NS Military Realism Consultancy Thread Mk X Purps Safe Space

[Neo-Pontic Empire]

Menghe's mobilization reserves would need to know far more than just "basic understanding of military formations, basic marksmanship training, and... marching in formation." Bear in mind that these are mechanized formations using Menghe's 1990s equipment (or, developed countries' 1980s equipment?). They would need to be ready to serve as tank gunners, anti-tank missile operators, combat engineers, TELAR radar operators... the list goes on. And they would need to be able to mobilize in a week to ten days, as opposed to the months needed to learn these tasks from scratch. This is also why I'd previously had Menghe's conscripts serve 2 months in "reserve familiarization" after they finish active service, to learn the last-generation equipment they will be using in their new units (realistically though this would probably be shorter for some roles than for others, e.g. truck drivers, artillery loaders, squad riflemen).

The idea is that these could be supplemented by retired veterans or individuals could undergo the specialized training in order to earn some money instead of just spending a couple weeks at a shooting range. Outside of the basic riflemen and support personnel (accountants, truck drivers, cooks) life for specialized personnel could be much like life for the reserves in a conventional nation, they have to train more frequently and are more attached to their units but they actually get paid as opposed to the basic personnel who don't get paid (or get paid very little) but only have to train for a couple of weeks every year.

In this sense, Menghe's mobilization reserves are meant to function more like mobilization reserves in the RoK, or first-three(?) years of reserve in the USSR: relatively high-readiness units that can be called up into mechanized units in order to bring the Army to its full fighting strength prior to a major conventional war. Emergency reserves / Homeland Defense units / whatever would still exist, but as a second resort after that, and even then their main role would be to bog down an enemy advance long enough for mechanized units to arrive or provide additional rear-area security around cities.

I mean if this is your goal the only option I see is either conscription or something more akin to the national guard that is still volunteer but doesn't put your entire life on hold for several years. Still more training than a national militia while having fewer soldiers but they would be trained to a much higher degree and could be readied much more quickly.

All of this is assuming, again, that there is a noticeably large gap in skill between personnel who get one month's rudimentary training, and personnel who train a few weeks out of the year after already having two years of military experience under their belt, not just for pilots and medics but also with regard to more technical roles that involve the operation of military vehicles and heavy weapons. It's possible that this is completely untrue, but I fail to see how a month of marching drills and target practice is any substitute for 2-4 months of training with the 1A42 rangefinder/sight plus two years spent using that sight plus two months being instructed in the sight that came before it plus annual exercises with the latter.

To be fair my idea is that the month is pretty much just boot camp, if you want to be a tank gunner you essentially have to say "hey I want to be armoured reserves" and you have to train for several months and your refresher course would be longer too (not sure how long you would need).

It also doesn't touch on the drawbacks - both social and military - of using two-year conscription but only selecting the most qualified among those eligible, and supplementing this with volunteers who renewed their contracts. Which is what I'm really interested in hearing, because I'm getting attached to that option and need someone, preferably a thread veteran, to present an alternative assessment of it.

The issue with conscription is obviously lower morale and discipline because the soldiers are forced to be there and put their lives on hold to do something they don't want to. Selective conscription compounds that and in effect punishes people for having qualities that make a good soldier. Oh you are a physically fit young man with no long term health problems? Great you have to put your life on hold for two years to join the military. Beyond that there are no reasons you inherently couldn't have selective conscription, if I did it I would have it based on lottery instead of choosing the better soldiers since at least than it wouldn't seem like a punishment for being physically fit and healthy.

Granted I feel like you really want selective conscription and just want a verification that it is acceptable, in which case sure you have my seal of approval. It isn't a bad idea by any means it just isn't what I would do, nor is it in my opinion the best solution (I think part time volunteer soldiers ala the US national guard would be best).

[Hurtful Thoughts]

China's AShBMs are the next step because while there are nowadays lots of countermeasures to regular AShMs, there are far fewer countermeasures against ballistic missiles. A ballistic missile bypasses all of the previous defense mechanisms against cruise missile strikes and requires a whole new suite of defenses to counter.

That moment when the FROG-7 has into AShM role.

It didn't turn out like that. He shuddered as he contemplated the very notion that someone would equip boghammers with ballistic missiles with a CEP of twenty furlongs as their main weapon, and then use thousands of these missiles as anti-ship weapons in an attempt at distraction for the only purpose of hitting an enemy's support vessels. The expense – of life, of money, of sheer firepower – when something like that could be accomplished far easier – seemed unbelievable to him. And yet here it was – a shattering blow to everything he had learned about warfare, about human nature itself. The sheer incompetence seemed to be hurting his mind by merely existing.

He drew his sidearm – a customized M1911 pistol with ivory grips – and cast a last sad look at the picture of his wife.

“I'm sorry, Ellen.” - he whispered, a lone tear rolling down his cheek. - “I can't live like this. The fail . It burns. It burns.” - he cried like a little baby - “I'm sorry, Ellen. I'm so, so sorry.”

Then, with a single, fluid motion, he shoved the pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

^Alleanean-Blackhelm conflict, ~2008.

---

OH RIGHT!

Um... I was thinking about doing a modernization-thing for the A-37B.

Like, stripping out the minigun in favor of a LIDAR/FLIR targeting pod, and semi-perm mounding a GSh-23L or 30mm DEFA under the belly.

