NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Gallia-]

like one or two per tube

[The Manticoran Empire]

If nuclear shells are to be issued to line artillery what 你numbers should they be in?

Not many. At most one to a battery. We are talking about thermonuclear ordnance on a battlefield. You shouldn't need more than one.

[Communist Xomaniax]

Could you use zip fuels in a ballistic missile?

[Triplebaconation]

A typical nuclear artillery fire plan would be one or two hundred warheads at corps level. They wouldn't be used in penny packages - the goal was to decisively terminate a battle.

[Gallia-]

rly the goal should be to reduce allocations of conventional weapons to the battery and freeing up road throughput for moving other things than shells

a single atomic shell is equivalent to like 50-100 rounds of conventional ammunition ):

[The Manticoran Empire]

Could you use zip fuels in a ballistic missile?

Given the lack of any significant development since the late 1950s, probably not.

[New Vihenia]

Could you use zip fuels in a ballistic missile?

certainly, We have Kerosene which is the same compound as jet fuel in rocket propellant, i would imagine zip fuel may serve similar purpose.

This make me curious however if that propellant actually "storable" inside the missile. The readiness requirement may mandate the missile to be stored in Silo fully fueled and ready to launch at the moments notice, this dictates that the propellant have to be "storable" and remain stable inside the missile.

[Theodosiya]

8 nuke shell per gun? (Even 105mm?)

also, introduce regimental artillery...? (Have US BCT, though with two infantry regiment each of two infantry battalion and a artillery battalion ?)

[United Earthlings]

This is not how fixed costs work at all. You're once again using jargon and misunderstanding it. Fixed costs are not fixed per unit. Quite the opposite.

In a simplified example, some New Vihenia company has a missile production line that costs $100 million per year to maintain. This $100 million is the fixed cost. Let's say each missile requires $1 million in materials and et cetera. This is the variable cost. Note that I'm NOT including labor in the variable cost for reasons that will become clear later.

In its first year of production, I seem to remember six Tomahawk missiles were built. But to keep things simple, let's say our missile plant makes 10 missiles its first year. The total cost is $100m plus 10 x $1m, or $110m. The unit cost is $11m per missile.

If the next year the company produces 50 missiles, the total cost to produce the missiles will be $100m plus 50 x $1m. The total cost is $150m and the unit cost is $3m per missile.

If the next year the company produces 100 missiles, the total cost to produce the missiles will be $100m plus 100 x $1m. The total cost is $200m and the unit cost is $2m per missile.

This is the most basic and fundamental concept in costs. If you don't understand it then everything then everything you've said so far is completely pointless.

This is correct.

Now let's get more complicated and find out where {you} went wrong and how learning curves really work. The highly-skilled labor needed for the majority of missile production is a fixed cost. You're not going out and hiring people from the local temp agency when you needed to cure extra composite casings.

At the beginning of the learning curve, these workers are producing missiles slowly. Your production line isn't being used at full capacity, but you're still spending the same for labor costs and overhead. As the curve progresses, the workers make more missiles for the same amount of fixed costs. When the curve flattens the line is close to being used at optimal capacity.

In other words, the learning curve is almost entirely about reducing fixed costs per unit. Variable costs per unit will remain roughly the same (actually they'll follow a curve of their own, but I doubt you're ready for diminishing marginal productivity yet).
..
Your entire argument is nonsensical.

This is incorrect, because whatever source first utilized by you resulted in you conflating the differences between fixed and variable costs which has led you to develop a misunderstanding. An easy enough reasoning mistake to make, even I’m not immune from those occasional snafus.

This is one of the reasons why you have found my stated opinion to be nonsensical.

Again, the method being used by New Vihenia to calculate unit costs has been proven reasonably accurate by hundreds of programs and is actually used in military cost estimates just as he's using it.

For the last and final time, my issue was never with the method itself NV was using, merely what seem to me to be its use in an incorrect way. That issue has been resolved.

Then put in the time and do the work {research} and do your math yourself. All you need to know is the fuel consumption and thrust of each missile at Mach 2.7. No doubt that's very easy information to find ( ) {that indicates sarcasm}, but if for some reason you can't all you have to do is calculate it from first principles based on performance, fuel weight, and burn time. You'll need to know each missile's drag coefficient at Mach 2.7, but if you can't find that in public sources you can just figure it out with decent CFD software. Shouldn't take more than few days. After all,

one merely needs to establish what the specific relevant variables are first and input the data to make the calculation.

