Military Ground Vehicles of Your Nation Mk X

[Xia-]

So just scrap paratroops, then?

The point is Crete does not innately validate paratroopers.

You cannot point at "look at THIS battle" and say "this is great!" because there is a much less dire situation where paratroopers failed to perform as anticipated. You can only look at the two sides of comparison (Hitler's "Crete was lose", Churchill's "Crete was gr88") and then look at yourself and say "am I Nazi Germany or am I the British Empire?" TBH.

And then you have to look at your foes and say "who am I fighting and what can they do?". And then you can maybe figure out if paratroopers and air-mech strike is good for you. In the past 50 years, though, no one has figured it to be good enough to beat the old "seize port and ship tanks" method of fighting mechanized wars.

The trick, though, is to see that no one has ever sat down and said, with a completely straight face, "we need to air-mechanize". The United States has tried many, many times, but it always fails and cracks a smug smile or smirk at itself.

[The Manticoran Empire]

So just scrap paratroops, then?

The point is Crete does not innately validate paratroopers.

You cannot point at "look at THIS battle" and say "this is great!" because there is a much less dire situation where paratroopers failed to perform as anticipated. You can only look at the two sides of comparison (Hitler's "Crete was lose", Churchill's "Crete was gr88") and then look at yourself and say "am I Nazi Germany or am I the British Empire?" TBH.

Well neither Nazi Germany nor the British Empire survived World War II (The British Empire was a shadow of its former self and by the 1970s had lost all of its meaningful territories and its remaining territories were on the road to independence). I would like to think I'm a more practical individual but evidently that isn't the case. If Airborne troops aren't much good for more than seize and hold operations, why have entire divisions of airborne troops when they do the job that can be done by a brigade? I guess what I'm really doing is trying to justify the existence of Airborne Divisions. A division is expensive in terms of manpower and material. It seems wasteful to just use it to capture bridges and airports.

[Allanea]

The argument is not "Hitler was wrong about paras", it's the idea that paratroopers are somehow innately validated by Crete. They aren't.

Actually, they very literally are.

Because we are exactly having a discussion about a tactical aspect of a problem and not a strategic one.

Germany's loss of the war invalidates paratroopers in the exact same way in which America's loss of Vietnam invalidates the use of helicopters: not. Short of Germany somehow inventing a nuclear weapon in 1941, it is hard to conceive a tactic or weapon system that could have won it the war.

Yes, we could go into a long match about the reality that National-Socialism was an irrational misinterpretation of several previous (and themselves irrational) ideas, and ended up achieving the absolute reverse of its strategic goals (instead of German national greatness and Lebensraum what was achieved was the destruction of Germany's national sovereignty, economy, and its turning into a pair of rump vassal states for the people that National Socialism intended to defeat). But this is irrelevant to the question of 'whether large-scale paratroop drops can take objectives if planned well', because clearly they can.

[Allanea]

The trick, though, is to see that no one has ever sat down and said, with a completely straight face, "we need to air-mechanize".

[The Manticoran Empire]

So just scrap paratroops, then?

The point is Crete does not innately validate paratroopers.

You cannot point at "look at THIS battle" and say "this is great!" because there is a much less dire situation where paratroopers failed to perform as anticipated. You can only look at the two sides of comparison (Hitler's "Crete was lose", Churchill's "Crete was gr88") and then look at yourself and say "am I Nazi Germany or am I the British Empire?" TBH.

And then you have to look at your foes and say "who am I fighting and what can they do?". And then you can maybe figure out if paratroopers and air-mech strike is good for you. In the past 50 years, though, no one has figured it to be good enough to beat the old "seize port and ship tanks" method of fighting mechanized wars.

The trick, though, is to see that no one has ever sat down and said, with a completely straight face, "we need to air-mechanize". The United States has tried many, many times, but it always fails and cracks a smug smile or smirk at itself.

I did find one site that suggested it with a straight face.

http://www.combatreform.org/armytransformedbytracks.htm: This was what got me interested in the idea of air-mech.

[Allanea]

The point is Crete does not innately validate paratroopers.