[The Soodean Imperium]

Menghe's mobilization reserves would need to know far more than just "basic understanding of military formations, basic marksmanship training, and... marching in formation." Bear in mind that these are mechanized formations using Menghe's 1990s equipment (or, developed countries' 1980s equipment?). They would need to be ready to serve as tank gunners, anti-tank missile operators, combat engineers, TELAR radar operators... the list goes on. And they would need to be able to mobilize in a week to ten days, as opposed to the months needed to learn these tasks from scratch. This is also why I'd previously had Menghe's conscripts serve 2 months in "reserve familiarization" after they finish active service, to learn the last-generation equipment they will be using in their new units (realistically though this would probably be shorter for some roles than for others, e.g. truck drivers, artillery loaders, squad riflemen).

The idea is that these could be supplemented by retired veterans or individuals could undergo the specialized training in order to earn some money instead of just spending a couple weeks at a shooting range. Outside of the basic riflemen and support personnel (accountants, truck drivers, cooks) life for specialized personnel could be much like life for the reserves in a conventional nation, they have to train more frequently and are more attached to their units but they actually get paid as opposed to the basic personnel who don't get paid (or get paid very little) but only have to train for a couple of weeks every year.

In this sense, Menghe's mobilization reserves are meant to function more like mobilization reserves in the RoK, or first-three(?) years of reserve in the USSR: relatively high-readiness units that can be called up into mechanized units in order to bring the Army to its full fighting strength prior to a major conventional war. Emergency reserves / Homeland Defense units / whatever would still exist, but as a second resort after that, and even then their main role would be to bog down an enemy advance long enough for mechanized units to arrive or provide additional rear-area security around cities.

I mean if this is your goal the only option I see is either conscription or something more akin to the national guard that is still volunteer but doesn't put your entire life on hold for several years. Still more training than a national militia while having fewer soldiers but they would be trained to a much higher degree and could be readied much more quickly.

All of this is assuming, again, that there is a noticeably large gap in skill between personnel who get one month's rudimentary training, and personnel who train a few weeks out of the year after already having two years of military experience under their belt, not just for pilots and medics but also with regard to more technical roles that involve the operation of military vehicles and heavy weapons. It's possible that this is completely untrue, but I fail to see how a month of marching drills and target practice is any substitute for 2-4 months of training with the 1A42 rangefinder/sight plus two years spent using that sight plus two months being instructed in the sight that came before it plus annual exercises with the latter.

To be fair my idea is that the month is pretty much just boot camp, if you want to be a tank gunner you essentially have to say "hey I want to be armoured reserves" and you have to train for several months and your refresher course would be longer too (not sure how long you would need).

The problem with this approach is that it effectively puts me back at square one for the mobilization reserve - again, the selective pool of reserves which would fill up the remaining mechanized divisions and bring the Army up to full strength.

If I rely on a national-guard-style pool of volunteers, then I will need to gather enough volunteers to fill all mobilization reserve units, on top of the volunteers needed for active units. Offering higher and higher wages for skilled personnel could be demanding, as Menghe is a middle-ranked developing country. And it might eat into the flow of volunteers for active units, if recruits are allowed to choose between the two.

Conversely, I could make "national militia" service mandatory and universal, and then select a subgroup of those as national militia for the mobilization reserve. They would get the same training as volunteers for active units, gather for exercises 1-3 weeks out of the year, and work with actual reserve equipment matched to their units and roles. But at this point, in a de facto sense I've already created a selective conscript military, except that it only lives in the reserves. And even then some large share of it would lack experience in active units.

It also doesn't touch on the drawbacks - both social and military - of using two-year conscription but only selecting the most qualified among those eligible, and supplementing this with volunteers who renewed their contracts. Which is what I'm really interested in hearing, because I'm getting attached to that option and need someone, preferably a thread veteran, to present an alternative assessment of it.

The issue with conscription is obviously lower morale and discipline because the soldiers are forced to be there and put their lives on hold to do something they don't want to.

The drawbacks, real and imagined, of conscript militaries regularly come up in these threads, and usually receive a lot of detailed attention from thread regulars. Based on those discussions, I'd hesitate to say that this is "obviously" the case.

Countries with strong state institutions, unifying nationalism, and a social consensus that the military's defense effort is justified have generally suffered fewer morale and discipline problems from conscription compared to those that lack these things. Compare Israel, RoK, and Singapore with the US in Vietnam. Or even the US in Vietnam with US in the World Wars. Competent and motivated conscript militaries have existed, as have incompetent and poorly motivated volunteer ones, and ultimately the deciding factors between the two have more to do with the social and institutional context.

Selective conscription compounds that and in effect punishes people for having qualities that make a good soldier. Oh you are a physically fit young man with no long term health problems? Great you have to put your life on hold for two years to join the military.

The "moral hazard" problem is one that I've considered, but I'm not sure if it would actually play out in reality. Can we really assume in the abstract that a large share of the teenage population will deliberately overeat, chain-smoke, and drink heavily because it might select them out of military service? Alternatively, given a strong enough sense of duty and nationalism, would people compete to remain fit in order to avoid the dishonor of being selected out? Surely there have been actual feasibility studies of this, or comprehensive assessments of different countries with targeted conscription.

As it stands, all countries practicing conscription, universal or otherwise, will exempt those with significant physical or mental health problems. So the moral hazard component isn't really unique here.

Beyond that there are no reasons you inherently couldn't have selective conscription, if I did it I would have it based on lottery instead of choosing the better soldiers since at least than it wouldn't seem like a punishment for being physically fit and healthy.

The idea of this is that, given that I'm only selecting like ~40% of each incoming cohort into service, I might as well select the best 40%. Not just in terms of physical fitness, but also intelligence, disciplinary history, medical qualifications, and the like. It would probably involve quotas for different roles, not just a single standard applied universally.