Your Proposal Is Acceptable

[United Earthlings]

Yeah and if its turned out to be as cheap as my previous calculations with simpler formula.. You will obviously starting the denial fest again.

Well i have my decision already. 335 missiles is what required to have the price i need. The variables can then come later if needed.

You probably dont even have a baseline of "level of realism" defined. As for me.. well conceptual is enough. and for conceptual design... there is no real need for extensive cost information nor overly complex equations.

The question is that.. When will you stop playing around and finally accept :

1.You do not understand what are you reading
2.You dodged already simple and clear definition of what actually i am making and resort to obfuscation.

The discussion can only end one way. You stop bullshitting around using those 2 behaviors observed so far. It is honestly very infuriating seeing your denial and obfuscation of actually simple issue.

I believe i can come up with any sources but as long as my missiles still have the ramjet elements, you will have a denial fest all over the place.

The discussion has ended, it ended some posts ago, it’s just neither of us was ready to acknowledge that fact, but I am now. This isn’t a discussion anymore, it’s a game where we’re both playing “I’m Not Always Right, But I’m Never Wrong” and I have no desire to play that game with you, Trip or anyone else here. When I’ve tried to express my opinion simply I’m in denial, when I try to explain a complicated subject I’m obfuscating. Confined between those two boundaries demanding unwavering conformity I see no room for a discussion to take place with me freely able to express my opinion let alone a dissenting opinion, do you? In hindsight, in the beginning I didn’t convey my opinion and/or knowledge as clearly as I could have, but what’s done is done. I have already admitted my error of understanding on the Air-Augmentation topic as such I don’t know what more you want from me.

If you no longer assign any worth to my opinion or knowledge, then your belief or any denial/acceptance I may have is irrelevant. Then the time has come for both of us to part ways, because you’re going to do whatever you deem best, regardless of what I say or do. That part at least to me is clear.

[Triplebaconation]

This is incorrect, because whatever source first utilized by you resulted in you conflating the differences between fixed and variable costs which has led you to develop a misunderstanding. An easy enough reasoning mistake to make, even I’m not immune from those occasional snafus.

This is one of the reasons why you have found my stated opinion to be nonsensical.

It seems nonsensical because you're spouting gibberish like 60/40 fixed/variable cost ratio for a single missile (the first, even!) and "at maximum efficiency at most you gain a 10% savings as applied to the overall variable costs with a more likely average of between 2 and 5% overall savings" when actual real world applications show the same results as New Vihenia's model. Why are you implying the cost of a missile will never drop below an unchanging fixed cost, when the fixed cost per missile is in fact highly fluid?

Direct labor is a variable cost. But if you have a relatively stable salaried or full-time hourly workforce, as opposed to something weird like paying your rocket engineers on commission, the total cost of that labor is fixed, at least in the short term. In this situation, the only way to take full advantage of the learning curve (and yes, you have to take advantage of it, it doesn't just happen) is to increase the yield of the production line, reducing the fixed costs per unit.

Yes, the variable cost of direct labor has technically decreased, but unless you're working in a land of perfect theory where skilled labor comes into being and evaporates precisely as you need it, labor is no different from any other fixed cost in the short term. In the long term of course, all costs are variable.

This is common sense. If the workers in my above $100m per year missile plant can produce 125 missiles in the time it previously took them to make 100 missiles because they're more experienced at making that missile or some other efficiency increase, the unit cost of each missile has decreased while my fixed costs and labor costs, whatever you want to categorize them as, remain the same. Variable costs have increased because you're making more missiles.

Of course, then you may reach a certain threshold and have to expand the production line - your fixed costs just became variable!

New Vihenia would have to perform a regression analysis to figure out all the ratios for his fictional missile production!

The Wright learning curve New Vihenia's formula is based on measures the reduction in time required to perform a task. This time reduction can obviously increase output. In the real world the connection between fixed and variable costs is complex and interdependent, and not entirely clear-cut. Wright himself recognized this in 1936.

New Vihenia's learning curve model, derived from real-world data from unit costs and applied in the real (or fictional) world to estimate unit costs, is reasonably accurate at calculating unit costs instead of showing savings of 2 percent in variable costs. At least for aerospace, a highly-skilled industry with minimal automation. If you're making paperclips you need a different model.