You cannot point at "look at THIS battle" and say "this is great!" because there is a much less dire situation where paratroopers failed to perform as anticipated. You can only look at the two sides of comparison (Hitler's "Crete was lose", Churchill's "Crete was gr88") and then look at yourself and say "am I Nazi Germany or am I the British Empire?" TBH.

And then you have to look at your foes and say "who am I fighting and what can they do?". And then you can maybe figure out if paratroopers and air-mech strike is good for you. In the past 50 years, though, no one has figured it to be good enough to beat the old "seize port and ship tanks" method of fighting mechanized wars.

The trick, though, is to see that no one has ever sat down and said, with a completely straight face, "we need to air-mechanize". The United States has tried many, many times, but it always fails and cracks a smug smile or smirk at itself.

I did find one site that suggested it with a straight face.

http://www.combatreform.org/armytransformedbytracks.htm: This was what got me interested in the idea of air-mech.

CombatReform is probably literally run by a madman.

[Xia-]

If Airborne troops aren't much good for more than seize and hold operations, why have entire divisions of airborne troops when they do the job that can be done by a brigade?

Because one division gives you one brigade.

Well I would like to be able to operate airborne forces without them getting completely raped the minute tanks show up. Existing armored formations are heavy and logistical nightmares to deploy. Marines are too light. If an Airborne force is deployed, it could be a day or two before support reaches them, maybe longer. I'm not entirely convinced of the uselessness of making airborne forces mechanized.

In what context?

"FCS" means "flying 3,000 miles non-stop to drop a tank division in Dammam, by air, to stop Giga!Iran from stealing Saudi Arabia and Friends' oil, in 96 hours," in a nutshell. There was another random ass contingency about kicking down the door to the next Maximum Leader and raiding his secret clubhouse for blow, too. Then they kept feature creeping and ended up in weird ass places like bombing Indonesia from Thailand while fighting Mega!Iran and throwing tens of thousands of American and Bundeswehr troops to their deaths in Riyadh because the FCS division wasn't able to fight in close terrain or whatever on account of :no armor:.

FCS was built around two major strategic contingencies: a LANTCOM scenario regarding a generic Central American country being invaded by the U.S. Army (reminiscent of Rio Hata), and a CENTCOM scenario about Desert Storm II, where the United States needs to rush mechanized troops to stop Saddam or Khomeini from taking the Saudis' oil fields again. Principal considerations were that the strategic airlift would be provided by an intercontinental helicopter with the approximate lift capacity of a C-130, with VLO technology, and every man on the ground would have the ability to talk to each other simultaneously, sharing information at "near perfect" levels with very little to zero ambiguity (there are specific measures for allowable ambiguities for each sensor system type [acoustic/seismic/magnetic/radar/visual/infrared/etc.] but I don't know them) and that the enemy would be equipped with near-future (late Soviet or current day Russian) technology of the Former Soviet Union.

Everything else came after that.

Because we are exactly having a discussion about a tactical aspect of a problem and not a strategic one.

Well you can just go back and read the conversation again. Because you're clearly not understanding what you're jumping into. But not understanding arguments before you try to refute them? That's the Allanean school of debate. Come back when you understand what FCS is, instead of thinking what you understand what it is. You know so little about what you're talking about right now that it would require several volumes of textbooks to make you understand.

FCS is not an armored brigade. It's not an airborne brigade. It's a total revolutionary transformation into a new existence. Literally. That's not marketing gobbledygook either. It's as literal as I can phrase it.

You're just too ignorant of "FCS" to understand how broad its scope was.

But the women will give birth to new ones.

Or maybe you're too ignorant of basic demographics. This is true for Israel, perhaps, with its incredibly 2.7 TFR for non-Haredi women.

Not so much in places which are being systematically reduced in size and population, because the natives are breeding at sub-replacement rates of 1.2-1.9 TFR and any population growth is either hollow, in the sense that it is being increasingly a mathematical abstraction brought by geriatrics living too long, or it is immigrants who arrive and subsequently adopt native TFR population rates, meaning that any growth is dependent on the growth of the immigrant source countries rather than the actual native population; or simply non-existent as in the case of Germany and Eastern Europe.

