NS Military Realism Consultancy Thread Mk X Purps Safe Space

[Hrstrovokia]

I there any sense in following a rising scale of artillery strength, say providing Brigades with 122-130mm and then allocating 152-155mm at Division?

Or is this just silly?

[Spirit of Hope]

I there any sense in following a rising scale of artillery strength, say providing Brigades with 122-130mm and then allocating 152-155mm at Division?

Or is this just silly?

What reason would make you want to have smaller artillery for a unit? 133-130mm guns are going to have just about the same crew and logistical requirements of a 155mm gun.

[Laritaia]

Does anyone know where the Pereh fits in the IDF structure?

it doesn't anymore, they've all been retired

[-Celibrae-]

Does anyone know where the Pereh fits in the IDF structure?

it doesn't anymore, they've all been retired

The more you know.

[The Soodean Imperium]

I there any sense in following a rising scale of artillery strength, say providing Brigades with 122-130mm and then allocating 152-155mm at Division?

Or is this just silly?

This is what the Soviet Army did, at least by the 1980s. 2S1 in the Artillery Battalion of the Brigade, 2S3 in the Artillery Regiment of the Division.

~5inch calibers are a difficult intermediate though, as they have the loading times of ~6inch pieces but without the range and shell size.

Kyiv did a few lengthy posts on this a while back, in an earlier iteration of the thread. At this point there's not much to lose by going straight to ~6inch artillery at the Brigade level.

[Kassaran]

I think I remember someone saying somewhere that you usually had medium artillery pieces for improved accuracy... or maybe it was bigger for better effect? Whatever it was, it came down to you should only really have two I think IIRC.

One mortar, for intermediate/immediate/mobile fire support on the infantry side, and then a 150mm+ artillery piece for everything else that absolutely needs to be deader. Everything you have should be accurate enough to hit what you want, so the reason for having a 'more accurate' smaller piece becomes moot.

[Laywenrania]

And here I am, fielding only 130 mm guns xD
*probably should go to 150 mm or something like that*

[Austrasien]

I there any sense in following a rising scale of artillery strength, say providing Brigades with 122-130mm and then allocating 152-155mm at Division?

Or is this just silly?

It is not silly but a bit redundant.

One of the traditional attractions of smaller calibers is they had lighter ammunition and less recoil which facilitated a lighter and more mobile design. With modern self propelled guns with automated or semi-automated ammunition handling systems this is much less important, below 6 inches the caliber of the gun is only weakly related to the weight of the carrier. The centralized artillery command and control system developed by the Commonwealth and American armies in WWII which has since become the standard outside of Russia also did away with the need for separate range "bands" as artillery at all levels of organization were now being directed through a single command net which allowed every gun in range to respond to any call for fire. And modern combat experience has shown range is extremely important for artillery, the majority of US fire support missions during the 2003 invasion of Iraq were fired at the highest charge increment, a natural outgrowth of the dispersed nature of the modern battlefield. Finally improvements in mortars have largely eliminated the need for very short range infantry guns.

All this points towards something like a self propelled long barrel 6 inch gun-howitzer with modular propellant charges and automatic or semi-automatic ammunition handling appears to be the ideal weapon for the bulk of the artillery. Though there is still a definite need for much lighter, probably towed, gun or howitzer for supporting airmobile light infantry (though the US Army uses the 155mm M777 for this) and possibly a need for a bigger gun/howitzer to engage targets with good overhead cover such as that provided by dense urban terrain or well constructed field fortifications.

There doesn't seem to be any inherent reason why an army could not adopt 122mm or 130mm or 140mm as their workhorse caliber in place of 150/152/155mm. Though historically these calibers are much less popular than 6 inch weapons, which have been recognized since WWI at least as a good compromise between size/weight, firepower and range.

[Gallia-]

Does anyone know where the Pereh fits in the IDF structure?

Battalions?

Allanea would probably know of where Spike-NLOS lives.

I there any sense in following a rising scale of artillery strength, say providing Brigades with 122-130mm and then allocating 152-155mm at Division?

Or is this just silly?

It is not silly but a bit redundant.

