Infantry Discussion Thread part 11: Gallas Razor edition.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Back again with another question, one i've done a bit of research for but found nothing that really answers my questions. Mostly trying to sound realistic here.

How are smaller units like Brigades and Battalions typically numbered?

For example, if i have an army of 1,000,000 and I decide my battalions are on average 5000 soldiers strong. Am i looking like an idiot trying to have a "170th Brigade" or a "405st Battalion"

What i've been doing, trying to not sound ridiculous, is anything smaller than a brigade the numbers start over. For example, A soldier from Countesia might be designated as being from "67th Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 1st Company, 1st Platoon" Is this a good way to go about it, or am i overcomplicating things?

Since others have answered your main questions very well, I will instead focus on the sizing. Generally a Battalion will be between 300 and 1,000 men, typically around the 800-man mark. As a rule of thumb, a squad is about 9-12 men, a platoon 30-45 men, a company 100-200 men, a battalion 500-800 men, and a brigade between 3,000 and 5,000 men.

[Triplebaconation]

I have come up with the basic permutation for an Amidian rifle platoon but have no real idea what to do for special weapons in a squad that replaces LMGs with just a lot I IARs with bigger magazines, also not a 100% on keeping around a platoon guide but I like having spare leaders to reduce the load on command and control.

Platoon Troop (1 Officer and 5 enlisted)
Platoon Commander (OF-1) IAR, GL
Platoon Sergeant (OR-5) IAR, GL
Platoon Guide (OR-4) IAR, GL
Radioman (OR-1) IAR
Mortarman (OR-3) IAR
Assistant Mortarman(OR-1) IAR
Combat Medic (OR-1) IAR**
Forward Observer (OR-1) IAR**
Forward Observer Radioman (OR-1) IAR**

Rifle squad (10 Enlisted)
Squad Leader (OR-4) IAR, GL
Deputy Squad Leader (OR-3) IAR, GL
Rifleman (OR-1) IAR, Disposable Rockets
Rifleman (OR-1) IAR, Disposable Rockets
Rifleman (OR-1) IAR, Disposable Rockets
Rifleman (OR-1) IAR, Disposable Rockets
Rifleman (OR-1) IAR, Disposable Rockets
Rifleman (OR-1) IAR, Disposable Rockets
Rifleman (OR-1) IAR, Disposable Rockets
Rifleman (OR-1) IAR, Disposable Rockets

In theory, the Lynerian light infantry platoon is 29 men in three squads of eight led by corporals plus a platoon HQ consisting of a "C Group" with the platoon commander lieutenant and his signaler/bodyguard and an "A Group" with the platoon sergeant and two assistants.

Each squad has two fireteams of four men. The first fireteam will generally have three riflemen, at least one with a grenade launcher, and a marksman. The second has three riflemen, again with at least one grenade launcher, and a GPMG gunner.

The C group is responsible for the tactical leadership of the platoon and communicating with higher echelons. The A group coordinates the rear of the platoon and is responsible for resupply and casualty evacuation. One of the assistants typically carries a GPMG.

In practice the platoon is much more amorphous. Not only is it often reinforced (sometimes quite heavily) by specialists from the battalion weapons company or brigade elements, the operational building block tends to be the pair. Squads may operate as an assault group of six and gun group of two with the GPMG, the platoon commander may trade his signaller to the sergeant for a soldier with specialist training, etc, etc. Platoon leadership is encouraged to be flexible with organization.

Additionally, each fireteam is trained in a secondary role (antitank, antiair, or pioneer) to augment the weapons company units when necessary or useful. Equipment for these secondary roles is held in company or battalion stores until needed.

[Countesia]

Back again with another question, one i've done a bit of research for but found nothing that really answers my questions. Mostly trying to sound realistic here.

How are smaller units like Brigades and Battalions typically numbered?

For example, if i have an army of 1,000,000 and I decide my battalions are on average 5000 soldiers strong. Am i looking like an idiot trying to have a "170th Brigade" or a "405st Battalion"

What i've been doing, trying to not sound ridiculous, is anything smaller than a brigade the numbers start over. For example, A soldier from Countesia might be designated as being from "67th Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 1st Company, 1st Platoon" Is this a good way to go about it, or am i overcomplicating things?

Since others have answered your main questions very well, I will instead focus on the sizing. Generally a Battalion will be between 300 and 1,000 men, typically around the 800-man mark. As a rule of thumb, a squad is about 9-12 men, a platoon 30-45 men, a company 100-200 men, a battalion 500-800 men, and a brigade between 3,000 and 5,000 men.