Germany's loss of the war invalidates paratroopers

For a country with the demographic and strategic position of Germany: i.e. little throughput in replacement and fighting outnumbered. Crete is as if the North Vietnamese Army decided to engage in decisive, pitched battle with the United States Army instead of running around in the jungle. Why would they do this? They wouldn't. Why would Hitler see paratroopers as valuable? He wouldn't.

[Allanea]

FCS is not an armored brigade. It's not an airborne brigade. It's a total revolutionary transformation into a new existence. Literally. That's not marketing gobbledygook either. It's as literal as I can phrase it.

These things are not relevant to this specific discussion.

[Allanea]

That's to say, somewhere a page or two up MR has already said he doesn't want to literally copy FCS, but instead only to have a force of mechanized paras.

[The Manticoran Empire]

If Airborne troops aren't much good for more than seize and hold operations, why have entire divisions of airborne troops when they do the job that can be done by a brigade?

Because one division gives you one brigade.

One division requires three maneuver brigades and 1-3 supporting brigades. Why waste so much funding for a mission that can be done with a single brigade? Soldiers are expensive to train, equip, and deploy, especially paratroopers. If all the paratroopers are good for is seizing objectives ahead of heavier forces (bridges and airstrips), what is the point of having division level formations as opposed to independent brigades?

[Allanea]

Because one division gives you one brigade.

One division requires three maneuver brigades and 1-3 supporting brigades. Why waste so much funding for a mission that can be done with a single brigade? Soldiers are expensive to train, equip, and deploy, especially paratroopers. If all the paratroopers are good for is seizing objectives ahead of heavier forces (bridges and airstrips), what is the point of having division level formations as opposed to independent brigades?

Paratroopers can also be used as non-paratroopers, that's to say, 'infantry with slightly shittier IFVs'.

But it's literally not possible to strategically airlift an air-mech division all at once with a real-world-sized air force.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Also, I'd like to point out that most of Operation Market Gardens tactical objectives were achieved. The American divisions took their bridges and held them. The operation failed its strategic objectives as a result of the armored column being delayed by stiff German resistance. As a result, the British division was overrun and the operation was a failure. In my view, Operation Market Garden demonstrates the vulnerability of paratroops to an enemy counterattack and the importance of adequately planning such an operation before hand. The Allies lost close to 20,000 men, most of them Paratroopers.

[The Manticoran Empire]

One division requires three maneuver brigades and 1-3 supporting brigades. Why waste so much funding for a mission that can be done with a single brigade? Soldiers are expensive to train, equip, and deploy, especially paratroopers. If all the paratroopers are good for is seizing objectives ahead of heavier forces (bridges and airstrips), what is the point of having division level formations as opposed to independent brigades?

Paratroopers can also be used as non-paratroopers, that's to say, 'infantry with slightly shittier IFVs'.

But it's literally not possible to strategically airlift an air-mech division all at once with a real-world-sized air force.

Duh. There are the weight considerations. At best, using the words of madmen, I could deploy a brigade of air-mech troops. Maybe. With that in mind, I ask again why waste resources on division level formations when a brigade, either mechanized or not, can accomplish the same goal with fewer logistical hurdles?

[Xia-]

FCS is not an armored brigade. It's not an airborne brigade. It's a total revolutionary transformation into a new existence. Literally. That's not marketing gobbledygook either. It's as literal as I can phrase it.

These things are not relevant to this specific discussion.

You are literally just inventing your own way to say "I'm right," amazing. There is no way to separate "tactical" and "strategic" when discussing organizations of large units. A brigade or a division's makeup is, inherently, a matter of strategic planning! How these simple observations evade you is both confounding and vexing at the same time, because they are really quite simple! If we were talking about something that was actually "tactical" like "how does a platoon reduce a bunker" or something, then you would have a point! But we aren't! We're talking about "how do you put paratroopers and tanks inside airplanes and ship them to other countries". The very basis of strategy!

That's to say, somewhere a page or two up MR has already said he doesn't want to literally copy FCS, but instead only to have a force of mechanized paras.

