NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Gallia-]

Imagine preferring to build a giga cannon rather than like...fixing collapsing roads, rebuilding sewer infrastructure, or incentivizing companies to bring factories back to the US lmao.

Real USSR hours.

Can't wait for B-21 to build like 10 aircraft and stop all production too.

Entire US bomber force reverts to 1975 standard.

[Triplebaconation]

Yeah, that's probably optimistic. In reality the Army just cancelled 80+ fairly low-risk programs to fund a high-risk switch to prioritizing hypersonic strike.

[Gallia-]

i guess making Pershing III was too boring or something

or because it was proposed by someone who actually knows what they're doing and not a consulting lobbyist with acronyms it was immediately rejected

Projection of
Extreme
Range
Stealth
Hypersonic
Intermediate range
Nuclear
Gizmo
.

look i have a degree in alcoholism and i can do it

us army pls hire me

[Shanghai industrial complex]

I'm more concerned with the tower like masts of U.S. Navy destroyers and frigates.Why not use a totally enclosed mast?

I'm not sure the mast would do much since it has to be radar transparent. The USN's preferred solution at the end of the day was flush antennae in a low RCS housing, but this was really expensive, and didn't really work very well in practice since a lot of the antennae ended up vaporware.

Radar transparency is not complicated.In addition, the radar antennas are not inside the mast, they still have their own radomes.Integrated mast can bring the benefits of stealth, maintenance and installation of more electronic equipment.But because it was too expensive, "Fort Lauderdale" replaced the standard integrated stealth mast of the "San Antonio" class with an ordinary non stealth mast.Seriously, for the first time, I've heard an army complain that it's too expensive, and that it's the richest U.S. Navy in the world.It's weird. How much can it cost? Unless they cut back on the electronics on the mast, they won't save much.

[Triplebaconation]

i guess making Pershing III was too boring or something

who needs SIGINT in the multidomain battlefield of the future anyway

[Gallia-]

I'm not sure the mast would do much since it has to be radar transparent. The USN's preferred solution at the end of the day was flush antennae in a low RCS housing, but this was really expensive, and didn't really work very well in practice since a lot of the antennae ended up vaporware.

Radar transparency is not complicated.

If you have a S/X-band transparent mast then it isn't going to hide you terribly well from S/X-band search radars.

In addition, the radar antennas are not inside the mast,

They are on AEMS. San Antonio has a SPS-48 inside the rear one. I forget what the fore one has, probably the node based PLRS (UH-1Y is used as the node carrier IIRC) for the landing craft to be able to controlled OTH.

Integrated mast can bring the benefits of stealth, maintenance and installation of more electronic equipment.

It's not important. The USN was just trying to copy the F-117 in the 90's.

Integrated mast is nice because it does reduce the wind at the top of the mast and lets you work in an enclosed environment. This alone is perhaps enough to justify something similar if you really care about sailors and their working environments.

But because it was too expensive, "Fort Lauderdale" replaced the standard integrated stealth mast of the "San Antonio" class with an ordinary non stealth mast.Seriously, for the first time, I've heard an army complain that it's too expensive, and that it's the richest U.S. Navy in the world.It's weird. How much can it cost? Unless they cut back on the electronics on the mast, they won't save much.

It's probably because the LX(R) isn't a combat ship but rather a glorified supply ship for amphibious troops.

San Antonio is intended to be a combination of assault ship and amphibious command ship, since it's controlling the landing proper with long range guidance and a giant air search radar it probably needs the radars.

Radar stealth as a whole is not a significant nor important factor for a surface ship. They are not planes. Their signatures are so massive that they can't be appreciably reduced without truly bizarre engineering feats, beyond eliminating the obvious stuff like corner reflection. Even then, for all the effort of putting up big radar shields on the side of flight deck, you only made the aircraft carrier look like a destroyer I guess. The real reason the USN went for stealth ships like Zumwalt and to a lesser extent LPD-17, is quite literally because they saw the USAF performance in Desert Storm, and someone at NAVSEA said "wow we need THAT in our boats".