One of the traditional attractions of smaller calibers is they had lighter ammunition and less recoil which facilitated a lighter and more mobile design. With modern self propelled guns with automated or semi-automated ammunition handling systems this is much less important, below 6 inches the caliber of the gun is only weakly related to the weight of the carrier. The centralized artillery command and control system developed by the Commonwealth and American armies in WWII which has since become the standard outside of Russia also did away with the need for separate range "bands" as artillery at all levels of organization were now being directed through a single command net which allowed every gun in range to respond to any call for fire. And modern combat experience has shown range is extremely important for artillery, the majority of US fire support missions during the 2003 invasion of Iraq were fired at the highest charge increment, a natural outgrowth of the dispersed nature of the modern battlefield. Finally improvements in mortars have largely eliminated the need for very short range infantry guns.

All this points towards something like a self propelled long barrel 6 inch gun-howitzer with modular propellant charges and automatic or semi-automatic ammunition handling appears to be the ideal weapon for the bulk of the artillery. Though there is still a definite need for much lighter, probably towed, gun or howitzer for supporting airmobile light infantry (though the US Army uses the 155mm M777 for this) and possibly a need for a bigger gun/howitzer to engage targets with good overhead cover such as that provided by dense urban terrain or well constructed field fortifications.

There doesn't seem to be any inherent reason why an army could not adopt 122mm or 130mm or 140mm as their workhorse caliber in place of 150/152/155mm. Though historically these calibers are much less popular than 6 inch weapons, which have been recognized since WWI at least as a good compromise between size/weight, firepower and range.

Do you have any books or spergdfs discussing the different artillery systems of WW2? Like a comparison/contrast of Anglo-American vs. Soviet vs. Wehrmacht? Or even more generally, the difference between "range bands" of Big Guns vice "Universal Gun" doctrine? Was the reason the USSR just had battalions ask for guns from their battalions or regiments from their regiments because they didn't have enough radios to make it work any higher, or is it something more subtle?

Also is there any serious disadvantages to being to concentrate huge quantities of firepower on a single target like USA did? Besides needing loads of radios and maps that is. Is artillery use something that's intrinsically tied to how you use maneuver units? Because the USSR relied a fair bit on forward detachments and ~mission command~ does that mean it couldn't have the same centralization of Big Guns like USA/UK did?

I want to flesh out how Galla's army works but I don't really know how other armies work besides USA and even then only vaguely. I like the idea of combining USSR's hyper industrial nomogram standardization fetish and mechanized cavalry sweeping maneuvers with America's big guns screaming for fire support, but I'm not sure to what extent those are compatible I guess.

I think I remember someone saying somewhere that you usually had medium artillery pieces for improved accuracy... or maybe it was bigger for better effect? Whatever it was, it came down to you should only really have two I think IIRC.

One mortar, for intermediate/immediate/mobile fire support on the infantry side, and then a 150mm+ artillery piece for everything else that absolutely needs to be deader. Everything you have should be accurate enough to hit what you want, so the reason for having a 'more accurate' smaller piece becomes moot.

When you get down to it, you only need a super-charged ~4" gun for paratroopers (think Light Experimental Ordnance) and a big 155mm (think Pzh 2000 or XM2001) for mechanized troops.

But you'd want to wring as much firepower out of those two as possible.

The US Army uses M777 for paratroopers, but only because it still hasn't discovered a super-charged 105mm like LEO that can lifted by helicopters. G7 would need to lose about 1,500-2,000 kg of fat ass before a UH-60 could lift him up and his ammo and his crew and put him on a mountaintop. And Stryker despises 105mm tank gun enough let alone the G7.

[United Muscovite Nations]

Can an electromagnetic catapult mechanism be used on a ski-jump ramp? I want to know if there is a way to keep the profile of a ski-jump carrier without the weight limitations imposed by such a low-tech mechanism.

[Gallia-]

Can an electromagnetic catapult mechanism be used on a ski-jump ramp? I want to know if there is a way to keep the profile of a ski-jump carrier without the weight limitations imposed by such a low-tech mechanism.

The only catapults cohabitating with ski jumps I'm aware of are Ulyanovsk and possibly a futuristic QE2. There might be some obscure US Navy light carriers too. The catapult would have been separate from the jump and been used to launch different airplanes that couldn't use the jump ramp in both cases.

With modern engines there aren't really any mass restrictions on takeoff compared to a catapult carrier, after a certain length. An 800 ft takeoff run should be able to accommodate an F/A-18 just fine. It could even accommodate an F-15 at near MTOW with a 9-degree jump ramp. A suitably navalized F-15 with strengthened gear and a 12-degree jump ramp should see no trouble flying off a STOBAR carrier the size of a Kitty Hawk or thereabouts. It's not really possible to hybridize the two, though. EMALS is also suitably flexible that it essentially obsoletes the ski jump.

