NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[The Manticoran Empire]

So can modern warship do away with them torps ?

Was thinking to put 650mm anti-ship/submarine torpedo for my corvette.

You can potentially do away with torpedoes and replace them with missiles.

[Great Aletia]

Are there any particular books relating to Soviet military history you guys would recommend? I've looked all over Amazon but can't find much. I'm also looking for an encyclopedia of Soviet weapons and armoured vehicles if anyone knows of any good titles.

[Allanea]

Are there any particular books relating to Soviet military history you guys would recommend? I've looked all over Amazon but can't find much. I'm also looking for an encyclopedia of Soviet weapons and armoured vehicles if anyone knows of any good titles.

It depends, frankly, on your desire to read in-depth history stuff.

It is my opinion that it is better to read books that have a simplified account of an event that might hold some errors in them, then to not read anything at all.

[New Visayan Islands]

So can modern warship do away with them torps ?

Was thinking to put 650mm anti-ship/submarine torpedo for my corvette.

Yes. Only the Russians keep heavy torpedo tubes around on surface ships, but these are mostly for use with missiles like RPK-2 or RPK-6. They take up a lot of space for little benefit since a surface ship underway at any decent speed is rather unlikely to detect a hostile submarine at the necessary range to benefit from the improved range of a heavy torpedo over something lighter in the 324-400 mm range. And extended ranges can be handled via helicopter or VL-ASROC which reach stand-off ranges faster than a normal torpedo.

With VL-ASROC and helicopters it's probably possible to do away with even lightweight standalone torpedo launchers but they also don't take up much space so they've stuck around. AFAIK Zumwalt relies entirely on VL-ASROC and doesn't have standalone torpedo tubes, which have never been very effective even with modern guidance packages.

It's likely that the only torpedo tubes that might make appearances going forward in new surface warship designs are hardkill interceptor torpedoes once those systems are mature enough to enter service.

TL;DR: VL-ASROC, SS-N-14 Silex, SS-N-27 Sizzler, and vertical-launched anti-sub variants of the CSS-N-8 Saccade want words.

[Gallia-]

They're redundant. The only reasonable ship-launched ASW weapon is something like Sea Lance. Everything else is too slow, too short ranged, or both, and is suitably filled by helicopters or other aviation.

Are there any particular books relating to Soviet military history you guys would recommend? I've looked all over Amazon but can't find much. I'm also looking for an encyclopedia of Soviet weapons and armoured vehicles if anyone knows of any good titles.

Soviet Air Land Battle Tactics is a ride. Colossus Reborn is a good and fairly succinct overview of the Soviet Army c. 1941-43. Stumbling Colossus is similar, but for the Red Army pre-Barbarossa, and deals more with the whys the RKKA collapsed rather than the hows or what it looked like. Red God of War is probably C. Bellamy's finest work (it is also one of his firsts, and before he began a unfortunate descent into fiction writing and, somehow, becoming a oblique apologist for Stalinism [re: everyone, is "the Indy" known as a Tankie rag in the UK?]) and is basically a look at then-contemporary ('80s) Soviet artillery forces, touching on things like terminology, history, equipment, and the tactics and organizations of the Soviet Army's artillery arm.

A more broad overview might be D. Glantz's When Titans Clashed I suppose, but that might be too broad for what you're asking for.

[Republic of Penguinian Astronautia]

The media portrays the F-35 program as an ongoing debacle, and it seems that it is. Other than combining to many requirements, and the inherent difficulty of large-scale weapons procurement, what made the program so expensive and underachieving? What could have been done better? Do joint programs and large and expensive weapons systems have to be like that?

[Crookfur]

The media portrays the F-35 program as an ongoing debacle, and it seems that it is. Other than combining to many requirements, and the inherent difficulty of large-scale weapons procurement, what made the program so expensive and underachieving? What could have been done better? Do joint programs and large and expensive weapons systems have to be like that?

