NS Military Realism Consultancy Thread Mk X Purps Safe Space

[Nearly Finland]

I appreciate the manufacturing and development realism advice. So semi-modern aircraft don't pop up out of nowhere, they have to be gradually developed, bit by bit, starting from flimsy Wright flyers. This makes sense, and is reflected in the region rules as a "culture point cost tech tree". I'm trying to ask more about tactics in the field of battle, though, so maybe more general questions would help. So given 1920s-era aircraft, what types of aircraft would be best at the anti-shipping role? What would they do to go about finding and attacking enemy ships, what methods would be used? Is there any way that they could operate in concert with friendly ships, similar to Close Air Support planes coordinating with ground forces?

EDIT: And, of course, how effective is the AA of the battle fleet against them?

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

I appreciate the manufacturing and development realism advice. So semi-modern aircraft don't pop up out of nowhere, they have to be gradually developed, bit by bit, starting from flimsy Wright flyers. This makes sense, and is reflected in the region rules as a "culture point cost tech tree". I'm trying to ask more about tactics in the field of battle, though, so maybe more general questions would help. So given 1920s-era aircraft, what types of aircraft would be best at the anti-shipping role? What would they do to go about finding and attacking enemy ships, what methods would be used? Is there any way that they could operate in concert with friendly ships, similar to Close Air Support planes coordinating with ground forces?

EDIT: And, of course, how effective is the AA of the battle fleet against them?

In your situation it would be more like 1916 because nobody has had the idea yet that planes can do other things than flying over enemy fleets and inspect them. :3

[Puzikas]

Does the failed reconnaissance trip by HMS Engadine's planes at Jutland count? If yes that gets pushed back 2 years. :3

No because thats not really a "fight" since they werent armed

Unless like the officer fired his Webly lel

Well, the first wright-style aircraft flies in the 1910s, and there was no WW1, Germany is still a confederation.

ok
but like
there were teams trying to build aeroplanes in the 1900s that were just months behind the wright flyer flying
Like, France, Britain, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russian and Germany all had civilians fly soon after the Wright flyer did

did everyone in your timeline get hit in the head with a rock and forget that heavier-than-air flight was possible? Or did advancements in the in internal combustion engine not happen either, and are guys putting around with 4hp 2-strokes still? It took like three years from the Wright bothers to fly to someone strapping a V8 on the thing and attempting to be witnessed.

TBF as Allanea mentioned the problem isn't so much flying as it is carrying useful bomb quantities.

yeah
but advancements in the petrol engine were one of the biggest thing and unless this guy just straight up doesnt have companies like Armstrong-Whitworth, Ford/Cadillac Motors, M.A.N or Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft its highly imporable some madman wouldnt try to strap a V8 to a fly-y thing
and that madman would probably be either Scottish or American tbh

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Does the failed reconnaissance trip by HMS Engadine's planes at Jutland count? If yes that gets pushed back 2 years. :3

No because thats not really a "fight" since they werent armed

Unless like the officer fired his Webly lel

You know Rutland would have if he had brought it with him. :3 The Germans would probs be like: "Wtf is that man doing." in addition to "Why didn't we think of this idea first."

[Purpelia]

To be fair, if he does not have a WW1 his setting won't have a lot of the aviation experience that sprung up from that war. So if he wants to have aircraft be a non factor (relatively) he can simply say that they do exist but because that experience is lacking people still look at them as novelty scout machines. And thus even if somebody did strap a V8 to them the focus was more on delivering more mail or flying faster and further and nobody really thought to develop proper bombing tactics, squadron flying tactics etc. And that would basically kill the aircraft as a bomber until some proper fighting was done for people to figure these things out the hard way.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

I appreciate the manufacturing and development realism advice. So semi-modern aircraft don't pop up out of nowhere, they have to be gradually developed, bit by bit, starting from flimsy Wright flyers. This makes sense, and is reflected in the region rules as a "culture point cost tech tree". I'm trying to ask more about tactics in the field of battle, though, so maybe more general questions would help. So given 1920s-era aircraft, what types of aircraft would be best at the anti-shipping role? What would they do to go about finding and attacking enemy ships, what methods would be used? Is there any way that they could operate in concert with friendly ships, similar to Close Air Support planes coordinating with ground forces?

