NS Military Realism Consultancy Thread Mk X Purps Safe Space

[Allanea]

Despite the whole thing of trying to attain 'elite mega-trained and equipped super soldiers' being a straight up bad idea, is it possible for an army to get something close(or barely) to it? And will it be a slightly less bad idea?

On that matter, how much extensive training could an average modern infantryman go through before it becomes redundant?

The IDF provides its infantry with as muchas 9 months of training.

The problem you run into, essentially, is that many of a super-soldier's ostensible abilities (superior physical form, superior marksmanship and reflexes) don't really help him as much on the battlefield as most people imagine they would.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Despite the whole thing of trying to attain 'elite mega-trained and equipped super soldiers' being a straight up bad idea, is it possible for an army to get something close(or barely) to it? And will it be a slightly less bad idea?

On that matter, how much extensive training could an average modern infantryman go through before it becomes redundant?

The IDF provides its infantry with as muchas 9 months of training.

The problem you run into, essentially, is that many of a super-soldier's ostensible abilities (superior physical form, superior marksmanship and reflexes) don't really help him as much on the battlefield as most people imagine they would.

Why have speed of light reflexes when you can have your battle-buddy make that follow-up shot for you?

Can't be in 3 places at once while outflanking a machine-gun nest while laying your own suppressive fire? Hey, we've got more soldiers for that.

Quantity is a pretty epic quality. Add some decent 1337 communication-skillz and clarvoiancy of what everyone on your team is doing at all times, and you're almost set to win by default.

Unless you're secretly an army of potatoes, then is harvest-season.

3 weeks is probably the bare minimum, and that's assuming you can do some really high-end dry-fire practice by letting your buds slam the charging-lever every time you go click.

Add maybe another week to learn "how not to die horribly in the wilderness just because it rained on a PT-march" and you start to see diminishing returns as you progress from "vaguely competant, but neon-green" to "is secretly Chuck Norris in a box, w/ a bandana in place of a mullet (and can sustain themselves off of nothing but snake-urine)".

Most countries tend to lean towards the latter because soldiers aren't treated as an infitely respawnable resource anymore, and their opponents seem quite willing to sit back and let them have time to train, hoping they make more mistakes in their training-scheduals than themselves.

[The Akasha Colony]

Despite the whole thing of trying to attain 'elite mega-trained and equipped super soldiers' being a straight up bad idea, is it possible for an army to get something close(or barely) to it? And will it be a slightly less bad idea?

On that matter, how much extensive training could an average modern infantryman go through before it becomes redundant?

It's not that it becomes redundant, it's just that at a certain point, it becomes unnecessary as the returns continue diminishing. A few months to teach infantry basics in training and then a few months in an active duty unit to learn from other soldiers is generally plenty, along with some field training exercises. You can double the length of training if you want, but you won't come close to doubling the skill improvements. I'd say 6-9 months is probably decent for a regular infantryman, plus again some time in the unit outside of formal training to get acclimated. And regular field exercises to keep them at least semi-familiar with actual operational conditions and procedures.

[United Earthlings]

A different take on the modern battleship and hence forth to be referred to only as a heavily armoured warship, since the official naval canon of my nation it’s not the guns that defined a battleship, but their armor, a tradition my navy has carried on to various degrees to the present period.

Realism Setting {Scale of 1 to 10, 10 being not realistic at all-reality as we know it doesn’t exist, 1 being the exact world as it exists now}: Some background first before the question, my nation exists entirely in the NS universe meaning IRL has little to no bearing, except for vague similarities of NS nations that take on the characteristics of various RL nations that never existed in the first place. So, there may be German and French speaking nations and Empires, but they are not the German and French entity’s that exist or existed in RL which includes their national history such as wars, conflicts, industrial development so on etc…So, the starting scale slant would be a 3 or 4.

If the above is too confusing, think of it this way: You booted up a Civilization Game and selected a random Civ and Map. Is it our world no, are there going to be some similarities, yes.

