NS Military Realism Consultation Thread Vol. 11.0

[Tule]

There are plenty of incidents of individual taking multiple rifle shots and remaining active. And generally it is the 5.56 that is the most deadly rifle round in common military use, because it tends to fragment more reliably and tumble sooner than full-sized rifle rounds.

In this particular video (which I recommend you take down before it gets reported) I can guarantee you that the robber did not sustain injuries to vital blood vessels, the brain or the heart. If he had he would have been on the floor before the video ended.

Hits kill, misses don't. That's 90% of stopping power. The most important factor apart from shot placement, by far, is penetration. Even a very big wound is unlikely to cause incapacitation unless the hole is deep enough to reach the heart/aorta/pulmonary arteries.

EDIT: BTW, for an interesting read, check out the 1986 Miami Shootout.

So with regards to the robber, he just happened to get lucky that the people shooting him weren't very good shots?

Re: Miami shootout, it sounds like the FBI was using pretty weak-ass firearms compared to the robbers. Isn't that what spurred the development of the Jesus cartridge, 10mm Auto?

It was shitty ammo.

9mm JHP at the time would underpenetrate.

A few more centimetres and Platt would have died in the first 10 seconds or do.

9mm JHP today is up to the task and the FBI have switched back to the cartridge.

The robber in the video really was just lucky. Even very good pistol shooters at very short range would have a hard time hitting vitals with a handgun.

[Gallia-]

Convince me that S-70 is better than S-61 and HH-65 is better than HH-52.

[The Dolphin Isles]

hey guys. Which do you think gives a navy its best bang for its buck when it comes to naval dominance, a few carriers, a larger fleet of submarines, a million patrol boats armed with a pair of Termit missiles each?

My nation is pretty isolated from the other nations in my region geographically. However, my population size is the same as Japan (which is between small and middle relative to others). I, however, lack a bit in the military department whereas everyone else around me has doubled down on that with imperialistic intentions.

Thus, I come to you all asking for advice on naval composition. Due to my island nature, this branch receives a great deal of preferential treatment. Right now, I have a carrier fleet that is medium to large sized by irl standards but is pretty meh relative to the people I rp with. However, the carriers are more of a OOC tool for rp, so I can have fun outside my borders and not only be an observer. The main fighting force of my Navy would be the submarine force right now with some pretty advanced nuclear-powered subs.

My main question, however, is if it is a good idea to focus on my subsurface fleet to defend my country from possible naval threats. With my current military, I would not really be able to bring the fight back to any of the major players, so I was focusing more on naval dominance than on expeditionary groups and marine landings which most (if not all) of the other nations do. Additionally, most of them have only minor amounts of their military budget allocated to their navies which means that I might be able to reach a partial parity to their forces at sea, but would not be able to have any success with a marine landing.

Thus, my main idea was that a larger fleet of submarines would be more beneficial than a smaller and more scattered surface fleet with carriers. Thus, I can hopefully defend my waters with a combination of my smaller surface fleet and subs, but still have the ability to reach out and touch them with hidden sub forces. However, I could be completely wrong on this assumption. Are carriers the better option if you can afford them or is it better to just have a stronger overall surface fleet with destroyers, frigates, etc.? Should I just relegate myself to my shores and focus more on things like anti-ship missile batteries, land-based naval strike aircraft, and green-water naval assets?

tl;dr: What's the best bang for my buck when it comes to only providing naval superiority, carrier groups, submarines, or just normal surface fleets?

[The Akasha Colony]

tl;dr: What's the best bang for my buck when it comes to only providing naval superiority, carrier groups, submarines, or just normal surface fleets?

Nuclear fast attack submarines.

[The Dolphin Isles]

Convince me that S-70 is better than S-61 and HH-65 is better than HH-52.

For SAR activities, the ability to float is a very nice feature that both the S-61 and the HH-52, and honestly makes this a hard choice if they were given upgraded avionics. However, the vastly improved speed of the HH-65 and its modernized avionics just add so much capability that it is hard to ignore. Especially for coast guard duties, the ability to get to the scene of a reported incident extremely quickly is paramount as it can save lives, especially with smaller vessels, or interdict criminals before they can escape. Additionally, the sea can change quickly. Conditions can change narrowing the time window and currents and wind can make vessels, people, etc. float miles away from where they reported having difficulties.

