NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[The Akasha Colony]

So I'm currently going into an RP with several people who are using the typical NS MT supership roflnoughts. You know: 1000+ ft mega-ships bristling with 20+ inch (rail)guns, thousands of VLS tubes, covered in meter-thick armor, and rocketing around at 60+ knots. (For example, though the specifics don't really matter.) Since I'm likely to end up fighting a naval campaign against some of them, I figured I'd strategize a bit.

Note that I'm viewing this as more of an entertaining thought excercise than an actual problem with the RP. Obviously I could complain and argue about how their ships are unrealistic, but there's not much fun in that for anybody. I could also fight fire with fire (I have designed roflnoughts of my own after all, though I don't use them), but I don't want to, and nobody would learn anything from that anyway. My plan is to fight them - and win - using my standard MT navy as realistically as I know how.

Anyway, the first challenge is the armor. The obvious solution is to send in the SSNs, which is my main plan. But just for fun, I though I'd explore other options. I know that anti-ship missiles and other guided weapons can destroy their radar and other sensors that can't be armored, which may not sink the ship, but will still take it out of the fight. But are there any modern weapons that could actually penetrate heavy armor? How would bunker busters like the GBU-28 or HOPE fair in this situation?

If the munitions can start a fire that cannot be put out by the crew, they will eventually sink the ship no matter how heavily armed or armored it is. Fire and the secondary effects of fire (like magazine explosions) is the deadliest thing that can happen to a ship, since otherwise poking a few holes here and there with bombs or missiles or even torpedoes are minor annoyances at best from a survivability standpoint.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Anyway, the first challenge is the armor. The obvious solution is to send in the SSNs, which is my main plan. But just for fun, I though I'd explore other options. I know that anti-ship missiles and other guided weapons can destroy their radar and other sensors that can't be armored, which may not sink the ship, but will still take it out of the fight. But are there any modern weapons that could actually penetrate heavy armor? How would bunker busters like the GBU-28 or HOPE fair in this situation?

Anti ship missiles usually use SAPHE.https://www.quora.com/Can-a-modern-anti-ship-missile-penetrate-armored-ships
Such as P-700,If a 750 kg SAPHE warhead is not enough to destroy a battleship，you can choose a 500 kt Nuclear warhead.If they don't work, modern warships wouldn't give up armor

[Radictistan]

Other than the shape of turret, i'm curious if there is any more differences between T-80B and T-80U ?

I just realized after watching top view during Russian victory parade... the T-80B have "<3" shaped turret while the T-80U have "curved blunt pentagonal" shape.

Off the top of my head there were some very minor changes to the glacis armor layout and the fire control system was upgraded. I'm sure how much better it was.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Other than the shape of turret, i'm curious if there is any more differences between T-80B and T-80U ?

I just realized after watching top view during Russian victory parade... the T-80B have "<3" shaped turret while the T-80U have "curved blunt pentagonal" shape.

From left to right T-80B,T-80BV,T-80A,T-80U,T-80UM1,T-80UM2(T-95)
Which you look on Russian victory parade maybe T-80BVM The main thing is to upgrade the engine to make it more suitable for the Arctic.

Now you can't see the t-80b in Russia's army.In 1985 ,the t-80b produced by Kirov factory was upgraded to t-80bv with explosive reaction armor，the t-80bk at the Omsk plant has also been upgraded to a t-80bvk that can also be fitted with reactive armor.
T-80bv and T-80U.They have different types of reactive armor.There are three armor plates in front of T-80U's side skirt.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

There is another img of T-80UK(T-80yk)'s turret and more information


http://btvt.narod.ru/raznoe/bulat-leo2.htm
http://btvt.narod.ru/4/t-80u.htm

[Austrasien]

Anyway, the first challenge is the armor. The obvious solution is to send in the SSNs, which is my main plan. But just for fun, I though I'd explore other options. I know that anti-ship missiles and other guided weapons can destroy their radar and other sensors that can't be armored, which may not sink the ship, but will still take it out of the fight. But are there any modern weapons that could actually penetrate heavy armor? How would bunker busters like the GBU-28 or HOPE fair in this situation?