I do recognize that a lottery might create a stronger culture of duty around the conscription policy, because it means any male citizen can be called up at random. Thus, it would be sort of universal by proxy. But it would also constrain the military's ability to match its recruit pool with its personnel needs for that year.

Granted I feel like you really want selective conscription and just want a verification that it is acceptable, in which case sure you have my seal of approval. It isn't a bad idea by any means it just isn't what I would do, nor is it in my opinion the best solution (I think part time volunteer soldiers ala the US national guard would be best).

If I just wanted verification of my own opinion, I would give up after the limited responses and tell myself that based on my limited knowledge it's good enough.

But this thread has several posters who have discussed and debated the merits of conscription policies at length in the past, and I want their critical input before I move on, because I'm aware that I'm at risk of confirmation bias if I go ahead and implement it right away.

[Austrasien]

The social "benefits" of universal conscription probably do not exist or are at least greatly overstated. Conversely the downsides of selective conscription are also overstated.

In a society where there is a high readiness to serve, selective conscription or voluntary service is fine. In a society where there is not a readiness to serve universal conscription won't help people get more out of it.

[Albynau]

Did the Imperial Court ever realize that it was either modernize or die, and, if they did, was it too late to do anything about it?

Most of the court realized that they had to modernize, they just never had any sort of consensus on how to do it outside from "buy western stuff". And naturally since it's Chinese politics, power struggles between rival power groups really prevented them from achieving anything substantial.

While they did try implementing some sense of modernization with regards to industrializing and updating the military, they did absolutely nothing in implementing any sort of societal reforms (understandable since how can you reform what is essentially a medieval era foreign ruling class governing a nation of subject people and turn it into a modern state without wrecking the whole system?)

[Prosorusiya]

Did the Imperial Court ever realize that it was either modernize or die, and, if they did, was it too late to do anything about it?

Most of the court realized that they had to modernize, they just never had any sort of consensus on how to do it outside from "buy western stuff". And naturally since it's Chinese politics, power struggles between rival power groups really prevented them from achieving anything substantial.

While they did try implementing some sense of modernization with regards to industrializing and updating the military, they did absolutely nothing in implementing any sort of societal reforms (understandable since how can you reform what is essentially a medieval era foreign ruling class governing a nation of subject people and turn it into a modern state without wrecking the whole system?)

The Imperial Court sort realized that it was "modernize or die", but far too late to be of any good. Western Indeminties, and over focus on producing weapons which led to the brith of warlords whoes power centered around the new weapons factories, and later indemnities to Japan after the Sino-Japanese War led to factionalism and a chronic lack of funds for improvement during the so called "Self Strengthening" movement.

The Imperial Court & Dowager Empress were hesitant to change before the later epiphany because their power was based on the traditions which Western Science and Technology threatened to undermine. Also, from the Chinese perspective much of Western technology was of dubious use, as it's labor saving advantages would lead to whole classes of people becoming jobless & pissed off, a great way to start a revolt against the Manchu's unstable regime.

[Prosorusiya]

How would an Air Force go about storing older aircraft in a strategic reserve, in such a way that they could be brought back on line if needed? I've heard tell of aircraft being crated, and seen long lines of aircraft rusting of Russian Air Bases, and neither strike me as exactly ideal storage methods.

Would ordnance for said aircraft be stored in a different hanger\facility? What is the shelf life for missiles & bombs anyhow? I've heard that phrase mentioned, but am not sure what is meant exactly, do electronics etc start to go wrong after extended storage enough to make unions useless, or are we talking degradation of explosives themselves?

[Neo-Pontic Empire]

The problem with this approach is that it effectively puts me back at square one for the mobilization reserve - again, the selective pool of reserves which would fill up the remaining mechanized divisions and bring the Army up to full strength.

If I rely on a national-guard-style pool of volunteers, then I will need to gather enough volunteers to fill all mobilization reserve units, on top of the volunteers needed for active units. Offering higher and higher wages for skilled personnel could be demanding, as Menghe is a middle-ranked developing country. And it might eat into the flow of volunteers for active units, if recruits are allowed to choose between the two.

Conscript national guard? Still less investment and cost than adding them to the regular army.

The "moral hazard" problem is one that I've considered, but I'm not sure if it would actually play out in reality. Can we really assume in the abstract that a large share of the teenage population will deliberately overeat, chain-smoke, and drink heavily because it might select them out of military service? Alternatively, given a strong enough sense of duty and nationalism, would people compete to remain fit in order to avoid the dishonor of being selected out? Surely there have been actual feasibility studies of this, or comprehensive assessments of different countries with targeted conscription.

While I also doubt that it would lead to a moral hazard as you describe it I highly doubt that such conscripts will be as dedicated as volunteers or even regular conscripts. As you mention earlier having a clear record could be a factor in getting drafted meaning young men might purposely act out just enough to avoid conscription. After all is getting arrested and a misdemeanor really that bad when the alternative is not getting to work in your preferred field for an additional 2 to 10 years. After all a smart hard working kid who wants to be a doctor probably won't finish his doctorate until he is 30, compared to that spray painting someone's car is minor by comparison.

However I still think the worse (and much much more likely) effect is simply low morale. By drafting the best and the brightest you are drafting the people who have the most reason to want to just finish up their conscription and get on with their lives.

The idea of this is that, given that I'm only selecting like ~40% of each incoming cohort into service, I might as well select the best 40%. Not just in terms of physical fitness, but also intelligence, disciplinary history, medical qualifications, and the like. It would probably involve quotas for different roles, not just a single standard applied universally.