The S-70 is a bit of a harder sell as it's not much faster than the other two older helicopters and its range is radically smaller. However, a helicopter that carries more than 17 people isn't really needed for coast guard difficulties and makes the extra size of the S-61 a bit redundant. Additionally, I am not too sure if this is a big deal, but the power of the engines compared to the weight of the airframe suggests that the S-70 would fair better in stormier conditions which is when these airframes are needed the most.

I love floating helicopters as much as the next guy, but there are just better options to fill the niche.

[Taihei Tengoku]

hey guys. Which do you think gives a navy its best bang for its buck when it comes to naval dominance, a few carriers, a larger fleet of submarines, a million patrol boats armed with a pair of Termit missiles each?

My nation is pretty isolated from the other nations in my region geographically. However, my population size is the same as Japan (which is between small and middle relative to others). I, however, lack a bit in the military department whereas everyone else around me has doubled down on that with imperialistic intentions.

Thus, I come to you all asking for advice on naval composition. Due to my island nature, this branch receives a great deal of preferential treatment. Right now, I have a carrier fleet that is medium to large sized by irl standards but is pretty meh relative to the people I rp with. However, the carriers are more of a OOC tool for rp, so I can have fun outside my borders and not only be an observer. The main fighting force of my Navy would be the submarine force right now with some pretty advanced nuclear-powered subs.

My main question, however, is if it is a good idea to focus on my subsurface fleet to defend my country from possible naval threats. With my current military, I would not really be able to bring the fight back to any of the major players, so I was focusing more on naval dominance than on expeditionary groups and marine landings which most (if not all) of the other nations do. Additionally, most of them have only minor amounts of their military budget allocated to their navies which means that I might be able to reach a partial parity to their forces at sea, but would not be able to have any success with a marine landing.

Thus, my main idea was that a larger fleet of submarines would be more beneficial than a smaller and more scattered surface fleet with carriers. Thus, I can hopefully defend my waters with a combination of my smaller surface fleet and subs, but still have the ability to reach out and touch them with hidden sub forces. However, I could be completely wrong on this assumption. Are carriers the better option if you can afford them or is it better to just have a stronger overall surface fleet with destroyers, frigates, etc.? Should I just relegate myself to my shores and focus more on things like anti-ship missile batteries, land-based naval strike aircraft, and green-water naval assets?

tl;dr: What's the best bang for my buck when it comes to only providing naval superiority, carrier groups, submarines, or just normal surface fleets?

Sea power is useful to the extent you can turn it into land power, because even though almost everyone lives by the sea they live on the land by the sea.

Japan's naval forces are structured around some political assumptions, namely that the US would come to its aid.

[The Dolphin Isles]

Nuclear fast attack submarines.

Would small, non-nuclear powered submarines be good to have in a defensive role as well, or is it best to just spend the extra money for the nuclear power plant?

Sea power is useful to the extent you can turn it into land power, because even though almost everyone lives by the sea they live on the land by the sea.

Japan's naval forces are structured around some political assumptions, namely that the US would come to its aid.

Yeah. I am not really in the same position as Japan though and I am not expecting to really "win" wars. More just survive them intact. I have a powerful ally that might help me in case of attack, but I want to prepare for if they stop answering my calls. Additionally, my nation is pretty far from the other players geographically by a whole lot of open seas, so I am hoping to capitalize on that and be able to maintain naval dominance or at least just be able to defend myself an arm's length away from my shores. Additionally, raiding merchant and supply ships could help with my efforts as well as increase war weariness and allow a peace to be made.

[Taihei Tengoku]

A status quo ante is a pretty bad goal--it's usually the result of a chain of failures rather than the end in and of itself.

[The Dolphin Isles]

A status quo ante is a pretty bad goal--it's usually the result of a chain of failures rather than the end in and of itself.

Yeah. I can see that. It definitely isn't ideal (or even remotely good). The biggest issue is I am not trying to roleplay as a military powerhouse like all of them are, but I still want to be able to defend myself if they attack and thought the best way is to meet them at sea which is the area where they spend barely anything compared to their other forces, so I thought this would be the best place to set up a defense.

However, is it too hopeful and/or too costly to think that a robust navy is the best defense. Would I be just better off investing in land-based aircraft and land-based anti-ship missile carriers (if I really get desperate) in order to ward off the enemy fleet?

[Taihei Tengoku]

Best to have one or two good carrier battle groups and a decent fleet of submarines instead IMO, you could defeat the portion of their fleet which threatens you and force a favorable peace. Land-based missiles and planes are nice to haves if you think the decisive battle is going to be fought within range of their bases.

