NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[The New California Republic]

I don't think the physics of water have changed since the 1980's.

Not what I meant. Submarine tech has changed since the 1950s when Grayback was designed and built.

[Gallia-]

It was retired in the 1980's and it was considered suitable for special forces use until then.

It was replaced by dry dock shelters on the backs of SSNs, which are still extremely quiet, and seem to suffer from few if any problems in noise increases or "flow" or whatever that would necessitate a giant clamshell to cover them up. The sail does them worse than the shelter. So what? Maybe they go a little slower as a result? Big deal. It's also well known that HI Sutton likes Grayback, but I like Grayback too, and apparently so does NV. The hangars on his special forces boat are an obvious homage to Grayback. It's not really a problem. Submarines are not loud because they have weird fairings hanging off them, like sails, dry dock shelters, or hangars. They've made do with giant sails for literally 70 years. I'm sure if you get rid of the sail and have a giant hangar door in its place it will produce few, if any, significant cavitation problems.

The biggest problem is that "missing" piece of hull is going to impose a drag penalty and require more horsepower to push the sub through the water at high speeds. Since neither HI Sutton's nor NV's boats are speed demons this isn't actually an issue. If they were speed demons, like Alfa, then it might be problematic. But then, Alfa also has a sail, and so suffers very little in practice from her drag issues.

[Kassaran]

The biggest problem is that "missing" piece of hull is going to impose a drag penalty and require more horsepower to push the sub through the water at high speeds. Since neither HI Sutton's nor NV's boats are speed demons this isn't actually an issue. If they were speed demons, like Alfa, then it might be problematic. But then, Alfa also has a sail, and so suffers very little in practice from her drag issues.

Wait, so what's the missing piece of hull? The hangar doors or the sail? I'm probably just being dumb, but I got kind of turned around reading this post and would like a better clarification as I figured having a covering over the doors would improve hydrodynamics?

[Gallia-]

It might but it's not going to translate to anything besides needing a slightly smaller powerplant or going slightly faster.

Considering how slow the sub is (lol 35 knots) it's not a big deal.

[New Vihenia]

Ok. Anyway revision time. Thanks for all the suggestions. So yeah

One particular concern could be flow noise where the water start swirling around the blunted parts, and make some noise.

Anyway let's add some fairing


How does it open ?



And yeah, those "sticks" are masts. The one on the white circle however is a vertical gun barrel OwO. The Vertical gun is of course a Plug in to the VPM.

And as usual, standard feature of our SSN. the SRC (Submarine Rescue Capsule)



The SRC also double as kind of sail where the retractable sailbridge is located.

and some internal arrangement


As usual. 3 pressure hulls, the front hold the torpedo room, mid is where the crew will spent most of their time while rear pressure hull is for propulsion, where the highly enriched uranium got its heat extracted by liquid lead and used to boil water which then turn some turbines and make some electric juice for the propulsion motor and service generators.

Will show where the sonar and everything else go later.

[Gallia-]

This seems to be becoming less an attack sub and more a low speed coastal commando mothership. It's pretty dope.

Is that spherical pressure object in the "sail" an escape capsule?

[The Manticoran Empire]

Ok. Anyway revision time. Thanks for all the suggestions. So yeah

One particular concern could be flow noise where the water start swirling around the blunted parts, and make some noise.

Anyway let's add some fairing
(Image)

How does it open ?

(Image)

And yeah, those "sticks" are masts. The one on the white circle however is a vertical gun barrel OwO. The Vertical gun is of course a Plug in to the VPM.

And as usual, standard feature of our SSN. the SRC (Submarine Rescue Capsule)

(Image)

The SRC also double as kind of sail where the retractable sailbridge is located.

and some internal arrangement
(Image)

As usual. 3 pressure hulls, the front hold the torpedo room, mid is where the crew will spent most of their time while rear pressure hull is for propulsion, where the highly enriched uranium got its heat extracted by liquid lead and used to boil water which then turn some turbines and make some electric juice for the propulsion motor and service generators.

Will show where the sonar and everything else go later.

So....how much to commission about 80 of these?

Also, assuming that you can contrive a reason for all warships to be submarines, would broadside torpedo tubes be useful? Mainly asking because I want a Trafalgar under the sea but if not practical, then I'll figure something else out.