I do recognize that a lottery might create a stronger culture of duty around the conscription policy, because it means any male citizen can be called up at random. Thus, it would be sort of universal by proxy. But it would also constrain the military's ability to match its recruit pool with its personnel needs for that year.

How would it constrain the military's ability to match its recruit pool and manpower needs? If you need 1 million men one year and 1.1 million the next just make it so the lottery picks more men. Unhealthy people can obviously be excluded. However while I agree with your idea of grabbing the best and the brightest I simply doubt that a few more clever and well behaved grunts actually means much over having slightly less clever and well behaved on average grunts who don't mind being there quite as much.

But this thread has several posters who have discussed and debated the merits of conscription policies at length in the past, and I want their critical input before I move on, because I'm aware that I'm at risk of confirmation bias if I go ahead and implement it right away.

I understand completely, I'm just saying you seem to really like your partial conscription and as far as ideas go this isn't a bad one by any measure, I'm just saying if you love this idea I think its fine and don't see any major holes. Maybe some minor morale issues but in the grand scheme of things even if you specifically drafted the top students in every secondary school and gave the worst 500 bucks I doubt it would mean much. Just more boys under fire might complain about how they should be getting their degree in engineering or pre-med.

One possible side effect I just thought of though is vital manpower drain. Essentially by conscripting your best and brightest first you are risking killing off a generation of future doctors, engineers, and lawyers vs a generation from all walks of life or a generation of lower middle class factory workers. IIRC when the US does call the draft they tend to exclude college students and those vital to the war effort (or at least draft them later) since an engineer is more useful to the war effort than a grunt with a rifle generally. If it is a worry for you you might be able to incentivize STEM careers while at the same time while at the same time preventing your military from killing your best and brightest by doing something like "if you have scholarships and are going to study in a STEM field you won't be drafted." Just a random thought.

[Crysuko]

Would it make practical sense in a modern army, to have a vehicle that acts as a dedicated ATGM carrier? Just thinking of giving my armoured corps a bit more variety.

[The Soodean Imperium]

The social "benefits" of universal conscription probably do not exist or are at least greatly overstated. Conversely the downsides of selective conscription are also overstated.

In a society where there is a high readiness to serve, selective conscription or voluntary service is fine. In a society where there is not a readiness to serve universal conscription won't help people get more out of it.

Fair enough. I guess in a society where ~85% of eligible youth join the generic Komsomol equivalent and the education system teaches history as propaganda, 1-2 years' service in the military for eligible males only doesn't make or break social cohesion.

I guess selective conscription also meshes well with Menghe's state-corporatist ethos, in that it picks out those who are best at soldiering as opposed to drawing randomly from the population.

Did the Imperial Court ever realize that it was either modernize or die, and, if they did, was it too late to do anything about it?

Most of the court realized that they had to modernize, they just never had any sort of consensus on how to do it outside from "buy western stuff". And naturally since it's Chinese politics, power struggles between rival power groups really prevented them from achieving anything substantial.

While they did try implementing some sense of modernization with regards to industrializing and updating the military, they did absolutely nothing in implementing any sort of societal reforms (understandable since how can you reform what is essentially a medieval era foreign ruling class governing a nation of subject people and turn it into a modern state without wrecking the whole system?)

This is a common problem when attempting to undertake reforms of any kind, and one of the reasons "get good institutions" has proven so hard to implement in the realm of international development broadly speaking. Any social system will have entrenched power holders who stand to gain from maintaining the status quo and stand to lose from overturning it. Even if it's harmful to the country as a whole, and even if the central leadership is convinced of the need for reform, these power holders have few incentives to embrace change and every incentive to oppose it. What varies are the degree of influence they have within the government, at various levels, and whether some or all see opportunities to turn reforms in their favor.

In the case of China specifically, the combination of internal armed conflict, Japanese invasion and administration, and Communist takeover all but demolished the landed classes, and gave the CCP a monopoly on power and a relatively blank slate from which to work. To some extent, the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution also undermined the hardline anti-market voices in the Party, though the abundant opportunities for profiteering in Deng-era China also provided incentives to embrace market reforms under the table.

The broader lesson for NSers is that reforms like "I'm going to privatize my socialist economy," "I'm going to overhaul my military," "I'm going to abolish the landed nobility," and the like are much easier said than done, and thinking about who would oppose this and how much power they would have to block it can be fruitful starting points for writing history and lore.

The problem with this approach is that it effectively puts me back at square one for the mobilization reserve - again, the selective pool of reserves which would fill up the remaining mechanized divisions and bring the Army up to full strength.

If I rely on a national-guard-style pool of volunteers, then I will need to gather enough volunteers to fill all mobilization reserve units, on top of the volunteers needed for active units. Offering higher and higher wages for skilled personnel could be demanding, as Menghe is a middle-ranked developing country. And it might eat into the flow of volunteers for active units, if recruits are allowed to choose between the two.

Conscript national guard? Still less investment and cost than adding them to the regular army.

At the very least, it would widen the gap between active forces and reserves, since they're barely part of the same personnel chain.

But it is the alternative I would most readily consider.

The "moral hazard" problem is one that I've considered, but I'm not sure if it would actually play out in reality. Can we really assume in the abstract that a large share of the teenage population will deliberately overeat, chain-smoke, and drink heavily because it might select them out of military service? Alternatively, given a strong enough sense of duty and nationalism, would people compete to remain fit in order to avoid the dishonor of being selected out? Surely there have been actual feasibility studies of this, or comprehensive assessments of different countries with targeted conscription.