I suppose if you were going hard into a ski jump, you'd put an EMALS on the arresting land and use that to catapult slow planes like AEW, ASW, and COD. Fighter jets wouldn't care either way.

[Austrasien]

http://nigelef.tripod.com/

Really good resource on British methods plus has a delightfully quaint web design.

Red God of War: Soviet Artillery and Rocket Forces is the best book I have seen on Soviet artillery in WWII. But it should probably be read with Steel Wind: Colonel Georg Bruchmuller and the Birth of Modern Artillery because Soviet methods are heavily influenced by German WW1 developments and the latter provides better explanations of why the methods/organization the Soviet Army used came into existence in the first place well the former is mostly about how Soviet artillery was used in practice. Jane's Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army also had a good section on artillery as did the good but poorly named Soviet Airland Battle Tactics which also includes some super cool reproductions of actual nomograms. I read an OK PDF about the evolution of US artillery methods in WWII but I can't remember its name. On DTIC though. Most US books I have found have been frustratingly long on historical/doctrinal issues and short on spergy specifics.

[United Muscovite Nations]

Can an electromagnetic catapult mechanism be used on a ski-jump ramp? I want to know if there is a way to keep the profile of a ski-jump carrier without the weight limitations imposed by such a low-tech mechanism.

The only catapults cohabitating with ski jumps I'm aware of are Ulyanovsk and possibly a futuristic QE2. There might be some obscure US Navy light carriers too. The catapult would have been separate from the jump and been used to launch different airplanes that couldn't use the jump ramp in both cases.

With modern engines there aren't really any mass restrictions on takeoff compared to a catapult carrier, after a certain length. An 800 ft takeoff run should be able to accommodate an F/A-18 just fine. It could even accommodate an F-15 at near MTOW with a 9-degree jump ramp. A suitably navalized F-15 with strengthened gear and a 12-degree jump ramp should see no trouble flying off a STOBAR carrier the size of a Kitty Hawk or thereabouts. It's not really possible to hybridize the two, though. EMALS is also suitably flexible that it essentially obsoletes the ski jump.

I suppose if you were going hard into a ski jump, you'd put an EMALS on the arresting land and use that to catapult slow planes like AEW, ASW, and COD. Fighter jets wouldn't care either way.

Thank you for the answer. I already planned on having a separate catapult for my heavy carriers to operate awacs in the open ocean. I was just concerned that a ski-jump would be inadequate after reading that China and India were having trouble launching fighters from their carriers.

[Gallia-]

http://nigelef.tripod.com/

Really good resource on British methods plus has a delightfully quaint web design.

Red God of War: Soviet Artillery and Rocket Forces is the best book I have seen on Soviet artillery in WWII. But it should probably be read with Steel Wind: Colonel Georg Bruchmuller and the Birth of Modern Artillery because Soviet methods are heavily influenced by German WW1 developments and the latter provides better explanations of why the methods/organization the Soviet Army used came into existence in the first place well the former is mostly about how Soviet artillery was used in practice. Jane's Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army also had a good section on artillery as did the good but poorly named Soviet Airland Battle Tactics which also includes some super cool reproductions of actual nomograms. I read an OK PDF about the evolution of US artillery methods in WWII but I can't remember its name. On DTIC though. Most US books I have found have been frustratingly long on historical/doctrinal issues and short on spergy specifics.

I wish to absorb all the branch parochialism too so those US books seem like they would be good starting points for majestic failures of cooperation, but that's a bit of a digression.

I will look for these. Aside from Isby's thing they are all probably like $20-30 on Amazon.

The only catapults cohabitating with ski jumps I'm aware of are Ulyanovsk and possibly a futuristic QE2. There might be some obscure US Navy light carriers too. The catapult would have been separate from the jump and been used to launch different airplanes that couldn't use the jump ramp in both cases.

With modern engines there aren't really any mass restrictions on takeoff compared to a catapult carrier, after a certain length. An 800 ft takeoff run should be able to accommodate an F/A-18 just fine. It could even accommodate an F-15 at near MTOW with a 9-degree jump ramp. A suitably navalized F-15 with strengthened gear and a 12-degree jump ramp should see no trouble flying off a STOBAR carrier the size of a Kitty Hawk or thereabouts. It's not really possible to hybridize the two, though. EMALS is also suitably flexible that it essentially obsoletes the ski jump.

