NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[Miku the Based]

Is 6.5 creedmoor the future of firearms or are we still going to be using a cartridge made back in the '60s and '70s? How long do you think until it becomes widespread?

Seeing as how the US Army has never shown any interest in 6.5 Creedmoor (or any of the other assorted "next generation" commercial rounds like 6.5 Grendel and 6.8 SPC) as a general purpose round in favor of its own designs (currently the 6.8 designs for NGSW), it seems unlikely at best that it's suddenly going to backtrack on that. And every other NATO power is taking the path of least resistance and basically just buying HK416 chambered in bog standard 5.56, without any interest in caliber changes.

I see, so is there a chance for the grendel or the 6.8? Never heard of the 6.8, or just rarely. Would a major conflict have to occur for a reassesment in calibers? It seems like development have stalled when in just 40 some years we went from 30-06 to 308 to 556 then nothing afterwards.

[Gallia-]

Seeing as how the US Army has never shown any interest in 6.5 Creedmoor (or any of the other assorted "next generation" commercial rounds like 6.5 Grendel and 6.8 SPC) as a general purpose round in favor of its own designs (currently the 6.8 designs for NGSW), it seems unlikely at best that it's suddenly going to backtrack on that. And every other NATO power is taking the path of least resistance and basically just buying HK416 chambered in bog standard 5.56, without any interest in caliber changes.

I see, so is there a chance for the grendel or the 6.8

Not unless you're a redneck militia I guess. Even then .300 BLK seems to be the round of choice.

then nothing afterwards.

There was literally no reason to move beyond 5.56mm when all your shooting is done in rooms against terrorists protected by KISS T-shirts and big dick energy.

.277 Fury/TVCM is the most powerful infantry cartridge ever made. 80k PSI versus the ~70k PSI of 6mm Unified. The entire reason is to defeat Interceptor/ESAPI levels of body armor.

Sadly no one issued 6mm Unified AEK-971s in Chechnya 2 since spicy meme economy demands .50 caliber assault rifles. Not that .50 cal is bad per se, it's big dick energy, but it's not 6mm Unified which is the true king.

I guess this means Gallaverse USSR will use 6mm Unified slimegirl propellant AEK-971s in the 2000s while Dumbla makes a 6.5x51mm AR-10 to dab on that.

[The Akasha Colony]

I see, so is there a chance for the grendel or the 6.8? Never heard of the 6.8, or just rarely. Would a major conflict have to occur for a reassesment in calibers? It seems like development have stalled when in just 40 some years we went from 30-06 to 308 to 556 then nothing afterwards.

No, and for the same reason. The US Army has no interest in them. 6.5 Grendel, 6.5 Creedmoor, 6.8 SPC, and .300 BLK are all more or less aimed at the market of wannabe operators looking for MAXIMUM LETHALITY but who are too broke to actually afford a completely new round/gun. That also includes actual SOF units, which have the money and procurement flexibility to buy whatever niche weapons they want, but not enough money or patience to develop custom rounds and guns. These rounds are all designed to be fairly easy and cheap retrofits for existing firearms and existing factories, but that limits the room for improvement or a serious reassessment of needs.

On the other hand, the Army does have the money to develop completely new rounds tailored to their specific needs (as well as completely new guns to fire them), so they have no interest in these half-baked semi-custom rounds shoehorned into existing guns (because they're developing new guns anyway).

There have been plenty of developments in small arms over the last several decades but the repeated conclusion has always been that they never offered anything worth switching to. It's only within the last decade or so that body armor has started to proliferate beyond developed countries, and even then it's still not universal in lower tier militaries and very rare in insurgent forces like ISIS. The US Army is already experimenting with 6.8 and it is unlikely a sudden conflict is going to accelerate this work. It is more likely to reveal other deficits in the Army's capabilities that will suck up more attention, and thus may end up delaying any caliber/rifle changes.

[Puzikas]

Nah they have their market.

6.5mm was developed to fit a 800m cartridge in a short action Winchester bolt originally before it became the means to fit it to a standard AR Upper before the current year of more common swappable uppers. It just so happened to coincide with ~tactical memes~ and marketing

.300AAC was developed specifically to work around the issue ARs have with supressors and to throw a more useful mass downrange at subsonic speeds (260gr vs. 120gr. For 5.56). It's the only one of the meme rounds worth anything significant.

6.8 Special Needs is for people who have suffered hypoxic brain injuries as a result of prolonged exposure to paint and hot glue fumes. In that way it's like the make a wish foundation I guess, there at the very end.

6.5 Creedmore is a hot meme because it was made to just get a good 6.5 on the market and honestly it's pretty decent.


Something to remember is that many states do not allow hunting if medium game (deer) with anything less than a bullet of 0.236 or 0.243 inches and these have been made to provide a legal alternative to those laws

All the cartridge switch memes are dumb anyways.

[Puzikas]

Double post because this form still operates from a back end made before the sack of Rome and because I hate my life

.50 Beowolf and .458 SOCOM are totally legit in their actual design goals and are up front about it; they want to push a large bore bullet from an AR platform for the reason of shooting hardened material and barrier penetration. They both do this job well. Weather or not you believe that this job is necessary or good is for you to determine.

