NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[The New California Republic]

WTF....
Ukrainians say the detector has a working distance of 14.5km.I'm sure it doesn't belong in this position.

(Image)

https://www.ecamsecure.com/blog/thermal ... rformance/

It is a SACLOS missile. The sight tracks the missile in flight to generate guidance commands. The new optics ball is in the same place as the old sight. Where else would it be?

I think maybe the comment was referring to how out of place it looks on the vehicle, rather than advocating siting it somewhere else. However as I said earlier if it was painted the same olive green colour then it wouldn't look out of place, as I think it is the colour alone that is having that effect.

[Barfleur]

What kind of actions might an intelligence officer receive a Brevet Major for?

If all their work is done in HQ, probably not much. They may get promoted if they do a good job, but most nations don't do brevets anymore, and certainly not if there isn't an immediate need to fill a billet.

[United States of PA]

Given that the smallest aircraft of the period to carry radar were twin engine bombers / heavy fighters that are an order of magnitude larger than anything ever carried on warships I am not sure you could even if you wanted to.

F6F Hellcat's also received a very reasonably sized radar array for night fighting starting in 1943

[Gallia-]

https://www.ecamsecure.com/blog/thermal ... rformance/

It is a SACLOS missile. The sight tracks the missile in flight to generate guidance commands. The new optics ball is in the same place as the old sight. Where else would it be?

I think maybe the comment was referring to how out of place it looks on the vehicle, rather than advocating siting it somewhere else. However as I said earlier if it was painted the same olive green colour then it wouldn't look out of place, as I think it is the colour alone that is having that effect.

Seems more like he's saying that because you rarely see over 1.45 kilometers in Europe at ground level, being able to see 14.5 kilometers is a bit silly for a ground based vehicle.

Thus, presumably, the optical ball would be elevated on a mast or something.

[The New California Republic]

I think maybe the comment was referring to how out of place it looks on the vehicle, rather than advocating siting it somewhere else. However as I said earlier if it was painted the same olive green colour then it wouldn't look out of place, as I think it is the colour alone that is having that effect.

Seems more like he's saying that because you rarely see over 1.45 kilometers in Europe at ground level, being able to see 14.5 kilometers is a bit silly for a ground based vehicle.

Thus, presumably, the optical ball would be elevated on a mast or something.

Dunno, we'll need to get him to clarify what he meant.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

What kind of actions might an intelligence officer receive a Brevet Major for?

If all their work is done in HQ, probably not much. They may get promoted if they do a good job, but most nations don't do brevets anymore, and certainly not if there isn't an immediate need to fill a billet.

What if most of their work is HUMINT?

[Crookfur]

What kind of actions might an intelligence officer receive a Brevet Major for?

Depends on what you mean by "intelligence officer".

If you mean someone who works in a G2/S2 section of an hq, then not a lot.

If you mean an actual field "spook" then there ate more options: maybe the head of station suffers a case of the dead and Mr. Super spy has to fill in as head of station in trying/dangerous conditions for an extended period of time until they can be extracted or relieved. Really the limit is your imagination and how much ian Fleming and Tom clancy you have read.

[New Vihenia]

I'm getting this stuff from USF 75, RADEIGHT, and contemporary literature instead of just talking out of my ass. Some good starting points for NV.

Anyway inaccuracy is obviously relative. Long-range naval gunnery wasn't very accurate. Aerial spotting was the most accurate way of correcting salvos past 20,000 yards or so.

So it's something like this ?



and yeah, regarding the extreme distance i am thinking of something like 40-50 Km.

[Triplebaconation]

Depends on the guns I guess. Yamato was able to hit (mine, really) White Plains at 32 km with aerial spotting.

This probably wasn't strictly over the horizon but there's not much practical difference at that range.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

Can purely ceremonial Brevets be a thing?
E.G. a Brevet Major who still has the role of a Captain (second-in command in a company)

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Can purely ceremonial Brevets be a thing?
E.G. a Brevet Major who still has the role of a Captain (second-in command in a company)

How long is a piece of string?

[The New California Republic]

I'm getting this stuff from USF 75, RADEIGHT, and contemporary literature instead of just talking out of my ass. Some good starting points for NV.

Anyway inaccuracy is obviously relative. Long-range naval gunnery wasn't very accurate. Aerial spotting was the most accurate way of correcting salvos past 20,000 yards or so.

So it's something like this ?



and yeah, regarding the extreme distance i am thinking of something like 40-50 Km.

