NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[Miku the Based]

Now that we're on the topic of submarines. Why don't we use the concept of the Dyson bladeless fan and use it underwater? Why do we still use screws as propellers? It wouldn't create that whooping sound and it would be a continuous hum instead.
Edit: a continuous hum would be higher pitch/frequency which may not show up on a passive sonar since it's not looking for those sounds. Apparently it's lower effeciency, but so is electric engines and That's why they still use hybrids mostly for subs that stay in the water longer then those all electric ones.

I understood that reference.

That being said, I do not imagine it to be any practical (or cost-effective) for submarine propulsion.

The reference was unintentional, it is one of the few Clancy books I have not read. Clancy aged pretty poorly for me. It comes out as a western power fantasy. Like with one of the books I have read, SSN, details how a single Los Angeles class sub takes out nearly all of the Chinese submarine fleet. He goes into detail how the Kilo class subs in the state of a dead fish in the water is really dangerous but then the sub takes on like 3 or 4 subs in which like two of them were dead fish that ambushed that sub and somehow it surived without a scratch. Then it winning against a superior new age all electric sub thought out of pure imagination. It leaves a bad taste. I was a fan of his works, especially rainbow 6, but the bias is just too strong for me to really enjoy anymore.

[The Corparation]

I think the "LFA kills whales" is a total meme.

I've heard both MMP and acoustics people reference sonar killing whales so I think there's some truth to to the meme. iirc it was more of an issue with older sonars, as the USN has figured out ways of making the sonar kill less whales over the years.

[Arkandros]

Now that we're on the topic of submarines. Why don't we use the concept of the Dyson bladeless fan and use it underwater? Why do we still use screws as propellers? It wouldn't create that whooping sound and it would be a continuous hum instead.
Edit: a continuous hum would be higher pitch/frequency which may not show up on a passive sonar since it's not looking for those sounds. Apparently it's lower effeciency, but so is electric engines and That's why they still use hybrids mostly for subs that stay in the water longer then those all electric ones.

the dyson "bladeless" fan actually just has its fan in the base. The outlet is just a shaped duct. Applying this to submarines, this is far less efficient than a screw/pumpjet/ducted propeller and greatly limits cross sectional area, requiring higher mass flow rates to achieve equivalent speeds, which in turn raise the acoustic signature and can cause cavitation.

[Crookfur]

I understood that reference.

That being said, I do not imagine it to be any practical (or cost-effective) for submarine propulsion.

The reference was unintentional, it is one of the few Clancy books I have not read. Clancy aged pretty poorly for me. It comes out as a western power fantasy. Like with one of the books I have read, SSN, details how a single Los Angeles class sub takes out nearly all of the Chinese submarine fleet. He goes into detail how the Kilo class subs in the state of a dead fish in the water is really dangerous but then the sub takes on like 3 or 4 subs in which like two of them were dead fish that ambushed that sub and somehow it surived without a scratch. Then it winning against a superior new age all electric sub thought out of pure imagination. It leaves a bad taste. I was a fan of his works, especially rainbow 6, but the bias is just too strong for me to really enjoy anymore.

IIRC SSN was more than a little silly as it was basically just a narative of the game's levels/missions

[Hinachi]

Hmmm. Looks like the best class of submarine to apply 'stealth' shaping to might be SSBN, then? They need to remain undetected above all else and do not necessarily need to go fast. SSKs would be dependent on whether they operate in deeper waters as Kyiv suggested. SSNs using double hull for a more streamlined exterior could apply 'transmission loss' coating to their outer hull.

I'm curious however if Bi-static/Multistatic system with non cooperative transmitter such as your enemy's own Active sonar would work. So the submarine would carry maybe a smaller underwater drones which act as the "receiver". There is limit however namely the underwater communication.. this put hard limit on the baseline distance or separation between the drones and its carrier by maybe 1 Km at best.

I think any emitter of active sonar can be used by a multi-static system as long as its position is well-known. Underwater communications that does not compromise stealth and provides sufficient bandwidth is a big problem - this paper discusses possible methods for low probability of intercept underwater communications and it estimates only a few kHz of bandwidth can be achieved. Perhaps the receivers could consist of multiple towed arrays instead?

[Gallia-]

AIUI the USN is interested in using SQR-19 and SURTASS LFA in a multi-static system. That way the SURTASS can stay really far away while the destroyers find enemy subs.

I don't see the utility of multistatic sonars in shallow waters like the Baltic though, since it's too shallow to use really long range sonars. It seems like it would be better to have a bunch of seafloor sonobuoys or something just pinging away to make a HF/MF "sonar fence" or something.

