NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[Kazarogkai]

There's no "best" type of draft animal any more than there's a "best" type of truck or sandwich or anything else.

Technically yes but we can still have fun speculating. That and Oxen are objectively a very solid draft animal. Outside of deserts and mountains where camels reign I guess.

[Gallia-]

People who get genocided usually don't have nukes.

Well, at least not if they're genocided by violent means like chemical bombing.

What if they’re enemies have more nukes
E.g. India’s actions in Kashmir

Pakistan isn't being genocided by India, nor vice versa, considering Pakistan has an independent government, nation, and territory. The fact that some Pakistanis in India or Bangladesh might be being genocided isn't really the concern of the government which rules the territory called Pakistan, unless you are a literal Nazi and obsessed with what other people do to their own tiny minorities instead of trying to make things good for your own people.

The Schmidtian ideal of internationalism is hard to enforce from the perspective of a decidedly weaker nation, though. Might as well suggest Greece invade Thracia to stop the Persian persecution of their brothers-in-blood or Israel invade Long Island to liberate New York Jews from the pogroms of Harlem. Perhaps only Hitler was stupid enough to actually attempt it, given the other two examples.

There isn't a plausible situation where escalating from chemical to nuclear would make your situation better. Chemical weapons are quite threatening to troops with no NBC equipment or training, but are mostly a (significant) annoyance for armies with access to basic NBC equipment (mask, gas alarms, atropine...) and training. Chemical attacks on civilian areas can be mostly thwarted with sophisticated techniques like "closing windows" and "duct tape"; again only completely unprepared civilians are going to suffer mass casualties from a chemical attack.

Nuclear retaliation is a credible threat against specific threats like mass surprise chemical attack on a populated area, but this has never actually happened in the context of interstate war, and even before nuclear weapons the threat of retaliation in kind was sufficient to make it dubious.

Well, if the Kurds had a nuke in the 80's I wouldn't be surprised if they used it on Baghdad and it would be justified in my opinion.

Then the Kurds would be a paragraph in a history book rather than a semi-autonomous province I suppose.

[Miku the Based]

What countermeasures are available for a low tech and a high tech subject when dealing with gunfire locators. How to obfuscate the sound or confuse it to think it is somewhere it isn't, how to confuse it to think it is what it is not. How to locate them, how to destroy them, methods of destroying them, so on.

Also opinions and advice on using aphrodisiacs and horny virus as chmical warfare.

[Miku the Based]

Then the Kurds would be a paragraph in a history book rather than a semi-autonomous province I suppose.

They are protected by nato jets and Sadam already tried exterminating them completely from north iraq.
Chemical warfare is only used against nations that don't have chemical weapons of thier own. I'd rekon they'll refrain from using chemical warfare if it was a nuclear power that surprisingly didn't have chemical weapons and a countermeasure to chemical weapons.
In the hypotetical senario of two nuclear powers, yes a nuclear exchange would probably occur but it wouldn't really matter if the whole nation was gonna die from chemical/bio war in the first place.

[Gallia-]

Bush didn't do anything when Saddam was gassing Kurds in 1991 lol. He would probably help Saddam gas more of them if the Kurds had nuked Baghdad or something dumb.

It made more sense to keep Iraq around and not have it collapse into anarchy than it did to protect a potentially flaky Iranic minority. Arguably it still does. For the reason why, I suggest you look at the last 18 years of the Middle East's history. It's easier for the Kurds to just leave Iraq and go somewhere else, obviously, which is what a lot of Kurds did, anyway.

[Miku the Based]

Bush didn't do anything when Saddam was gassing Kurds in 1991 lol. He would probably help Saddam gas more of them if the Kurds had nuked Baghdad or something dumb.

It made more sense to keep Iraq around and not have it collapse into anarchy than it did to protect a potentially flaky Iranic minority. Arguably it still does. For the reason why, I suggest you look at the last 18 years of the Middle East's history. It's easier for the Kurds to just leave Iraq and go somewhere else, obviously, which is what a lot of Kurds did, anyway.

