NS Military Realism Consultancy Thread Mk X Purps Safe Space

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

So i'm looking for some advice on the viability of a concept for an attack craft both from a military and engineering point of view. It would be a turboprop powered craft (to make it cheaper) who's general design would be based roughly on a slightly upscale Westland Wyvern. The major difference would be it has a remotely controlled ball turret armed with either twin automatic grenade launchers (maybe something similar to the H&K GMG) or twin 0.50 cal mgs. This would be at the cost of a reduced payload of rockets and bombs.

Do you intend to use this thing in high intensity conflicts post-1964 or thereabouts?

[The Akasha Colony]

So i'm looking for some advice on the viability of a concept for an attack craft both from a military and engineering point of view. It would be a turboprop powered craft (to make it cheaper) who's general design would be based roughly on a slightly upscale Westland Wyvern. The major difference would be it has a remotely controlled ball turret armed with either twin automatic grenade launchers (maybe something similar to the H&K GMG) or twin 0.50 cal mgs. This would be at the cost of a reduced payload of rockets and bombs.

It's probably physically possible.

But I'm not sure why you'd bother with it. It'd require a huge amount of work, since you'd have to use the two-seater version so that someone can control the turret without the plane crashing and you'd need to modify the lower fuselage obviously for the turret. Accurately aiming the turret at ground targets would probably be rather difficult compared to a conventional gunship in a pylon turn or a shallow dive with forward-firing guns.

You'd also be trading more useful armaments (the rockets and bombs) for less useful ones (the MGs or GMGs). On a very old aircraft, to boot. And anything more powerful than an angry glare would probably shoot it out of the sky.

[Gallia-]

So i'm looking for some advice on the viability of a concept for an attack craft both from a military and engineering point of view. It would be a turboprop powered craft (to make it cheaper) who's general design would be based roughly on a slightly upscale Westland Wyvern. The major difference would be it has a remotely controlled ball turret armed with either twin automatic grenade launchers (maybe something similar to the H&K GMG) or twin 0.50 cal mgs. This would be at the cost of a reduced payload of rockets and bombs.

Do you intend to use this thing in high intensity conflicts post-1964 or thereabouts?

Wyvern wasn't even terribly useful in the Korean War.

[Crookfur]

So i'm looking for some advice on the viability of a concept for an attack craft both from a military and engineering point of view. It would be a turboprop powered craft (to make it cheaper) who's general design would be based roughly on a slightly upscale Westland Wyvern. The major difference would be it has a remotely controlled ball turret armed with either twin automatic grenade launchers (maybe something similar to the H&K GMG) or twin 0.50 cal mgs. This would be at the cost of a reduced payload of rockets and bombs.

Meh if you are going to fap to twin engine coin/light attack aircraft at least do it with something sexy like the Pucara or OV-10 bronco, heck the bronco has had a nifty little 20mm cannon turret and you can get some nice pictures of it with the 20mm cannon and all of the hellfires fitted.

Otherwise there is nothing impssible about sticking a small turret on the bottom of say a super tucano, its just that its a fair bit of weight and drag for bugger all pay off. .50s or 40mm AGLs realy don't bring enough to the table for the role of such aircraft, a 20mm or light 30mm (M230) would really be the acceptable minimum to be useful and they are too big and heavy unless you go to bronco size. You are uch better just keeping the IR/EO/laser turret that you would need to aim the gun(s) (and is already mounted on the newer super tuncano and its lookalikes) and use it for spot for PGMs.

[North Arkana]

The Wehrmacht was so disorganised the Nuremberg Tribunal didn't think it was worth charging such a fractured entity as a single defendant.

Where can I read more about that?