That's irrelevant. If you strategize in a void you get nothing useful and nothing useful can be said. As shocking as this may be to you, the number of nuts and bolts your rifle takes are highly relevant to strategic planners.

One division requires three maneuver brigades and 1-3 supporting brigades. Why waste so much funding for a mission that can be done with a single brigade?

What does this even mean? I just told you that one division gives you one brigade. Generally one brigade is on ready, one brigade is being refit after coming off readiness, and the other brigade is finishing up their refit for the next rotation. The U.S. Army uses 18-month cycles: 12 months on, 6-months off.

Soldiers are expensive to train, equip, and deploy, especially paratroopers. If all the paratroopers are good for is seizing objectives ahead of heavier forces (bridges and airstrips), what is the point of having division level formations as opposed to independent brigades?

Because a division gives you one brigade. Independent brigades would give you ready battalions. If you organize them to give you the whole brigade, you might as well just put them in a division anyway.

[Allanea]

Paratroopers can also be used as non-paratroopers, that's to say, 'infantry with slightly shittier IFVs'.

But it's literally not possible to strategically airlift an air-mech division all at once with a real-world-sized air force.

Duh. There are the weight considerations. At best, using the words of madmen, I could deploy a brigade of air-mech troops. Maybe. With that in mind, I ask again why waste resources on division level formations when a brigade, either mechanized or not, can accomplish the same goal with fewer logistical hurdles?

And the answer is, again, because you could be using the troops in circumstances where the inability to airlift them together is not relevant (the fact they're paratroopers doesn't mean they're always going to fight as such).

Moreover, splitting the division into three brigades in no way saves money because you'll still be having all the same troops and assets.

[Allanea]

You are literally just inventing your own way to say "I'm right," amazing. There is no way to separate "tactical" and "strategic" when discussing organizations of large units. A brigade or a division's makeup is, inherently, a matter of strategic planning! How these simple observations evade you is both confounding and vexing at the same time, because they are really quite simple!

Then it is absolutely impossible to have this discussion because we do not know anything about his nation's strategic situation.

How many people live in it in-character?

Who are its enemies?

Where do they live?

These questions are more relevant strategically to ME than the strategic situation of Nazi Germany.

[Xia-]

You are literally just inventing your own way to say "I'm right," amazing. There is no way to separate "tactical" and "strategic" when discussing organizations of large units. A brigade or a division's makeup is, inherently, a matter of strategic planning! How these simple observations evade you is both confounding and vexing at the same time, because they are really quite simple!

Then it is absolutely impossible to have this discussion because we do not know anything about Manokan Republic's strategic situation.

That is my point. It's painfully obvious from where I am standing.

How many people live in it in-character?

Who are its enemies?

Where do they live?

These questions are more relevant strategically to MR than the strategic situation of Nazi Germany.

What if I told you Nazi Germany had answers to all those questions? And that its answers to those questions determined that it would consider Crete a tremendous failure, that Hitler was right, and using Crete as an example to hold up "paratroopers are good [for strategic planning]," is, in true fact, the exact opposite of the truth! Crete is the antithesis of the notion that "paratroopers are good" unless you are incapable of seeing past the next week and think the only thing that matters is Wikipedia writing "<nation> victory" in the "outcome" field. In which case, paratroopers are universally great. Except they aren't.

The fact that it's taking you this long to understand what I meant is bemusing to me. I wasn't hiding any of my argument whatsoever.

[Allanea]

Then it is absolutely impossible to have this discussion because we do not know anything about Manokan Republic's strategic situation.

That is my point. It's painfully obvious from where I am standing.

How many people live in it in-character?

Who are its enemies?

Where do they live?

These questions are more relevant strategically to MR than the strategic situation of Nazi Germany.

What if I told you Nazi Germany had answers to all those questions? And that its answers to those questions determined that it would consider Crete a tremendous failure, that Hitler was right, and using Crete as an example to hold up "paratroopers are good [for strategic planning]," is, in true fact, the exact opposite of the truth! Crete is the antithesis of the notion that "paratroopers are good" unless you are incapable of seeing past the next week and think the only thing that matters is Wikipedia writing "<nation> victory" in the "outcome" field. In which case, paratroopers are universally great. Except they aren't.