Here's how the learning curve works in real world missile production. After the prototyping and testing stage, missiles typically enter a period of low-rate production. During this period, the production line is streamlined, tooling becomes "hard," workers gain experience, bugs are worked out, and management pursues cost-cutting strategies. This is the time when you're going to see the most dramatic decreases in cost. In full-rate production they'll be purchased in blocks of lots, which will see less dramatic cost improvements. The rule of thumb commonly used for aircraft and complex missiles is the learning curve flattens at 1000 units.

As you're a perfectionist I suggest you use the Bahk and Gort method for determining learning curves: Y_ijt=Φ_jt(K_ijt)^α_j(L_ijt)^β_j(X_ijt)^λ_jν_ijt

Just

establish what the specific relevant variables are first and input the data to make the calculation.

No, the page you triumphantly revealed wasn't the full formula for calculating learning curves. There isn't one. There are multiple ways to calculate learning curves, and indeed multiple theories of learning curves. This has been the problem all along. You're attempting to discuss this is a very narrow theoretical bubble, while New Vihenia is using a formula commonly used in the aerospace industry to estimate unit costs. He doesn't need to know the hourly wage or man-hours per missile or the ratio of variable costs to fixed costs. These aren't in the formula, which has proven relatively accurate even though it implicitly treats variable and fixed costs the same.

Why are they able to be treated the same? Because at the level these analyses work we're much more concerned with recurring costs than the fine distinction between variable and fixed costs. Often the non-recurring costs are ignored as some other contract or operating expense for the company.

Yes, he could do what's known in the aerospace industry as a rate curve analysis, simulating every single cost that goes into the missile and comparing that to production rate, then using that to calibrate the learning curve (he'd quickly discover the large number of skilled personnel necessary to maintain minimal production are indeed a fixed cost), but is it more accurate to make up a thousand numbers than one?

If anyone is actually interested in this incredibly boring stuff (looking at New Vihenia) this is a good source:
https://www.cna.org/CNA_files/PDF/D0006870.A3.pdf

Anyone pedantically concerned with the exact definition of learning curves and how narrowly they're applied should read the first paragraph: "In this chapter, we first discuss statistical methods for estimating "cost progress" or "learning." We use these two terms interchangeably to describe a reduction in unit production cost as more items have been cumulatively produced over the course of a manufacturing program. Some older works defined the term "learning" in a much narrower sense, to encompass only the reduction in manufacturing labor hours as workers learn to perform repetitive tasks faster or with fewer errors. Most modern authors have expanded the concept of "learning" to include redesign of the production process itself, perhaps changing the tasks that workers perform or complementing those workers with improved automation. In addition, as a production program unfolds, manufacturers may find cheaper suppliers, or enter into long-term contracts under which they enjoy quantity discounts from suppliers. We retain the older term "learning" without much concern for whether the source of the unit cost reduction is confined to production workers performing repetitive tasks, or extends to some other economic or technological factors. We also use the term "learning curve" to describe the mathematical relationship between unit production cost and the cumulative quantity produced."

To put a different spin on things, New Vihenia isn't calculating a learning curve in the narrow definition you're using. He's estimating the cost improvement due to the learning curve, which everybody just calls a learning curve. He doesn't need to break down the costs necessary to calculate the learning curve because he's assuming a typical and reasonable value of .8.

This gives him three valid points:
1) You don't understand what he's doing.
2) If he goes through the steps you're demanding and it gives him a value of .799 or .833, you'll probably still find something to complain about and this is an unnecessary degree of (false) precision for him.
3) You don't, and probably can't, do what you're demanding he "compromise" about because of point 1.

For starters, it would help if you fully understood what the learning curve means and what that 80% was in reference too. Learning curves are a separate concept from Economies of scale, but they are also interconnected. What learning curves are not however is some Frankenstein type merger between the two afore mentioned concepts. In addition, 80% is not typical, but an average when applied to Learning curves scales, these LCSs can be in a range of slopes of that 80% depending on many factors with just one being the type of equipment being produced. Furthermore, learning curves specifically apply to labor costs, which is but one factor that will influence the variable costs of the product produced and depending on the variable costs your nation is paying for labor plus what percentage your labor costs are of the total costs will determine the overall savings. Finally, as you applied the Learning Curve is incorrect as it wouldn’t take 335 units for LC to start applying, the LC means, depending on the specific percentage, that direct labor input {IE. the hours needed to finish 1 unit} declines by a certain percentage for each doubling in the cumulative output of a given product. However, like all things in economics there eventually comes a point when no more cost efficiencies can be gained.