[United Earthlings]

Ospery's books are good or they are a meme?. The first book i have read was about the Triple Alliance War against Paraguay and i quite enjoyed it, the books as whole inspire me to make realistic ORBATs and made me got interested on strategic organization and division-building. Be honest plz.

Personally, I find them to be a mix bag. Depending on the specific subject, the series in question and even sometimes the author, for example things like their New Vanguard series can in general be a good first introduction to a piece of equipment/technology its covering, but most of the time that information can be found by anyone with a good internet connection and a good search engine. I tend to find that the harder the information is to find from other sources, the more value it holds, at least to me.

For example, the books from the Battle Order Series covering various World War II divisions and their organization and the two New Vanguard’s covering British and European Ironclads are excellent books well worth the money IMO. The New Vanguard’s I own on the Centurion and T-54/55 tank are ok.

More recently, the more in-depth books on various subjects that Osprey occasionally publishes are what I’ve been keeping my eye on. Their already a few years old now, but I snagged me two, one on an Overview of various armies during the Napoleonic wars and the other on Air Warfare over the Eastern Front during World War II that I found to be quite good.

In closing, out of probably by now over a hundred various Osprey books I’ve reviewed over the years as consideration to acquire, less than 20 survived to make it to my list.

The future Vihenian SSN. Basically a multirole submarine.

(Image)
(Image)

Some features :

-Sail-less
-Integrated USV hangar, with more premium 10 m in length while 5 meter in diameter, allow deployment not only Swimmer but also something bigger
-8 VPM/VLS, 3 m in diameter and about 15 m in height, deployment of mini USV or whatever including a large caliber Vertical Gun.
-Surfaced displacement of about 17500 metric tonne.
-Much more improved accommodation for crew and integrated "mission space" for special forces or specialist.
-Length is about 169m, Beam of 21 m.

Others are basically standard, liquid metal reactor, pumpjet and electric propulsion with some perhaps 70K SHP for maximum speed of 35 Knot (perhaps less), 10 650mm torpedo tubes.. yeah.. those things.

I’ll let others address the more technical issues as they seem to have that well in hand, I’m more curious at the moment about the political issues.

You know your NS nation and its political structure better than me, but it’s been my observation that political leaders in charge of budgets tend not to approve projects that they could easily misconstrue as merely some radical future concept straight from the pages of a Popular {Mechanics} magazine that’s designed to attract the most eyeballs, but not meet some actual military operational requirement. Especially, the old and unimaginative politicians who must surely exist, realistically speaking, in every NS nation.

Realistically speaking, wouldn’t it be more politically likely that a smaller “proof of concept” design would be built first if at all, something in the size of a diesel-electric like the original SMX-31 concept which seems partly or mostly to be your inspiration?

There’s also the issue, if I can play the politician devil’s advocate, on why they should approve this potential boondoggle, when we graciously in the past have approved numerous submarines among a few different classes and why couldn’t a few of those be modified to meet whatever requirement is being requested? You can tell your politicians this is a new needed SSN Class, doesn’t mean they’ll believe you or be persuaded.

But, that’s realism for you. Sometimes, it’s just not cool or fun.

[Triplebaconation]

Navy: Here's our future submarine concept. We won't bother to demonstrate why it meets some actual military requirement or detail any of the various studies a reasonable person could assume we've done because we really just popped in to show off a picture our CGI artist just finished.

"Realistic" politician: Now hold on there! It's funny looking! I want you to spend at least half a billion dollars and several years developing a 4000-ton diesel submarine that you may or may not have any need for and which will have nothing in common with the final project except the general hull form - which could be easily and cheaply evaluated with an unmanned scale model like Seawolf, Virginia, and Zumwalt!

The HI Sutton concept this is based on has nothing in common with SMX-31 except the lack of a sail, by the way. In fact it's a thought exercise in the opposite direction - designing a multirole submarine without any untested technologies rather than showcasing them.

[The New California Republic]

Ok. Anyway revision time. Thanks for all the suggestions. So yeah

One particular concern could be flow noise where the water start swirling around the blunted parts, and make some noise.

Anyway let's add some fairing
(Image)

How does it open ?

(Image)

Ah yes much better.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

What's the point of divisions as a military unit?