They were trying to turn a 15-20,000 ton ship into a F-117. It didn't work in either case. NAVSEA in the 90's was of two minds about it [stealth on ships]: one side said the Burke was fine with its low signature mast because it eliminated the most obvious corner reflectors and that's really all that matters on a warship. The other said it didn't go far enough and they needed to replicate F-117. The latter one and the USN proceeded to waste billions of dollars and engineering hours on a useless trio of ships that don't work. Now they're going back. I suspect LPD-17 wouldn't need the AEMS if SPS-48 wasn't a giant square, since the distinctly not square/cube shaped SPQ-9B sits atop the fore mast just fine, but it was built in the 90's and they had nothing else to work with.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

According to Russian sources, the green areas on the t-57 are AESA antennas(Type N036 AESA).The antenna at the nose has 1552 T / R modules, and the antenna on both sides of the nose has 358 T / R modules, which can provide the scanning capability of 270 degree airspace in front of the aircraft.An L-band AESA radar antenna is installed on the leading edge of the wing（Type N036L-1-01）Radar for wings and tails combines the L402 electronic countermeasure Suite.But I don't know the number of T / R modules in the wing and tail part of the radar.
Q:1.I don't think there will be too many t / R modules in other locations except for the nose part.Can it really find stealth fighters from all directions?Does AESA perform well in detecting stealth fighters?The message I got was that AESA could concentrate all of its power in one direction to detect stealth aircraft
2.Will radar antenna affect stealth capability?Whether installing so many radar antennas will greatly affect its stealth ability?
3.Are aircraft platforms more important or missiles and radars more important?I think if the large radar can find stealth fighters at a long distance, then the fighter team equipped with AWACS and advanced missiles can effectively counter stealth fighters
[/spoiler]

1.Well for the L-band antenna in wing leading edge... the size would be dependent on the available length and frequency. So far however 12 elements per leading edge appears to be practical thus if they are working in Unison that would made about 24 elements. The range however is hotly debated. Common consensus however regards wing leading edge AESA on Su-57 was a mere IFF.

Which is true if it assumed to be working in the same manner as the nose AESA. Problem is that it may not so as far as i see.

The following is a simple "tradeoff" sheet i make mainly to compare or estimate radar performance based Only on 4th root laws

The sheet however includes RCS "scaling" so you can compare radar or "build" a radar based on your reference but works in different wavelength. Top is known parameters for Su-57 nose radar, lower one is "scaled" radar but with less elements and different wavelength.

The important parameter here is the Pulsewidth and the Dwell time. As seen working on L-band, 24 elements. 100 usec of pulsewitdh and 1 Second of beam dwell time.. so the beam would "stay" on particular sector for 1 second... Thus if you have 5 sectors, then your search time would be 5 seconds. One can have considerable range against 0.001 sqm RCS in X-band (about 0.005 sqm in L-band)

If the radar works independently (12 elements)

The range is about 82 Km.

However one may doubt the usefullness of it. Long dwell time does help range BUT.. it may actually lowers the probability of target being detected as target may "escape" before the beam is there. Plus 1 second is considerable time for ESM receiver. Long pulsewidth is helpful.. but It may lowers your minimum range... 100 us pulsewitdh is about 1500m of "dead range" where your radar cannot detect target due to eclipsing.

2.Yes as Radar antenna is a very great reflector. There is Bragg lobes and direct reflection lobes.. thus why stealth fighter or reduced RCS fighter have its radar canted upwards. Otherwise the radome have to be designed to be "frequency selective" so only working frequency of the antenna can enter the radome.

-----------------------
Anyway.. i would release the sheet soon including the description on how to use it.

yes,Type N036L-1-01 is used as the transceiver antenna of IFF N036sh.But its essence is still an L-band AESA.I think it shows that it may provide a relatively rough detection result that can only be used for IFF.

So the forward detection capability of su-57 can reach 400 km and the antenna on the wing can detect 82km?It's so amazing that I think it's comparable to an AWACS to some extent.Su-57 probably didn't think about stealth from the beginning.If equipped with a high-performance Over-the-shoulder air-to-air missile or Omnidirectional attack combat missile, it will undoubtedly be very powerful.

[New Vihenia]

Su-57 probably didn't think about stealth from the beginning.If equipped with a high-performance Over-the-shoulder air-to-air missile or Omnidirectional attack combat missile, it will undoubtedly be very powerful.

Well no.. as if it doesnt do any RCS reduction then it wont be shaped the way it is. It just the Russians have different idea on how to do things.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Su-57 probably didn't think about stealth from the beginning.If equipped with a high-performance Over-the-shoulder air-to-air missile or Omnidirectional attack combat missile, it will undoubtedly be very powerful.

Well no.. as if it doesnt do any RCS reduction then it wont be shaped the way it is. It just the Russians have different idea on how to do things.

