those "Heavy MLRS" Like SY-400 with 400 Km range...What make this system any different or cheaper compared to full fledged Battlefield short range ballistic missile like say.. Tochka-U, ATACMS or Iskander ?

Googling SY-400 did seem to suggest that it's considered an SRBM.
Could you clarify your question?

[HMS Vanguard]

A contest between modern symmetrical opponents would be a lot like eating an orange. And by orange, I mean onion. And like an onion it would have layers, or levels. And like a onion there is more than one way you could divide it up. This is mine.

1. Information Battle
2. Aerospace Battle
2. Non-Contact Battle
3. Contact Battle

The higher level creates the conditions for success in the lower level. But only the lowest level, the contact battle, is assured to produce a decisive result. Why? Because until you go and shoot them there is no guaranteed way to force an adversary to do battle and by doing so expose their assets to destruction. They can always run and hide. And unless you possess enough firepower to destroy everything (aka nuclear warfare) everywhere you must expose the enemy before you can defeat them.

The role of maneuver on a modern battlefield is to smoke out the hidden adversaries (those which are not hidden will probably be dead) and fix them for destruction by any and all means. In doing so it can achieve decision as there will literally be no where left for the adversary to run.

What I agree on is that the relationship between the levels is unidirectional. You must win at the higher level before you can contemplate winning on the lower level. From information superiority flows air superiority, from air superiority flows artillery superiority, from artillery superiority flows successful maneuver. And that this relationship does not reverse in most cases. But I would add that victory at the lower level is not an automatic consequence of victory at the higher level and that you are writing off the importance of the lower level too quickly. It is still possible to lose in the contact battle if you win at all the higher levels, especially if you neglect your capabilities at this level.

It was precisely the fear that they could still be defeated, or only win at great cost, in the contact battle that spurred the US Army to make air mobility central to the Future Combat System. Their wargames showed them that even if they established decisive superiority in information, air power and stand off firepower dug-in static defenders still could not be uprooted from a safe distance. The only way to reliably defeat them was to close in for the kill and this often came at an unacceptably high cost. The FCS tried to solve this dilemma by achieving such a high level of mobility that the battle could be fought and won before the defender could establish a hardened defense, negating they hoped the need for a bloody close battle at all.

Obviously the FCS did not pan out there was an important kernel of wisdom in there: Even under fully modern conditions the close or contact battle is both inescapable and necessary. And within the scope of this level of combat effective maneuver remains a key capability. A force which cannot, as you said, leverage maneuver to produce a tactical advantage in close combat is seriously disadvantaged at this level. And if a force cannot achieve dominance at this level as well as all other levels there remains a real possibility that its adversary can force it to a stalemate.

Thank you for an interesting post. I find much to agree with. Some comments that are not necessarily intended as criticism -

1. The idea of using a very large but ineffective army to make forcing a victory disproportionately expensive is of course not new. The most explicit such attempt was probably that of late WWII Japan, which sought to dissuade (they probably knew they could not defeat) the US industrial mechanised army with a very large and lightly equipped static army. The Germans probably also tried something similar but as their problem had always been lack of manpower rather than equipment it was much less obvious. You didn't say it was new of course, but I wonder how you think the strategic dimension to air power, which is somewhat new, plays into this. Japan was compelled to surrender mostly because of its vulnerability to US blockade and bombing; if air power is now much more effective at destroying defenceless strategic targets, that suggests the national redoubt strategy has become weaker.

Again I'd contrast this potentially successful theory with the reality that the US in particular does not really want to create extensive and lasting social collapse in a country that remains nominally a belligerent, preventing reconstruction and the influx of aid, both for moral reasons and because it looks bad. But not every country is the US.

2. Again I'd object to the use of the term 'manoeuvre' in describing this defence strategy. It's a static defence strategy, enemy surveillance and air having effectively denied the use of the transport system to the enemy, at least on a strategic scale. Perhaps this a purely semantic point, or perhaps I have been uncharitable and you are only referring to manoeuvre as an approach to be used by the victor at the higher level, not both sides; nonetheless I think others were not.

[New Vihenia]

Googling SY-400 did seem to suggest that it's considered an SRBM.
Could you clarify your question?

Well basically "Why Chinese advertise this as "MLRS" Or "Guided rocket"" ? Well granted that this might be a marketing strategy (Like French with "Sharklet" Which in fact no different than winglet) But still.. What make this system could be any different than ballistic missile.

[Yukonastan]

Googling SY-400 did seem to suggest that it's considered an SRBM.
Could you clarify your question?

Well basically "Why Chinese advertise this as "MLRS" Or "Guided rocket"" ? Well granted that this might be a marketing strategy (Like French with "Sharklet" Which in fact no different than winglet) But still.. What make this system could be any different than ballistic missile.

Except that of course sharklets also extend below the wing...