Nothing is universally great.

Even "having a military" is a bad idea for some nations.

[The Manticoran Empire]

These things are not relevant to this specific discussion.

You are literally just inventing your own way to say "I'm right," amazing. There is no way to separate "tactical" and "strategic" when discussing organizations of large units. A brigade or a division's makeup is, inherently, a matter of strategic planning! How these simple observations evade you is both confounding and vexing at the same time, because they are really quite simple! If we were talking about something that was actually "tactical" like "how does a platoon reduce a bunker" or something, then you would have a point! But we aren't! We're talking about "how do you put paratroopers and tanks inside airplanes and ship them to other countries". The very basis of strategy!

That's to say, somewhere a page or two up MR has already said he doesn't want to literally copy FCS, but instead only to have a force of mechanized paras.

That's irrelevant. If you strategize in a void you get nothing useful and nothing useful can be said. As shocking as this may be to you, the number of nuts and bolts your rifle takes are highly relevant to strategic planners.

One division requires three maneuver brigades and 1-3 supporting brigades. Why waste so much funding for a mission that can be done with a single brigade?

What does this even mean? I just told you that one division gives you one brigade. Generally one brigade is on ready, one brigade is being refit after coming off readiness, and the other brigade is finishing up their refit for the next rotation. The U.S. Army uses 18-month cycles: 12 months on, 6-months off.

Soldiers are expensive to train, equip, and deploy, especially paratroopers. If all the paratroopers are good for is seizing objectives ahead of heavier forces (bridges and airstrips), what is the point of having division level formations as opposed to independent brigades?

Because a division gives you one brigade. Independent brigades would give you ready battalions. If you organize them to give you the whole brigade, you might as well just put them in a division anyway.

Using the rotational readiness statement makes that "One division gives you One brigade" statement make more sense.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Duh. There are the weight considerations. At best, using the words of madmen, I could deploy a brigade of air-mech troops. Maybe. With that in mind, I ask again why waste resources on division level formations when a brigade, either mechanized or not, can accomplish the same goal with fewer logistical hurdles?

And the answer is, again, because you could be using the troops in circumstances where the inability to airlift them together is not relevant (the fact they're paratroopers doesn't mean they're always going to fight as such).

Moreover, splitting the division into three brigades in no way saves money because you'll still be having all the same troops and assets.

Cutting the two or three supporting brigades does save money.

[Xia-]

Nothing is universally great.

w o r d
o
r
d

Even "having a military" is a bad idea for some nations.

It's a bad idea for all nations. Only a few have the luxury of not having one, as much as it pains me to say that.

I guess this is how people who like windjammers or musketry feel.

Using the rotational readiness statement makes that "One division gives you One brigade" statement make more sense.

I had to look up the paper schedule, I thought it was 6 on, 3 off or something.

It's only true for the U.S. Army, of course. You can do it however you want, but triangular divisions make it really easy. Further proof that squares are evil and triangles are supreme.

The trick, though, is to see that no one has ever sat down and said, with a completely straight face, "we need to air-mechanize".

Did this man plan to invade Nebraska with the VDV mechanized regiments?

Because that would be an accurate analogy that fully understands the metaphor, rather than one that only superficially does. In America/the West, "air-mechanization" refers to "air-mechanized expeditionary operations" involving a large and coordinated network of intercontinental, global bases to enforce the best purpose of the UN (spreading liberal democracy through fighter-bombers).

"Just over the border" isn't exactly the same scale, purpose, or difficulty.

It is much easier to mechanize the VDV than to air-mechanize the entire United States Army and deploy a brigade in 96 hours, an armored division in 120 hours, and five armored divisions in 30 days. By air. From +3,000 miles away.

The VDV is more like "a regiment/division every few days from 300 miles". So at least an order of magnitude less difficult TBF.

[The Manticoran Empire]

So what's a good structure for airborne troops? Are the 82nd and 101st good things to use as a basis?

[The Akasha Colony]

Moving on, is the RSG any good to replace heavier formations, like ABCTs? I've been reviewing the powerpoint presentation about it from October 2016 and it is very interesting. My question is could it replace the Heavy Brigade Combat Team or would it serve more as a medium tier combat formation?