Relatively speaking.Stealth may not be the most critical indicator

[Mannixa Prime]

Any tips on what kind of equipment an archipelago based nation with a temperate climate dominated by dense forests and mountain passes?

Climate is temperate, moderate and fairly warm all around.

My military specializes in counter insurgency and dealing with strong points and fortifications quite well if that helps.

[Austrasien]

Any tips on what kind of equipment an archipelago based nation with a temperate climate dominated by dense forests and mountain passes?

Climate is temperate, moderate and fairly warm all around.

My military specializes in counter insurgency and dealing with strong points and fortifications quite well if that helps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_c ... ombat_team

[Mannixa Prime]

Any tips on what kind of equipment an archipelago based nation with a temperate climate dominated by dense forests and mountain passes?

Climate is temperate, moderate and fairly warm all around.

My military specializes in counter insurgency and dealing with strong points and fortifications quite well if that helps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_c ... ombat_team

Thank you!

[Kassaran]

So what I'm hearing is that I need to begin developing ultra-long-range aircraft that can be serviced by a carrier/tender fleet to maintain total control of my local area (eg South America ala Brazilian Empire in the '40s)?

I'm pretty much determining that I'm going to have to start investing in building up my population and my naval power, as current trends of floating battleship carrier thingies seem to have somehow caused most people to forget about the sea in the first place. Looking to dominate submarine battlespace first, then the seas in my local area. Probably look at eventually managing a primary means of maintaining a thriving arms manufacturing industry for the warring states in Africa and Asia. Oh, and Europe, because apparently they've been going at it more than in our timeline.

[Velkanika]

So what I'm hearing is that I need to begin developing ultra-long-range aircraft that can be serviced by a carrier/tender fleet to maintain total control of my local area (eg South America ala Brazilian Empire in the '40s)?

I'm pretty much determining that I'm going to have to start investing in building up my population and my naval power, as current trends of floating battleship carrier thingies seem to have somehow caused most people to forget about the sea in the first place. Looking to dominate submarine battlespace first, then the seas in my local area. Probably look at eventually managing a primary means of maintaining a thriving arms manufacturing industry for the warring states in Africa and Asia. Oh, and Europe, because apparently they've been going at it more than in our timeline.

Don't neglect amphibious warfare, or you will be unable to seriously impact events beyond the nations you share a land border with. Cruise missiles and air strikes are effectively a bloody nose, it takes an invasion and ground combat to knock out a country.

[Gallia-]

So what I'm hearing is that I need to begin developing ultra-long-range aircraft that can be serviced by a carrier/tender fleet to maintain total control of my local area (eg South America ala Brazilian Empire in the '40s)?

Brazil's entire naval needs could be met by half a dozen OPVs and some business jets.

So what I'm hearing is that I need to begin developing ultra-long-range aircraft that can be serviced by a carrier/tender fleet to maintain total control of my local area (eg South America ala Brazilian Empire in the '40s)?

I'm pretty much determining that I'm going to have to start investing in building up my population and my naval power, as current trends of floating battleship carrier thingies seem to have somehow caused most people to forget about the sea in the first place. Looking to dominate submarine battlespace first, then the seas in my local area. Probably look at eventually managing a primary means of maintaining a thriving arms manufacturing industry for the warring states in Africa and Asia. Oh, and Europe, because apparently they've been going at it more than in our timeline.

Don't neglect amphibious warfare, or you will be unable to seriously impact events beyond the nations you share a land border with. Cruise missiles and air strikes are effectively a bloody nose, it takes an invasion and ground combat to knock out a country.

Never forget the Brazilian contribution to the Fenno-Korean Hyperwar.

[Austrasien]

Well no.. as if it doesnt do any RCS reduction then it wont be shaped the way it is. It just the Russians have different idea on how to do things.

Relatively speaking.Stealth may not be the most critical indicator

It is. Most aircraft kills have always been against unaware, non-manoeuvring targets. Stealth and speed advantages compress the space-time "buffer" which an aircraft being attacked has to detect and react to their opponent. All things being equal less of their query will detect and react to their presence in time to take effective defensive action of any kind.

An aircraft like the F-22 has a decisive "spook" supremacy over something like the Su-57. The distance of equal probability of detection (by their prey) is much shorter for the F-22 and the time it takes to cross any distance after detection is also significantly shorter because of its superior ability to sustain supersonic flight. And this will win more air battles than any other characteristic - most battles which end in the hunter (regardless of the qualities of either) taking its quarry are counted among those where the query simply fails to realize it is under attack or realizes without enough time to take effective action (aka "spooked").