EDIT: And, of course, how effective is the AA of the battle fleet against them?

In your situation it would be more like 1916 because nobody has had the idea yet that planes can do other things than flying over enemy fleets and inspect them. :3

Tbh... it was 1914...

[Gallia-]

I appreciate the manufacturing and development realism advice. So semi-modern aircraft don't pop up out of nowhere, they have to be gradually developed, bit by bit, starting from flimsy Wright flyers. This makes sense, and is reflected in the region rules as a "culture point cost tech tree". I'm trying to ask more about tactics in the field of battle, though, so maybe more general questions would help. So given 1920s-era aircraft, what types of aircraft would be best at the anti-shipping role? What would they do to go about finding and attacking enemy ships, what methods would be used? Is there any way that they could operate in concert with friendly ships, similar to Close Air Support planes coordinating with ground forces?

Yes but the idea was still primitive until the late '30s (at which point it only needed a war to be put into practice). The U.S. Navy was experimenting with airborne aircraft carriers USS Macon and USS Akron, for example, and the aircraft carrier (Langley, Lexington, and Saratoga at the time) was primarily limited to the screening role of battle fleets alongside light and heavy cruisers. The utility of aerial reconnaissance was the first identified use for aircraft, primarily because it was a direct descendant of aerial reconnaissance performed by balloon barges and such as far back as Napoleon's time. It is also its most important use today, but attacking things is also obviously useful.

There are probably books you can find on the subject of Interwar naval aviation development though. I don't know a lot about it. It probably goes something like this:

1) Launch planes in suspected direction of boats based on intuition.
2) Planes radio back that they've found the enemy, or not, and possibly bomb them.
3) Repeat until enemy found.
4) Carrier radios back to battle fleet the direction of the enemy.
5) Battle fleet shows up and kills the enemy in a surface engagement.

Or something akin to that.

Just read some books about it or something.

EDIT: And, of course, how effective is the AA of the battle fleet against them?

If radar guided and VT fused: extremely.
If not: poorly.

American battleships were the best anti-aircraft escorts of the WW2.

To be fair, if he does not have a WW1 his setting won't have a lot of the aviation experience that sprung up from that war. So if he wants to have aircraft be a non factor (relatively) he can simply say that they do exist but because that experience is lacking people still look at them as novelty scout machines. And thus even if somebody did strap a V8 to them the focus was more on delivering more mail or flying faster and further and nobody really thought to develop proper bombing tactics, squadron flying tactics etc. And that would basically kill the aircraft as a bomber until some proper fighting was done for people to figure these things out the hard way.

WW1 was not the beginning of aircraft in military use. Their utility was already widely understood in military circles, what was lacking was the technology of the time. If anything, it just means that said understanding will be more compartmentalized, since fewer people will have access to the relevant information.

Douhet had far more influence than any military "lessons" of WW1, which was principally "planes are necessary for reconnaissance and for preventing the enemy from reconnoitering", and Douhet's theories predate WW1 anyway, since he was already talking about huge bombers and "command of the air" before Italy even entered the war. "Lessons" from wars are rarely necessary to be fought for to be understood, or even discovered. What is necessary is an approximate understanding of the technological-economic conditions of the time period, which can be acquired by good information.

Which is to say that wars are primarily where pre-war theory is tested, rather than developed, and WW1 was hardly fertile ground for theory testing. All relevant aviation theory was developed prior to and after WW1, with little emphasis on the actual war itself, because no one had tested the concepts of strategic bombing or whatever. They tried to test them and they failed, which I guess is an accomplishment? Except not really. It contributed no actual knowledge except the observation of "planes are not yet ready" and the theory-crafting continued unabated as aviation progressed through the '10s and '20s. Planes never got swole enough to do anything besides shoot other planes and take pictures until after WW1. Planes weren't swole enough to do much of anything besides that and maybe some harassment bombings until the 1930s.