The question was never about the Wehrmacht as a whole but about the OKW, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, meaning the high command of all armed forces, including Heer, Navy, and Air Force. Had it not been for the specific threshold of what constitutes an organization (to which I'll get momentarily), the Wehrmacht High Command would have been declared a criminal organization, which meant that its members would have been easier to prosecute and sentence. It is however important to emphasize that membership in a criminal organization as declared by the IMT was a legal tool in order to help establish individual liability and guilt, not a reason to sentence someone to legal punishment based on that sole fact. It also came into play during denazification where membership could mean loss of pension or, until the late 40s/early 50s loss of the right to vote, at least in Austria.
So, let's talk about criminal organizations according to the IMT: The idea of such a thing was relatively novel though the people who wrote the IMT charter were inspired by the legal tools developed in the US that would be later found in the RICO act, meaning that the idea of conspiracy was tantamount in the definition. In its judgement the IMT wrote concerning criminal organizations:
The discretion [to declare a group of people a criminal organization] is a judicial one and does not permit arbitrary action, but should be exercised in accordance with well-settled legal principles, one of the most important of which is that criminal guilt is personal and group punishment should be avoided [emphasis original]. If satisfied of the criminal guilt of any organization or group, this Tribunal should not hesitate to declare it to be criminal because the theory of "group criminality" is new, or because it might be applied unjustly by some subsequent tribunals. On the other hand, the Tribunal should make such declarations of criminality so far as possible in a manner to ensure that innocents peoples will not be punished.
The IMT analogized a criminal group to a conspiracy, and wrote that for a criminal organization to exist, "there must be a group bound together and organized for a common purpose. The group must be formed or used in connection with the commission of crimes denounced by this charter.
It also specified that the definition of such a group "should exclude persons who had no knowledge of the criminal purpose or acts of the organization and those who were drafted by the State for membership, unless they were personally implicated in the commission of acts defined as criminal as members of the organization."
In short this means that for the IMT mere membership was not enough for criminal liability stemming from membership in a criminal group. It required either the commission of a criminal act by the individual member or membership with the knowledge that the organization was used in the commission of crimes.
Concerning the OKW, the Tribunal wrote:
The prosecution has also asked that the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces be declared a criminal organisation. The Tribunal believes that no declaration of criminality should be made with respect to the General Staff and High Command. The number of persons charged, while larger than that of the Reich Cabinet, is still so small that individual trials of these officers would accomplish the purpose here sought better than a declaration such as is requested. [emphasis mine] But a more compelling reason is that in the opinion of the Tribunal the General Staff and High Command is neither an " organisation " nor a " group " within the meaning of those terms as used in Article 9 of the Charter.
(...)
According to the evidence, their planning at staff level, the constant conferences between staff officers and field commanders, their operational technique in the field and at headquarters was much the same as that of the armies, navies and air forces of all other countries. The over-all effort of OKW at co-ordination and direction could be matched by a similar, though not identical form of organisation in other military forces, such as the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff.
To derive from this pattern of their activities the existence of an association or group does not, in the opinion of the Tribunal, logically follow. On such a theory the top commanders of every other nation are just such an association rather than what they actually are, an aggregation of military men, a number of individuals who happen at a given period of time to hold the high-ranking military positions.
Much of the evidence and the argument has centred around the question of whether membership in these organisations was or was not voluntary; in this case, it seems to the Tribunal to be quite beside the point. For this alleged criminal organisation has one characteristic, a controlling one, which sharply distinguishes it from the other five indicted. When an individual became a member of the SS for instance, he did so, voluntarily or otherwise, but certainly with the knowledge that he was joining something. In the case of the General Staff and High Command, however, he could not know he was joining a group or organisation, for such organisation did not exist except in the charge of the Indictment. He knew only that he had achieved a certain high rank in one of the three services, and could not be conscious of the fact that he was becoming a member of anything so tangible as a " group," as that word is commonly used. [emphasis again mine] His relations with his brother officers in his own branch of the service and his association with those of the other two branches were, in general, like those of other services all over the world.
The Tribunal therefore does not declare the General Staff and High Command to be a criminal organisation.
The take-away here is that the IMT refused to declare the OKW as a criminal organization because it did not meet the merits of being an organization with the statue of the Tribunal, not because it wasn't criminal. In fact, not only the IMT prosecute and sentence several high ranking members of the military – Karl Dönitz, Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Keitel and Erich Raeder – it also had not one, not two but three subsequent trials against the military in the form of the Milch Case, the High Command Case, and the Hostage Case as they are known.
The criminal policy and participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity of all branches of the German military was therefore well established by the IMT and the NMT.
But with the Heer as well as the organization declared criminal, both IMT and NMT followed a policy that it was their mandated to prosecute only the highest ranking members and those really resposnible at the top. Individual members of the Waffen-SS or the Wehrmacht of a lower rank should be prosecuted either by lower ranking Allied courts (which happened in connection to the murder of Allied Airmen e.g.) or by German and other national courts (as happened in the case of 129 Wehrmacht officers in Yugoslavia e.g.).
With regards to the Heer in toto, the same argument applied as to the General Staff: It simply didn't constitute an organization as defined by the statute of the IMT, meaning unlike the Waffen-SS, which grew out of the party hierarchy, joining the Heer – as it was an army of a state, which is a well-established fact – didn't happen with the specific knowledge that one joined an organization in the sense of the SS or a party formation. Rather, it was assumed, that people joined in the good faith to be doing something normal and out of the ordinary. The fact that the Heer as such, from its leadership down to its lowest rank was heavily involved in war crimes and other criminal acts, was something that had to be dealt with on the individual level because the threshold of "group criminality" in the sense of the statute of the IMT was not met.
This all might seem legalistic, and it really was but for many of the people involved in the IMT, a measured application of its mandate was tantamount because in a lot of way, they were charting new legal territory. Group criminality, crimes against the peace, crimes against humanity were new legal tools and those behind the Tribunal saw the need for a careful and measured application. Such was the case with the OKW and the Heer. This careful application however, says nothing about the criminal acts of these organizations. The argument, often employed by clean Wehrmacht fanatics and apologists, that neither OKW nor Wehrmacht being declared criminal organizations because they did not take part in criminal acts misses the mark by a very far margin. These groups did not consititue organization under the IMT statute but that doesn't say anything about their criminal conduct, which the IMT and NMT established without a doubt in a myriad of cases.
Sources:
M. Cherif Bassiouni: Crimes Against Humanity in International Criminal Law.
Kim Priemel (ed.): Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography.
Kim Priemel: The Nuremberg Project. Reclaiming the West in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, forthcoming.