Because Turkey nato jets were protecting them above in Turkey (purely to protect Turkey airspace). If Sadam could gas the entirety of the Kurds he would. Practiality and politically he couldn't do so. The response is avoiding the cusp of thé argument being that in some circumstances a nation using nuclear weapons is justifiable under the reason of self preservation. If Kurdistan was a nation with a state and a nuclear power and Sadam had decided to conduct Chemical warfare anyways then it would be justifiable to use them in certain contexts. Kurdistan as a state has no place to emmigrate to (Turkey does not like them and neither did Syria at the time, if I could remember Turkey sent troops to turn away the kurds at a point) and it would be absurd to do so as a state, to lose it's claim to land. It will have to resort to nuclear warfare in order to protect the Kurdish people and the nations integrity if the population was at imminate danger of dying from chemical/bio warfare.
The choice of words and behavior there is a reason why I put you on my foe list.
Don't know how bush was involved.

[Austrasien]

Well, if the Kurds had a nuke in the 80's I wouldn't be surprised if they used it on Baghdad and it would be justified in my opinion. Same with the Ethiopians and Italy. Sure, it may not make the situation better and will introduce a new dynamic to the war. But it may just as well end hosilities and cause at the very least a cease fire if your enemy is reasonable enough.
Really, Belka was justified in using nukes for self preservation in my opinion.

You are aside the point here.

1. Nuclear weapons are a lot more devastating than chemical weapons.
2. If you nuke an opponent who is armed with nuclear weapons, in response to a chemical attack, they will certainly nuke you in response to that.
3. The consequences of being nuked are typically much worse than the consequences of being gassed.

So it isn't a credible threat. The US threatened Iraq with nuclear retaliation if they used gas on coalition troops and it worked. Iraq had no nuclear weapons. But nobody seriously thought the US or any other NATO member would use nukes against the Warsaw Pact in response to a chemical attack... because this would have invited the Warsaw Pact to unleash their nukes. For this reason, NATO both built its NBC defence and retained its chemical arsenal, the only credible deterrent was a response in kind - the Soviets being subject to the same constraints as NATO.

And there is a question why, if a nuclear-armed opponent has decided its time for your people to vanish from the earth at all costs, they are using gas to do it rather than the more economical and expedient method of nuking you pre-emptively. This at least has the possibility of diminishing your nuclear arsenal in a meaningful way, while chemical attacks leave it almost untouched. Since they can reasonably assume you will retaliate with everything available to you once you learn of their genocidal intentions (regardless of whether they choose to use mass gassing, nuking, chopping or whatever), you have nothing more to lose once their plan is in motion, they have every reason to go all-in.

Of course similar logic dictates that genocide is far more likely to happen when the aggressor has already subjugated their target, at which point they have far more options to divide-and-destroy a target population in ways that preclude effective organized resistance.

[Triplebaconation]

Indeed if ethnic minorities were powerful nations with access to nuclear weapons they'd be at much less risk of being gassed - or bulldozed, which turned out to be a far more efficient method of killing Kurds.

[Gallia-]

Tread on those who tread on you. - Kurdish proverb.

[Miku the Based]

Well, if the Kurds had a nuke in the 80's I wouldn't be surprised if they used it on Baghdad and it would be justified in my opinion. Same with the Ethiopians and Italy. Sure, it may not make the situation better and will introduce a new dynamic to the war. But it may just as well end hosilities and cause at the very least a cease fire if your enemy is reasonable enough.
Really, Belka was justified in using nukes for self preservation in my opinion.

You are aside the point here.

1. Nuclear weapons are a lot more devastating than chemical weapons.
2. If you nuke an opponent who is armed with nuclear weapons, in response to a chemical attack, they will certainly nuke you in response to that.
3. The consequences of being nuked are typically much worse than the consequences of being gassed.