No.

Each 7 meters thick, and stacked a meter apart with heavy internal bracing in order to shrug off the threat of torpedoes like few other ships of it's time. This absolutely massive external hull, however, isn't the end of it's defenses- With the upper super-structure being much the same, with many of the key systems dug into the innermost hulls in order to prevent lucky shots from disabling them. The primary armored deck alone is nearly 4 meters thick- To speak nothing of the two secondary decks, each another three meters thick.

Something like this can't be built. Maybe if it was cast in zero gravity and cooled radiatively into the vacuum for many years. It is more like an iron-nickel meteor or a mountain than anything man-made. The biggest shaped charges that have been made would poke small holes in it. For purely off the shelf weapons only nuclear weapons will do much more than damage external components/disable the ship.

A nuclear bomb would certainly be the logical choice. Failing that a *very* large torpedo/suicide submarine is a very promising option.

Though the areal density of the armour is so high the "citadel" must be quite tiny compared to the vastness of these tubs - assuming steel the armour has an areal density of 31-55 tons which eats through even a million tons remarkably fast - most of the ships vast bulk is going to be rather poorly protected and so quite vulnerable to conventional weaponry. It is quite evident they never bothered to count how large the surface area of such a massive ship would be...

[United Earthlings]

So I'm currently going into an RP with several people who are using the typical NS MT supership roflnoughts. You know: 1000+ ft mega-ships bristling with 20+ inch (rail)guns, thousands of VLS tubes, covered in meter-thick armor, and rocketing around at 60+ knots. (For example, though the specifics don't really matter.) Since I'm likely to end up fighting a naval campaign against some of them, I figured I'd strategize a bit.

Note that I'm viewing this as more of an entertaining thought excercise than an actual problem with the RP. Obviously I could complain and argue about how their ships are unrealistic, but there's not much fun in that for anybody. I could also fight fire with fire (I have designed roflnoughts of my own after all, though I don't use them), but I don't want to, and nobody would learn anything from that anyway. My plan is to fight them - and win - using my standard MT navy as realistically as I know how.

Anyway, the first challenge is the armor. The obvious solution is to send in the SSNs, which is my main plan. But just for fun, I though I'd explore other options. I know that anti-ship missiles and other guided weapons can destroy their radar and other sensors that can't be armored, which may not sink the ship, but will still take it out of the fight. But are there any modern weapons that could actually penetrate heavy armor? How would bunker busters like the GBU-28 or HOPE fair in this situation?

The funny thing is, you really don't need to overthink the answer. Whatever tactics and strategies your Navy has devised to deal with a large enemy fleet of 100,000+ tons of SuperCarriers can just as easily apply to a fleet of “Magical” SDNs {Super Dreadnoughts}. The only major difference being the application of additional ordnance use may be called for against said Magical” SDN/s.

Penetrating heavy armor also isn’t any great mystery, any sufficiently large shaped warhead will do. A meter of armor sounds impressive, until you realize that even with the waving away of magical ability you can’t armor everything with a meter of armor. I’m guessing in their hurry to match and NSify the thick turret and belt armor of the 1940s super battleships that inspired them, they completely forgot about deck armor among many other important considerations to numerous to go into at this time. Have your average anti-ship missile {preferably one fitted with a very large warhead} do a terminal pop-up attack and coming crashing down right thru their unarmored decks. A few of those types of hits will put that ship out of commission fast.

If any type of “bunker buster” hits at the right angle and a critical weak spot to boot, the damage can be extensive, one need only ask the Tirpitz.

P.S. If you do decide to RP against the SDNs, can you TG me the thread title and link? Be interested to see what direct you go in.

Edit: After noticing Austrasien’s post, I guess I must commend them for actually thinking about deck armor even if the thickness level is beyond words let alone sanity. Since this is clearly going to be a meme vessel, I vote we convince the original designer that the magical impregnable armor of Pykrete is the way to go.