Pretty much.

Politicians only ever want to hear positive answers so the military and industry provide them during the selling stage. Naturally nobody has perfect foresight so can't know precisely what bumps lie down the road but because they had to over promise to get the journey started everything looks shit when they have to slow down or make detours.

IIRC given its sheer scale, complexity and ground breaking nature the F-35 program has faired pretty damned well compared to the fuck ups that have occurred in just about every major aviation project since ww2.

At least its not flying with bags cement instead of a radar and actually has a functional engine.

[Gallia-]

F-35 is artificially stretched because it's what is keeping L-M alive in lieu of literally any other military contract.

Most of this is invisible, existing as things like foot dragging through contracts and slow work pace, rather than deliberate sabotage or anything of that sort, though.

[The Manticoran Empire]

The media portrays the F-35 program as an ongoing debacle, and it seems that it is. Other than combining to many requirements, and the inherent difficulty of large-scale weapons procurement, what made the program so expensive and underachieving? What could have been done better? Do joint programs and large and expensive weapons systems have to be like that?

The F-35 is a quite unprecedented program, seeking to create three variants of a aircraft that not only meets the very different requirements of the US Air Force, US Marine Corps, and US Navy while also meeting the requirements of the British, Canadian, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Danish, Norwegian, Israel, and Singapore, with interest in further procurement from Belgium, Japan, and South Korea. The requirements of the aircraft across three different variants and at least 10 different military's also add to the complexity.

The F-35A is fairly straight forward: a land based, Fifth Generation fighter intended to take over the roles of the A-10, F-15, and F-16 fighters. Fairly easy to accomplish. But the F-35B and F-35C are more complicated and the desire to have parts similarity between all three variants further increases complexity. The need for it to be a stealth fighter doesn't help, either.

The F-35B has to be a STOVL aircraft to meet USMC requirements while F-35C has to be able to withstand the stresses of CATOBAR operations. The need to also make the stealth coatings and composites on both the F-35B and F-35C able to resist the weathering of the saltwater air at sea is also not easy or cheap to accomplish. Further expense is garnered from the development of various technologies alongside the fighters.

When you are developing the most advanced fighter in human history, it is quite common for just about everything to have a bug of some kind and those are expensive to find and correct. And, just like in most video games, every bug corrected unveils even more bugs.

[Lahnland]

What are some methods a state could employ to foster the creation of a martial and warrior culture? I figured this was related to military matters so I asked here.

[The Manticoran Empire]

What are some methods a state could employ to foster the creation of a martial and warrior culture? I figured this was related to military matters so I asked here.

The education system.

[Lahnland]

What are some methods a state could employ to foster the creation of a martial and warrior culture? I figured this was related to military matters so I asked here.

The education system.

Alright. Anything else or just that?

[Kassaran]

Alright folks, for those of you who know how warfare and organizational units were formed during the later 19th Century and into the early 20th Century, I've currently been RPing in a region where I am East China, industrialized and familiar with western technology of the time but still lagging by about ten-to-thirty years in some areas.

The Japanese have currently attacked me and do so regularly through airship raids in which they firebomb my cities. They have attempted four naval landings, only one of which worked and was centered in Busan. I have a Soviet Russian Expeditionary Army (the guy playing Russia went commie real early in the RP) currently bearing down on me, with their transport into my country via the rail lines having been temporarily halted in Mongolia or such.

With the Russians as my allies, and roughly 2.9 million soldiers mobilized so far of the 152 million working age population I foster, what's the reasonably largest military I can field right now being semi-industrialized, but suffering from minor food shortages on the mainland? Keep in mind, the 2.9 million also includes some 600K that have been mobilized to man the massive junk fleets of green water gunships I'd been using to patrol my coasts before, I've apparently cost Japan a pretty penny in the fighting of the war as they've lost upwards of twenty iron-clad warships thus far, and have had an additional five severely damaged by my calculations, with several hundred thousand Japanese killed at the expense of roughly 90,000 of my own. I've been holing up hard to force the war of attrition I know the Japanese can't afford and when Soviet reinforcements arrive, I plan to counter-attack hard.