The most compelling evidence the Russian Air Force was pursuing an alternative conception of air combat would be if they had designed the Su-57 for extreme speed, sustained Mach 2+ or Mach 3+ flight. As it stands it looks like simple technological inferiority and path dependency. Russia's radar industry is particularly vibrant, so the Su-57 is bristling with radars. Russia still has many skilled aerodynamicists and aircraft engineers so the Su-57 reflects their knowledge. Etc. But there is no indication of any "new understanding" relative to the Su-27 (and its myriad derivatives). Supermanoeuvring, extensive radar and moderate RCS reduction were all experimented with on the Flanker and Flogger.

The Su-57 really does resemble what many western analysts speculated a "Super Flanker" might entail. Minus supercruising as they tended to overestimate Russia's ability to produce a new model of engine. Which suggests again the "vision of air war" which animates the Su-57 is the same old one (you could an draw a line of intellectual development here all the way back to the F-X in the late 60s) which dwelt in the Flanker all along. Its just a more perfect realization of it. The revolutionary development in the principles of air combat the F-22 represents wasn't refuted, it wasn't even addressed. Russia would certainly have built a comparable aircraft if they could as the Chinese and Japanese now are and Europe wants to.

[Small Calibre Automatics]

Due to the proliferation of armour piercing fragmentation and high yield explosives, soldiers are currently outfitted with armoured suits as well as the standard combat tactical vest.
The armoured suit can resist six hits of a 7.62x39mm full metal jacket lead core bullet at 1 meter distance, at a muzzle velocity of 750m/s, over a 8in square area, with 1in spacing.
This armoured suit is comprised of sheer thickening fluid impregnated ballistic fibres and has a cooling/impact mitigation underlayer. It weights approximately 30lbs.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Pair F-22 with AAM-4B and the first notice the enemy has that he's in danger is probs when he explodes. Unless he has an RWR capable of measuring in the Ka-band range ofc. <.>

On another note, instead of trying to reduce a CVN's signature to something more conspicious what if I didn't and instead put a civvie AIS onboard along with civvie nav radars to make it look like a supertanker on a RORSAT screen? *thinking*

[Gallia-]

someone would look at a picture with a cubesat and say "that's no oil tanker"

it would probably work 50 years ago though but that's what they did normally and VID was only possible with a tu-95 or b-52 overflight really

bigboi cvns are slowly going the way of the battleship ultimately since land based aircraft are just as good as carrier ones but have the added benefit of being actually modern

the only thing they add is responsiveness to crisis i guess but that's not really important when your empire is collapsing around you

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Pair F-22 with AAM-4B ?But the aam-4b is a Japanese self-use missile.The F-22 should use aim-120-c / d.

[Gallia-]

aam-4b might fit if the usaf ever wanted to buy it

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Pair F-22 with AAM-4B ?But the aam-4b is a Japanese self-use missile.The F-22 should use aim-120-c / d.

It's attacking from a radio band that no Soviet or PRC'ian RWR with 1980's tech were ever expected to measure. So the first sign that you are being attacked is you exploding.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Pair F-22 with AAM-4B ?But the aam-4b is a Japanese self-use missile.The F-22 should use aim-120-c / d.

It's attacking from a radio band that no Soviet or PRC'ian RWR with 1980's tech were ever expected to measure. So the first sign that you are being attacked is you exploding.

なに？Detecting radar signals is not an advanced technology.Ka band radar is a very common band, which is often used by weather radar and vehicle overspeed monitoring.Or you can call it centimeter wave radar

[Gallia-]

It's attacking from a radio band that no Soviet or PRC'ian RWR with 1980's tech were ever expected to measure. So the first sign that you are being attacked is you exploding.

なに？Detecting radar signals is not an advanced technology.Ka band radar is a very common band, which is often used by weather radar and vehicle overspeed monitoring.Or you can call it centimeter wave radar

RWRs on fighter aircraft aren't going to care about weather radars or being tagged by speed traps, nor will they be particularly interested in sniffing out Ka-band in general, unless they're some sort of ultra-modern broadband ELINT gear like ASQ-239, ALR-94, Spectra, or Advanced QuickFix. ALR-67, which we can consider representative of the last generation of radar receivers (the mid 1990's) absolutely won't be able to detect a 35 GHz missile without help, either from a radar detecting the incoming missile or a MAWS seeing the missile launch motor ignite. If we can consider the PLA to have anything near modern, it'll probably be comparable to ALR-67 rather than ALR-94 and ASQ-239, so whatever souped up Su-27 the PLAN is flying probably won't notice either.