These heavily armoured warships with large caliber guns will have been designed in the 1960s as replacements for those battleships my nation built in the late 1930s & 1940s, to be built throughout the 1970s and early 1980s as a complement and companion to all the new Nimitz Class carriers being built in the same period. These vessels would combined the role of a heavily armoured warship {AKA: battleship} with that of a Guided Missile nuclear cruiser like that of the American Carolina and Virginia Class, FTR they would use either a modified or similar reactor as that being utilized by the Nimitz class. They would sacrifice some gun armament {having either 2 triple turrets or just one triple turret of 16in} for arm missile launchers {Mark 23s at first} which at a later date of course would be updated eventually to VLS cells in the mid to late 1980s. These heavily armoured vessels would act as an anti-air flagship of a battlegroup providing air defense to said group, shore bombardment for supporting amphibious assaults and finally as a possible counter to any battleships other nations might still have in service.

All those modern for the time period heavily armoured gun warships built in the 1970s/1980s would be decommissioned/scrapped/turned into museum pieces even before the start of the 21st century, probably 1999 at the latest. Even before then, by the late 1980s/early 1990s most would have been regulated to secondary roles or placed in the fleet reserve awaiting their fate.

Given the NS universe I described above and a naval budget and technological knowhow to build them isn’t an issue, would those vessels fall within the 3 to 6 realism scale I used above?

I ask because at the height of the SD craze, I spent quite a bit of time doing write-ups for heavily armoured warships {AKA: battleships} and leaving them canon I think adds some flavor and oddity to my nations naval history. Not to mention I’d like to be able to savage all that hard work if possible in a realistic way.

Of course either way I’m going to have retcon quite a few things, but in a tense and strained relations Cold/Hot War setting, having heavily armoured warships around during those years in my nation’s NS universe seems more plausible than after a similar détente period occurs.

[Gallia-]

Despite the whole thing of trying to attain 'elite mega-trained and equipped super soldiers' being a straight up bad idea, is it possible for an army to get something close(or barely) to it? And will it be a slightly less bad idea?

On that matter, how much extensive training could an average modern infantryman go through before it becomes redundant?

~18 weeks is all you need re: infantry training.

6 weeks basic
12 weeks specific

[Austrasien]

A different take on the modern battleship and hence forth to be referred to only as a heavily armoured warship, since the official naval canon of my nation it’s not the guns that defined a battleship, but their armor, a tradition my navy has carried on to various degrees to the present period.

Realism Setting {Scale of 1 to 10, 10 being not realistic at all-reality as we know it doesn’t exist, 1 being the exact world as it exists now}: Some background first before the question, my nation exists entirely in the NS universe meaning IRL has little to no bearing, except for vague similarities of NS nations that take on the characteristics of various RL nations that never existed in the first place. So, there may be German and French speaking nations and Empires, but they are not the German and French entity’s that exist or existed in RL which includes their national history such as wars, conflicts, industrial development so on etc…So, the starting scale slant would be a 3 or 4.

If the above is too confusing, think of it this way: You booted up a Civilization Game and selected a random Civ and Map. Is it our world no, are there going to be some similarities, yes.

These heavily armoured warships with large caliber guns will have been designed in the 1960s as replacements for those battleships my nation built in the late 1930s & 1940s, to be built throughout the 1970s and early 1980s as a complement and companion to all the new Nimitz Class carriers being built in the same period. These vessels would combined the role of a heavily armoured warship {AKA: battleship} with that of a Guided Missile nuclear cruiser like that of the American Carolina and Virginia Class, FTR they would use either a modified or similar reactor as that being utilized by the Nimitz class. They would sacrifice some gun armament {having either 2 triple turrets or just one triple turret of 16in} for arm missile launchers {Mark 23s at first} which at a later date of course would be updated eventually to VLS cells in the mid to late 1980s. These heavily armoured vessels would act as an anti-air flagship of a battlegroup providing air defense to said group, shore bombardment for supporting amphibious assaults and finally as a possible counter to any battleships other nations might still have in service.

All those modern for the time period heavily armoured gun warships built in the 1970s/1980s would be decommissioned/scrapped/turned into museum pieces even before the start of the 21st century, probably 1999 at the latest. Even before then, by the late 1980s/early 1990s most would have been regulated to secondary roles or placed in the fleet reserve awaiting their fate.