[The Akasha Colony]

Nuclear fast attack submarines.

Would small, non-nuclear powered submarines be good to have in a defensive role as well, or is it best to just spend the extra money for the nuclear power plant?

Only if you're fighting in confined seas like the Baltic, the Med, or the Sea of Japan.

[Crookfur]

Yeah i would focus on a primarily SSN based fleet maybe with a few fast CBGs that can combine to achieve localised air superiority and/or significantly degrade or complicate enemy ASW efforts.

At the very least the carrier groups will allow you to fight for intel on enemy movements and cover a much larger patch of sea when hunting for targets to be handed off to your subs.

[The Dolphin Isles]

Thanks for all of the advice everyone. I think I am good and happy with what I currently have right now then which is basically 2 Charles de Gaulle sized carriers and 2 refitted Enterprise sized carriers (don't worry. I mean the modern one. not the WWII version haha) that I bought from someone else. On top of that is a decent sized fleet that can do escort missions and very substantial subsurface fleet.

Ironically, I am the least military oriented nation in the region, but my ally and I are the only ones that actually enjoy researching military things and know a lot about it. We're actually the only two that really know how modern naval combat is conducted too (ex: one of the other nations mocked my sub reliant navy saying that the Germans showed how flawed that system was in WWII), so I guess we'll see how things go in the future.

[Gallia-]

Question for Crookfur/Puz/Mist(?): How is FNH able to undercut Colt by almost 100%? Is FNH's mfg. capability twice as efficient as Colt's? Has Colt not recapitalized their manufacturing base? Or is something nefarious like they are they selling M4s at a big loss and expecting to make up the difference with M240/M249 or replacement barrels or something else FNH makes? Or is it because FNH is subsidized by the government and the Walloon taxpayer is just eating the extra cost? Or is it all of this in differing quantities of effort?

This is relevant because I'm not sure how much it would cost a state arsenal to produce M16A1-style rifles with modern mfg. I'm assuming it's somewhere around $650-700 per since that is what FN charges, but Colt charged $1,200 per and that was without royalty fees (OTOH so is $650-700) or whatever, so how come Colt needed twice as much money to make a rifle if their production processes are the same, unless they aren't?

Convince me that S-70 is better than S-61 and HH-65 is better than HH-52.

For SAR activities, the ability to float is a very nice feature that both the S-61 and the HH-52, and honestly makes this a hard choice if they were given upgraded avionics. However, the vastly improved speed of the HH-65 and its modernized avionics just add so much capability that it is hard to ignore. Especially for coast guard duties, the ability to get to the scene of a reported incident extremely quickly is paramount as it can save lives, especially with smaller vessels, or interdict criminals before they can escape. Additionally, the sea can change quickly. Conditions can change narrowing the time window and currents and wind can make vessels, people, etc. float miles away from where they reported having difficulties.

The S-70 is a bit of a harder sell as it's not much faster than the other two older helicopters and its range is radically smaller. However, a helicopter that carries more than 17 people isn't really needed for coast guard difficulties and makes the extra size of the S-61 a bit redundant. Additionally, I am not too sure if this is a big deal, but the power of the engines compared to the weight of the airframe suggests that the S-70 would fair better in stormier conditions which is when these airframes are needed the most.

I love floating helicopters as much as the next guy, but there are just better options to fill the niche.

SH-3 is for ASW not SAR. Sorry I should have specified. I don't really see any advantage that SH-60 has that SH-3 doesn't besides forcing "commonality" down the throat of the U.S. Navy. Unless UTTAS has some really badass hover performance or something I don't really see why you would use him over something like SH-3 for hunting subs since SH-3 is just so much bigger, i.e. more room for stores and electronics.

H/e I guess if HH-65 is n minutes faster than HH-52 then that is a really bigge improvement. Is it just not possible to make a relatively high speed amphibious helicopter or would it be better to use an amphibious jet plane instead of HH-52?

Super Frelon seems to be the fastest amphibious helicopter and he goes barely 150 mph.

[Taihei Tengoku]

Colt rifles are stupid expensive for no good reason because Colt is badly managed. They were asking $2500 for their repro M16A1s but Brownells et al came out with the same thing for literally half the price.

The FNH that makes M16s and SAW/M240 is FN America, headquartered in Virginia with its factory in South Carolina.

[Hayo]

Colt doesn't do things "better-faster-cheaper", and its product lines not especially innovative or novel.