Yeah, i realised my error. I meant brigade instead of battalion.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Since others have answered your main questions very well, I will instead focus on the sizing. Generally a Battalion will be between 300 and 1,000 men, typically around the 800-man mark. As a rule of thumb, a squad is about 9-12 men, a platoon 30-45 men, a company 100-200 men, a battalion 500-800 men, and a brigade between 3,000 and 5,000 men.

Yeah, i realised my error. I meant brigade instead of battalion.

I'll be honest. As a fan of the Clone Wars TV show, I love the idea of non-sequential unit designations. It gives me an excuse to form the 212th and 501st in my own nation's canon.

[Central Prestonia]

The way I've always done things is sequential but adding another ordinal at second and maybe third level depending on whether I'm organizing my orbat with divisions or brigades as the primary maneuver unit, e.g:

1st division
-11th brigade
--111th battalion

or

1st brigade
-11th battalion
--A Company

[Immoren]

[Geographic feature] Army
[Roman numeral] corps
[corps number*4-x**]th division
[division number*3-x**]th div manouvre unit
[division number]th div support unit
battalions are numbered with [Latin numberal]/[Brigade number]-x**
companies are numbered again with Arabic ordinal numbers counted first to last
Platoons are use marked with phonetic alphabet
Squads are like same with companies
Teamsadsafarfewefwmwe

*** X=0, 1, 2 etc, depending of its placement in subunits. So for example II corps would've 8th, 7th and 6th divisions

So
Army of Isthmus, II corps, 8th division, 24th brigade, I/24th battalion, 2nd company, Celsius platoon, afasgfrweger

[Cisairse]

How realistic would it be to comprise a defense force out of individually managed but mutually friendly paramilitary organizations?

[Central Prestonia]

How realistic would it be to comprise a defense force out of individually managed but mutually friendly paramilitary organizations?

Could be done, Bosnia’s military comes from rival paramilitaries in the wars (ABiH and Army of Republika Srpska, ABiH itself being a merger of Croat and Bosnian militias). Theoretically easier if the militias are already making common (or common enough) cause. Your downside is that militias as an institution tend to be more loyal to their leadership than to anything external, and of course with different independent groups commonality of supply will be a problem. But it could be, and has been, done all over the world in conflict zones and transitional states.

[The Soylent Green Party]

Hi all, Dam this thread is getting sad. I first joined NationStates because I kept running into these military threads while looking up military info on the web. I have never posted here because I am a horrible speller, slooow typist, and I hate getting into arguments over the internet. But now I have to make a post just so I can find it

[Husseinarti]

Hi all, Dam this thread is getting sad. I first joined NationStates because I kept running into these military threads while looking up military info on the web. I have never posted here because I am a horrible speller, slooow typist, and I hate getting into arguments over the internet. But now I have to make a post just so I can find it

Yeah allot of us have stopped posting as much as we used to because we have issues with moderation being heavy-handed with us and the forums in general. They also have come down to warn or ban people for a period of time because of the use of actual mechanical terms because they perceived it as some kind of insult or something with no real apology or attempt to talk with us about it. As well we used a word which became a term of endearment between us in these threads for people who put allot of effort and work into something and they also put the lid on it because people who don't post here get offended.

We've mostly moved to Discord and post there now. A few still post here but they don't post nearly as much as they used to, me included.

[Puzikas]

yeah RIP compendium of knowings




Theres incredibly deep lore for this gun. I have a 3000 word story on just this alone but im too developmentally delayed to post it.

[Gallia-]

i should finish drawing all the stupid m16s

[Puzikas]

gib ax M16

[Sevvania]

yeah RIP compendium of knowings


(Image)

Theres incredibly deep lore for this gun. I have a 3000 word story on just this alone but im too developmentally delayed to post it.

But you should, and then you should post your other weapons in this scale so that I can smash them together into a Frankengun that in turn spawns its own story

[Gallia-]

Copy and paste parts of their lore too.

[Puzikas]

yeah RIP compendium of knowings


(Image)

Theres incredibly deep lore for this gun. I have a 3000 word story on just this alone but im too developmentally delayed to post it.

But you should, and then you should post your other weapons in this scale so that I can smash them together into a Frankengun that in turn spawns its own story

This scale was required because the original was so small that I found out my traditional scale of "idk will it fit into a 1000x1000 box on GIMP" was so small that the Opist. M/73 was 70% the size.

Now the Opist m/73 is like 36cm long ( ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ) but it's not OTs-14-01 long.

So instead of doing what a sane person would do and like just use an image scaler and trim it manually I just redrew it.

I'm not an artist so much as I'm an insane person. No one's even seen the full copy of the literal hyperburst revolver!

Copy and paste parts of their lore too.