Given the NS universe I described above and a naval budget and technological knowhow to build them isn’t an issue, would those vessels fall within the 3 to 6 realism scale I used above?

I ask because at the height of the SD craze, I spent quite a bit of time doing write-ups for heavily armoured warships {AKA: battleships} and leaving them canon I think adds some flavor and oddity to my nations naval history. Not to mention I’d like to be able to savage all that hard work if possible in a realistic way.

Of course either way I’m going to have retcon quite a few things, but in a tense and strained relations Cold/Hot War setting, having heavily armoured warships around during those years in my nation’s NS universe seems more plausible than after a similar détente period occurs.

A post-WWII armoured warship would probably have armour distribution approaching uniform, with the deck much strengthened at the expense of the belt (the deck thickness would probably need to exceed 200mm to provide protection from common aerial AP bombs), and significantly smaller guns. There was simply no logical requirement for the very high penetration of big 14, 16 or 18 inch guns in this period.

Going by the simple metric of it should be able to kill itself, 11 inch guns in the same class as the main armament of the Sverige or Deutschland, would be more than sufficient for engaging any contemporary warship including a hypothetical similar armoured ship as well as providing effective naval fire support.

[United Earthlings]

A post-WWII armoured warship would probably have armour distribution approaching uniform, with the deck much strengthened at the expense of the belt (the deck thickness would probably need to exceed 200mm to provide protection from common aerial AP bombs), and significantly smaller guns. There was simply no logical requirement for the very high penetration of big 14, 16 or 18 inch guns in this period.

Going by the simple metric of it should be able to kill itself, 11 inch guns in the same class as the main armament of the Sverige or Deutschland, would be more than sufficient for engaging any contemporary warship including a hypothetical similar armoured ship as well as providing effective naval fire support.

I figured the armour layout would be quite different given the threat and operational requirements would be different in a 1960/1970 time period. What exactly that armour layout would be I haven't gotten that far yet.

You pointing out the obvious about the large guns, yes I was going to use an updated {newly built} 16in gun, mostly to achieve good range for the HE shells rather than penetration capability, still your suggest to use a smaller gun was genius and so I have a follow up question.

In lieu of the 11in guns as found on the Sverige or Deutschland, what about a revamped/updated 12"/50 caliber Mark 8 gun as that found on the Alaska-class cruisers? If it’s realistically possible for the 12in guns to achieve a similar rate of fire as the later 8"/55 caliber Mark 16 guns did on the Des Moines class cruisers, the small loss in range would be more than offset by the higher rate of fire compared to using a updated/modified 16in gun. Also, as you stated I don't see a 12in AP shell having any difficulties against any potential hypothetical similar armoured vessels its likely to encounter.

What do you think? Good Compromise?

[North Arkana]

A post-WWII armoured warship would probably have armour distribution approaching uniform, with the deck much strengthened at the expense of the belt (the deck thickness would probably need to exceed 200mm to provide protection from common aerial AP bombs), and significantly smaller guns. There was simply no logical requirement for the very high penetration of big 14, 16 or 18 inch guns in this period.

Going by the simple metric of it should be able to kill itself, 11 inch guns in the same class as the main armament of the Sverige or Deutschland, would be more than sufficient for engaging any contemporary warship including a hypothetical similar armoured ship as well as providing effective naval fire support.

I figured the armour layout would be quite different given the threat and operational requirements would be different in a 1960/1970 time period. What exactly that armour layout would be I haven't gotten that far yet.

You pointing out the obvious about the large guns, yes I was going to use an updated {newly built} 16in gun, mostly to achieve good range for the HE shells rather than penetration capability, still your suggest to use a smaller gun was genius and so I have a follow up question.

In lieu of the 11in guns as found on the Sverige or Deutschland, what about a revamped/updated 12"/50 caliber Mark 8 gun as that found on the Alaska-class cruisers? If it’s realistically possible for the 12in guns to achieve a similar rate of fire as the later 8"/55 caliber Mark 16 guns did on the Des Moines class cruisers, the small loss in range would be more than offset by the higher rate of fire compared to using a updated/modified 16in gun. Also, as you stated I don't see a 12in AP shell having any difficulties against any potential hypothetical similar armoured vessels its likely to encounter.