What are some good plays I have here that can enable me to do massive amounts of damage to the Japanese islands in a short amount of time, granted the war has only been going on for three months as of this point?

[Austrasien]

What are some methods a state could employ to foster the creation of a martial and warrior culture? I figured this was related to military matters so I asked here.

Be poor.

Win a lot of wars.

[The Manticoran Empire]

The education system.

Alright. Anything else or just that?

Be broke. Win lots of wars. Be Prussia.

[Austrasien]

Basically:

• There are no examples of societies maintaining effective martial cultures effectively in the extended absence of warfare.
• It is generally impossible to regularly fight wars AND regularly lose AND continue to exist as a functional state. So you must win.
• Fighting is hard and generally is not something people will flock too given an alternative. Successful martial cultures overwhelmingly originate from conditions of (relative) deprivation. The acquisition of wealth is usually the beginning of the end of an effective martial culture.

[Gallia-]

TFW the PVA the apex of Mainlander society and culture.

[The Manticoran Empire]

The education system.

Alright. Anything else or just that?

Basically:

• There are no examples of societies maintaining effective martial cultures effectively in the extended absence of warfare.
• It is generally impossible to regularly fight wars AND regularly lose AND continue to exist as a functional state. So you must win.
• Fighting is hard and generally is not something people will flock too given an alternative. Successful martial cultures overwhelmingly originate from conditions of (relative) deprivation. The acquisition of wealth is usually the beginning of the end of an effective martial culture.

Alright. Anything else or just that?

Be broke. Win lots of wars. Be Prussia.

You could always try for just plain old Nationalism as opposed to going full on Warrior Culture. It will be cheaper, allow prosperity, and probably last longer.

Maybe.

[Allanea]

Being a warrior culture is not at all necessary to have an effective military [and of course, an effective military doesn't guarantee winning wars].

[Kassaran]

Being a warrior culture is not at all necessary to have an effective military [and of course, an effective military doesn't guarantee winning wars].

What do you mean, it worked fine for Japan!?

Disregard that it ultimately led to them getting the A-bomb dropped twice on the islands, giving us anime and sushi. There's also the massed firebombing of every Japanese city we could reach, and the overall disregard for human life they eventually ended up fostering as their populations became a bunch of malnourished religious zealots or economically paralyzed peasants in the short order of a four-year long siege on their main islands.

[Special Aromas]

A warrior culture is mostly just an illusion projected outwardly, there's usually no greater buy-in from the average front line soldier nor citizen than there is in any other culture. If you want to create the appearance of one yourself, all you need is propaganda.

[Gallia-]

Being a warrior culture is not at all necessary to have an effective military [and of course, an effective military doesn't guarantee winning wars].

What do you mean, it worked fine for Japan!?

It did, though. Japan won WW2. Completely and utterly. It accomplished all its strategic objectives. Literally all of them.

An effective martial culture is necessary to win wars, obviously. A nation without a good martial culture either develops one during wartime, or dies. The USA had a comparable martial culture to Japan (at least insofar as it was willing to die for the President and Democracy, whereas Japan's religious beliefs were more traditional) combined with a much better industry. Japan and USA being at comparable levels of moral strength meant that it would lose either way if it couldn't force Kantai Kessen, which it never did, because the USN got to the point where it had less than a single carrier combat capable in the Pacific Theater of Operations. There's a reason the USN was, for all practical purposes, annihilated as a fighting force 1941-1943 in the Pacific, and yet it didn't surrender, because it had a lot more ships coming down the line. Had the USA not had an effective martial culture it would have surrendered and retired to the Western Hemisphere indefinitely right after Pearl Harbor. Unlike in WW2 though, this is a plausible outcome for any future war with PRC or Russia, at least if DOD's ideas about the US population are in any sense true.