No. Because it's basically FCS Round 2: Electric Boogaloo. But slightly heavier this time. Not heavy enough though compared to a formation with real tanks. It's basically a new armored cavalry regiment.

Well neither Nazi Germany nor the British Empire survived World War II (The British Empire was a shadow of its former self and by the 1970s had lost all of its meaningful territories and its remaining territories were on the road to independence). I would like to think I'm a more practical individual but evidently that isn't the case. If Airborne troops aren't much good for more than seize and hold operations, why have entire divisions of airborne troops when they do the job that can be done by a brigade? I guess what I'm really doing is trying to justify the existence of Airborne Divisions. A division is expensive in terms of manpower and material. It seems wasteful to just use it to capture bridges and airports.

And this is why in the whole of the Western Front of WWII, only a relative handful of airborne divisions were ever raised. Out of the many dozens of Allied divisions that fought in Europe, fewer than a half-dozen were airborne. Whole fronts like the Italian front went without paratroops, because they were a carefully-husbanded strategic asset.

And then post-war, their numbers were cut drastically, just like everyone else's. The US held on to them because they were useful for playing world cop, along with the Marines.

Capturing strategic bridgeheads, airports, and seaports is hardly a waste. They are critically important. That's why the Allies were willing to deploy their very expensive airborne divisions to seize them when invading Germany, and why the Germans were willing to use them against the Belgian border forts and capture the Meuse river bridges. Without them and the element of surprise and speed they bring, reducing the fortresses and rebuilding the blown bridges would have taken a long time, giving the French time to reinforce their northern defenses. Crossing the Rhine for the Allies would have been similarly difficult if intact bridges could not be secured. Which is why it was such a big deal when American ground troops just happened to almost accidentally capture the Ludendorff Bridge. Capturing that one bridge altered the entire operational picture and Eisenhower revised his plans.

I did find one site that suggested it with a straight face.

http://www.combatreform.org/armytransformedbytracks.htm: This was what got me interested in the idea of air-mech.

Combatreform is like actually crazy though. It also advocates carrier-battleships and masturbates to the M113 as the solution to everything.

Also, I'd like to point out that most of Operation Market Gardens tactical objectives were achieved. The American divisions took their bridges and held them. The operation failed its strategic objectives as a result of the armored column being delayed by stiff German resistance. As a result, the British division was overrun and the operation was a failure. In my view, Operation Market Garden demonstrates the vulnerability of paratroops to an enemy counterattack and the importance of adequately planning such an operation before hand. The Allies lost close to 20,000 men, most of them Paratroopers.

The point is that the paratroops were not able to hold off against German counterattacks for an extended period. This is not surprising, since they were never expected to do so, they were supposed to be relieved.

But every time paratroops have been expected to operate independently without very quick relief by ground troops in the face of heavy enemy opposition, they have failed. The French troops in Dien Bien Phu got rekt despite the best efforts of the French and the Americans to keep them supplied. Even Khe San probably would have followed had it not been for the breakthrough of US relief columns on the ground. The paras in Market Garden couldn't hold out either, and the paratroopers in Crete sustained serious casualties when they were forced to carry the burden of fighting themselves, unlike their previous deployments where they had been mostly used as a capture force, not a combat force. Had the Allies been able to rush real reinforcements to Crete, the Fallschirmjager would have been completely rekt.

Including some basic earthmoving or logging equipment with which to build entrenchments might be a more interesting and useful alternative to loading them up with a ton of heavy mechanized vehicles.

[Xia-]

So what's a good structure for airborne troops?

What do you want to do? Find something that does similar things to that.

VDV is OK to copy if you can only afford to fly over the border to your neighbor and invade them.
American airborne is OK if you want to fly all over the world and step on terrorists or w/e.

That's the easiest way. The other way is to worldbuild fully.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

1. paradrop near bridge/airfield/etc
2. kill the defenders with your gats and mortars
3. dig a hole with your entrenching tool
4. sit and wait for tanks to come save your ass
5. ????
6. profit