[Mitheldalond]

That second link up there ("example") will take you to the RP

[Manokan Republic]

For naval warfare, central systems are aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, attack submarines, missile submarines, and replenishment ships. For air warfare, fighters, bombers, attack planes, recon planes, and airborne early warning planes. For ground warfare, tanks, IFVs, APCs, light trucks, medium trucks, and heavy trucks. This LUDICROUSLY over simplified. This is one of my factbooks that is just equipment. Some of the images are broke so I'm gonna have to fix those but the basic point remains the same.
There are LOTS of different things that a military needs in order to function.

ok maybe thats too much. What im thinking was a page that showed off the "main weapon" for each category. Like, heres our main rifle, heres our main fighter, etc. How would I go about doing that? And do you have any layouts that youd suggest on the forums? Also I realize since my nation has magic, a lot of those vehicles like spyplanes would be redundant because we could just use magic to scry on people. How would I factor that into my factbook?

I suppose I would employ magicians a lot like military or civilian intelligence, or civilian groups added on top of military one's. So it's like the CIA, the information came from, somewhere, and they got it under mysterious conditions, because someone or something was on the inside that you don't need to know about, but here's the base and it's got terrorists in it so who cares? The information comes from somewhere, and thus can be used regardless. I'd imagine it would still be useful to have spy planes and such for number's sake, presuming powerful magic is rare, and to augment intelligence gathering and so on, especially if the scrying powers are messed with additional forms of magic, such as scrying free bubbles etc. Telepathy could be used to communicate instead of just radios, neat stuff like that, you could have enhanced explosives. Presumably magicians/mages or whatever would be rare, and talented one's rarer than that, so the abilities would be used sparingly where they could do the most good for the military and they would mostly be kept off the front lines. You might have some kind of special unit that incorporates front line magicians or what have you.

[Manokan Republic]

So I'm currently going into an RP with several people who are using the typical NS MT supership roflnoughts. You know: 1000+ ft mega-ships bristling with 20+ inch (rail)guns, thousands of VLS tubes, covered in meter-thick armor, and rocketing around at 60+ knots. (For example, though the specifics don't really matter.) Since I'm likely to end up fighting a naval campaign against some of them, I figured I'd strategize a bit.

Note that I'm viewing this as more of an entertaining thought excercise than an actual problem with the RP. Obviously I could complain and argue about how their ships are unrealistic, but there's not much fun in that for anybody. I could also fight fire with fire (I have designed roflnoughts of my own after all, though I don't use them), but I don't want to, and nobody would learn anything from that anyway. My plan is to fight them - and win - using my standard MT navy as realistically as I know how.

Anyway, the first challenge is the armor. The obvious solution is to send in the SSNs, which is my main plan. But just for fun, I though I'd explore other options. I know that anti-ship missiles and other guided weapons can destroy their radar and other sensors that can't be armored, which may not sink the ship, but will still take it out of the fight. But are there any modern weapons that could actually penetrate heavy armor? How would bunker busters like the GBU-28 or HOPE fair in this situation?

A bomb that goes off underneath a ship can "break it's keel", or back, by creating a vacuum underneath it. A bigger ship is in particular subject to this, so you have a missile that turns in to a torpedo to avoid getting shot down by a missile defense system (protecting from underwater threats is much harder since bullets only penetrate a few feet before disintegrating), and then it can go underneath the ship and blow up. You would take out, presumably the outer ring of defenses first, such as a submarine for the carrier fleet, and then take out the battleship or what have you. You can in part use the weight of the ship against itself with this method; another thing of course is nuclear bombs or really large bombs, as bigger targets are easier to hit. There isn't anywhere for it to hide, so it gets bombed to oblivion.

Another idea is railguns from space or kinetic bombardment. Kinetic orbital bombardment allows you to drop something on top of the ship from space, and the concussive blast from the water alone might destroy the ship, especially if it's from space, with such a high velocity projectile, at least 8-11 km/s, very easily penetrating through whatever armor they may have, and it can orbit the earth at around earth in 90 minutes, so positioning it right above the enemy forces would be easy, and nearly impossible to avoid. A 10 ton depleted uranium rod dropping at like 10 km/s would contain the energy of a small nuke, and would penetrate through any kind of armor, disintegrating it on contact. You could wipe out their navy in a day just by dropping massive spikes on them from space, and then they wouldn't have much left by the smaller craft that was small enough to avoid detection or avoid being taken out from space.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

Does the US Army use psychological evaluations for criminal history waivers? If so what does that entail?