I decided to see how much lore.i wrote for my stupid sub par art and it turns out it's about 25,000 words.

My review for the The Bakery wasn't even that long.

[Triplebaconation]

yeah RIP compendium of knowings


(Image)

Theres incredibly deep lore for this gun. I have a 3000 word story on just this alone but im too developmentally delayed to post it.

But you should, and then you should post your other weapons in this scale so that I can smash them together into a Frankengun that in turn spawns its own story

[Central Prestonia]

Puz if you ever see this (or anyone else) what do we know about the AK-12 and how it compares to the -74 and western service rifles? And how widespread is its issue currently?

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

What is the most worthless, inappropriate for its purpose tank machine gun?

[Gallia-]

Not having one.

[Parcia]

What is the most worthless, inappropriate for its purpose tank machine gun?

Using 12.7x99 HEI to turn up and till a field to be seeded by another mg using single seeds attached to the bullets of said MG.

[Puzikas]

yeah RIP compendium of knowings


(Image)

Theres incredibly deep lore for this gun. I have a 3000 word story on just this alone but im too developmentally delayed to post it.

Hey remember that 3000 word lore here's half of it

The history of the Kalashnikov rifle is not one that needs to be introduced to any self respecting enthusiast of history or firearms. Mikhail Kalashnikovs Avtomat reigns supreme at the forefront of firearms as the epitome of everything an infantry rifle should be; it is as rugged as it is simple, it has a longevity unlike any of its peers, and it is a system so without peer that it has been used in every theater of war, in every environment, across the world, since the late 1950s. It's an object as close to religious iconography as any weapon has ever been.

It is no surprise, then, that the Soviet Military elected to send the Avtomat to be with her men as the traveled to within the earth.

This rifle was recovered from Gat' 771, Omsk Subterranean Autonomous Oblast, 1,334 meters below Omsk on January 31st of 2047. It is an Avtomat Kalashnikova Modernizírovannyj manufactured by the Izhevsk Arms Plant in 1966, and records indicate it was delivered to the 71st Guards Motor Rifle the same year. Though it wears little of its original furniture or finish, has little in the way of its original features, it is, nonetheless, a rifle from beyond time.


The discovery beneath Kola in 1967 dramatically drove the Soviet Unions leadership to the brink of psychological collapse. The Institute of Saint Petersburg so dramatically drove the 7th convocation session of the Supreme Soviet to the edge of paranoia behind their closed door sessions that, for some time, the seat of power of the Soviet Union was vacant. A massive, gangling bureaucracy shambling aimlessly, like a monster so large that, even with its head cut off, it continues to move before it's legs get the signal that it is dead. NATO, too, was driven to madnesses end as they watched Soviet forces withdraw closer to the soviet border, as Polish, Belarusian, East German, Bulgarian, and Romanian units stood up and took their place. Soviet bombers would take off from airfields in East Germany and Poland, and make mad dashes to the Soviet lands, vanishing from NATO radar screens. NATO battle fleets would watch Soviet SSBNs surface and make way back to Soviet shores. In one instance, a Soviet sniper team in Vietnam approached an American LRRP patrol and, in broken English, would request to be taken prisoner and brought to America immediately. A MiG-23 broke NATO airspace and set down in a corn field, the pilot rambling about conspiracy and horrors beyond NATOs comprehension. The gates to the East German border were closed, enforced by Machine Gun fire and pre-sighted mortar fire, a promise of demise in the form of a smoke shell for every citizen that dared approach the border. Soviet special forces in East Germany, a nuisance to NATO observers in the past, went dark all at once.

NATO for it's part feared the worst. Contact with Soviet leadership was nil, and emissaries and ambassadors had no answers. Even they could not get through to Moscow. The clock moved thirty seconds to Midnight, as every radar contact emerging from Soviet airspace netted American interceptors to scream into the sky, racing to keep the clock from striking midnight.

For all of its technological ability, NATO was powerless to find anything. Entire divisions worth of tanks and APCs sat motionless in depots and camps. Soviet bombers sat quietly in their hangers, and Soviet fleets sat still at anchor. Factories were moving at triple time. Soviet roads were clear of civilian traffic, as KAMAZ and GAZ trucks moved literal mountains of material and resources. Soviet rail lines were rapidly expanding as locomotives miles in length snaked and twisted through the Soviet lands, moving an incalculable amount of unknown products to and fro through the motherland. The Veins and Arteries of the Soviet Heart were working double time, a societal tachycardia.