While I also doubt that it would lead to a moral hazard as you describe it I highly doubt that such conscripts will be as dedicated as volunteers or even regular conscripts. As you mention earlier having a clear record could be a factor in getting drafted meaning young men might purposely act out just enough to avoid conscription. After all is getting arrested and a misdemeanor really that bad when the alternative is not getting to work in your preferred field for an additional 2 to 10 years. After all a smart hard working kid who wants to be a doctor probably won't finish his doctorate until he is 30, compared to that spray painting someone's car is minor by comparison.

Any society where promising students would decide that they would rather give up promising medical careers, in order to instead spend their lives spray painting cars, for the sole purpose of avoiding two years in the military, and would do so by committing a crime in order to have it on their record, and would do so in large enough numbers to make a dent in the military's recruiting base, is probably facing larger problems around national identity, social cohesion, and readiness to serve in the first place.

If South Korea is any example to follow, I'd suspect that anyone even indirectly accused of evading military service through self-destructive behavior would face severe social stigma and exclusion from hiring networks.

However I still think the worse (and much much more likely) effect is simply low morale. By drafting the best and the brightest you are drafting the people who have the most reason to want to just finish up their conscription and get on with their lives.

If anything, though, disproportionately (or, really, proportionately) conscripting personnel with higher IQs and greater qualifications would confer an advantage, at least in the more specialized roles where the speed of mastering a complex task is important and there is greater potential for growth.

One possible side effect I just thought of though is vital manpower drain. Essentially by conscripting your best and brightest first you are risking killing off a generation of future doctors, engineers, and lawyers vs a generation from all walks of life or a generation of lower middle class factory workers. IIRC when the US does call the draft they tend to exclude college students and those vital to the war effort (or at least draft them later) since an engineer is more useful to the war effort than a grunt with a rifle generally. If it is a worry for you you might be able to incentivize STEM careers while at the same time while at the same time preventing your military from killing your best and brightest by doing something like "if you have scholarships and are going to study in a STEM field you won't be drafted." Just a random thought.

Excluding college students or college entrants was something that I considered when drawing up Menghe's conscription policy earlier on. Among the drawbacks is that promising students in STEM fields tend to be the ones whose skills the military would value most.

I intend to partly get around this with a sort of ROTC program where students can defer their service until after they complete a college degree in a relevant field, at which point they serve an extended term in a specialist position. Military-paid scholarships may be involved. I may also add selected exemptions for college students in other fields, though mostly as a way for certain officials in the Party elite to give their sons special treatment.

The other thing to consider is that Menghe's conscript military is a peacetime standing army, having gone to war briefly in 2004-2005 and 2014-2015. It's not involved in the sort of long, grueling, unpopular conflicts the US faced in Vietnam and Afghanistan, so "we're killing off our smartest generation for no good reason" probably would not be a major social complaint. The main problem is that it's delaying their entry into the labor force, during which time their skills may atrophy.

[The Soodean Imperium]

Would it make practical sense in a modern army, to have a vehicle that acts as a dedicated ATGM carrier? Just thinking of giving my armoured corps a bit more variety.

Do you mean an existing chassis (e.g., APC, IFV, or 4x4) which has been modified to carry ATGMs? Or a vehicle which was designed from the ground up for the sole purpose of carrying ATGMs?

Both have existed, but the former is more common, and is generally preferable because it allows commonality in spare parts and the like.

[Crysuko]

Would it make practical sense in a modern army, to have a vehicle that acts as a dedicated ATGM carrier? Just thinking of giving my armoured corps a bit more variety.

Do you mean an existing chassis (e.g., APC, IFV, or 4x4) which has been modified to carry ATGMs? Or a vehicle which was designed from the ground up for the sole purpose of carrying ATGMs?

Both have existed, but the former is more common, and is generally preferable because it allows commonality in spare parts and the like.

I was thinking the second. A low to the ground chassis profile, with the missiles fired from a rotating turret. The idea being you can easily dig them in for ambushes and quick attacks

[Neo-Pontic Empire]

I intend to partly get around this with a sort of ROTC program where students can defer their service until after they complete a college degree in a relevant field, at which point they serve an extended term in a specialist position. Military-paid scholarships may be involved. I may also add selected exemptions for college students in other fields, though mostly as a way for certain officials in the Party elite to give their sons special treatment.

That is certainly an option. Since you seem to have such a preference for a military and united national culture something akin to JROTC voluntary or mandatory could be useful. Honestly though the most elegant solution may just be enlistment bonuses. "Yeah you were drafted but now the state will help cover your college directly and pay you." Upper class kids might still be butthurt since they weren't paying for college anyway but for the majority of conscripts being conscripted might actually be seen as a positive thing "yay now I won't go into a decade of debt paying off college loans." In the grand scheme of things supplementing college costs isn't that expensive but could lessen the blow of getting drafted or perhaps even make it a good thing.

The other thing to consider is that Menghe's conscript military is a peacetime standing army, having gone to war briefly in 2004-2005 and 2014-2015. It's not involved in the sort of long, grueling, unpopular conflicts the US faced in Vietnam and Afghanistan, so "we're killing off our smartest generation for no good reason" probably would not be a major social complaint. The main problem is that it's delaying their entry into the labor force, during which time their skills may atrophy.

Noted, but still the risk exists was my main point. After all having a lack of factory workers sucks but having a generation of engineers and doctors killed off is likely much worse.