But to aim an SRBM it has to be guided during its boost phase. And if there are multiple missiles on a single truck, that's where the MLRS will come from.

Basically what makes it different from your average theatre ballistic missile is the fact that it isn't explicitly called that.

[Imperializt Russia]

Googling SY-400 did seem to suggest that it's considered an SRBM.
Could you clarify your question?

Well basically "Why Chinese advertise this as "MLRS" Or "Guided rocket"" ? Well granted that this might be a marketing strategy (Like French with "Sharklet" Which in fact no different than winglet) But still.. What make this system could be any different than ballistic missile.

Making the Americans less antsy over how they're party to the INF and the Chinese aren't?
Mistranslation?

[New Vihenia]

Making the Americans less antsy over how they're party to the INF and the Chinese aren't?
Mistranslation?

Maybe a mistranslation. Nonetheless it's quite disturbing.

About INF though... I doubt it still on force today given Russian deplyoment of Tender-M (Their version of Iskander) This thing have over 500 Km range.. Just the same as the R-400 Oka Which was banned by INF. and of course the Kalibr (3M14) Which essentially new form of RK-55 Reliyef.

[Imperializt Russia]

Officially, Iskander (I had to look up what Tender was, but I did assume it was probably Iskander) has a range of like 400km.
It's probably there to push INF as far as it will bend.

[Mitheldalond]

Why didn't anybody put a Gatling gun on fighter aircraft in WWII? I mean, the thing has been around since 1862, and with a prop fighter you've already got an engine and propellor spinning at 2000-3000 rpm. It seems like it should have been fairly easy to rig something up, and then you'd have a fighter with a gun firing at the same speed as your engine/propellor. Does it just come down to ammo consumption, or is there some other reason?

Fake edit: I'm thinking of something like the P-39 with its engine behind the cockpit, so that there would be room for the gun in the nose.

Actually, rate of fire would be how fast it's spinning times the number of barrels, wouldn't it?

[San-Silvacian]

Why didn't anybody put a Gatling gun on fighter aircraft in WWII? I mean, the thing has been around since 1862, and with a prop fighter you've already got an engine and propellor spinning at 2000-3000 rpm. It seems like it should have been fairly easy to rig something up, and then you'd have a fighter with a gun firing at the same speed as your engine/propellor. Does it just come down to ammo consumption, or is there some other reason?

Fake edit: I'm thinking of something like the P-39 with its engine behind the cockpit, so that there would be room for the gun in the nose.

Actually, rate of fire would be how fast it's spinning times the number of barrels, wouldn't it?

You have reached Purp levels of Captain Hindsight.

Good job.

[Mitheldalond]

Why didn't anybody put a Gatling gun on fighter aircraft in WWII? I mean, the thing has been around since 1862, and with a prop fighter you've already got an engine and propellor spinning at 2000-3000 rpm. It seems like it should have been fairly easy to rig something up, and then you'd have a fighter with a gun firing at the same speed as your engine/propellor. Does it just come down to ammo consumption, or is there some other reason?

Fake edit: I'm thinking of something like the P-39 with its engine behind the cockpit, so that there would be room for the gun in the nose.

Actually, rate of fire would be how fast it's spinning times the number of barrels, wouldn't it?

You have reached Purp levels of Captain Hindsight.

Good job.

But why is it hindsight? They seem to have had everything they needed.

The technology to build it was about 80 years old, so the gun should have been known and understood. They knew that more bullets increased the chances of a hit or kill (hence the addition of two more .50 cals to later versions of the P-51). The P-39 was even a successful aircraft, so they knew that layout worked.

So why didn't anyone try to do it?

[Stahn]

Why didn't anybody put a Gatling gun on fighter aircraft in WWII? I mean, the thing has been around since 1862, and with a prop fighter you've already got an engine and propellor spinning at 2000-3000 rpm. It seems like it should have been fairly easy to rig something up, and then you'd have a fighter with a gun firing at the same speed as your engine/propellor. Does it just come down to ammo consumption, or is there some other reason?

Fake edit: I'm thinking of something like the P-39 with its engine behind the cockpit, so that there would be room for the gun in the nose.

Actually, rate of fire would be how fast it's spinning times the number of barrels, wouldn't it?

Have you considered how heavy and large it would be? Including the ammo it would use?

[Spirit of Hope]

You have reached Purp levels of Captain Hindsight.

Good job.

But why is it hindsight? They seem to have had everything they needed.

The technology to build it was about 80 years old, so the gun should have been known and understood. They knew that more bullets increased the chances of a hit or kill (hence the addition of two more .50 cals to later versions of the P-51). The P-39 was even a successful aircraft, so they knew that layout worked.

So why didn't anyone try to do it?

Probably because the Gatling guns wouldn't have dramatically increased the rate of fire, would have cost more, would have been more mechanically complex, would have weighed more, and likely would have been larger.