Other hot memes include 6mm unified which was too pure to live, .25-45 Sharps which shouldn't exist but did, .240 A-Square which is bad and you should feel bad, .223 Wild which is a good meme if .223 wild wasn't vaporware, .224 Valkyrie which is something I have to accept exists.

[Gallia-]

Dumbla uses .458 (and later .50 BW) AR-15s for nuclear plant security. ):

Also .50 Barret (and later 25mm Payload Rifle) to stop cars.

6mm Unified AEK-971 should be standard issue for Ratnik 3 troops IRL also.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

What are the differences and commonalities among France,Russia, the United States and China's division army reform into brigade army?I find that they generally tend to incorporate units originally assigned to the army group level into brigade level units.If division level troops are no longer the mainstream in the future, then I think the army may become more flexible and responsive,can perform more diverse tasks.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

Gallia-, I asked you a military realism question.

[Fuso-]

Gallia-, I asked you a military realism question.

And I ask you as OP to kindly stop harassing people.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

Does teaching soldiers MMA achieve anything?

[Gallia-]

It gives them a hobby.

Gallia-, I asked you a military realism question.

And I ask you as OP to kindly stop harassing people.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

It gives them a hobby.

Ok.

[Puzikas]

Dumbla uses .458 (and later .50 BW) AR-15s for nuclear plant security. ):

Also .50 Barret (and later 25mm Payload Rifle) to stop cars.

6mm Unified AEK-971 should be standard issue for Ratnik 3 troops IRL also.

And it is based for doing so

[Manokan Republic]

Seeing as how the US Army has never shown any interest in 6.5 Creedmoor (or any of the other assorted "next generation" commercial rounds like 6.5 Grendel and 6.8 SPC) as a general purpose round in favor of its own designs (currently the 6.8 designs for NGSW), it seems unlikely at best that it's suddenly going to backtrack on that. And every other NATO power is taking the path of least resistance and basically just buying HK416 chambered in bog standard 5.56, without any interest in caliber changes.

I see, so is there a chance for the grendel or the 6.8? Never heard of the 6.8, or just rarely. Would a major conflict have to occur for a reassesment in calibers? It seems like development have stalled when in just 40 some years we went from 30-06 to 308 to 556 then nothing afterwards.

The U.S. Special Forces have shown quite an interest in 6.5mm Creedmoor, going so far as to make several semiautomatic rifles and even a machine gun in it, which honestly makes a ton of sense as one of the key advantages is range and reduced recoil. The U.S. military is also currently working on a 6.8mm gun, which so far has focused on polymer ammunition primarily, although it stems from a program where caseless rounds were developed as well, including a 6.5mm round which seems to have never really gone in to mass production. Despite the naysayers who just hate new things (and are lying out their ass about the U.S. military having no interest in these things), there is a lot of work being put in to a new 6mm cartridge right now, and for a lot of reasons, including just generally improved ballistics with no obvious need for an increase in price and the fact that our guns are fairly old and aging. The M16 series of guns being in service for 50+ years, twice as long as the garand, springfield, or M14. If you're going to replace your old guns, you might as well switch to a new cartridge or at least consider it, and go all out.

A few key things, weight, recoil, aerodynamics and armor penetration are present for the decision, with the 6.5mm and 6.8mm actually having quite a bit bitter armor penetration for the same type of round than the 7.62mm (I.E. not needing expensive tungsten rounds or the like), and as both China and Russia are more frequently using body armor and their equipment is likely to end up in the hands of our enemies one day, be it Iran or terrorists for example (who use S-300 missiles and ak-47's), it makes sense to develop weapons more focused on these threats. The last 30 years has actually changed the future battlefield quite a bit, with a massive shift in countries like Russia and China filling in the technology gap that was present during the cold war, making it more of a concern for us to have better equipment ourselves. Basically, while we could get away with certain things in the past, advancements in technology has changed that. A modern cellphone for example has a better computer system than what was used in the NASA moon missions, and so while the Russians and Chinese could never get a missile with an accurate guidance system, and never had a manned moon mission for example, you literally could put a cellphone in one and have better computer capabilities than the Americans did in the 60's and 70's; private companies are starting to regularly go to space, such as SpaceX, which means country's definitely can. Both Israel and the UK are planning missions to the moon. The shift has been quite dramatic, to the point where computerized electronic controls are now the norm, and so things like air-bursting rounds, hand-held computers, high-end scopes, and other sophisticated electronics are quite common, with the factories that make these goods also having electronic computerized controls allowing for more sophisticated production of goods than was possible even just in the 90's. Just Red-dot scopes from the early 90's in comparison to today almost seem like a joke, yet are common place today.