This is when his point #1 became valid. First of all, not typical, but an average?

Secondly, how on Earth did you come to the conclusion his application of the learning curve didn't begin until the 335th missile? He was obviously talking about the unit cost decreasing over the course of 335 missiles until it reached $2m - following a learning curve! The unit cost of the 335th missile is obviously different and lower than the LRAC in his projection. ($2m vs $3m)

For what it's worth I estimate an average cost in 1999 dollars of $2.7m to $4m using an entirely different methodology.

Sorry for the all the edits but I worked on this when I had a few seconds throughout the day.

[Theodosiya]

8 nuke shell per gun? (Even 105mm?)

also, introduce regimental artillery...? (Have US BCT, though with two infantry regiment each of two infantry battalion and a artillery battalion ?)

And, add one air defense battalion operating something like Starstreak and Mistral.

Did I just reinvent a RCT, but this time part of BCT?

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Let's build a space tanku for Venus nsmrc. :3

[Austrasien]

Could you use zip fuels in a ballistic missile?

It's possible but it's not particularly useful.

Tactical missiles are generally solid rocket motors.

[Purpelia]

Zip fuel powered segway when?

[Gallia-]

Let's build a space tanku for Venus nsmrc. :3

The one place the Aerogavin cannot conquer.

[North American Environmental Alliance]

MacArthur did nothing wrong and should've nuked Korea.

[Republic of Penguinian Astronautia]

Patton should have started WWIII as soon as WWII ended.

[Husseinarti]

wau v eggy

[Gallia-]

patoon kill by jepu

nyoom smush

him ded dawg

[The Corparation]

Let's build a space tanku for Venus nsmrc. :3

The one place the Aerogavin cannot conquer.

The US Space Force should should buy Astro-Gavins. Astro-Gavin can operate on any planet provided you have a launch vehicle that can send it's battle box shipping container onto the correct trajectory.

[Crysuko]

In a modern army, would it make more sense for a platoon to consist of 3 sections of 10, or 2 sections of 15. Assuming I have my numbers right.

[Spirit of Hope]

In a modern army, would it make more sense for a platoon to consist of 3 sections of 10, or 2 sections of 15. Assuming I have my numbers right.

Either would be possible, though slightly on the smaller side of for a modern platoon.

[Diarcesia]

Thanks for the responses... Just finished the image for the tank.

My first MBT writeup. Thoughts?

snip

Added more info in the page. The turret location is kept, with all the (dis)advantages it comes with.

My first MBT writeup. Thoughts?

AC well covered the major issues, so here's a minor one I thought stood out for humorous sake.

A tank fitted with sonar, even for me that's a new one.

I know jungles can be dense, but I didn't think one could make a tank function in an underwater jungle.

GI JOE and COBRA have really step up their brinkmanship.

Teslas use sonar for their autopilot.

snip

Good points.
Applique armor: the stated weight in the spec box includes the stock armor package that comes off the factory. I'm not well versed with the details of applique, so I used power-to-weight as a basis to give a maximum recommended applique wieght.

If the mission is primarily targeted against personnel, the main armament can be changed in advance to accommodate the needed ammunition.

Removed. Opted instead for a shorter turret length to minimize overhang from the hull, so it gets stuck less on trees.

To cope with the confined spaces of the battlefield, the main gun's reload time is designed to be relatively quick.

Gave a hard number.

Complementing its mobility, 360-degree imaging sensors such as seismic, thermal, ambient sound, infrared, and image recognition are fitted.

Raised the price if this package is installed. The $4 million variant is an export specification, so it's removed.

Its transmission and suspension are largely carried over and modernized from the Scorpion, helping drive down the government's total cost of upgrading part of its main battle tank fleet.

Rephrased so it says that they're an evolution of a proven design. Parts are new.

2. An armor material containing inward-facing micro-bolts

Did a little reading and found that rivets are bad. So they're changed to micro-welds.

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

engine in front I guess?