What actually was a serious test for airpower was WW2, and it broadly failed to live up to its pre-war claims, but it showed that you could bombard enemy industry and win a war that way. So there will still be Popular Mechanics magazines decrying the gas warfare of the future with radio controlled bombers and metal zeppelins lighting unquenchable firestorms across all cities. Much in the manner that people say atomic war is the end of the world, it wasn't and wouldn't be. Yet we still have nuclear weapons and people still built ICBMs. Strange, that.

tl;dr No.

[Gallia-]

Does the failed reconnaissance trip by HMS Engadine's planes at Jutland count? If yes that gets pushed back 2 years. :3

No because thats not really a "fight" since they werent armed

Unless like the officer fired his Webly lel

But dig this:

In 1956 VP-7 bombed a shitton of orcas that were eating all the food fish off the coast of Iceland to save the fishing industry from collapse. Depth bombs, 5" HVAR rockets, 12.7mm machine guns, and .45 caliber pistol ammunition was all listed as expenditures during the anti-killer whale campaign.

Which means some motherfucker leaned out the side of a P-2 Neptune and shot a fucking whale with a .45.

I didn't know the Navy wore such massive spurs.

[Schwere Panzer Abteilung 502]

Question about 2nd Fallujah. According to what I've been reading, the city was besieged for several weeks and heavily bombarded from artillery and the air, at which point Coalition forces went in.

From what I've heard, this kind of bombardment on a city makes things worse, not better. The stereotypical example is Stalingrad; maybe I'm confusing those who defended Fallujah as being of the same determination and number as those who defended Stalingrad, but if the pre-attack bombardment horribly backfired for the Nazis in the end, why did it succeed for the Coalition in 2004?

[Puzikas]

Because insurgents in rags with limited logistics are not battle hardened Soviet army and marines with the entire might of the Soviet Union backing them.

No because thats not really a "fight" since they werent armed

Unless like the officer fired his Webly lel

But dig this:

In 1956 VP-7 bombed a shitton of orcas that were eating all the food fish off the coast of Iceland to save the fishing industry from collapse. Depth bombs, 5" HVAR rockets, 12.7mm machine guns, and .45 caliber pistol ammunition was all listed as expenditures during the anti-killer whale campaign.

Which means some motherfucker leaned out the side of a P-2 Neptune and shot a fucking whale with a .45.

I didn't know the Navy wore such massive spurs.

Where can I read of this

[Gallia-]

I have to find it.

It was on some non-DNS website whose only URL is an IP address and written by a kooky conversationist "save the whales" type.

[Allanea]

Does Allanea consider that these men are a multiple rocket launcher?

(Image)

Yeah this is about as much an aircraft carrier as men jumping off cliffs with wings on their arms are an airplane. Very good disingenuous statement though. You are good at hyperbole and literal statements designed to deceive.

Langley gave up the project after two crashes on take-off on October 7 and December 8, 1903.

Very successful aircraft carrier good job.

But besides that:

This required a catapult for launching. The craft had no landing gear, the plan being to descend into the water after demonstrating flight which if successful would entail a partial, if not total, rebuilding of the machine.

Next you'll be telling us that a rocket sled is a fighter jet or something because they both have ejection seats? The analogy is apt since the only thing Langley's dumb catapult had in common with an aircraft carrier was that they both have catapults. I guess a better comparison is this, though:



Rare image of the US Navy's secret amphibious aircraft carrier, designed to use pre-existing runways.

You're missing my point and it is this:

It's really hard to conceive of a circumstance where humanity has had aircraft, but has not, somehow, conceived flying them off ships, because the idea of launching them off ships is literally older than the planes themselves.

[Nearly Finland]

Alright. Well, I've got all the answers I think I want, and I can't think of any more questions, so thanks for the time, people who know things.

[Gallia-]

Does Allanea consider that these men are a multiple rocket launcher?



Yeah this is about as much an aircraft carrier as men jumping off cliffs with wings on their arms are an airplane. Very good disingenuous statement though. You are good at hyperbole and literal statements designed to deceive.



Very successful aircraft carrier good job.