The U.S. military likely is going to skip right over the 6.8mm SPC and 6.5mm Grendel in favor of a whole new cartridge based on the concept, with these basically being developed as stop gap solutions that would fit in to a 5.56mm sized gun and receiver, making it easier to convert to these rounds. These have a lot of utility, but if you are just designing a whole new gun, it makes sense to design a whole new cartridge. The 6.5mm Grendel and 6.8mm Remington both saw use by the U.S. military and various other military's, such as Italy (6.8mm SPC) and Serbia (6.5mm Grendel), but not in large numbers. The main limiting factor being, well, replacing all the old guns. Although in my opinion new guns don't cost that much and make up like less than .1% of most military budgets anyways, military forces for logistics reasons are generally loathe to replace their existing gun stocks, the U.S. using the grease gun all the way in to the 90's in an actual serious capacity for example by Delta Force, so they tend not to replace them until something really amazing comes along or they just want to start a new project.

[Triplebaconation]

Indeed we live in such a golden age of technological progress that decreasing or increasing the diameter of a bullet by a millimeter is seen as an advance.

[Gallia-]

Engineers then: We have taken this 6 month old howitzer and put it on an 8 month old armored tractor to revolutionize warfare with a new form of attacking large earthworks.
Engineers now: We increase horsepower of tank by 10.

[Triplebaconation]

when you crash your lunar lander because you accidentally pull up tiktok on your smartphone

[United Earthlings]

Whew, it's been a long time since I've posted in one of these.

Anyway, I've already got a basic opinion on this topic formed, but I thought I'd ask what you all think: if you have a small population in an MT nation, how do you maximize your military strength? Let's say like a million people. Conscription wise, how many active duty personnel could you theoretically have before your country just became a constant warzone? Equipment wise, what do you think would maximise their firepower? Assume that tech isn't a problem.

Thanks in advance.

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here"

In your case, no military would have a similar deterrent value as a small military.

Best long term plan would of been to have found your nation sometime in the past a larger/more powerful nation to guarantee the sovereignty of your nation through an alliance structure that resembles the RL NATO.

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Q1: Assuming an NS world that more resembles the political situation as it was the during the RL Cold War. Would the development of a modern SPAAG for replacement of a previous SPAAG similar to the Gepard or 2K22 Tunguska be worth pursuing?

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Q2: If the Dawn of Civilization had begun when the world looked more like it did when the Pangaea {Gondwana&Laurasia} or Rodinia supercontinent were in existence. How would the evolution/revolution of military technology been impacted on a humanity placed compacted on one giant supercontinent? Would land warfare be more advanced now at the expense of naval warfare? Would Air Power have come into being sooner, the same or later in time? Would humanity itself be less technologically advanced, more or about the same you think?

[Triplebaconation]

It depends on the climate, which of course varied drastically over the hundreds of millions of years you're talking about.

If anything naval warfare would be more important.

[New Vihenia]

With massive continent... there would be massive desert... mi thinks of a tracked giant aircraft carrier.

[Gallia-]

Deserts would just be impassable barriers. Navies would be important because everyone would live on the coasts where there is arable land and water.

Australia is the obvious analogy here.

[United Earthlings]

It depends on the climate, which of course varied drastically over the hundreds of millions of years you're talking about.

If anything naval warfare would be more important.

1. Whichever climate type you feel like elaborating on, so either as it was all those millions of years ago or a facsimile from the Dawn of Civilization to Present only the thing being different is the configuration of the continents.
2. Ok, but how and in what ways would it be more important than compared to what happen historically.

With massive continent... there would be massive desert... mi thinks of a tracked giant aircraft carrier.

So basically the Mortal Engines novel/film?

Also, from what I remember reading while the climate was different in various ways and similar to what humanity has experienced for the past 10-12,000 years depending on the specific point in time, while deserts did exist, the entire supercontinents weren't just a single massive desert.

Also, for the sake of simplicity given the very impossible, I'm assuming that Planet wide atmospheric PPM oxygen and carbon dioxide levels would remain what they were historically for the past 12,000 years.

Deserts would just be impassable barriers. Navies would be important because everyone would live on the coasts where there is arable land and water.

Australia is the obvious analogy here.

Assume arable land and water exist within the vast interior of the supercontinent.

If it also helps, humanity is living on a world that looks like the following 12,000 years ago to today instead of the millions it actually was.

Option 1:


Option 2:

[Gallia-]

Assume arable land and water exist within the vast interior of the supercontinent.

Not very Pangea then.

[United Earthlings]

Assume arable land and water exist within the vast interior of the supercontinent.

Not very Pangea then.

Pangea existed as a supercontinent for over a hundred million years, so your both right and wrong, only by picking a specific date determines which.

Again, I'm assuming for this weird scenario that climate levels would be similar to what they have been for the past 12,000 years versus what they were actually those tens of millions of years ago from what we do know.

That stated, if you want to hypothesize what it would be like for humanity to live on a planet with 4,000 PPM CO2 level, your free to do that, but that's even beyond the scope of what I had in mind.

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And in addition, seeing as this topic has veered way off course then what I originally had in mind, it bears repeating again.

I'm more interested in what impact on military technology, tactics and strategies if humanity had evolved on an Earth when a supercontinent was still present.

[Champagne Socialist Sharifistan]

Could you design an Army uniform including a cloak (with trackpants covering the legs and body armour underneath)?
Would it be effective as uniform for medics and logistics soldiers?