[Izukyu]

Does the US Army use psychological evaluations for criminal history waivers? If so what does that entail?

Wow, you are really dedicated to this random topic.

Generally not for criminal history waivers. Past pysch issues, yes, they will run you by a shrink to make sure you're good to go.

You can get a lot of things waived in terms of past brushes with the law, or the recruiter will probably just pretend he didn't hear you, or advise you not to disclose that particular life story and let it be someone else's problem down the road.

[Velkanika]

So I'm currently going into an RP with several people who are using the typical NS MT supership roflnoughts. You know: 1000+ ft mega-ships bristling with 20+ inch (rail)guns, thousands of VLS tubes, covered in meter-thick armor, and rocketing around at 60+ knots. (For example, though the specifics don't really matter.) Since I'm likely to end up fighting a naval campaign against some of them, I figured I'd strategize a bit.

Note that I'm viewing this as more of an entertaining thought excercise than an actual problem with the RP. Obviously I could complain and argue about how their ships are unrealistic, but there's not much fun in that for anybody. I could also fight fire with fire (I have designed roflnoughts of my own after all, though I don't use them), but I don't want to, and nobody would learn anything from that anyway. My plan is to fight them - and win - using my standard MT navy as realistically as I know how.

Anyway, the first challenge is the armor. The obvious solution is to send in the SSNs, which is my main plan. But just for fun, I though I'd explore other options. I know that anti-ship missiles and other guided weapons can destroy their radar and other sensors that can't be armored, which may not sink the ship, but will still take it out of the fight. But are there any modern weapons that could actually penetrate heavy armor? How would bunker busters like the GBU-28 or HOPE fair in this situation?

I decided for the hell of it to try to calculate a general ballpark figure for how many weapons you'd need to kill a 2,000,000 ton displacement warship, and theoretically speaking it's remarkably doable.

I busted out some of my old research materials from when I was working on my undergrad, specifically Humphrey's data on the number of 1,000 lbs bomb equivalent (TPBE hereafter) hits needed to put a WWII armored warship out of action. I plotted his figures, and the best fit I could find for them mathematically is 5464.06x²+2266.91x-1720.47, where x is the number of TPBE hits required to achieve a firepower kill on y tonnage. For 2,000,000 tons, I'm getting 18.9, call it 19, TPBE to neutralize that tonnage and put it in the yard for repair and equipment replacement.

If you want to sink it outright, 134.417x²+990.109x-3607.31 is the best fit and I got 118.46 TBPE hits to sink 2,000,000 tons. All is not lost however, as modern ASCMs tend to set everything in the compartment they hit on fire if there is oxygen to burn - Exocets are documented to have consistently caused fires that reached around 3,000°F in the unclassified literature I've seen from the Iran-Iraq War and Falklands War. Notably, Exocets were also far less lethal to oil tankers than warships in that respect as the thicker double hull on a supertanker typically detonated the warheads against the hull rather than inside, and the fuel tanks on a tanker are constantly purged of oxygen by engine exhaust. So, depending on where you hit it and how big the missile you hit it with is, you can plausibly sink an NS-style super dreadnought outright with conventional weapons from a very heavy surface action group or a multi-carrier strike group.

I can't put an equation on it, but the secondary incendiary effects of ASCMs act as a force multiplier, and that effect trends toward having a greater effect with larger displacement. There's not enough declassified data to say for sure, but generally speaking a missile like the RGM-84 Harpoon or MM38/40 Exocet hits somewhere between 1.4-2.0 TBPE. So, you probably won't be too terribly far off if you take the warhead weight of whatever missiles you shoot at that thing in pounds, double that number, divide by 1,000, and treat that as your TBPE for outright sinking it.

My recommendation is, go for the firepower kill. Tactically it's just as good as sinking a ship outright, and is far easier to do in this case.