[Karjin]

Someone with more know-how than I do please review this section of my factbook to ensure accuracy and plausibility.

The Karjina Navy consists of 2 amphibious assault ships, 31 submarines, 12 cruisers, 46 destroyers, and 8 frigates. Karjin also operates 4 aircraft carriers, which typically contain 10 anti-ship aircraft, 10 multirole aircraft, 6 ground attack aircraft, 10 air-to-air fighters, and 3 search and rescue helicopters. Only 1/4th of this total is currently deployed. Peacetime assignments include the escort of sensitive cargo, training exercises, and border protection.

The Karjina Air Force operates 270 combat aircraft, with 120 air-to-air fighters, 78 ground attack aircraft, 20 strategic bombers, and 52 multirole aircraft, with a further 101 support aircraft, including 33 reconnaissance aircraft, 10 tanker aircraft, 16 electronic warfare aircraft, and 42 transport aircraft. The Karjina Air Force operates a fleet of 26 drones, whose operations range from reconnaissance to payload delivery. Karjin also has 132 helicopters in its inventory, with 35 attack helicopters, 20 reconnaissance helicopters, and 27 transport helicopters, and 50 utility helicopters. Only 3/8ths of this force is deployed today. Current assignments typically entail airspace protection, search and rescue, and training.

Things I know I'm missing:

TANK
Model/Type
Era (1990-Present, btw)

Thanks.

[Allanea]

So i'm looking for some advice on the viability of a concept for an attack craft both from a military and engineering point of view. It would be a turboprop powered craft (to make it cheaper) who's general design would be based roughly on a slightly upscale Westland Wyvern. The major difference would be it has a remotely controlled ball turret armed with either twin automatic grenade launchers (maybe something similar to the H&K GMG) or twin 0.50 cal mgs. This would be at the cost of a reduced payload of rockets and bombs.

I hope you don't mind my two cents.

In the history of attack aircraft, people have gone through a variety of arrangements - single-seat, double-seat, gunner facing backwards from aircraft, even 'turret in back of aircraft facing backwards with 23mm gun being fired over open-sights' (Russia is an interesting country).

The absolute best way to shoot a moving target, or to shoot a target while you're moving, unless you're using a guided bomb (more on that later) is to be facing directly towards the target while shooting your gun or dropping your bomb in the direction of flight. (Dive bombers have been more accurate in WW2 than regular bombers for this reason).

It's not clear if you're intending this aircraft to be used in an 'early cold war era' or in the modern day. In the early CW era you're limited by the above restrictions, and also by the fact that remote turrets were pretty awful as a technology at the time. Moreover, automatic grenade launchers and machineguns were already then really limited in usefulness in that context.

In the modern day era, the turret can be pretty good, but the uselessness of the firearms in question has gotten really limited. Today even terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, ISIS, and others often have armored vehicles that would laugh in the face of 12.7mm, and of course terrorists use trenches and bunkers, while firing back at you with automatic cannon and guided missiles.

For this reason you want to be staying far away from the battlefield in general.

(People often misunderstand 'close air support' as being 'close' because the plane is close to the soldiers it's 'supporting'. That's a misconception! Close air support is actually a situation where the enemy is close to the soldiers you're supporting, so you can't just schedule a bombing of their location and call it a day.