They make money off their premium brand image.

FN has the advantage of economy of scale. They have won many military contracts (making it easier to spread their capital cost across large production runs), while Colt has struggled to win big contracts since the 1980s (despite focusing heavily on the government market)

[Sudbrazil]

I recently got into a RP that involves combat in Siberia, while I am a South American nation,, so few questions have surfaced:

Would it be unreasonable for container ships to be modified to serve as improvised helicopter carriers, and if not, could an attack helicopter be disassembled into large parts, put into containers, then taken out, reassembled, and operated from a proper FOB or helicopter carrier?

Could the concept of an Escort Carrier be resurrected as a stop gap for a nation that is unwilling or unable to spend too much on proper aircraft carriers?

[Elan Valleys]

So I've been reading this book.

And I like what I'm reading about the Russian system. Particularly the bits about winning the information battle and cutting the OODA loop. Therefore I'm leaning towards having the Russian system in my military.

These seem to be the main pros and cons, what have I missed?

Pros
Shorter OODA loop (main pro)
Operational flexibilty (admittedly at the cost of tactical flexibility)
Specialist officers/NCOs who have spent entire careers in one role
Obscene amounts of artillery
'Bonegruppa' (this may be a western thing too but haven't seen any reference to it)



Cons
Loss of 'mission command' at lower levels
Higher dependence on strength and ability of commander due to less staff and commander performing some of the staff roles
Lack of cross-arm experience throughout careers

[Taihei Tengoku]

The "tighter OODA loop" is an objective rather than an actual demonstrated capability. In practice the Western system of human commanders who have it intuitively in their head to begin with (from realistic training) is faster than the Soviet norms-based system because looking up which norm to use and calculating it is also a time-consuming activity.

The Russian system is also a reflection of Russian society--a defined leadership caste ruling over a bunch of noticeably dimmer subjects.

[Gallia-]

These seem to be the main pros and cons, what have I missed?

The forest for the trees. Read this.

Shorter OODA loop (main pro)

As long as the norms work and your enemy is less competent than you. With the American system, where soldiers are taught "as you go" rather than being taught "acceptable floor", it is a real possibility. Especially if the American attacks.

Operational flexibilty (admittedly at the cost of tactical flexibility)

There is no trade off this isn't a video game.

The Soviet system was entirely accepting of unique and unusual forms of leadership and "getting the problem done" within military science. Forward detachment commanders were at least as intuitively capable as American counterparts, perhaps moreso, since they also had the backing of a strong and capable leadership training system to provide a skill floor for them. Sure, the average Soviet officer was probably duller and less capable than the average American officer, but the worst Soviet officer was miles ahead of the worst American officer, and the best Soviet officer was just as good as MacArthur or any other legendary American war leader. IOW, the skill curve was narrower yet just as high in the Soviet system. By any other metric that is a vast improvement.

Specialist officers/NCOs who have spent entire careers in one role

Yes.

Obscene amounts of artillery

Russian, yes. Soviet, no. Obscene amounts of artillery would be and were invented by the Tsarist regime, not the Communist one, since they were the most successful at slaying the Golden Horde.

'Bonegruppa' (this may be a western thing too but haven't seen any reference to it)

Bronegruppa are an experience unique to Afghanistan, partially. Puzikas may know about their use in Chechnya or something, but I have a feeling they're the Soviet equivalent of "bring back the SLR/M-14/7.62mm/.30 cal".

Loss of 'mission command' at lower levels

The USSR relied massively on "mission command" at lower levels. No one can fight the Hun for half a millennium and not do that.

Higher dependence on strength and ability of commander due to less staff and commander performing some of the staff roles

This has nothing to do with the "Russian way of war" and everything to do with "lack of NCO corps" in the Soviet Army. It's a relic of post-Tsarist revolutionary fervor which is being corrected as I type.

Lack of cross-arm experience throughout careers

This is a good thing. Having one really good artillery officer or really good maneuver officer is better than having two guys who are at best mediocre at both. Two mediocres do not equal two goods by their powers combined.

The "tighter OODA loop" is an objective rather than an actual demonstrated capability. In practice the Western system of human commanders who have it intuitively in their head to begin with (from realistic training) is faster than the Soviet norms-based system because looking up which norm to use and calculating it is also a time-consuming activity.

The Russian system is also a reflection of Russian society--a defined leadership caste ruling over a bunch of noticeably dimmer subjects.