[Manokan Republic]

Yes For the most part, as is heat management and finding a reliable way to generate electricity, although a sterling engine is not a bad idea for this. In addition, the armor can serve as a way of blocking out the radiation, as metal and depleted uranium are also pretty good at blocking out radiation, as is a faraday cage, so depending on the design, it can be far lighter weight than you might expect with an existing armored vehicle.

First off, faraday cages are not shielding. blocking EM transmissions and stopping gamma/beta/neutron radiation is entirely different, and a faraday cage operates on an entirely different principle than nuclear shielding. Secondly, your bigger concern is going to be the crews who spend days or weeks a matter of feet from the reactor, which puts your shielding internal to the armored vehicle, thus making it deadweight. I won't get into actual shielding calculations because talks of energy windows and borate doping will probably go over your head, but expect at least a solid 2-3 inches of lead between crews and your reactor.

Faraday cages do provide electromagnetic shielding, and I'm aware that certain forms of radiation are not blocked. That's why I said, in addition to the shielding. I also mentioned that both metal and depleted uranium, which make good armor, block out radiation as well. A heavily armored tank wouldn't need to add tons of extra weight as it already is designed to have heavy armor that can be used to block out the radiation instead. Lead is not needed to block out radiation, just any form of dense heavy material. Almost any material can be used as radiation shielding as long as it's in sufficient amounts, and this includes metal, particularly depleted uranium. For example, just as a quick reference of halving thickness for different materials, when tested against gamma rays, showed a relative value of 44.5mm for concrete, 12.7mm for steel, 4.8mm for lead, 3.3mm for tungsten, and 2.8mm for DU. Now, considering the vehicle is already going to have several inches of steel and and uranium armor, it's not that crazy to think about placing the reactor within this part of the armor so as to act as a radiation shield, with only a small amount of extra weight being needed to fill in any gaps that may be present. You don't need lead shielding and it doesn't need to add tons of extra weight as any material of sufficient density and radiation resistance can be used to block it out. Now, in situations where additional radiation shielding beyond the mass of the material is needed, lighter weight designs can be used, which take on various forms. Such as a faraday cage, which will provide additional protection to help block out certain types of radiation.

Early designs for nuclear powered vehicles often were designed to be flying and used extremely hot liquids to mechanically spin the turbines as they needed to move at really high speeds with a lot of energy, which lead to a lot of problems and required a lot out of the design.

The working fluid for airborne nuclear reactors has always been air. Their primary coolant has only *sometimes* been air. Yes, that air has been extremely hot (to maximize usable work), and yes, sometimes air is referred to as a fluid, but your later comments lead me to believe you did not understand this. This is *crucial* to understanding the limitations of mobile reactors, because their efficiency will always be limited by their heat transfer to their heat sink (ie, air temperature and density).

Le quote: "The ARE was the first molten salt reactor (MSR) to be built and operated. It used the molten fluoride salt NaF-ZrF4-UF4 (53-41-6 mol%) as fuel, was moderated by a hexagonal-configuration beryllium oxide (BeO), and had a peak temperature of 860 °C. A redundant liquid sodium coolant system was used to cool the moderator and reflector materials. A secondary helium gas coolant loop was circulated around the primary coolant to transfer heat to a water radiator where heat output was dumped to atmosphere." Far be it from me to question your brilliance and genius though. I'm guessing this whole thing started as a misunderstanding and a lack on your part to be charitable.

Although in theory more efficient to convert the heat directly to mechanical energy, in practice it rarely is, which is why hybrid electrics tend to have better fuel efficiency than standard combustion engines, and far simpler designs.

[insert power supply here]-electric plants are more efficient (amazingly, you aren't wrong on this) because they let the speed changing happen electronically as opposed to mechanically, allowing the mechanical drive to run continuously at its ideal rotational speed and avoid throttling losses. The gain in efficiency from the continued run at ideal speed is what gives you the ability to tolerate the conversion losses. The electric system itself really has no efficiency gain, it's just enabling a more efficient operational load for the mechanical system. Your comment about far simpler though is straight up wrong.

Electric motors are generally far simpler than comparable combustion motors, yes, in that they have less moving parts; this should be obvious if you've ever looked at one. But yes, my point is that while the total energy efficiency of the system is theoretically lower, as it would be more efficient to transform the heat in to mechanical energy, the methods of converting heat to mechanical energy are less efficient in practice than using the electric motor. That is why electric motors can be used to be more efficient, and also require less heat which requires a less powerful nuclear source and allows for a less demanding overall design. I've never tried to argue that it produces more energy, and I specifically clarified that in this post, it just seems you are talking over me at this point.