Even with an aircraft spotting for corrections, at such extreme ranges the shells of a longer-ranged Iowa-type battleship you asked about would be extremely inaccurate regardless of any corrections that could be offered. In fact, the shell deviations inherently coming from the performance of the gun and other factors are so wide that any corrections offered would be meaningless. There are no firing tables for such extreme ranges, but looking at the data for the maximum range on the following table (39,600 yards) should give you a really good idea of how difficult it'd be to hit an OTH moving ship:

It'd be far better to close the range if possible, as firing at a moving OTH target is clearly just wasting shells.

[Purpelia]

Assuming a yard is roughly a meter aren't those deviations like... the size of warships?

[The New California Republic]

Assuming a yard is roughly a meter aren't those deviations like... the size of warships?

The baseline drift at 39,600 yards is 1,756.8 yards, so at 45km, which is about the range that he wants to engage at with the slightly extended range weapon he has in mind, which is about 50,000 yards, the drift will be ~3,000+ yards roughly on the basis of the increase of those figures. Coupling to that the additional deviations on the basis of other factors and you may as well say a prayer before you fire the salvo, as only the hand of God will put the shells anywhere near an OTH moving target.

[Purpelia]

Assuming a yard is roughly a meter aren't those deviations like... the size of warships?

The baseline drift at 39,600 yards is 1,756.8 yards, so at 45km, which is about the range that he wants to engage at with the slightly extended range weapon he has in mind, which is about 50,000 yards, the drift will be ~3,000+ yards roughly on the basis of the increase of those figures. Coupling to that the additional deviations on the basis of other factors and you may as well say a prayer before you fire the salvo, as only the hand of God will put the shells anywhere near an OTH moving target.

I am just endlessly amused by the notion of expressing your CEP in units of battleship.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

How to make your soldiers tolerate homosexuals?

(Sharifistan has high levels of homophobia, homosexuals used to be banned from the forces, most of Sharifistan's Muftis and Bishops are against the practice and Jamaican dancehall music is popular in Sharifistan.

[The New California Republic]

How to make your soldiers tolerate homosexuals?

...

...the juxtaposition of a conversation about naval artillery accuracy with this type of question just makes my eyes bleed.

But alright, it is more a society-wide shift that is necessary. If the society in which the military is situated has intolerant attitudes then it will be an uphill battle to make the soldiers themselves tolerant.

[Austrasien]

Assuming a yard is roughly a meter aren't those deviations like... the size of warships?

The baseline drift at 39,600 yards is 1,756.8 yards, so at 45km, which is about the range that he wants to engage at with the slightly extended range weapon he has in mind, which is about 50,000 yards, the drift will be ~3,000+ yards roughly on the basis of the increase of those figures. Coupling to that the additional deviations on the basis of other factors and you may as well say a prayer before you fire the salvo, as only the hand of God will put the shells anywhere near an OTH moving target.

There is no expectation that the first salvo will hit. Firing and observing the fall of shot relative to the target is a very direct (and very accurate) way to determine errors in gun laying.

The process shown in Sketches 3 and 4 is called “bracketing.” Two shots are fired at a difference of, say, 800 yards. Observation shows the first to be too short, the second to be too far. The difference is bisected by the third shot. This places the target in one of the halves of the bracket. This half is bisected by the fourth shot,97 placing the target in a quarter. If an eighth of the bracket is less than the danger space, then the fifth shot must hit.

A succession of bracketed salvos will be able to correct for even massive errors in range eventually. By bisecting each successive bracket the miss distance decreases exponentially. Starting with ten thousand meters between the brackets the 9th shot will be on target (less than 50 meters of range uncertainty). Or to put it stupidly, if the outer bracket was at fifty kilometers and the inner at zero meters the range could be found by the 11th shot provided only the observer consistently observes if each subsequent bisecting shot is short or long.

[The New California Republic]

The baseline drift at 39,600 yards is 1,756.8 yards, so at 45km, which is about the range that he wants to engage at with the slightly extended range weapon he has in mind, which is about 50,000 yards, the drift will be ~3,000+ yards roughly on the basis of the increase of those figures. Coupling to that the additional deviations on the basis of other factors and you may as well say a prayer before you fire the salvo, as only the hand of God will put the shells anywhere near an OTH moving target.

There is no expectation that the first salvo will hit. Firing and observing the fall of shot relative to the target is a very direct (and very accurate) way to determine errors in gun laying.