The requirements of a CAS plane today are:

1. Can remain 'on-station' for a long time (that's to say, carries enough fuel to stick in the fight for a while).
2. Possesses sufficient firepower to support efficiently (that's to say, carries lots of weapons and the sensors equipment to land fire exactly where the soldiers below want it).
3. Is capable of avoiding being damaged by enemy fire long enough to render effective support. In the past this was done by armoring the plane, these days it's often done by staying far away from the airfield and using complex electronics to avert enemy guided weapons.

All of this suggests in my view that the best modern CAS plane is - and statistics bear this outin terms of amounts of CAS missions flown and targets engaged - either a drone, or some terrifying thing like a C-130 or B-52 or even a B-1. But a broad variety of aircraft has been refitted for this with success.

1. Stay far away from the other guys whenever feasible.
2. Shoot ATGMS/long-range unguided rockets and drop guided weapons at targets designated by people directly in the fight until you run out of ammunition and fuel.
3. Repeat ad nauseam.

While flying low to the ground and firing autocannon at your fellow man while shouting 'FOR THE MOTHERLAND!' is still sometimes done (and there are the medal citations to prove it), it's an intensely dangerous practice. Countries have lost entire air forces doing that.

[Austrasien]

https://defensesystems.com/articles/201 ... rfare.aspx

An emerging area of EW innovation quite relevant to the new strategy includes industry initiatives to leverage existing SIGINT platforms and technologies to improve and streamline key elements of electronic warfare. CACI, for instance, is refining new EW systems designed to pinpoint areas of relevance by utilizing SIGINT technologies and infrastructure to inject a small, less detectable amount of power to disrupt enemy signals and communications.

The method is described by developers as a solution that relies upon a much lower level of power or signal emissions than that used by traditional jammers. An approach of this kind, intended to minimize the electronic signature of offensive and defensive EW systems, is based on the simple premise that a larger signal is naturally more detectable by enemy forces and therefore more vulnerable.

“We look at this from the signals intelligence background. We look at what type of signal it is and then precisely attack different portions of that signal, only precisely pinpointing a little bit of power to disrupt that signal,” said Jerry Parker, senior vice president, CACI EW solutions.

This is ~interesting~

It is generally assumed that jamming is an inherently detectable process. But that may not be true after all. Covert jamming, depending on what it really can and cannot do, could have some big implications. Stealth aircraft and ground forces in particular need to weigh the benefits of jamming against the signature of the jammer at present. But this may be an obsolete trade-off. Things like a stealth Growler and squad jammer become conceivable.

Years ago the USAF talked about what it called a "stand-in" jammer based on the X-47 or X-45 it seemed odd, because why would you send an easily detectable jammer into the teeth of enemy air defenses? But if something like this was already existing or under development in the black world... It may also be that some recent operations where air defense suppression was attributed to cyberweapons may also have involved occult covert jamming techniques that are now coming into the light.

[Gallia-]

Weren't stand-in jammers fairly common in the Vietnam War and earlier?

e: I could flick through Iron Hand and see I guess, but IIRC that just talks about cluster bombs and ARMs.

e2: Also inverse square law probably means this is practical only at close ranges to the target?

e3: And this means my idea of cybernetic/electronic attack systems for infantry units is becoming closer to a loosed spergasm. ;o

e4: What if this means TACJAM-A/Advanced QuickFix is just coming back in a bigger than life return to the ring for WWE (World War Europe) Smackdown 202X?

[Austrasien]

Why did they want to use a big stealth UCAV was the question, it was not expendable platform like the MALD-J.

How much range it has really depends on how precisely it is being done. Since they mention SIGINT equipment I presume that when a specific signal is identified they can selectively jam some portions of it, which causes the whole thing to fail. The million dollar question being how large or small are these portions?

[Gallia-]

TBF, this sounds like Advanced QuickFix by any other name. Perhaps the reason the TACJAM-A portion of AQF really died is because they couldn't get it to be LPI enough! But that would require digging through whatever archive has the field trials results from 199X and probably GBCS's uncensored ORD.

Or they could just be talking about mating Suter to a low sidelobe antenna idk. Or maybe that was the gist of TACJAM-A in the first place.

[Kassaran]

How realistic is the latest in BI's Milsim games: ARMA III? Been playing it a lot, and it's futuristic setting seems to lend credence to the idea that we're pretty much near the peak of what we're going to feasibly see in combat with our current technology. additionally, it actually supports the idea of an advanced Asian state to counter NATO when WP becomes defunct and it's made up primarily of ME and EA nations to boot. Additionally, American economy tanking, asian industry booming... I never realized all the points the game made in the sidelines that you guys occasionally touch on here... that's why I'm asking: how real is ARMA III? How faithful is it to real life military development and whatnot?