The complication of needing to boil salt mixtures at high levels and then run this to a wheel or turbine to spin(discussed earlier) and radiation proof the whole thing is just not worth it in comparison to converting it to electricity and having a more efficient electric drivetrain. You also can operate at lower temperatures using just the heat difference between the environment to generate the electricity.

No matter what you do, you have to shield your reactor (and preferably your coolant loops in a closed loop system), and you can't just appear electricity from nowhere. Your reactor has to heat a working fluid to generate electricity, and either that fluid or some intermediary will have to touch the core to be heated, which means it can contain fission or fuel particulates and should be shielded. The only way to not do this is to use a RTG, which would be absolutely hilariously moronic for dozens of reasons, least of which is its abysmal efficiency.
As for lower temperatures, as discussed previously, your efficiency will be entirely based on your temperature difference. A lower temperature differential means lower efficiency, and thus less power.

With a design like this you could likely get away with just radiation proofing the hot cube of uranium

You have literally just described a primary shield arrangement. Every extant nuclear system has a primary shield, though largely for reflection and not purely shielding. This will rarely be sufficient for personnel safety while operational.

Honestly, I can't even be assed to get into your gross conceptual misunderstanding of MSRs, so I recommend as a bare minimum reading the wikipedia entry on nuclear reactors before you start posting about them again.

I'm well aware of that, and again, you seem to be talking over me. Clearly, I'm talking about using the molten salt in this case to spin the wheel of a tank, and not spin the turbine engine of the plane. I also never claimed you wouldn't radiation shield more of the vehicle or reactor, obviously, but that in theory you could just shield the fuel and transfer the heat through the shielding to the coolant, by heating the shielding with the radiation instead. There are two methods of transferring the heat from the fuel to your coolant, you either use the radiation to heat the coolant directly, or you can shield the fuel and then use the heat transferred through the radiation shield to heat your liquid or whatever else (such as an RTG or in this case a Sterling engine which also uses a liquid). Virtually all modern designs however have at least some radiation shielding on any fuel rods, obviously, so this is not that crazy of an idea. Even chadding on nuclear fuel rods which allows nuetrons through is designed to prevent fission byproducts from contaminating the coolant, which would otherwise escape in to the air in most steam reactors which boils the water. There is usually almost always shielding adding to the reactor rod, even in designs which are meant to let most of the radiation through (which is most typical reactors). Radiation shielding can be used to absorb the neutrons which then causes it to heat up instead of the coolant, and then this heat can be used to power the reactor design such as by transferring it to the coolant instead (although this lowers the operating temperature typically). Typically in most reactors, neutrons get through the outer layer of the protective coating on the uranium and heat the water used as coolant directly, but it's also possible to have the radiation shield absorb the neutrons and then the resulting heat be used to heat the coolant instead.

You could also use a neutron moderator which functions in a similiar albeit somewhat different manner. But anyways, that was just one example; even though the coolant acts as a radiation shield and moderator in most cases, you likely would shield the entire thing. The armor would act as a radiation shield in all directions except internally inside the vehicle, require an a single extra armor panel inside which usually is already used with things like spaced armor. The engine usually isn't directly exposed to the crew for obvious reasons when they are inside the vehicle and there is a barrier between it and the soldiers, the same sort of barrier would exist for the reactor. As you are replacing the engine and the fuel, you wouldn't add that much extra weight with a nuclear reactor design even if you needed a lot of shielding, and as much of the armor can be used as shielding, you'd save on weight, unlike aircraft which did not come with extremely thick armor. Just for fun, I decided to draw a crude diagram to illustrate the concept.

[Austrasien]

You aren't boiling reactor salts lol, let alone feeding salt vapour through a turbine to generate power. The engine would have to run somewhere in the 1500 degree celsius range. This is around the melting point of steel and way beyond the heat limits of lubricants and seals. Molten salt was promising for an aircraft reactor because the hot salt could heat the air directly through a heat exchanger. But a vehicle engine needs rotation, not hot air, and all the ways you can directly convert a temperature gradient into mechanical rotation without a pressure gradient (which a liquid won't provide just from heating it) suck. At least in terms of power density.

[Triplebaconation]

when you learn about radiation from facebook posts about 5g

Just give the crew shungite pyramids.

[Hrstrovokia]

I was listening to one of the Chieftain's videos on Youtube and he was talking about the addition of TOWs to the Bradley IFVs. He mentioned something that got me thinking; equipping infantry with the same ATGMs as the IFVs carried.

Is there a case to be made for everyone that can carries version of the Kornet or should dismounted stick to something like the Metis which isn't as powerful or doesn't have the range but is at least not as heavy as the Kornet, so more manoeuvrable for dismounted infantry?