[Prosorusiya]

The social "benefits" of universal conscription probably do not exist or are at least greatly overstated. Conversely the downsides of selective conscription are also overstated.

In a society where there is a high readiness to serve, selective conscription or voluntary service is fine. In a society where there is not a readiness to serve universal conscription won't help people get more out of it.

Fair enough. I guess in a society where ~85% of eligible youth join the generic Komsomol equivalent and the education system teaches history as propaganda, 1-2 years' service in the military for eligible males only doesn't make or break social cohesion.

I guess selective conscription also meshes well with Menghe's state-corporatist ethos, in that it picks out those who are best at soldiering as opposed to drawing randomly from the population.

Most of the court realized that they had to modernize, they just never had any sort of consensus on how to do it outside from "buy western stuff". And naturally since it's Chinese politics, power struggles between rival power groups really prevented them from achieving anything substantial.

While they did try implementing some sense of modernization with regards to industrializing and updating the military, they did absolutely nothing in implementing any sort of societal reforms (understandable since how can you reform what is essentially a medieval era foreign ruling class governing a nation of subject people and turn it into a modern state without wrecking the whole system?)

This is a common problem when attempting to undertake reforms of any kind, and one of the reasons "get good institutions" has proven so hard to implement in the realm of international development broadly speaking. Any social system will have entrenched power holders who stand to gain from maintaining the status quo and stand to lose from overturning it. Even if it's harmful to the country as a whole, and even if the central leadership is convinced of the need for reform, these power holders have few incentives to embrace change and every incentive to oppose it. What varies are the degree of influence they have within the government, at various levels, and whether some or all see opportunities to turn reforms in their favor.

In the case of China specifically, the combination of internal armed conflict, Japanese invasion and administration, and Communist takeover all but demolished the landed classes, and gave the CCP a monopoly on power and a relatively blank slate from which to work. To some extent, the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution also undermined the hardline anti-market voices in the Party, though the abundant opportunities for profiteering in Deng-era China also provided incentives to embrace market reforms under the table.

The broader lesson for NSers is that reforms like "I'm going to privatize my socialist economy," "I'm going to overhaul my military," "I'm going to abolish the landed nobility," and the like are much easier said than done, and thinking about who would oppose this and how much power they would have to block it can be fruitful starting points for writing history and lore.

Agreed.

Another take away on reform should be that starting reform in one portion of society can cause a ripple effect, and reform other portions unintentionally. In the case of Japan, their was an effort to build railways to improve transport, which then created a new public space where different class and people of different regions mixed, creating areas where political opinions could be traded freely. The need for native locomotive drivers and railways workmen created a new working class which clashed with ex-samurai company owners and foreign workers and led to the formation of the first labour unions. Slightly earlier in Japanese history, the need for a larger army to fight the forces of the Shogunate lead to the creation of a conscript army, which then replaced the Samurai as a class. In order to reduce the waste of money spent on stipends to Samurai clans and employ now superfluous Samurai families, Japan allowed the creation of "private railways" which would be built by the government using the stipends of the Samurai daimyos, who would in exchange be allowed to serve as these new companies presidents. This started the growth of industrial dynasties in Japan.

[Austrasien]

Why did the modernization of the Qing military fail so horribly in comparison with that of the IJ Military?

Japan was a Japanese nationstate. The Qing was a Manchu empire.

The modern nationstate drew on the resources of society much more effectively than old hierarchical empires. One national subject pulls a lot more weight than an imperial or feudal subject. Since the Manchus were actually tiny in number and by the later part of the dynasty lacked a real homeland (Manchuria has been heavily settled by Han Chinese) the resources they could draw on were limited. The Empire was overwhelmingly Han, but the Han needed to be held in a politically subordinate position (which was largely accomplished by preserving the traditional Chinese social order of scholar gentry lording over peasants), so they could not be mobilized militarily or economically the way the Japanese could mobilize their own people.

It is not much different than the way the Germans could go toe-to-toe with the British or French individually despite both having vast colonial empires.

[The Akasha Colony]

Did the Imperial Court ever realize that it was either modernize or die, and, if they did, was it too late to do anything about it?

They knew they had to modernize, but no one knew what that really entailed. They took the easy steps readily, buying big, expensive, and impressive warships from abroad and training a few units of troops to use modern rifles and such.

But at its core, the Imperial government was never willing to accept that the entire system had to be changed. Many did realize this, but they had virtually no chance of winning against the entrenched interests. The courtiers realized they were losing to the West, but the question became one of how to modernize China while preserving their own power, and that of their networks of regional friends and allies. How do you create a new Western bureaucracy without eliminating the old one? And how do you get the old one onboard with a plan to basically replace itself? How do you get powerful regional governors to comply with the mandates of the central government to turn over their power to the new state bureaucracy? How do you integrate a vast population of different ethnic identities into a single state while preserving the privileged position of the Manchus?

China's still grappling with that last question, although at the very least by creating the core of the modern Chinese government around the Han ethnicity rather than the Manchu minority they've ensured they at least have the majority of the population onboard. But they've never figured out what to do with the other various minorities aside from try to force them to assimilate.

These are most of the same problems the Tokugawa shogunate wrestled with until the Satchō alliance came and simply removed them from power wholesale. With the old bakufu gone, the victorious pro-Meiji factions were free to install whatever new government they wanted. The confiscated domains of the old shogunate and its supporters created a strong core for the new central government and the voluntary surrender of both Satsuma and Chōshū's lands basically guaranteed that the remaining daimyō would follow suit. After this, the new central government took specific steps to weaken the power networks of the former daimyō by taking on the responsibility of paying stipends to samurai retainers (thus taking them off the payroll of the daimyō themselves) and then finally created the kazoku peerage system that inextricably connected the fortunes of the old nobility with the unified state and not with any specific regional power base.