Edit: It should go without saying that this is probably way off given that I have no solid data beyond increasingly wild extrapolations above 45,000 tons, but if people want to say they have a 2 million ton warship I think it's fair to extrapolate well beyond the available data right along with them.

Edit: I want to add some stuff to the magic conversation too and I don't feel like double posting.

ok maybe thats too much. What im thinking was a page that showed off the "main weapon" for each category. Like, heres our main rifle, heres our main fighter, etc. How would I go about doing that? And do you have any layouts that youd suggest on the forums? Also I realize since my nation has magic, a lot of those vehicles like spyplanes would be redundant because we could just use magic to scry on people. How would I factor that into my factbook?

I suppose I would employ magicians a lot like military or civilian intelligence, or civilian groups added on top of military one's. So it's like the CIA, the information came from, somewhere, and they got it under mysterious conditions, because someone or something was on the inside that you don't need to know about, but here's the base and it's got terrorists in it so who cares? The information comes from somewhere, and thus can be used regardless. I'd imagine it would still be useful to have spy planes and such for number's sake, presuming powerful magic is rare, and to augment intelligence gathering and so on, especially if the scrying powers are messed with additional forms of magic, such as scrying free bubbles etc. Telepathy could be used to communicate instead of just radios, neat stuff like that, you could have enhanced explosives. Presumably magicians/mages or whatever would be rare, and talented one's rarer than that, so the abilities would be used sparingly where they could do the most good for the military and they would mostly be kept off the front lines. You might have some kind of special unit that incorporates front line magicians or what have you.

Really, it depends on the rules of the magic system. What does it cost to cast a spell or enchant an object? That answer changes things dramatically, but presumably magic doesn't displace technology so much as it augments it. You could use enchanted technology to create holograms and retrieve physical objects from a bag of holding, like a videogame inventory system where you can carry 300 lbs of stuff without having a visible backpack. You could also use magic in industrial processes to generate and remove heat, and golems could be used alongside robotics to fully automate assembly lines, agriculture, and a lot of manual labor. I can see quite a few military applications for all that, with militarized golems in particular being an effectively free source of manual labor for engineering and logistics work. Being able to add and remove heat with high efficiencies would make remote sensors quite a bit cheaper and more compact, and allow for much higher clock speeds for computers. Enchanted computers in particular sounds particularly useful, as it would give them a way to alter their environment as fast as they can activate a magic item with a USB port.

As far as intelligence gathering goes, presumably rival nations also have extensive investment in magic and have expended significant resources working on ways to shield their infrastructure and secrets from prying eyes. If magic can be detected and counterspelled, then it can presumably be used to prevent observation with scrying or direct magical means.

Honestly, go nuts. I love the concept, and I've been doing a little worldbuilding for a D&D setting for some of my college buddies based around magic existing in a high-tech setting where technology evolved alongside it. The Starfinder setting specifically handled this in an interesting way, but I personally suggest you make it a defined "magic" system where it has rules that any reader of your setting will be able to easily identify. Think Bending in Avatar: The Last Airbender which follows consistent internal rules over Harry Potter, where magic is as powerful or weak as is required to fit the plot.

[Immoren]

I was doing Armour Reserve Officer School org for my nation that got me thinking. Reserve officer schools of course are meant to give certain percentage of conscripts platoon leader training and Ensign/Second Lieutenant commission when they go into reserve. I was again aping Finnish system where Ground Force has generic Reserve Officer School for (almost) all other reserve officers, while Armoured Brigade has Armour Reserve Officer School for their Ensigns/Second Lieutenants. I'd copy this, except there would be several such institutions. Some thing like 1 per larger Military region or something.
What I'm getting is that I realized that this division between Armour Reserve Officer School and Reserve Officer School exists in Finland because mechanization is relatively low. On other hand in Immoren if I've Mechanization rate and general size of army is also larger, would having several specialized armour schools still make sense, or would it be "reasonable" is that there is no longer specialized schools for armour reserve officers and all reserve officer schools have their tank line and armoured howitzer lines and what have you, while one Reserve Officer School still holds to name of "Reserve Armour School" out of "heritage" reasons. lol

[Purpelia]

Er... did anyone even consider how much a 7m thick slab of steel would weigh? A ship with the armor configuration described would find it difficult to remain buoyant in concrete, let alone water.