So it isn't a credible threat. The US threatened Iraq with nuclear retaliation if they used gas on coalition troops and it worked. Iraq had no nuclear weapons. But nobody seriously thought the US or any other NATO member would use nukes against the Warsaw Pact in response to a chemical attack... because this would have invited the Warsaw Pact to unleash their nukes. For this reason, NATO both built its NBC defence and retained its chemical arsenal, the only credible deterrent was a response in kind - the Soviets being subject to the same constraints as NATO.

And there is a question why, if a nuclear-armed opponent has decided its time for your people to vanish from the earth at all costs, they are using gas to do it rather than the more economical and expedient method of nuking you pre-emptively. This at least has the possibility of diminishing your nuclear arsenal in a meaningful way, while chemical attacks leave it almost untouched. Since they can reasonably assume you will retaliate with everything available to you once you learn of their genocidal intentions (regardless of whether they choose to use mass gassing, nuking, chopping or whatever), you have nothing more to lose once their plan is in motion, they have every reason to go all-in.

Of course similar logic dictates that genocide is far more likely to happen when the aggressor has already subjugated their target, at which point they have far more options to divide-and-destroy a target population in ways that preclude effective organized resistance.

So in this hypothetical scenario would you suggest the side getting gassed to just deal with it and hold on to their nukes until they all die from the gas? I'm unsure if that's a rational course of action.
So gas isn't as severe as nukes concerning humans, that doesn't exactly matter if one's going to get exterminated anyways.
What is the proper response of a nuclear armed power getting their entire poplulation exterminated through Chemical/biological warfare by another nuclear armed power?

[Triplebaconation]

What is the proper response of a nuclear armed power getting their entire poplulation exterminated through Chemical/biological warfare by another nuclear armed power?

The first thing would be to pinch themselves.

[Austrasien]

I was thinking "put on gas masks" would be a good start.

[Gallia-]

What is the proper response of a nuclear armed power getting their entire poplulation exterminated through Chemical/biological warfare by another nuclear armed power?

The first thing would be to pinch themselves.

It's like the opening of a pataphorical joke.

[Miku the Based]

I don't know, small pox and black plaugue killed more then nukes ever did. And who knows, there could be a Manhattan project on chemical/bio weapons where there isn't a effective countermeasure to it.
The Cold and flu are easily contagious (and possibly coule be weaponized to be very deadly) and even the best gas masks won't help the population from needing to eat and drink.
It's classified as a weapon of mass destruction for a reason.
Plus: consider the hypothetical nation to be underprepared for chemical and bio war in the first place and I could see this scenario playing out.

[Triplebaconation]

It's classified as a weapon of mass destruction for a reason.

Yes, "weapon of mass destruction" is a political term that has nothing to do with capabilities. A rice cooker may be a weapon of mass destruction but nobody's going to go nuclear over one.

If there was a magic chemical or biological weapon with the destructive power you're envisioning you may well be justified in using nuclear weapons in retaliation.

However, as far as we know these remain in the realm of science fiction.

[Austrasien]

I don't know, small pox and black plaugue killed more then nukes ever did. And who knows, there could be a Manhattan project on chemical/bio weapons where there isn't a effective countermeasure to it.
The Cold and flu are easily contagious (and possibly coule be weaponized to be very deadly) and even the best gas masks won't help the population from needing to eat and drink.

They are also wildly unpredictable. Disease transmission is extremely complicated (see: Covid-19) and currently mostly beyond human understanding aside from rather trivial statistical aggregations (if on average each carrier infects more than one person, the epidemic will spread!). Even very basic questions like why there is a cold and flu season cannot be definitely answered, even though it occurs annually like clockwork and has been since before human history.

Manhattan project for diseases would be harvesting animals for viruses and mashing together genetic chunks of different diseases that were dangerous in the past and infecting people with them until a lot of people died. This could plausibly work but it's never been attempted, even turbo edgelords like unit 7-11 made no useful progress. Laboratories are not good analogies for actual populations in actual environments.