So, this kinda got caught up in Galla and Al's convo... or debate if you will. Srsly tho, I liked the background ARMA 3 gave us, looking into even more, the idea of British special forces going rogue, contractors being the primary military force used for NATO, and the fact that CSAT (the alliance of nations from the ME and Asia) is much more advanced, but still somewhat incompetent.

What are some of the takeaways from the game itself as well?

[Laritaia]

How realistic is the latest in BI's Milsim games: ARMA III? Been playing it a lot, and it's futuristic setting seems to lend credence to the idea that we're pretty much near the peak of what we're going to feasibly see in combat with our current technology. additionally, it actually supports the idea of an advanced Asian state to counter NATO when WP becomes defunct and it's made up primarily of ME and EA nations to boot. Additionally, American economy tanking, asian industry booming... I never realized all the points the game made in the sidelines that you guys occasionally touch on here... that's why I'm asking: how real is ARMA III? How faithful is it to real life military development and whatnot?

So, this kinda got caught up in Galla and Al's convo... or debate if you will. Srsly tho, I liked the background ARMA 3 gave us, looking into even more, the idea of British special forces going rogue, contractors being the primary military force used for NATO, and the fact that CSAT (the alliance of nations from the ME and Asia) is much more advanced, but still somewhat incompetent.

What are some of the takeaways from the game itself as well?

if you play Apex you find out that they never went rogue

[Austrasien]

It's fairly standard technothriller stuff AFAICT.

[Kassaran]

So, this kinda got caught up in Galla and Al's convo... or debate if you will. Srsly tho, I liked the background ARMA 3 gave us, looking into even more, the idea of British special forces going rogue, contractors being the primary military force used for NATO, and the fact that CSAT (the alliance of nations from the ME and Asia) is much more advanced, but still somewhat incompetent.

What are some of the takeaways from the game itself as well?

if you play Apex you find out that they never went rogue

!

Dude, seriously though, that's the stuff you put in spoilers. I'm doing a playthrough now, which is why. >:\

[Laritaia]

if you play Apex you find out that they never went rogue

!

Dude, seriously though, that's the stuff you put in spoilers. I'm doing a playthrough now, which is why. >:\

oh noes i ruined the most minute detail of a campaign that like three people including me have actually played, or care about.

[Gallia-]

It's fairly standard technothriller stuff AFAICT.

However it is basically Simpkingame.exe.

The entire NATO army is powered by Merkava.

[Kassaran]

!

Dude, seriously though, that's the stuff you put in spoilers. I'm doing a playthrough now, which is why. >:\

oh noes i ruined the most minute detail of a campaign that like three people including me have actually played, or care about.

Shush you! I was trying to care in spite of the rather dry characters and humor.

[Gallia-]

ArmA doesn't have a campaign, really.

[Kassaran]

ArmA doesn't have a campaign, really.

Retake rogue islands of Stratis and Altis via NATO invasion? That not enough for a campaign as-is?

[Gallia-]

Literally no one would miss it if BIS put more effort into fixing their games instead of making campaigns no one plays.

[Purpelia]

Literally no one would miss it if BIS put more effort into fixing their games instead of making campaigns no one plays.

Why would anyone play a game without a good singleplayer campaign? The only thing left is multiplayer and that's by definition a pointless waste of time and effort. Like if you want to interact with other human beings go outside or something.

[Laritaia]

Literally no one would miss it if BIS put more effort into fixing their games instead of making campaigns no one plays.

Why would anyone play a game without a good singleplayer campaign? The only thing left is multiplayer and that's by definition a pointless waste of time and effort. Like if you want to interact with other human beings go outside or something.

the Campaign isn't "good"

and the vast majority of ARMA's player base is not what you would call "normal"

[Crookfur]

Literally no one would miss it if BIS put more effort into fixing their games instead of making campaigns no one plays.

Why would anyone play a game without a good singleplayer campaign? The only thing left is multiplayer and that's by definition a pointless waste of time and effort. Like if you want to interact with other human beings go outside or something.

Saddly purp has not discovered the bottomless time sink that is "arseing around in the editor" and "all of the mods".

[Ardavia]

Literally no one would miss it if BIS put more effort into fixing their games instead of making campaigns no one plays.

Why would anyone play a game without a good singleplayer campaign? The only thing left is multiplayer and that's by definition a pointless waste of time and effort. Like if you want to interact with other human beings go outside or something.

"why would people pick up this semi-milsim game with a heavy multiplayer component and not just stick to playing a boring campaign with bad AI teammates"