[Gallia-]

I was doing Armour Reserve Officer School org for my nation that got me thinking. Reserve officer schools of course are meant to give certain percentage of conscripts platoon leader training and Ensign/Second Lieutenant commission when they go into reserve. I was again aping Finnish system where Ground Force has generic Reserve Officer School for (almost) all other reserve officers, while Armoured Brigade has Armour Reserve Officer School for their Ensigns/Second Lieutenants. I'd copy this, except there would be several such institutions. Some thing like 1 per larger Military region or something.
What I'm getting is that I realized that this division between Armour Reserve Officer School and Reserve Officer School exists in Finland because mechanization is relatively low. On other hand in Immoren if I've Mechanization rate and general size of army is also larger, would having several specialized armour schools still make sense, or would it be "reasonable" is that there is no longer specialized schools for armour reserve officers and all reserve officer schools have their tank line and armoured howitzer lines and what have you, while one Reserve Officer School still holds to name of "Reserve Armour School" out of "heritage" reasons. lol

Send all officers, reserve or not, to the same armor school.

Ditto for everything else.

[Gallia-]

there was a logh episode about the romeo x juliet take

it's the first time you see the alliance tanks too

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

ngl if you tried to start replacing the Ostmarkian population via war rape we'd probs start dropping genetically altered lethal smallpox in your capital city via Pershing II's (that or the rumoured emasculation virus every Muslim seems to be afraid of irl). Then again we live next door to charming places like Serbia and Russia.

[Gallia-]

imagine not being an island lmao

[The Akasha Colony]

If you wilfully misrepresent me again I will not let you hear the end of it.

You already post so incessantly that there would hardly be a difference.

[Almadaria]

I just stumbled in here and scrolled past two pages of the most disturbing shit I've ever seen come from someone.

I will turn around and leave.

[Purpelia]

This is why we can't have nice things.

I'll bite.

As a general rule Purpelian soldiers are expected to behave in accordance to the laws of what ever nation they are in at the time in times of peace and Purpelian laws in times of war. Also, if Purpelia has bases in a foreign country they are also expected to obey Purpelian laws there. As Purpelia has no age of consent laws (other than the notion that those who have not completed elementary school have to get consent from their parents for sex) this can lead to interesting situations with foreigners as one might imagine. Especially since according to Purpelian law the consent of foreigners who are on Purpelian soil without a legal permit is neither requested nor required.

[Grand Indochina]

To Champagne Socialist Sharifistan...

Stop asking questions about NSFW topics, can't you see how many times others have told you to stop ? Peoples in this forum aren't comfortable with your questions, they found them DISTURBING.

Also, consider this a short answer to all the questions you may have in the future : it is your world, do whatever you find fit.

I do believe there is no such thing as stupid question, however think a little bit before you ask does help a lot.

Lastly, don't annoy peoples by telling them to answer anything, let them do so voluntary.

---

To other peoples of this thread...

Fellas, instead of talking bad about Champagne Socialist Sharifistan, why don't you just ignore him if you dislike his questions so much ? Don't feed the troll and certainly the troll will die.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

This is why we can't have nice things.

I'll bite.

As a general rule Purpelian soldiers are expected to behave in accordance to the laws of what ever nation they are in at the time in times of peace and Purpelian laws in times of war. Also, if Purpelia has bases in a foreign country they are also expected to obey Purpelian laws there. As Purpelia has no age of consent laws (other than the notion that those who have not completed elementary school have to get consent from their parents for sex) this can lead to interesting situations with foreigners as one might imagine. Especially since according to Purpelian law the consent of foreigners who are on Purpelian soil without a legal permit is neither requested nor required.

Interesting but Purpelia is an international pariah.

How can you get away with mentioning stuff like that though?

[Purpelia]

Interesting but Purpelia is an international pariah.

NO IT IS NOT. WHERE DID YOU GET THAT IDEA? I AM OFFENDED NOW.