What do you think? Good Compromise?

Modern 5" guns can out range a 16" Mark 7 in terms of effective range, and 155mm AGS just lols all over it in terms of range.

[Dostanuot Loj]

Despite the whole thing of trying to attain 'elite mega-trained and equipped super soldiers' being a straight up bad idea, is it possible for an army to get something close(or barely) to it? And will it be a slightly less bad idea?

On that matter, how much extensive training could an average modern infantryman go through before it becomes redundant?

The IDF provides its infantry with as muchas 9 months of training.

The problem you run into, essentially, is that many of a super-soldier's ostensible abilities (superior physical form, superior marksmanship and reflexes) don't really help him as much on the battlefield as most people imagine they would.

The training is where people get all hyped about "super soldiers", but it's unimportant. A few months of training to learn the basic skills are all you need.

REAL effective small units are those that spend a lot of time together, doing lots of things. All the time.

When your entire squad are your bros, and you spend 24/7 together doing shit, you work like a perfect machine. This is why exercises are important, where the entire unit mocks their tasks together. So when real shooting happens each team member concentrates on their own stuff because they inherently know and believe the others will be doing the same, and everything will be covered.

[Great Nordanglia]

Nordanglia's Horse Guards Regiment was divided up in the 1970s, when it was still a regular armoured regiment, to provide Brigade reconnaissance. It was joined in this task by the Grenadier Horse Guards in the 1980s.

Each Regiment is today divided into five Troops, which are Platoon-Company sized units, attached to one of the ten armoured brigades of the Nordanglian Army. These are as follows:

Horse Guards Regiment

• King's Troop, HGR (King's (Armoured) Brigade, Home Forces)
• Household Troop, HGR (5th Armoured Brigade, 7th Armd Division)
• Prince of Cambria's Troop, HGR (1st Armoured Brigade, 1st Armd Division)
• Parliament's Troop, HGR, 9th Armoured Brigade, 5th Armd Division)
• Light Horse Troop, HGR (11th Armoured Brigade, 5th Armd Division)

Grenadier Horse Guards

• Queen's Troop, GHG (Queen's (Armoured) Brigade, 1st Armd Division)
• Crown Prince's Troop, GHG (3rd Armoured Brigade, 1st Armd Division)
• Reynold's Troop, GHG (2nd Armoured Brigade, 5th Armd Division)
• Mercer's Troop, GHG (12th Armoured Brigade, 7th Armd Division)
• Cotton's Troop, GHG (20th Armoured Brigade, 7th Armd Division)

Each Troop is divided into four Groups, each comprised of two main battle tanks and three tracked infantry carrying vehicles, for a total of twenty vehicles. This Troop provides forwards reconnaissance for the Brigade. Each year, the officers and non-commissioned officers of the two regiments meet to discuss tactics, experiences, and concepts. Both Regiments are comprised entirely of volunteers.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

Despite the whole thing of trying to attain 'elite mega-trained and equipped super soldiers' being a straight up bad idea, is it possible for an army to get something close(or barely) to it? And will it be a slightly less bad idea?

On that matter, how much extensive training could an average modern infantryman go through before it becomes redundant?

The most effective "super soldiers" wouldn't necessarily be "mega-trained" or "mega-equipped", they would be given some combination of drugs (near term) and/or genetic modification (far term) that would drastically reduce the need to eat and sleep. It's what DARPA calls "continuously assisted performance" and its implications in terms of force multiplication are infinitely greater that whatever "super strength" or "super speed" enhancements you see in movies or video games. Even if you start going into crazy stuff like nanobots the implications are rather mundane in terms of "cool factor", think something like nanobots being used to filter out pathogens and chem/bio agents out of your bloodstream. Sounds boring but soldiers that never get sick are much more useful than soldiers that run really fast or jump really high.

Like others have said more than a few months of infantry training isn't worth much. Extensive training, say more than a year, suggests some kind of specialist training on top of basic infantry stuff.