I suppose if you were going hard into a ski jump, you'd put an EMALS on the arresting land and use that to catapult slow planes like AEW, ASW, and COD. Fighter jets wouldn't care either way.

Thank you for the answer. I already planned on having a separate catapult for my heavy carriers to operate awacs in the open ocean. I was just concerned that a ski-jump would be inadequate after reading that China and India were having trouble launching fighters from their carriers.

The US Navy was able to launch F/A-18As from a 9-degree incline ski jump during the Cold War.

When the USAF thought to borrow the Navy's ski jump they realized their landing gears were insufficiently strong and had it lowered, but modelling said that the F-15 would be able to squeeze just barely over an 850 ft takeoff run at 55,000 lbs with a 9-degree ramp. I don't know if that included the ramp itself, though. A 12-degree ramp might be better in that respect, but "optimal" angles depend heavily on thrust-to-weight ratio and angle of attack limits, to name a few things. Ramp length and curvature are for landing gear strength limits, etc.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a237265.pdf

[Ardavia]

http://nigelef.tripod.com/

Really good resource on British methods plus has a delightfully quaint web design.

Red God of War: Soviet Artillery and Rocket Forces is the best book I have seen on Soviet artillery in WWII. But it should probably be read with Steel Wind: Colonel Georg Bruchmuller and the Birth of Modern Artillery because Soviet methods are heavily influenced by German WW1 developments and the latter provides better explanations of why the methods/organization the Soviet Army used came into existence in the first place well the former is mostly about how Soviet artillery was used in practice. Jane's Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army also had a good section on artillery as did the good but poorly named Soviet Airland Battle Tactics which also includes some super cool reproductions of actual nomograms. I read an OK PDF about the evolution of US artillery methods in WWII but I can't remember its name. On DTIC though. Most US books I have found have been frustratingly long on historical/doctrinal issues and short on spergy specifics.

This might be helpful on the topic on US field artillery in WW2, I guess? It's more generally about the artillery as opposed to ww2 specifically, though.

[The Soodean Imperium]

Can an electromagnetic catapult mechanism be used on a ski-jump ramp? I want to know if there is a way to keep the profile of a ski-jump carrier without the weight limitations imposed by such a low-tech mechanism.

The only catapults cohabitating with ski jumps I'm aware of are Ulyanovsk and possibly a futuristic QE2. There might be some obscure US Navy light carriers too. The catapult would have been separate from the jump and been used to launch different airplanes that couldn't use the jump ramp in both cases.

With modern engines there aren't really any mass restrictions on takeoff compared to a catapult carrier, after a certain length. An 800 ft takeoff run should be able to accommodate an F/A-18 just fine. It could even accommodate an F-15 at near MTOW with a 9-degree jump ramp. A suitably navalized F-15 with strengthened gear and a 12-degree jump ramp should see no trouble flying off a STOBAR carrier the size of a Kitty Hawk or thereabouts. It's not really possible to hybridize the two, though. EMALS is also suitably flexible that it essentially obsoletes the ski jump.

I suppose if you were going hard into a ski jump, you'd put an EMALS on the arresting land and use that to catapult slow planes like AEW, ASW, and COD. Fighter jets wouldn't care either way.

So, does this mean that the Warships Thread's well-worn "ski-ramps are inferior to catapults in every way, they can only launch aircraft at greatly reduced combat weights" explanation is not valid after all?

[Gallia-]

The only catapults cohabitating with ski jumps I'm aware of are Ulyanovsk and possibly a futuristic QE2. There might be some obscure US Navy light carriers too. The catapult would have been separate from the jump and been used to launch different airplanes that couldn't use the jump ramp in both cases.

With modern engines there aren't really any mass restrictions on takeoff compared to a catapult carrier, after a certain length. An 800 ft takeoff run should be able to accommodate an F/A-18 just fine. It could even accommodate an F-15 at near MTOW with a 9-degree jump ramp. A suitably navalized F-15 with strengthened gear and a 12-degree jump ramp should see no trouble flying off a STOBAR carrier the size of a Kitty Hawk or thereabouts. It's not really possible to hybridize the two, though. EMALS is also suitably flexible that it essentially obsoletes the ski jump.

I suppose if you were going hard into a ski jump, you'd put an EMALS on the arresting land and use that to catapult slow planes like AEW, ASW, and COD. Fighter jets wouldn't care either way.

So, does this mean that the Warships Thread's well-worn "ski-ramps are inferior to catapults in every way, they can only launch aircraft at greatly reduced combat weights" explanation is not valid after all?