But besides that:



Next you'll be telling us that a rocket sled is a fighter jet or something because they both have ejection seats? The analogy is apt since the only thing Langley's dumb catapult had in common with an aircraft carrier was that they both have catapults. I guess a better comparison is this, though:

(Image)

Rare image of the US Navy's secret amphibious aircraft carrier, designed to use pre-existing runways.

You're missing my point and it is this:

It's really hard to conceive of a circumstance where humanity has had aircraft, but has not, somehow, conceived flying them off ships, because the idea of launching them off ships is literally older than the planes themselves.

Why didn't you say so?

Yeah that's what I've been saying, too.

I would just consider Langley's plane catapult to be a really tenuous connection, even though he had an aircraft carrier named after him, I suspect that was more of a hindsight thing than Langley having any designs on possible naval combat applications of his catapult, anymore than the Wright Brothers had for their catapult.

The most obvious predecessor to aircraft carriers is something like balloon barges of the US Civil War. Not quite as tenuous since it accomplishes much of the perceived utility of early carriers: aerial reconnaissance.

[Allanea]

He had a defense contract for the experimental barge.

But yes. The idea of 'let's put aircraft on boats' is extremely old.

[Gallia-]

I thought he just had a grant for the airplane tbf.

[Allanea]

I thought he just had a grant for the airplane tbf.

As I understand it he was given 50,000 1903 dollars to keep developing the plane/barge combination (yes, not actually a contract to buy more barges and planes), but they stopped giving him money when the planes fell apart, and then the Wright brothers had their first flight a month or two later.

[Gallia-]

OIC.

[North Arkana]

modern aircraft have serious problems carrying sufficent bombs to threaten other aircraft as well

Except that one time the F-15 bombed a helicopter but that was metal

My dad knew that guy, served with him in the Air Force. They were Aggressors together.

Dan "Chewie" Bakke (Chewbacca). Apparently the guy was pretty insane even for a fighter pilot.

[Gallia-]

Is it fine to assume that fixed installations, like airbases, should have centrally controlled VSR/FCR for their air defense systems, like Skyshield? Or is local FCR for each gun a better option? But is there any reason why I shouldn't have a central VSR for an SPAA battery? Should each SPAA have a VSR and FCR, or just a FCR? I ask because I'm worried about the cost of VSRs over FCRs.

OTOH central VSR requires either wires or radio links to work I guess, which is kind of a bummer. Also can I press the FCR into VSR duty like Shilka or is it better to have a separate for both like Crotale NG?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, does an SRADS SPAA need to know about threats greater than 20-ish km, and should this be done on the vehicle itself or at a dedicated, towed or mobile, early warning radar? This applies to C-RAM as well, since I'd consider SRADS and C-RAM/C-UAS to be the same mission of low altitude air defense. Should a C-RAM/C-UAS vehicle have a counter-mortar radar on it, or should a counter-mortar radar cue it on things? I suspect the former actually is true for over SRADS against tactical aircraft, which might differentiate the two somewhat since C-RAM/C-UAS are attacking low RCS objects, but OTOH C-RAM systems are generally just AAA or naval CIWS.

[Laritaia]

Is it fine to assume that fixed installations, like airbases, should have centrally controlled VSR/FCR for their air defense systems, like Skyshield? Or is local FCR for each gun a better option? But is there any reason why I shouldn't have a central VSR for an SPAA battery? Should each SPAA have a VSR and FCR, or just a FCR? I ask because I'm worried about the cost of VSRs over FCRs.

OTOH central VSR requires either wires or radio links to work I guess, which is kind of a bummer. Also can I press the FCR into VSR duty like Shilka or is it better to have a separate for both like Crotale NG?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, does an SRADS SPAA need to know about threats greater than 20-ish km, and should this be done on the vehicle itself or at a dedicated, towed or mobile, early warning radar?

a "fixed" Gun battery probably doesn't need a dedicated VSR, instead you could just tie the controllers into the local air defence net to provide them the necessary threat cues.

[Gallia-]

Is it fine to assume that fixed installations, like airbases, should have centrally controlled VSR/FCR for their air defense systems, like Skyshield? Or is local FCR for each gun a better option? But is there any reason why I shouldn't have a central VSR for an SPAA battery? Should each SPAA have a VSR and FCR, or just a FCR? I ask because I'm worried about the cost of VSRs over FCRs.