[Kassaran]

Honestly, to turn a civilian into a soldier probably takes the better part of eighteen weeks. From my experience, it was at about the point where most of my classmates and I would have completed BCT a second time through in time spent on training at AIT, that we really started to act like soldiers. We had gotten tired of just being babied or treated like shit and hunkered down to bite the bullet. If anything, most modern civilians joining the US Army aren't doing it initially for the sake of being soldiers. I'd say most of them were doing it for college money and pay benefits, if not bragging rights. I'm not too up to speed on much else regarding the Army, I've yet to reach even my first duty station, but you can guarantee I'm looking forward to it now having spent the better part of 9 months in the IET (initial entry training) environment and most others whom have spent such long times under it generally feel the same way.

[Nanmaunaktuk]

Honestly, to turn a civilian into a soldier probably takes the better part of eighteen weeks. From my experience, it was at about the point where most of my classmates and I would have completed BCT a second time through in time spent on training at AIT, that we really started to act like soldiers. We had gotten tired of just being babied or treated like shit and hunkered down to bite the bullet. If anything, most modern civilians joining the US Army aren't doing it initially for the sake of being soldiers. I'd say most of them were doing it for college money and pay benefits, if not bragging rights. I'm not too up to speed on much else regarding the Army, I've yet to reach even my first duty station, but you can guarantee I'm looking forward to it now having spent the better part of 9 months in the IET (initial entry training) environment and most others whom have spent such long times under it generally feel the same way.

Not even close. Not sure how it works on the US side of things, but at least in Canada, you're not considered a "full" soldier until you have 3-4 years in.

I mean, in terms of creating a quick militia, yes, 18 weeks will do. But if you want a professional military, you're looking at a couple years to bring a civilian to be an effective soldier.

[Austrasien]

What do you think? Good Compromise?

Yes. The Alaska's gun are a fare bit more powerful, but they are still much smaller than the Iowa's 16 inch guns based on Naval Weapons information. If you have a good IC reason to use 12 inch it would be a bit superfluous to use 280mm guns. One thing that could be improved in that time period is the gun tubes could be manufactured monoblock from a CNC rotary forge, which would make them lighter, cheaper, probably longer lasting and would allow them to be manufactured at a larger range of less-specialized plants.

[Gallia-]

Honestly, to turn a civilian into a soldier probably takes the better part of eighteen weeks. From my experience, it was at about the point where most of my classmates and I would have completed BCT a second time through in time spent on training at AIT, that we really started to act like soldiers. We had gotten tired of just being babied or treated like shit and hunkered down to bite the bullet. If anything, most modern civilians joining the US Army aren't doing it initially for the sake of being soldiers. I'd say most of them were doing it for college money and pay benefits, if not bragging rights. I'm not too up to speed on much else regarding the Army, I've yet to reach even my first duty station, but you can guarantee I'm looking forward to it now having spent the better part of 9 months in the IET (initial entry training) environment and most others whom have spent such long times under it generally feel the same way.

Not even close. Not sure how it works on the US side of things, but at least in Canada, you're not considered a "full" soldier until you have 3-4 years in.

I mean, in terms of creating a quick militia, yes, 18 weeks will do. But if you want a professional military, you're looking at a couple years to bring a civilian to be an effective soldier.

No you aren't. It really is ~18 weeks. That's about how long it takes to learn the basics of fire and movement, fire and maneuver, and digging a foxhole. You can cut it shorter if you have a pre-selected pool of applicants and train them in nothing but practical skills, rather than useless things like drill. Professional armies are mostly a bad meme that has more economic than practical reasons behind them.

The best tankers in the US Army are National Guard anyway. So much for the idea that a "militia" is worse than "professional" troops.

Besides that, using Canada as a yardstick for a "military" is a joke. Pretty much all Commonwealth armies tend to over train and under equip their troops, for whatever reason. They'd be a lot better off if they cut down their training hours to something resembling the US Army (~24 weeks for infantrymen and tankers alike) and used the money saved to buy newer, better equipment.

What you're actually describing is anathema of civility, democracy, and liberty: tribalism/societal parochialism. Citizen-soldiery is a potential solution to the problem of an increasing military-civilian divide in Western societies, but is probably most studied and recognized in the USA. Its greatest barrier is the falsity that professional armies are somehow inherently superior to conscript or part-time armies. The two biggest examples that show how false it is are modern-day Israel vs. every other NATO country and Canada and Australia in both world wars vs. the other Allied armies.