The MiG-21's SPO-10 or the MiG-29's SPO-15M also wouldn't notice, but those might not even notice AIM-120 honestly, yet these are backbone RWRs for a lot of developing economies' (like India) frontline tactical fighters. 35 GHz is a good band to go for in the near term because it probably won't be "developing world" standard until the mid-'30's probably. In the far term you'll want to shoot for 94 GHz or something.

What last generation receivers might notice is the fighter radar locking them, provided they have the software necessary to discriminate the waveform of the APG-77, but that's assuming it isn't being off boarded by a AWACS or something. Since APG-77 is a X-band radar it should be detectable anyway, and the PLA has sufficiently developed industrial espionage faculties to probably have extracted a useful amount of information about it to develop an update package for their RWRs.

Due to the proliferation of armour piercing fragmentation and high yield explosives, soldiers are currently outfitted with armoured suits as well as the standard combat tactical vest.
The armoured suit can resist six hits of a 7.62x39mm full metal jacket lead core bullet at 1 meter distance, at a muzzle velocity of 750m/s, over a 8in square area, with 1in spacing.
This armoured suit is comprised of sheer thickening fluid impregnated ballistic fibres and has a cooling/impact mitigation underlayer. It weights approximately 30lbs.

Needs Ratnik's carbon fiber spine.

I'm pretty much determining that I'm going to have to start investing in building up my population and my naval power, as current trends of floating battleship carrier thingies seem to have somehow caused most people to forget about the sea in the first place. Looking to dominate submarine battlespace first, then the seas in my local area. Probably look at eventually managing a primary means of maintaining a thriving arms manufacturing industry for the warring states in Africa and Asia. Oh, and Europe, because apparently they've been going at it more than in our timeline.

To expand: carriers are useless for anything besides colonial policing.

A defensive navy does not need to be big. Nor does it require ships, really, although they may be bought simply to keep naval officers on the payroll.

It requires aviation and those can be based on land. A P-3 can more than adequately survey the entire EEZ of the United States and destroy submarines with suitable reconnaissance equipment in the near to medium term future. The deep ocean will be safe for subs, since photons have a hard time penetrating 3,000 feet below the surface. Surface ships can be easily dissuaded by sea mines or just killed by airstrikes from light attack jets with modern missiles.

A sea like the Baltic, which is very shallow and generally noisy, or the Gulf of Mexico which is similar (but deeper), is unlikely to be survivable for submarines in the face of cheap orbital surveillance and maritime patrol aircraft. They will simply be located by satellites and sunk by planes. Pretty simple. In the longer term future (the 50's) it may be possible to surveil depths down to 3,000 feet and use single sunlight photons that come up to extract images of submarines, but this is pretty heady so don't get too excited. More likely it just means that coastal subs are doomed because they can't dive deep enough and the attempt by the USN to field acoustic based measures of hunting diesels in the shallows is a fool's errand, but because light is literally right there lmao you can just map the sub with a laser beam or something and drop a torpedo on it.

Downsides are that lasers are slow, but you can always put them on a satellite, or use sunlight (or moonlight) to do the same job, so the littorals will eventually be a no-go zone for submarines in the coming decades, at least as long as the enemy can sustain aircraft sorties.

So really naval combat just devolves to putting planes on target, as all warfare has in the past century or so, and you don't actually need a boat to do this. What you need is planes. How many depends on what you expect to fight but "Brazil in the '40's" biggest threat was probably Paraguayan fishermen so "maybe a dozen business jets" might be overkill for the job. The boats can be useful for boarding pirates or smugglers' ships though, which is why I said you could use a few OPVs.

e: Then again perhaps they'll be sending swarms of Paraguayan Mestizo Marines of the Ultimate Soldier Unified Southern Race to kill you in barges and cigarette boats so you might need 500 Gripens perhaps.

[Austrasien]

なに？Detecting radar signals is not an advanced technology.Ka band radar is a very common band, which is often used by weather radar and vehicle overspeed monitoring.Or you can call it centimeter wave radar

Detecting spread spectrum signals with unknown parameters, low sidelobes and effective power management (below the radio noise floor at the target), is.