OTOH central VSR requires either wires or radio links to work I guess, which is kind of a bummer. Also can I press the FCR into VSR duty like Shilka or is it better to have a separate for both like Crotale NG?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, does an SRADS SPAA need to know about threats greater than 20-ish km, and should this be done on the vehicle itself or at a dedicated, towed or mobile, early warning radar?

a "fixed" Gun battery probably doesn't need a dedicated VSR, instead you could just tie the controllers into the local air defence net to provide them the necessary threat cues.

Well "fixed" meaning it defends a non-moving object, not that it's immobile. I mean towed guns and stuff like it, since I'm considering giving Galla a towed 50mm Supershot DIVADS. :DDD

But the "local air defense net" would also be provided by the same battery that provides the guns. A battery or platoon operations vehicle would have something like a AN/MPQ-64, or more likely, a P-STAR sitting on top that it uses to tell the 3-8 guns under its command what to kill.

It is perhaps unsurprisingly heavily based on the LADS that DIVADS was supposed to grow into with the adorable towed DIVAD and a radar HMMWV for the light infantry.

The only problem is that Phalanx and DIVADS step on each other's toes in the C-RAM department. Maybe Phalanx provides mobile C-RAM for infantry divisions and towed DIVADS does the heavy lifting for the parachute infantry.

And yes the first application of 50mm Supershot in Galla is in AAA, I'm glad you asked, since Galla has a long history of adapting air defense guns to the anti-tank role.

[Austrasien]

Question about 2nd Fallujah. According to what I've been reading, the city was besieged for several weeks and heavily bombarded from artillery and the air, at which point Coalition forces went in.

From what I've heard, this kind of bombardment on a city makes things worse, not better. The stereotypical example is Stalingrad; maybe I'm confusing those who defended Fallujah as being of the same determination and number as those who defended Stalingrad, but if the pre-attack bombardment horribly backfired for the Nazis in the end, why did it succeed for the Coalition in 2004?

It wasn't bombarded indiscriminately. The US never employed those methods in Iraq. They methodically picked off targets as they were ID'ed by ISR with relatively precise air and artillery strikes.

The bulk of the damage to the city occurred during the offensive.

[Austrasien]

Is it fine to assume that fixed installations, like airbases, should have centrally controlled VSR/FCR for their air defense systems, like Skyshield? Or is local FCR for each gun a better option? But is there any reason why I shouldn't have a central VSR for an SPAA battery? Should each SPAA have a VSR and FCR, or just a FCR? I ask because I'm worried about the cost of VSRs over FCRs.

OTOH central VSR requires either wires or radio links to work I guess, which is kind of a bummer. Also can I press the FCR into VSR duty like Shilka or is it better to have a separate for both like Crotale NG?

I guess what I'm trying to say is, does an SRADS SPAA need to know about threats greater than 20-ish km, and should this be done on the vehicle itself or at a dedicated, towed or mobile, early warning radar? This applies to C-RAM as well, since I'd consider SRADS and C-RAM/C-UAS to be the same mission of low altitude air defense. Should a C-RAM/C-UAS vehicle have a counter-mortar radar on it, or should a counter-mortar radar cue it on things? I suspect the former actually is true for over SRADS against tactical aircraft, which might differentiate the two somewhat since C-RAM/C-UAS are attacking low RCS objects, but OTOH C-RAM systems are generally just AAA or naval CIWS.

Separating the radar is not a big deal if the system is stationary. Having one fire control radar for each firing battery of ~3 guns, and one centralized surveillance radar - or possibly an air surveillance radar (ideally on a mast) and separate counter-artillery radar - is fine for such applications. Fully integrated systems like Pantsyr make the most sense when the system is mobile and you want to avoid dealing with having to calculate all the offsets before firing.

[Laritaia]

going by the MANTIS system you would have six guns and two Fire control modules per battery, into which you could plug the feed from something like the SAAB Giraffe AMB radar for general air search.