The other barrier is the questioning of a need for a large/powerful military in lieu of dire threat. This is probably the biggest of the two major reasons, because it's actually hard to motivate people to want to have big militaries unless they are cute spergs, because they're afraid they will die in a random war. Unfortunately, this rather cancerous strain of intellectualism has permeated all Western societies at all levels. Probably because the idea behind it is rather counter-intuitive. Big militaries prevent wars in democracies because they hold a larger portion of constituent voters to the risk of being injured, which forces society to gauge more finely whether or not they should be getting involved in a war or not.

Besides that, you start to get a weird/creepy sycophantic vibe from the civilian side in societies that don't actually understand their militaries or why/how they work. When people are more readily exposed to something, they become more willing to discuss its faults and how to correct them, rather than taking them at face value as being right and proper. Thus, you invite constructive criticism from the majority of citizen-soldiers, rather than the fawning/adoration that is increasingly prevalent. The latter is how you get things like Korea, where the US Army was nearly thrown off a continent by a bunch of random people with T-34s; or >80% of citizens trusting the military. Compare that to Israel, where about 60% of citizens trust the military, which compares favourably with the USA in Vietnam and WW2, and is probably directly because of how exposed they are to it.

What generally seems to happen as a result of large military-civilian divide is that you get involved in more pointless wars, voters dehumanize the military into a monolithic Other, and said military gets its ass spanked because people refuse to listen to it critically when it says stupid things like "air-mechanization", "compound rotodynes", and "digital jujitsu". There are other problems too, but those are mostly symptoms rather than causes, like rise in incivility and partisanship.

So yeah, 18 weeks is about enough to turn someone into a soldier, i.e. able to shoot, able to perform battle drills, and able to work in cooperation with the other tanks, infantry, air defense, and artillery as part of the combined arms team.

The minimum required training, followed by periodic field exercises, is also a much better method of training people how to fight than spending 60 weeks training to asymptote followed by nothing.

[Radictistan]

In a "real" war between well-equipped states infantry will probably end up being divided between forward observers and targets. Shell fragments laugh at your Trident.

[Austrasien]

Besides that, using Canada as a yardstick for a "military" is a joke. Pretty much all Commonwealth armies tend to over train and under equip their troops, for whatever reason. They'd be a lot better off if they cut down their training hours to something resembling the US Army (~24 weeks for infantrymen and tankers alike) and used the money saved to buy newer, better equipment.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files ... aryvol.pdf

Service members’ completion rates are important to DoD because people’s level of experience in the military affects their productivity. Individuals with more years of service have generally acquired more knowledge and skills than those with fewer years. Research has shown that career military personnel are at least 1.5 times more productive than first-term personnel at certain tasks.

Canada is entirely correct when it comes to managing personnel skills. A Sumer said, length of service and minimal rotation (something the US military is terrible at) both measurably improve soldiers performance.

[North Arkana]

Besides that, using Canada as a yardstick for a "military" is a joke. Pretty much all Commonwealth armies tend to over train and under equip their troops, for whatever reason. They'd be a lot better off if they cut down their training hours to something resembling the US Army (~24 weeks for infantrymen and tankers alike) and used the money saved to buy newer, better equipment.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files ... aryvol.pdf

Service members’ completion rates are important to DoD because people’s level of experience in the military affects their productivity. Individuals with more years of service have generally acquired more knowledge and skills than those with fewer years. Research has shown that career military personnel are at least 1.5 times more productive than first-term personnel at certain tasks.

Canada is entirely correct when it comes to managing personnel skills. A Sumer said, length of service and minimal rotation (something the US military is terrible at) both measurably improve soldiers performance.

Is it improved performance or complacency? Because I can assure you, leave someone in the same posting long enough, and the improvement is less improvement than making it look good.

[Gallia-]

Besides that, using Canada as a yardstick for a "military" is a joke. Pretty much all Commonwealth armies tend to over train and under equip their troops, for whatever reason. They'd be a lot better off if they cut down their training hours to something resembling the US Army (~24 weeks for infantrymen and tankers alike) and used the money saved to buy newer, better equipment.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files ... aryvol.pdf

Service members’ completion rates are important to DoD because people’s level of experience in the military affects their productivity. Individuals with more years of service have generally acquired more knowledge and skills than those with fewer years. Research has shown that career military personnel are at least 1.5 times more productive than first-term personnel at certain tasks.