[Spirit of Hope]

What's the point of divisions as a military unit?

About the same point of any military unit, providing a designated unit that can be controlled. Humans are only good at controlling the actions of a small number of moving pieces, an army commander trying to control the actions of all his subordinate brigades would quickly become overwhelmed.

[The New California Republic]

What's the point of divisions as a military unit?

About the same point of any military unit, providing a designated unit that can be controlled. Humans are only good at controlling the actions of a small number of moving pieces, an army commander trying to control the actions of all his subordinate brigades would quickly become overwhelmed.

It also helps to limit the command and control chaos that results if senior officers are killed. It's rare, sure, but it does happen.

[The Manticoran Empire]

What's the point of divisions as a military unit?

Through most of human history, armies rarely got much larger than 10 to 20,000 soldiers. Sometimes you had anomalies, such as the almost quarter million men led by Xerxes or the 50,000 or so commanded by Caesar at Alesia but, for the most part, prior to the 19th century, armies and battles rarely exceeded about 20,000 men per side. But then you get the Napoleonic Wars, where battles were routinely fought with hundreds of thousands of men on the field on each side. This required a new way of organizing armies. Before, the most you might need is a couple of brigade commanders to run groupings of regiments. But now, with dozens, possibly hundreds of regiments on the field? Now you've got dozens of brigades, requiring new levels of command to coordinate them, giving you divisions and corps. Quite simply, the divisions evolved into a combined arms formation used as the basic combat unit (an event that happened in the 20th century, before then it was primarily a grouping of brigades and regiments for coordination). So in short the purpose of a division is to simplify the command and control of large numbers of men in the field.

[Immoren]

I don't know why I've "obsession" (if that's correct word) with quasi-square organization (if that's correct word). In sense that formation would've four manoeuvre units except they would be organized such way that 3 units would be "appropriate" sized and, depending on level, single arms units. While Fourth one would be step smaller but it would be all-arms organization and would be "Better" armoured and armed than other three.
Like motorized division would have 3 motorized regiment/brigades and 1 mechanized battle group.
Mechanized division would've 3 mechanized regiments/divisions and 1 armoured battle group.
Etc.
Except I guess in armoured units "step smaller" unit would've Ns!grade tanks and HIFVs and other that kind of stuff while other line units are "grounded".

[The Manticoran Empire]

I don't know why I've "obsession" (if that's correct word) with quasi-square organization (if that's correct word). In sense that formation would've four manoeuvre units except they would be organized such way that 3 units would be "appropriate" sized and, depending on level, single arms units. While Fourth one would be step smaller but it would be all-arms organization and would be "Better" armoured and armed than other three.
Like motorized division would have 3 motorized regiment/brigades and 1 mechanized battle group.
Mechanized division would've 3 mechanized regiments/divisions and 1 armoured battle group.
Etc.
Except I guess in armoured units "step smaller" unit would've Ns!grade tanks and HIFVs and other that kind of stuff while other line units are "grounded".

Square Divisions and similar formations typically had two maneuver elements. Two brigades of 2 regiments each to a division. Regiments and equivalent units would almost universally be 3 or 4 battalions of 3 or 4 companies or 3 or 4 platoons each.

[Gallia-]

I don't know why I've "obsession" (if that's correct word) with quasi-square organization (if that's correct word). In sense that formation would've four manoeuvre units except they would be organized such way that 3 units would be "appropriate" sized and, depending on level, single arms units. While Fourth one would be step smaller but it would be all-arms organization and would be "Better" armoured and armed than other three.
Like motorized division would have 3 motorized regiment/brigades and 1 mechanized battle group.
Mechanized division would've 3 mechanized regiments/divisions and 1 armoured battle group.
Etc.
Except I guess in armoured units "step smaller" unit would've Ns!grade tanks and HIFVs and other that kind of stuff while other line units are "grounded".

I did a light infantry truck division with 3 fairly well rounded, independently supporting brigades, a metric boatload of divisional support, and a very heavily armored HIFV/Nota tank battalion as the division reserve.

I guess the "main" MBT is a crummy knock off an M1 (like the GM one, with a short turret probably) and the "best boi" MBT is a Nota knock off with a turret that resembles a half breed of a Stryker MGS and Merky IIb. The 140mm tanks are probably rare and committed either as division reserves like this armor battalion, or as cavalry troops for DeEp RaIdInG MeMeRy

[Triplebaconation]

The point of divisions is literally just to divide an army.