This didn't go entirely smoothly. Obviously, the first step was a (relatively brief) civil war and the destruction of the reigning shogunate. And lots of samurai revolts occurred for several years after the Boshin War as samurai found themselves both out of work and losing their prestige in the new society that relied instead on a conscript army of commoners. And there was no shortage of political intrigue as various factions tried to steer Japan's course one way or another.

[Crookfur]

How would an Air Force go about storing older aircraft in a strategic reserve, in such a way that they could be brought back on line if needed? I've heard tell of aircraft being crated, and seen long lines of aircraft rusting of Russian Air Bases, and neither strike me as exactly ideal storage methods.

Would ordnance for said aircraft be stored in a different hanger\facility? What is the shelf life for missiles & bombs anyhow? I've heard that phrase mentioned, but am not sure what is meant exactly, do electronics etc start to go wrong after extended storage enough to make unions useless, or are we talking degradation of explosives themselves?

You need to keep them very dry and ideally drained of fluids. Unless you have a handy desert you pretty much need to build climate controlled facilities. Creating can help but again everything has to be very dry. IIRC there are some good articles about on how aircraft are processed in and out of Davis Monthan.

Ordinance will likely be at a desperate depot and munitions degradation can involve general exposure to the elements and the gradual break down of explosive compounds.

[Prosorusiya]

I figured that was the case. I am looking at the post Cold War policies of my nation again, and want to retain my MiG's, but put them into storage since unless all out War break out I have less use for them... and also I am only trying to defend the air space of a nation the size of Georgia and thus am trying to copy policies of the latter nation, which only operates Su-25s, L-39s, and L-29s, much the in the way I am attempting to go to an all L-39 combat jet force.

It seems to make sense to me, in a post Cold War draw down, to turn Mozdok from a Strategic Air Base into a combined storage facility and Air Force museum. So kinda like Wright-Patterson on steroids. I am thinking maybe a new hanger for museum air craft, a hanger for the stored fighters, and a combined use restoration facility?

I think Mozdok already has a magazine which should work for storing munitions... do you know if the Soviets kept nukes at their strategic bomber fields, or were they dispirsed elsewhere & transported in when needed?

What should I do about larger aircraft? Just park them in the old revments? I have a couple An-12s and An-26s, and frankly I don't think they would easily stored. Maybe dissembling them for spare parts would be best?

[Arkandros]

I figured that was the case. I am looking at the post Cold War policies of my nation again, and want to retain my MiG's, but put them into storage since unless all out War break out I have less use for them... and also I am only trying to defend the air space of a nation the size of Georgia and thus am trying to copy policies of the latter nation, which only operates Su-25s, L-39s, and L-29s, much the in the way I am attempting to go to an all L-39 combat jet force.

It seems to make sense to me, in a post Cold War draw down, to turn Mozdok from a Strategic Air Base into a combined storage facility and Air Force museum. So kinda like Wright-Patterson on steroids. I am thinking maybe a new hanger for museum air craft, a hanger for the stored fighters, and a combined use restoration facility?

I think Mozdok already has a magazine which should work for storing munitions... do you know if the Soviets kept nukes at their strategic bomber fields, or were they dispirsed elsewhere & transported in when needed?

What should I do about larger aircraft? Just park them in the old revments? I have a couple An-12s and An-26s, and frankly I don't think they would easily stored. Maybe dissembling them for spare parts would be best?

In the US, airborne nuclear weapons are currently (and were historically) stored in central depots and transported elsewhere (temporarily) as needed. These storage facilities are typically associated with, but not under the direct command of, strategic bomber fields. I don't imagine the Soviets did this any differently, since it allows the nuclear arsenal to be entirely under the control of a central command while keeping them available to bombers.
Tangentially related reading: https://fas.org/blogs/security/2009/11/locations/

[United Earthlings]

Time for Soode to ask another lengthy question about conscription?

INCOMING! TAKE COVER!

To start off with, since my nation also uses conscription I’m going to begin there as a basis for your questions and while I know an apples to apples comparison isn’t possible given that our nations sociality structure and defense requirements are polar opposites, hopefully you’ll find some inspiration in the comparison. I may be wrong, but your main goal with your questionnaire seems to be to find the right balance.

1. Not everyone loves to hear this, but embrace the downsizing this re-scaling permits for opportunities. For ex. with less of a need for conscripts you could reorganize you’re Navy into an all volunteer service without any loss in capability {given time for transition}, in fact if budgeted right you could in theory expand the operational capabilities of the Navy by freeing up funds for naval procurement of more sophisticated platforms. Navies also tend to be along with the Air Force more technocentric, so a shift towards the volunteer side in your nation’s navy would harness its greater technical capabilities of what it’s already inclined towards. This seems to be the direction your taking your nation’s military forces anyway.
2. Vary the conscription term, while personally I decided to settle on 21 months as the term of service, depending on your nation’s exact requirements and the conscripted individuals MOS/MOC you could have a variable term of between 12 to 24 months.
3. Not to brag, but my favorite part, economic incentives. As is already well established, since you are conscripting people against their will and a specific age cohort no less known as young males specifically, the incentive is from the offset a negative towards the state since limitations placed on freedom of choice is generally considered economically inefficient. However, given the state’s broad power over sociality issues, there are things the state itself can do to offset this negative into a more neutral incentive and if configured properly even eventually become {considered} a positive benefit/incentive. Speaking from an economic point of view, conscription is generally considered economically viable when the size of the conscripted force meets a certain threshold above that of what could be obtained with an all-volunteer force at standard labor market rates. Thus, the larger the force requirement, the more the budgetary advantage leans toward the conscript force, since a conscripted force generally tends to be paid below the market value of labor. Circling back to the first point I brought up, by embracing the downsize of your force you could in theory devote that money spent on the larger force to paying your conscripts the private market value of their labor or even above said market value. This would offset some of the negative wealth generation & economic productivity of your conscripted citizens later in life and also lead to some better retention in the near term.
   