Canada is entirely correct when it comes to managing personnel skills. A Sumer said, length of service and minimal rotation (something the US military is terrible at) both measurably improve soldiers performance.

I don't see how that translates to 60+ weeks of basic training al a Britain. It seems more an argument for permanent unit stationing and a professionalized cadre, and neither of those are mutually exclusive to an all-volunteer army.

[Austrasien]

Measurably improved performance.

Using a generalized Leontief production function, Marcus (1982) estimated the
substitution possibilities between three rank groupings of Navy enlisted aviation
maintenance personnel (El/E3, E4/E6, E7-E9). The output measures consisted of
292 observations on aviation squadron sorties and (alternatively) mission capable rates.
Marcus calculated that at the sample means an additional E7-E9 has a "mission
capable" marginal product 5 times larger than the marginal product of an E4/E6 and
9 times larger than the marginal product of El/E3 personnel. The estimates imply
that E4/E6 personnel are about twice as productive as El/E3 personnel, an estimate
consistent with Albrecht's.

Horowitz and Sherman (1980) and Beland and
Quester (1991) both found that Navy productivity is adversely related to crew turnover.
In the latter study, the crew turnover rate averaged 12 percent per quarter (so that the
annual crew turnover rate is almost 50 percent). The elasticity of the mission capable
rate with respect to crew turnover is about -0.3. Furthermore, for two of three ship
classes studied, Beland and Quester found that a ship's mission capable rate is related
to the length of time the ship's commanding officer has been aboard ship. Kostiuk
and Follmann (1989) find that the productivity of Naval Reserve recruiters doubles
in their first 24 months of duty but that productivity falls as recruiters approach the
date of rotation to other assignments. Scribner et al. (1986) estimated that doubling the
time that a tank commander and his gunner spend in the crew from the average of 7
to 14 months would raise the crew's score by about 4 percent. These studies point out
the down side of US military rotation policy.

From "The Economics of Military Manpower".

[North Arkana]

Measurably improved performance.

Using a generalized Leontief production function, Marcus (1982) estimated the
substitution possibilities between three rank groupings of Navy enlisted aviation
maintenance personnel (El/E3, E4/E6, E7-E9). The output measures consisted of
292 observations on aviation squadron sorties and (alternatively) mission capable rates.
Marcus calculated that at the sample means an additional E7-E9 has a "mission
capable" marginal product 5 times larger than the marginal product of an E4/E6 and
9 times larger than the marginal product of El/E3 personnel. The estimates imply
that E4/E6 personnel are about twice as productive as El/E3 personnel, an estimate
consistent with Albrecht's.

Horowitz and Sherman (1980) and Beland and
Quester (1991) both found that Navy productivity is adversely related to crew turnover.
In the latter study, the crew turnover rate averaged 12 percent per quarter (so that the
annual crew turnover rate is almost 50 percent). The elasticity of the mission capable
rate with respect to crew turnover is about -0.3. Furthermore, for two of three ship
classes studied, Beland and Quester found that a ship's mission capable rate is related
to the length of time the ship's commanding officer has been aboard ship. Kostiuk
and Follmann (1989) find that the productivity of Naval Reserve recruiters doubles
in their first 24 months of duty but that productivity falls as recruiters approach the
date of rotation to other assignments. Scribner et al. (1986) estimated that doubling the
time that a tank commander and his gunner spend in the crew from the average of 7
to 14 months would raise the crew's score by about 4 percent. These studies point out
the down side of US military rotation policy.

From "The Economics of Military Manpower".

So they're using NAVAL data to try to comment on TANK crews? It reads like one of those thousands of studies by other countries trying to make themselves feel better about having to subcontract their military security to the US by making their military sound better.

[Gallia-]

Measurably improved performance.