Instead of moving an army in one big group supported by huge depots and pillaging, which was slow and cumbersome, Napoleonic armies split into divisions and corps could move along multiple routes in fronts over a hundred miles wide, then converge and destroy the enemy with concentrated force.

[Gallia-]

Armies will soon move by individuals supported by pillaging and converge to destroy things.

Flash mob firepower when.

[Immoren]

Armies will soon move by individuals supported by pillaging and converge to destroy things.

Flash mob firepower when.

I know we're talking about infantry, but for some reason this brought in mind advances in forward observtion that made it possible to command fires of hundreds of artillery pieces on same target in single fire mission.

[Gallia-]

No that was WW2.

This is more like the general trend of land forces writ large.

[Immoren]

No that was WW2.

This is more like the general trend of land forces writ large.

I know. Lol

---

Now I am wondering if separate combined arms detachment build around infantry company could do fuck all or would that be too small. Even in context of parent brigade's operations.
Like motorized infantry brigade with 3 motorized battalions and mechanized detachment built around APC mounted company. lol.

[Gallia-]

Battalions with single motorized companies were popular pre-WW2 I guess.

Having companies in little villages or whatever might be good if they're given lots of machine guns, MANPADS, and anti-tank missiles.

[Immoren]

Battalions with single motorized companies were popular pre-WW2 I guess.

Having companies in little villages or whatever might be good if they're given lots of machine guns, MANPADS, and anti-tank missiles.

Well not just motorized/mechanized. All variations. But yeah. lol

---

I know that Ns!nation is with NS!budget, so in theory they could do same tank company organization in both, but for some reason another brain bug I've currently is that I'd have not!M1 or its contemporary in 2+4x4 tank companies while NS!tanks would be in companies of 1+3x3 because in theory they are more capable and even costlier.
Although I guess in that case more reasonable approach would be to have fewer NS!tank battalions with companies of 2+3x5 so you can mass the fewer numbers. lol

[Gallia-]

3x4x4 battalion is superior in close terrain, probably because the tank platoon can be evenly divided into wingman pairs, while 4x3x3 is superior in open terrain, but it isn't really clear why the latter is the case except that in the specific study the tank battalions were larger and thus had more tanks (the 3-tank platoon battalion had 27 tanks, the 4-tank platoon battalion had 24). The differences are pretty marginal though, but in most terrains a 4x3x3 battalion will have more platoons at the end of a fight than a 3x4x4 battalion (probably because it has more platoons to start with). OTOH the 4x3x3 battalion loses proportionately more platoons, which is probably a better metric to go off than just platoons remaining in general, since it shows that the 3x3 battalion is losing relatively more vehicles, even in favorable circumstances.

Buying a couple less battalions is probably a reasonable trade off depending on how close the terrain is TBH, rather than adopting a new platoon structure. If the tanks are really better beyond just bigger gun/thicker armor they will be fine. If you go from 4 to 3 tank crewmen you can probably capture most of the tank's lifetime cost savings too. Unit costs are a bit of a fib since they are easy to lie about by not counting things or having weird artifacts in accounting. This was the case with the M60 vs M1 cost comparisons in the '80's in the U.S. Army, but it still came close to replacing the M60 fleet nearly 1:1. And the Conservative Heavy Division design process that could have potentially led to a 3-tank platoon for the U.S. Army ended up leading to nowhere, because the U.S. Army just bought more trucks and humvees.

Changing the platoons won't really give you much benefit unless you can take advantage of the numbers to begin with.

That said I don't think I ever gave Galla the 3x3 tank platoon though. A triangular platoon just strikes me as bizarre outside light infantry TBH, since mechanized vehicles are a single object, and it's hard for me to envision where it would be advantageous to have a whole tank platoon that straight up just can't be divided at all. It probably went from 5 tank platoons in the '40s to 4 tank platoons in the '60s and hasn't changed since. If it needs mechanization but it can't afford the tanks it ends up doing kooky shit like bringing back motorized infantry and International Harvester tractor brigades, and spreading a tank brigade across like 6 divisions. I suppose that's not possible without a large growing young population though.