   Part 2: Some of the ways I had my nation address these economic incentives were as follows: Initially, once an individual had been conscripted, whatever their wage was from their prior employment before being conscripted was their starting base pay. Later, once I settled on a downsizing plan for my own forces, I set the conscripted base pay tied to that of my volunteer forces and its associated rank structure, which I also set at above the private market labor compensation rate of my nation, that being what was the national minimum wage. Now, while that system may be beyond the means of your nation or even not socially possible, another incentive I pursued was thus one I think is more applicable to your nation. While, I went with offering two years fully paid college/university education to all my citizens as the social contract for their agreement to serve the state, you could offer something like the following. I read from your wiki if it’s still in effect that your nation and I quote, “In addition to a Reserve Officers' Training Corps, both the Army and the Navy offer a limited number of "contract scholarships" every year, in which they pay full tuition and allow a deferral of service until university graduation in exchange for a guarantee that the student will major in a relevant degree and serve at least four years in the military upon graduating. This system is usually used to fill highly skilled roles, such as nuclear reactor operators, military doctors, and certain engineering roles, in which a college degree is deemed necessary”. Apply this incentive on a grander scale down to your conscripts, something to the effect that those who pursue a higher skilled MOS while conscripted will be granted credit for university courses completed in their field specialty. The variable ways you could configure this could fill an entire chapter in a book.
   
   Part 3: On the topic of “contract scholarships”, how you have it structure may be at a disincentive for your forces, with those for deferments wishing to complete university education, if this deferment is only temporary, just as said graduate would start to convert their knowledge learned in university into labor market experience and expertise, they would be pulled off the private labor market and upon reentry years later, the knowledge they had acquired may have depreciated and would need to be recouped before being put to good use.
   
4. Switching gears slightly on the incentive for conscript turnover rates, another method I adapted for my nation you might want to consider in some form is in allowing the conscripted individual to select not only what branch they want to serve in {if you decide to continue to use conscripts for your Navy, Army or both}, but also their service occupation. Someone who dreams of becoming a doctor, pilot, etc... will be more productively inclined even if conscripted if while conscripted they are allowed to pursue jobs and skills that match their future endeavors they wish to pursue. You can’t get more incentivized than understanding a person’s psychological motivations. As a weird Socialist State, I could even image your army having an entire departmental staff devoted to psychological motivating your conscripts.
5. Since, you touch on this a little in your posts and in your nation’s wiki page, if you’re so inclined to have a volunteer force, then it may be time to embrace it given the parameters of your nation have changed in your benefit. However, if you still feel a sentimentality towards conscription, one method might be to split the difference. Have all your active forces be all-volunteer and the reserves the conscripts, which is the method I adapted minus a few tweaks in places. For some time during the transition, your active forces will be smaller, but once the transition to a professional all-volunteer force is complete, even a smaller active force will be highly competitive not to mention eventually more economically productive per soldier as a professionally staffed military would have a higher capital to labor ratio, i.e. more firepower per soldier than a conscript one.
6. And lastly, probably not applicable to your nation from what I’ve read, but you could always increase your potential recruit base by introducing conscription to women also. If not, I’m fine with my nation having the moral high soapbox in this case.

For Reference in the economic incentive section, to make sure my statements were as clear and concise as possible, I utilized the following for various passages: CASTLES, BATTLES & BOMBS, pg 298-307.

[Gallia-]

So apparently the US Army was considering turning M93 Hornet into an anti-helicopter mine. Or at least, there are pictures of a Deep Attack AHM that looks similar to Hornet, except it's blowing up Hinds and Hips after being delivered by a ATACMs or 155mm shell. Is it possible for AHMs to be that small? I was under the impression they were large things.

Being able to establish helicopter mine barriers also seems prohibitively expensive tbh. Are AHMs especially cost-effective compared to a couple of guys with Stinger missiles? Would something like a rocket or artillery delivered SIAM be better?

e: Oh wait it's literally Hornet with a software upgrade telling it to count rotor beats instead of track squeaks. Bodacious.

e2: Oh wait Hornet never worked properly. RIP, he only achieved half of his necessary range.

[Laritaia]

it might be possible using something like the XMX1100 Scorpion

but you would probably need a bunch of them, and they're not exactly small

[Gallia-]

Scorpion is basically the same size as Hornet. It uses the same SFW bomblet anyway.

The real question is if using a jettisoned EFP is even practical tbh. Hornet WAM had a range of less than 50 meters (maybe closer to 20 meters), and it had a directed SFW ejection. Scorpion is basically vertical launch.

This seems a better solution, but I don't know how big he is:



He has a range of 200 meters though, so I'm guessing he is hand emplaced only.

[Laritaia]

the latest Bulgarian Anti-helicopter mine seems to be a distributed system with a central sensor post and a bunch of airburst fragmentation mine launchers arranged around it to just blanket the entire area in fragmentation

[Gallia-]

gross

efps are cuter you can hug them