Using a generalized Leontief production function, Marcus (1982) estimated the
substitution possibilities between three rank groupings of Navy enlisted aviation
maintenance personnel (El/E3, E4/E6, E7-E9). The output measures consisted of
292 observations on aviation squadron sorties and (alternatively) mission capable rates.
Marcus calculated that at the sample means an additional E7-E9 has a "mission
capable" marginal product 5 times larger than the marginal product of an E4/E6 and
9 times larger than the marginal product of El/E3 personnel. The estimates imply
that E4/E6 personnel are about twice as productive as El/E3 personnel, an estimate
consistent with Albrecht's.

Horowitz and Sherman (1980) and Beland and
Quester (1991) both found that Navy productivity is adversely related to crew turnover.
In the latter study, the crew turnover rate averaged 12 percent per quarter (so that the
annual crew turnover rate is almost 50 percent). The elasticity of the mission capable
rate with respect to crew turnover is about -0.3. Furthermore, for two of three ship
classes studied, Beland and Quester found that a ship's mission capable rate is related
to the length of time the ship's commanding officer has been aboard ship. Kostiuk
and Follmann (1989) find that the productivity of Naval Reserve recruiters doubles
in their first 24 months of duty but that productivity falls as recruiters approach the
date of rotation to other assignments. Scribner et al. (1986) estimated that doubling the
time that a tank commander and his gunner spend in the crew from the average of 7
to 14 months would raise the crew's score by about 4 percent. These studies point out
the down side of US military rotation policy.

From "The Economics of Military Manpower".

IC, the difference seems to be from the definition of "soldier" where Nanmaunaktuk seems to be implying that "better" means "start of", where as I'm being more pedantic and using "bare minimum" as the metric rather than "good at their job" or something. I suppose this explains how National Guard BCTs require three months of remedial training, though. How does Israel manage its conscripts, since it's the only truly modern military to retain conscription in any real form? Does it have two separate armies, where one is professional and one is a strategic manpower reserve like the US National Guard?

The CBO seems to think that it's possible to have a volunteer military that doesn't become isolated from the greater society at large, though, which is the major sticking point of a draftee vs. professional military IMO. OTOH, down that road [which the CBO offers] lies QinetiQ and private contracting, which makes the Soviet Onion a far preferable choice.

Measurably improved performance.





From "The Economics of Military Manpower".

So they're using NAVAL data to try to comment on TANK crews? It reads like one of those thousands of studies by other countries trying to make themselves feel better about having to subcontract their military security to the US by making their military sound better.

It's obviously two separate studies.

[Federated Kingdom of Prussia]

In Napoleonic warfare, how much of a boon is it to have elite or highly respected units, a la the French Old Guard or the Russian Life Guard Grenadiers? The morale effect of these units is highly attested to, but one lost battle and a general can lose the cream of their army's crop. Mixing veterans and green soldiers seems to be what most modern armies do rather than maintain a white elephant that might just be the modern equivalent of SS Panzer Divisions or whatever.

[The Akasha Colony]

So they're using NAVAL data to try to comment on TANK crews? It reads like one of those thousands of studies by other countries trying to make themselves feel better about having to subcontract their military security to the US by making their military sound better.

The second paragraph references four separate studies (Horowitz and Sherman; Beland and Quester; Kostiuk and Follman; and Scribner et al.). It's not saying that the data in each study is directly related to the others, except that all of these studies show the same general trend: that longer assignments show increased productivity. The first two relate to navy crews, the third to Naval Reserve recruiters, and only the last one references tank commander rotations.

[North Arkana]

So they're using NAVAL data to try to comment on TANK crews? It reads like one of those thousands of studies by other countries trying to make themselves feel better about having to subcontract their military security to the US by making their military sound better.

The second paragraph references four separate studies (Horowitz and Sherman; Beland and Quester; Kostiuk and Follman; and Scribner et al.). It's not saying that the data in each study is directly related to the others, except that all of these studies show the same general trend: that longer assignments show increased productivity. The first two relate to navy crews, the third to Naval Reserve recruiters, and only the last one references tank commander rotations.

A point I've made previously stands. I suspect a lot of the productivity comes from learning what short cuts you CAN make, but really SHOULDN'T make.

Correction, I do know a lot of productivity comes from that kind of thing. I've been on the same post, in the same unit, in the same position for three years.