After four months of silence, a Soviet defector from East Germany slipped in the night through the gauntlet. Running to an British parachutes regiment post, he fell to his knees and sobbed, kissing the soil before him. Men is suits, driving Cadillacs, quickly ferried the man away to parts unknown. According to Lt. Daniel "Danno" Craigwell, 2 Coy, 3 Para., "They walked not as if they were under orders. They moved as if they were the orders"

Rumors abound throughout the local garrisons. It was a plague. It was an uprising. It was a second Soviet revolution, the Whites were overthrowing the Commies, the Sparticists were fighting the whites, someone read Posadas and actually took it to heart, it didn't matter. There was something going on in the Soviet Union. Something at the highest level of Government, and no one was the wiser.

Three weeks after the defector and the world waited with bated breath. The United States affirmed they had taken into "Protective custody" a member of the Soviet intelligence community, but denied all else.

The clock moved closer to Midnight on July 3rd 1967 when satellite images confirmed the Soviet Union has struck against China, but in an inordinate way. Hundreds of Soviet T-62 and T-64 tanks, tens of thousands of men and hundreds of aircraft had struck into inner Mongolia. But..not far. They had all stopped, seized in place. The Chinese for their part had not fought back, it seemed. The soviets drove hard to the city of Hulunbuir, and seemed to stop there. A massive engineering operation was being undertaken, but the status of this project was unknown. Massive pieces of drilling and excavation equipment were being moved onto sight, but that is as far as the west could see. The Chinese looking glass was closed, and the world was forced to watch and wait in silence.

NATO armies would all breathe a breath of relief on July 12th 1967 when the US Signal Corps received an uncoded message from the Soviet Union.

"Moscow Calling. Prepare for a message from the Supreme Soviet."

The message was grim. Relayed along Soviet frequencies that NATO commonly monitored, Dmitry Polyansky spoke in a calm, monotonous, measured tone. He spoke of a greater enemy from within the earth, one that promised to bridge the divide between ideology, nullify religious tensions, and bring humanity to the brink. He spoke of knowledge that would bring madness to those who processed it, of conspiracy, of terror. He concluded his 17 minute statement with a promise to meet with NATO members, and a call for unity and measured response.

American embassies, cut off from contact to the west for months, immediately re-established contact. Soviet intelligence officers were speaking to American officers in ernest. The true magnitude of their discovery was slowly brought into focus.

The first troops to be deployed to the Soviet Containment Zone at Gorka-9 were members of the Portuguese 34th Light Infantry. Armed with Armalight AR-10s, they joined the 110th Soviet Guards Motor Rifle Regiment in the first NATO-WarPact joint expedition below the crust. Their descent to 18,300 feet below the surface of the earth was described by Captain Ronaldo "Gorda" Pachek:

"The darkness is beyond description. It is a place that has never known light, there is no description. The darkness swallows all light, every vain attempt to penetrate it ends in failure. The caverns twist and turn endlessly, an infinite network beyond the comprehension of the mind. It's utter insanity, and knowing what lurks within that blackness drives one beyond the reaches of the logical mind."

By the time of the American entry under the crust, the Portuguese had suffered a 7% casualty rate-all to suicide.

The first American expedition to The Wield, as American intelligence officers had begun to call it, was small. 46 members of the US MAC-V-SOG, recruited from VietNam, all Tunnel Rats, joined a small detachment of Soviet Navy PDSS combat divers. Code named "Earthworm", their role was to introduce the Americans to the climate and circumstances at -18300 feet.

Slipping through cracks in the earth, the world would swallow them whole. No members of EarthWorm were ever recovered; the only surviving proof of EarthWorm is a single picture taken before the expedition, and, incredibly ominously, a Makarov PM pistol issued to Soviet Capitan Lev Tsoi, with a single round remaining in the magazine.

The joint NATO and WarPact efforts to move with the cavernous earth have persisted since Earthworm. Deep tomes of Knowledge have been written about the ancient underworlds, the beings that lurk there, and the fights that happen there. The wield, however, is a dark place. A place that knows no light, knows no warmth except that of the molten earth that winds through it's stone arteries. It swallows untold thousands a year, lost forever to time, to darkness, and to the earth. The story of this rifle, an extremely early OTs-14-01, is not known. Due to the nature of the underworld, all those who never return from their sorties are forever listed as missing in action. The owner of this rifle is somewhere among the 81,436 missing men of the Soviet Union, and one of the 110 missing of Spetznagruppa Snyeed, the premier Soviet confined space specialists.

Not that anyone even posts here anymore LMAO

[Dtn]

horror not seen since friendship with benefits

[Sevvania]

Hey remember that 3000 word lore here's half of it

It is I

I am the Earthworm

---

Also Groza is good and one day I will come up with another gun to post.

[Gallia-]

Earthworm Яша