Naturally, it's not coincidental that the USA has been mostly incapable of beating goat herders/opium dealers/rice farmers in Asia for the past 50 years, despite its massive industrial advantages.

Disregard that it ultimately led to them getting the A-bomb dropped twice on the islands, giving us anime and sushi. There's also the massed firebombing of every Japanese city we could reach, and the overall disregard for human life they eventually ended up fostering as their populations became a bunch of malnourished religious zealots or economically paralyzed peasants in the short order of a four-year long siege on their main islands.

Japan went into WW2 with two major goals:

1) Avoid a war with the United States if possible. Defeat its navy quickly and decisively if war comes.
2) Secure resources on the mainland for ensuring the prosperity of Japan into the future.

It failed to achieve 1 by fiat because the US declared war on it with the oil embargo. It basically achieved the defeating of the USN, since practically the entire fleet was sunk prior to Midway, minus a handful of carriers and some minor ships. So while America started the war, and that doesn't really count, and while Japan severely underestimated the martial resolve of the USA, it also achieved 2 indirectly anyway. Sure, the Soviets pushed it out of Asia and made it surrender, but the Allies never occupied it at all as severely as they did Germany, and the same people who launched Pearl Harbor remain in charge today. The first post-war Prime Minister of Japan was a member of the inner circle of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and these sort of connections haven't changed in the past 70 years, and it will likely never change since the Communist Party's reason for existence has been dead and buried for 26 years. The principal difference between Japan of 1938 and Japan of 2018 is that Japan of 1938 recognized that having a large navy and a imperial presence in Asia were key requisites to its future success (all important, wealthy, powerful states of the time had overseas empires, including the USA). Japan of 2018, OTOH, recognizes that simply by pretending to be democratic (we can call it "pseudodemocracy" or "parademocracy") and giving lip service to "liberal order" it can secure its prosperity through trade with the United States.

Thus, by being nuked (and convincing the Americans that it was the nuking, rather than the Soviet destruction of the Kwangtung Army on the mainland, that led to surrender) and occupied, Japan won completely. America handed everything it could ever want on a silver platter. It suffered, more or less, no real loss. Its recovery was subsidized, its military protection is paid for by the United States, and it doesn't even need to make an effort to maintain expensive things like strategic missile submarines or nuclear weapon programs because the USA is gracious enough to pay for it all with no real, tangible benefits that it's willing to capitalize on (i.e. forward strike bases against the PRC).

Japan's biggest problem at the moment is that the United States might withdraw from Asia entirely, either because of a military defeat courtesy the Chinese, or political apathy making the overseas commitments untenable.

In which case it will need to find resources again and may fall back on the old playbook of seizing Manchuria and Korea. Again.

[The Akasha Colony]

The media portrays the F-35 program as an ongoing debacle, and it seems that it is. Other than combining to many requirements, and the inherent difficulty of large-scale weapons procurement, what made the program so expensive and underachieving?

It isn't under-achieving nor is it surprisingly over-budget. This may be a somewhat tired example by now, but the original six frigates ordered by the US Navy exceeded their original budget by well over 100%.

What could have been done better?

Better management of expectations, maybe. But that's the perpetual conundrum between marketing and actual work. The difference is that unlike a conventional retailer that is selling a finished product and can develop marketing around that finished product, defense contractors are selling ideas. And ideas can run into issues when being turned into reality. They're basically billion-dollar Kickstarter campaigns since no defense contractor has the cash on hand to develop a fifth generation stealth fighter or SSBN with its own funds in the hope of getting reimbursed later.

Do joint programs and large and expensive weapons systems have to be like that?

History says yes.