The process shown in Sketches 3 and 4 is called “bracketing.” Two shots are fired at a difference of, say, 800 yards. Observation shows the first to be too short, the second to be too far. The difference is bisected by the third shot. This places the target in one of the halves of the bracket. This half is bisected by the fourth shot,97 placing the target in a quarter. If an eighth of the bracket is less than the danger space, then the fifth shot must hit.

A succession of bracketed salvos will be able to correct for even massive errors in range eventually. By bisecting each successive bracket the miss distance decreases exponentially. Starting with ten thousand meters between the brackets the 9th shot will be on target (less than 50 meters of range uncertainty). Or to put it stupidly, if the outer bracket was at fifty kilometers and the inner at zero meters the range could be found by the 11th shot provided only the observer consistently observes if each subsequent bisecting shot is short or long.

...not applicable to this extreme case that we are discussing. Again, if the baseline drift is in the magnitude of ~3,000+ yards, as it is in this case, trying to offer corrections by bracketing is meaningless.

[Austrasien]

1 & 2: 6000
3: 3000
4: 1500
5: 750
6: 375
7: 187.5
8: 93.75
9: 46.975 <- Bingo

Hardly.

[The New California Republic]

1 & 2: 6000
3: 3000
4: 1500
5: 750
6: 375
7: 187.5
8: 93.75
9: 46.975 <- Bingo

Hardly.

No. Keep in mind the extremely long flight times of the shells, likely to be about 2 minutes at the kinds of ranges we are talking about, and this target is OTH and likely moving at speeds of ~25 knots, probably manoeuvring too in light of incoming shells. At such speeds the ship will be ~0.85 nautical miles from where it was when the shells were fired. Coupled with the 1.5 nautical mile baseline random drift of the shells at that range makes it even worse. Sorry, but considering those things I don't buy that bracketing will make the shells accurate under actual combat conditions at the ranges we are talking about. After all, we are not just talking about range, but azimuth too.

[Austrasien]

No. Keep in mind the extremely long flight times of the shells, likely to be about 2 minutes at the kinds of ranges we are talking about, and this target is OTH and likely moving at speeds of ~25 knots, probably manoeuvring too in light of incoming shells. At such speeds the ship will be ~0.85 nautical miles from where it was when the shells were fired. Sorry, I don't buy that bracketing will make the shells accurate under actual combat conditions at the ranges we are talking about.

You are jumping back and forth between different issues. It is indeed possible to obtain an accurate range and bearing on a very distant target by observing the fall of the shot even with very simple instruments. If the target is maneuvering evasively, yes you are correct, it is very unlikely a decent hit probability will be achieved. But this is a problem inherent with using guns and it is relevant even at much, much shorter ranges.

[The New California Republic]

No. Keep in mind the extremely long flight times of the shells, likely to be about 2 minutes at the kinds of ranges we are talking about, and this target is OTH and likely moving at speeds of ~25 knots, probably manoeuvring too in light of incoming shells. At such speeds the ship will be ~0.85 nautical miles from where it was when the shells were fired. Sorry, I don't buy that bracketing will make the shells accurate under actual combat conditions at the ranges we are talking about.

You are jumping back and forth between different issues.

Not really. I've been treating it as part and parcel of the same problem the entire time.

If the target is maneuvering evasively, yes you are correct, it is very unlikely a decent hit probability will be achieved.

Yes which is exactly the point I've been trying to get across, that for realism purposes one would expect the target to be taking such action, and coupled with everything else makes a successful engagement exceedingly unlikely.

But this is a problem inherent with using guns and it is relevant even at much, much shorter ranges.

But the problem is multiplied at the extreme ranges that we are talking about, hence why I said earlier that it'd be far better to close the range rather than waste large numbers of shells at attempting a ~45km OTH range spotter aircraft-assisted engagement which was specified by the person who originally raised the query.

[Radimostan]

Can purely ceremonial Brevets be a thing?
E.G. a Brevet Major who still has the role of a Captain (second-in command in a company)

Why would you waste a Major (even a brevet one) for that? If that guy is good enough to get a brevet the Armed Forces will probably sent him to fill up a command vaccancy... and there is always a command vaccancy.

[Barfleur]

Can purely ceremonial Brevets be a thing?
E.G. a Brevet Major who still has the role of a Captain (second-in command in a company)

Why would you waste a Major (even a brevet one) for that? If that guy is good enough to get a brevet the Armed Forces will probably sent him to fill up a command vaccancy... and there is always a command vaccancy.

The only reason I can think of is if an officer has enough connections to ensure promotion but he's incompetent and the promotion is purely honorary while he fills a lower role.