Norms were less "you lead I follow" and more "write down the good ideas". It's actually very similar to the American system in theory: you do a bunch of training/experience drills, write down what works, and put it into an easily quantified format. Then you write that down so it plugged into a computer or taught to students in school. In practice, it falls apart, because Soviet and Russian troops are too busy being chicken farmers or distilling ethanol from antifreeze to actually train, but once you pass that hurdle you're just taking lessons from various NTC exercises (or, in USSR's case, the Great Patriotic War), distilling them down to simple algebra, and writing it in books for people of the future to learn from. But there's nothing particularly wrong with the concept of norms themselves.

The USSR's ultimate problem was that it was more Hegelian than WASPs, somehow, and also that it was Russian. This meant that the scope of definition of certain terms was a bit narrower ("military science" in Russian is more akin to "mathematics" in English than "science" as we know the words, if we're going by Kattsunisms like "maths is just applied logic" which is itself an alteration of Lenin's quote about "science is applied logic") and the economic window for fitting in things like "training" and "military preparedness" was also narrower. When your system is based on "science" (but not as we know it!) and your definition of "science" necessarily involves asking "what use is this" rather than "what meaning is this" (ok that's really bad, it's more like "where can we go from here?" but I don't want to change the basic structure of the question) then you will be a bit slower than the other guy.

When the Stavka got going, it really got going, but it takes it a while to get to where it needs to be because it has to overcome peacetime inertia and find a utility for knowledge that may not be directly relevant. You can argue that the Soviet laws of war might be a restriction, too, since in the Soviet mind they might as well have been etched into stone by Moses (Marx?) himself, but the laws of war are also incredibly generic, here are the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's laws of war, and I'm sure that the PLA has their own laws of war, perhaps dating back to Mao himself:

• War is defined within the context of the political character of the groups involved.
• The course and outcome of a war is determined by the economic strengths of the warring groups. Baxter summarizes this as "In the final analysis, (...) the use of economic power for mass production of materiel".
• Science and technological development has a significant impact on the outcome of the war. i.e. A large scientific gap requires a larger "economic power" in Baxterian terms to overcome?
• The ideologies and political character of the warring groups has a major impact on the course and outcome. The group that has the higher morale can fight longer, basically? But also involves the avenues of instituting moral factors like patriotism and reciprocal obligation according to Baxter, or at least he implies this.
• The militaries and armed forces, and their relative preparedness and potential for preparedness, has a significant impact on the course and outcome of the war.
• The side that can marshal these correlations most ably usually wins? i.e. the group with the most patriotic people, biggest production basis, willingness to sacrifice, and most prepared and capable armed forces wins. In Communispeak, "the progressive social structure defeats the reactionary social structure".

The USSR's disdain for the concept of "IQ test" keeps it from allowing that relative human competence/quality also matters, but I suspect that can be rolled into the fourth (and sixth!) law regardless. But the laws themselves are very generic. There is also V. Savkin's "four laws" and J. Stalin's "five laws" but of them I think Savkin's laws are best. They are essentially the "six laws" of the Communist Party but stated more succinctly, alliteratively, and they don't involve restatement like the CPSU's laws which apparently thinks that the political character of war is so important that it needs statement twice, just in case you forget what the first law of war is.

tl;dr The "Soviet system" is fine in theory but "Russia" would make any "military system" look bad.

[Austrasien]

So I've been reading this book.

And I like what I'm reading about the Russian system. Particularly the bits about winning the information battle and cutting the OODA loop. Therefore I'm leaning towards having the Russian system in my military.

These seem to be the main pros and cons, what have I missed?

Pros
Shorter OODA loop (main pro)
Operational flexibilty (admittedly at the cost of tactical flexibility)
Specialist officers/NCOs who have spent entire careers in one role
Obscene amounts of artillery
'Bonegruppa' (this may be a western thing too but haven't seen any reference to it)

Cons
Loss of 'mission command' at lower levels
Higher dependence on strength and ability of commander due to less staff and commander performing some of the staff roles
Lack of cross-arm experience throughout careers

Well most of these things have nothing to do with each other - there is no relationship between Russian artillery and say BMP groups or the lack of personnel rotation. It would be far more sensible to look at aspects of the Russian military you think are suitable for your military and adopt those.

Countries which tried to unthinkingly copy the Soviet army as a template almost without exception have failed miserably on the battlefield.