Complex programs that push the envelope almost inevitably run into unforeseen difficulties. That's the problem with working on the cutting edge. You don't really know for sure exactly how it's going to turn out. And often things turn out to be more difficult than expected. Conversely, some things might turn out to be simpler. Software has been a particular bugbear in a lot of recent defense programs in part because software has evolved so quickly that it is very hard to set targets and benchmarks for it. But there isn't much of a choice when developing complex weapon systems and history also shows that breaking programs up into smaller pieces or spreading out development is a very good way to kill off entire parts of a program. F-22 decided to defer development and implementation of a HMD and AIM-9X certification in order to get a working fighter out the door. The idea is that these features would be added later. 13 years after introduction, the HMD still isn't working and AIM-9X compatibility was only added a few years ago. Turns out once F-22 started entering service, the USAF was more interested in its next project (F-35) than in funding upgrades to a past project.

On top of this, joint projects have always introduced a host of other issues. Just look at how many joint defense programs in Europe have fallen apart. At some point, practically every major NATO power has tried to develop a tank in collaboration with another NATO power and all of them have failed, which is why you have separate tanks developed in the USA, UK, Germany, France, and Italy. France decided it wanted to pull out of the Eurofighter program and Britain pulled out of the NATO frigate program. Europe has a worse problem with this than the US does internally though for various reasons as additional political factors are often in play regarding workshare and such.

On the other hand, the primary benefits of joint programs is still undeniable: pooling of resources and enhanced political clout. The creation of the JSF program essentially meant that F-35 became un-killable. If the USN, USAF, and USMC all started separate fighter programs, it is very likely Congress would have cancelled at least one of those programs, maybe two of them, on the grounds that it could not afford three new fighters. But with a joint program, JSF became bulletproof; there were no alternatives and Congress could not kill it without leaving all three services without aircraft. The USMC got access to a better fighter than it could have otherwise afforded (since it can usually barely afford meals and rifle ammo nevermind fifth generation stealth fighters) and the USAF got the USN and USMC to back it up in Congressional hearings whenever questions were asked about cost overruns. The USN was able to ensure this program didn't go the way of NATF or A-12 or every other new aircraft it has tried to develop in the last 30 years aside from Super Hornet. Everyone got something out of this project, which is better than getting nothing.

[Gallia-]

Segmented band tracks are the worst of both worlds. Change my mind.

Galla's HyperIFV needs a futuristic method of movement that isn't 1) air cushions 2) jet engines 3) anti-gravity. Segmented band tracks seem to solve the problem of putting the track on the tank with none of the serious road benefits because they're linked by a flimsy metal linkage?

Or is the only real disadvantage that band tracks don't work at >40 tons or more. Because I got that one covered (Galla's HyperIFV is actually a piece of shit that Came From The '80s).

e2: Tho KF41 has segmented tracks apparently? Or is that only the smol Lynx?

[Special Aromas]

The media portrays the F-35 program as an ongoing debacle, and it seems that it is. Other than combining to many requirements, and the inherent difficulty of large-scale weapons procurement, what made the program so expensive and underachieving? What could have been done better? Do joint programs and large and expensive weapons systems have to be like that?

It's a simple case of poor contract management and the JSF program not pushing hard enough against the initial contractual demands of LM, which ultimately pushed all financial risk of the project onto the end user. In a better managed arrangement, LM would have been held more accountable for their inability to deliver on their promises for the price originally promised from the beginning. Ultimately, it took until 2010 before the JSF program pushed back against LM with any real intent, with a senate inquiry being the catalyst for change. Although, you could argue that LM has still gotten of extremely lightly as they've not been made to pay close to what their liquidity and responsibility suffests they should.

It will undoubtedly happen again in the US, as the defence lobbyists have succeeded in pushing a "right to profit" narrative for the last 40-odd years. The nature of a defence contract of this scale means that the procurement program will only ever deal with one contractor for a product of which the details haven't been finalised yet. The contractor holds all the power in that arrangement, the only option for the client is to decide to walk away. In some cases, this is a practical option. In case of the JSF, it wasn't.