It isn't clear if it's even possible to achieve what is desired. From the pathogen's, perspective symptoms including death are just a means to reproduction. Ultra-mega lethality doesn't do much to make a pathogen more transmissible. And optimization for resistance to medical intervention does not necessarily do much to benefit the pathogen in the contest with the natural immune system or against natural competitors (even viruses actually do compete with each other). An apparently perfect viral weapon in trials might turn out to be cockblocked utterly by a common cold strain or something... the world is not under obligation to be neat. Since real pathogens infecting real organisms do not trend monotonically towards naively optimal contagion or lethality there are almost certainly important trade-offs that must be made, and there is no reason to assume these are "logical" tradeoffs. They are probably much more occult like trading between binding with certain antibodies and infecting cells in the nasal cavity.

[Miku the Based]

Tactically under such a senario I would personally nuke the nuclear sites first and then the chemical and biological factories.

[Gallia-]

Bill Clinton just used cruise missiles but OK.

[Triplebaconation]

In such a contrived scenario any course of action is as good as another.

This is really NS RP in a nutshell.

[New Vihenia]

Anyway how about Sub-Kilotonne warhead ? Does this could also be considered as "trigger" for a full blown nuclear retaliation ?

[Gallia-]

It's tit for tat.

[Hinachi]

Is it plausible that an army never develops attack helicopters because it 1) lacks significant experience of using transport helicopters under fire (i.e. US in Vietnam War), 2) has air support from either an air arm with fixed-wing aircraft or a 'tactical air force' (i.e. Soviet Frontal Aviation), and 3) does not face the threat of massed armour attack?

Instead the closest it gets is the evolution of reconnaissance helicopters into armed ones (in the 4k, later 6k MTOW weight class) so that they can attack targets of opportunity or defend themselves. They probably emphasise survivability and looked like Cobras (the earlier single-engine ones) with narrow frontal profiles, while later versions bury their engine deep in the fuselage to minimise infrared signature, among other things.

[Gallia-]

Yes.

[Puzikas]

Is it plausible that an army never develops attack helicopters because it 1) lacks significant experience of using transport helicopters under fire (i.e. US in Vietnam War), 2) has air support from either an air arm with fixed-wing aircraft or a 'tactical air force' (i.e. Soviet Frontal Aviation), and 3) does not face the threat of massed armour attack?

Instead the closest it gets is the evolution of reconnaissance helicopters into armed ones (in the 4k, later 6k MTOW weight class) so that they can attack targets of opportunity or defend themselves. They probably emphasise survivability and looked like Cobras (the earlier single-engine ones) with narrow frontal profiles, while later versions bury their engine deep in the fuselage to minimise infrared signature, among other things.

This is how basically any non first or second rate power operates tbh

like the list of countries that actually operate dedicated attack helicopters is pretty low, like maybe 30-ish nations operate actual attack helicopter frames. The Mi-24 and MI-8TV/TVK/TBK/AMTSh notwithstanding.

[Austrasien]

Anyway how about Sub-Kilotonne warhead ? Does this could also be considered as "trigger" for a full blown nuclear retaliation ?

It is pretty much literally the prisoners game.

There is no useful response to a nuclear strike except launching your own. Failing to respond to a strike is extraordinarily dangerous because the implicit threat of nuclear retaliation is the main defence either side has against a nuclear alpha strike. But this is true for both sides. One strike will probably beget a chain of retaliation and counter retaliation even if neither side desires escalation.

There could be cases where a chain of retaliation and escalation does not continue to the highest possible level. If the weapons were used in a relatively remote air-sea battle, in outer space, an island/colony or the like. It is a lot like lighting a forest fire in the forest you live in. Bad idea. But if you absolutely must don't do it near your home. The more remote in every way from a nation's core population and territory (both physically and sociopolitical), it doesn't help if the nukes are flying in a battle for control of a remote barren island that happens to be the tomb of the sacred prophet and the site of the holiest temple, the better.