Edit:
"OODA loop" - a supreme Americanism - is an example of what American observors tend to miss. The Russian army generally is and has always been inflexible on the battlefield and slower to react than a lot of its opponents because the centralized chain of command is almost always overly long. But historically they have made this up by their generally exceptional ability to muster large forces and mass them at unexpected times and places. The Russians are world-historic champions of land power projection (a concept which is incomprehensible to most Anglo-American military minds) and this has consistently frustrated their European rivals.

But their imitators generally are not. This is not an explicit feature of Russian or Soviet military doctrine either. But it is one of the boundary conditions that make it work.

[Albynau]

I recently got into a RP that involves combat in Siberia, while I am a South American nation,, so few questions have surfaced:

Would it be unreasonable for container ships to be modified to serve as improvised helicopter carriers, and if not, could an attack helicopter be disassembled into large parts, put into containers, then taken out, reassembled, and operated from a proper FOB or helicopter carrier?

Could the concept of an Escort Carrier be resurrected as a stop gap for a nation that is unwilling or unable to spend too much on proper aircraft carriers?

Well, you could operate helicopters off any kind of flat surface. It's not going to be ideal, particularly with container ships given the compartmentalization below decks for containers and a total lack of any sort of elevator system for moving anything below decks. You're going to be stuck with whatever can sit on deck. Unless you plan on gutting the interiors and installing lifts but then I don't think you're in improvised territory anymore.

I can't comment on the rest of your question but I would curious why a poor (or at least unwilling to spend money on a military) nation would be going to war across the globe.

[Prosorusiya]

Is/was it possible, in the Soviet/Russian Army to serve as an MP in a unit and also be trained in the specialty of that unit? For instance, could a soldier assigned to the Commandants Service also be part of a combat engineering unit and trained accordingly in addition to acting as an MP?

I’m trying to set up parameters for recruits to my new OMSN unit, and I’m thinking of having it be an all volunteer unit, with the requirement being that recruits must have either:

1. Served at least two years as conscript MPs or in the KGB border guards.

2. Be former members of the MVD or KGB Spetznav.

3. Be Terek/Sunzha Cossacks.

But of course I also want to leave open the possibility of my men having training outside of just military police work.

[Crookfur]

I recently got into a RP that involves combat in Siberia, while I am a South American nation,, so few questions have surfaced:

Would it be unreasonable for container ships to be modified to serve as improvised helicopter carriers, and if not, could an attack helicopter be disassembled into large parts, put into containers, then taken out, reassembled, and operated from a proper FOB or helicopter carrier?

Could the concept of an Escort Carrier be resurrected as a stop gap for a nation that is unwilling or unable to spend too much on proper aircraft carriers?

The British did it with Atlantic Conveyor and Causeway for the falklands but they mainly functioned as refuelling bases for the offloading of supplies by helicopter than as anything approaching a proper carrier

[The Dolphin Isles]

SH-3 is for ASW not SAR. Sorry I should have specified. I don't really see any advantage that SH-60 has that SH-3 doesn't besides forcing "commonality" down the throat of the U.S. Navy. Unless UTTAS has some really badass hover performance or something I don't really see why you would use him over something like SH-3 for hunting subs since SH-3 is just so much bigger, i.e. more room for stores and electronics.

H/e I guess if HH-65 is n minutes faster than HH-52 then that is a really bigge improvement. Is it just not possible to make a relatively high speed amphibious helicopter or would it be better to use an amphibious jet plane instead of HH-52?

Super Frelon seems to be the fastest amphibious helicopter and he goes barely 150 mph.

My apologies. I assumed you were talking missions like coastal patrol since you used the name for the coast guard version of the HH-65 instead of the name AS565 Panther. When it comes to naval warfare, I would say that the ability for a helicopter to float is not really needed for anything other than heavy lift helicopters meant for deploying or receiving troops in boats which can just be done by hovering really low like a Chinook. For rescue missions, helicopters with rescue divers and small boats deployed from other ships are good enough if not better. There is really just no need sit on the water. For ASW activities, just attach a rope/cable to the sonar buoy like they do now.

As for the question on a size requirement for float helicopters, I think it is just a height and width stability issue. You just need to look at the ratio of width/length to height of ships and helicopters in pictures/videos and then remember that while the engine and all that are in the bottom of a ship, they are on the top of a helicopter which makes it a lot harder to stabilize as well. On top of that, aircraft are pretty small and top heavy compared to sea-worthy ships and will be in danger of flipping if the sea state is acting up even a little.