It's valid but it's more nuanced than that.

STOBAR is "worse" than CATOBAR in the sense that you can lift limited combat loads. The question is how limited and does it actually matter. If you only intend to throw F-15s at ~55-60,000 lbs weight, then a CATOBAR and a STOBAR make no real difference for launch. Both can accomplish this in the same ground run. STOBAR is also the simpler launch system and requires less maintenance and crew to deal with, with fewer points of failure. If you can't make catapults of sufficient power to throw an F-15 at combat weight (~58,000 lbs) or you can't deal with a crew size to run more than one or two steam cats, then a ski jump is a good fit. EMALS throws a bit of a wrench in this because it relies on engine power rather than a multiple failure point, labour intense steam network. But EMALS also doesn't really work.

Arguably STOBAR has gained ground in that front in the past couple decades with advancements in big thrust turbofans, too. Planes aren't really limited by mass in either configuration because their engines are suitably powerful that a ski jump can put even a combat loaded F-14 into the air with full reheat and an 800 ft takeoff run. It just takes longer to put more planes into the air (and recover them) because you're eating more space with each takeoff run.

For an American-style attack carrier whose sole purpose is to throw thirty to forty planes in the span of fifteen minutes and nuke Eurasia to death, then catapults are the only way to go. They ensure maximum sortie rate because you occupy a relatively small takeoff run and allow you to have bigger deck loading and gives you bomb farms on the deck. Both of those are necessary when operating large air wings.

For a "patrol" carrier like Kuznetsov or Queen Elizabeth II, who will realistically carry maybe 10-20 combat aircraft at any one time, then STOBAR is a serious competitor. Sortie rates aren't a huge factor there because you'll have a significant fraction of your available combat power in the air at any one time (read: all of it) and your overall number of airframes can be held entirely inside your hangar deck when being bombed/fueled up.

Retrotechnical Syndicalists is just old fashioned and thinks all planes are F-8/A-7 or something I guess.

[-Celibrae-]

On a related note, YA-7F: A good concept, or are more multiroles the better answer?

[Gallia-]

YA-7F would be on its way to the scrapyard right now in favour of F-35.

It was an ok interdictor I guess. F-35 was just everything YA-7F was and better.

[-Celibrae-]

YA-7F would be on its way to the scrapyard right now in favour of F-35.

It was an ok interdictor I guess. F-35 was just everything YA-7F was and better.

Thanks. That's all I needed to know.

Edit: Assuming that one cannot properly make a helicopter low-observable to radar owing to the rotor blades, was the RAH-66 Comanche primarily designed to suppress it's infrared signature? And if so, how effective would it have been?

[Gallia-]

RAH-66's infrared signature was about 3x smaller than AH-64. It had active cooling of the exhaust with ambient drawn in from the top of the tail boom, and exhausted out the bottom of the tail boom, and the engines were buried inside the airframe like AH-1. Contemporary Stinger missiles either didn't like to, or refused to, acquire it as a target.

It would have been an impressive scout helicopter if they hadn't tried to get it to be compatible with the Objective Force (i.e. self-deployment across the Atlantic).

[Laritaia]

RAH-66's infrared signature was about 3x smaller than AH-64. It had active cooling of the exhaust with ambient drawn in from the top of the tail boom, and exhausted out the bottom of the tail boom, and the engines were buried inside the airframe like AH-1. Contemporary Stinger missiles either didn't like to, or refused to, acquire it as a target.

It would have been an impressive scout helicopter if they hadn't tried to get it to be compatible with the Objective Force (i.e. self-deployment across the Atlantic).

I remember reading some airport novel, Tom Clancy type book where a pair of Comanches use hellfire missiles to shoot down a Japanese E-767

right after they use them to assassinate some guy by fucking with his TV using the Laser pointer then blowing him up with a hellfire

also i think they land on an SSBN at one point

[Gallia-]

The halcyon days of when "Japan is our enemy".

Copy/paste China and you have the truth?

[Laritaia]

The halcyon days of when "Japan is our enemy".

Copy/paste China and you have the truth?

i cant remember if it was the same book as the one where they fight japanese active stealth jets in F-22s that have optical camoflage

also the japanese aren't directly attacking murrica

they're invading Siberia and America sends mercs to protect russia from them

[Gallia-]

If you replace every mention of "Japan" with "China" in War in 2020, the book becomes much more realistic.

Right down to South Africa being a client state of the Chinese and Russia becoming a neo-Caliphate.