Also, are you at a disadvantage to have infantry using up IFV ammo? Use up ammo at potentially twice the rate?

[Gallia-]

when you learn about radiation from facebook posts about 5g

Just give the crew shungite pyramids.

shungite is literal king tier

[The Corparation]

I was going to post a reply to Manokan's post but then I realized that this is just going to turn into the latest case of him arguing about a topic with someone who works in the field of the topic he's arguing about. He argued terminal ballistics with someone who has done academic research in the field and stitches bullet holes up for a living and now he's going to argue reactor physics with a man who dicks down nuclear reactors for a living. I expect an argument about semantics after he decides that none of us know the definitions of term except for him, him asking for dictionary definitions of those words and then disregarding those definitions shortly.

[Triplebaconation]

I was going to post a reply to Manokan's post

What the hell, it's a dreary Saturday.

For example, just as a quick reference of halving thickness for different materials, when tested against gamma rays, showed a relative value of 44.5mm for concrete, 12.7mm for steel, 4.8mm for lead, 3.3mm for tungsten, and 2.8mm for DU.

For just a quick reference, a tank crewman sitting 2 meters from an unshielded 6MW reactor core that might produce 1500hp could expect to experience radiation doses of roughly 67,000 rem/hour from gamma radiation and 23 million rem/hour from neutron radiation.

The NRC maximum safe annual dosage for radiation workers is 5 rem. Even if you fudge on that you'll need quite a few halving thicknesses!

just any form of dense heavy material

The opposite is needed for effective neutron protection. Tank armor will do exactly jack about neutron radiation.

Now, in situations where additional radiation shielding beyond the mass of the material is needed, lighter weight designs can be used, which take on various forms.

Cosmic radiation is drastically different in type and intensity from reactor radiation.

Such as a faraday cage, which will provide additional protection to help block out certain types of radiation.

Unfortunately none of these "certain types of radiation" are gamma or neutron.

[
Le quote: "The ARE was the first molten salt reactor (MSR) to be built and operated. It used the molten fluoride salt NaF-ZrF4-UF4 (53-41-6 mol%) as fuel, was moderated by a hexagonal-configuration beryllium oxide (BeO), and had a peak temperature of 860 °C. A redundant liquid sodium coolant system was used to cool the moderator and reflector materials. A secondary helium gas coolant loop was circulated around the primary coolant to transfer heat to a water radiator where heat output was dumped to atmosphere." Far be it from me to question your brilliance and genius though. I'm guessing this whole thing started as a misunderstanding and a lack on your part to be charitable.

I'm not sure Ark is a brilliant genius, but his job is nuclear propulsion. But yes, it started from your misunderstanding. ARE was a research reactor. If it had been a working reactor, the heat would have been transferred to the working fluid in a jet engine, air, rather than being dumped as waste. Air was not a working fluid in this case because it did no work.

But yes, my point is that while the total energy efficiency of the system is theoretically lower, as it would be more efficient to transform the heat in to mechanical energy, the methods of converting heat to mechanical energy are less efficient in practice than using the electric motor. That is why electric motors can be used to be more efficient, and also require less heat which requires a less powerful nuclear source and allows for a less demanding overall design. I've never tried to argue that it produces more energy, and I specifically clarified that in this post, it just seems you are talking over me at this point.

Electricity doesn't just appear magically from a reactor or other heat source. Converting heat into mechanical energy then into electrical power using a generator is in fact far more efficient than known methods of converting heat or radiation directly into electrical power using thermocouples or betavoltaics.

You may be trying to say in some incredibly awkward way that a turboelectric system is more efficient at transmitting power, which may be correct in certain circumstances.

The fuel efficiency of a hybrid vehicle isn't a direct result of using an electric motor.

You could also use a neutron moderator which functions in a similiar albeit somewhat different manner.

Most of the rest of this post is largely indecipherable (the main thrust seems to be intentionally creating a nuclear meltdown by designing a fission reactor along the lines of an RTG), but yes, I should hope you're using a neutron moderator in your nuclear tank lol

]
Early designs for nuclear powered vehicles often were designed to be flying and used extremely hot liquids to mechanically spin the turbines as they needed to move at really high speeds with a lot of energy

By the way, if anybody's misunderstanding you the blame is on you for writing like this. These are English words but the structure is like some kind of agglutinative proto-Sumerian.

[Arkandros]

The working fluid for airborne nuclear reactors has always been air. Their primary coolant has only *sometimes* been air. Yes, that air has been extremely hot (to maximize usable work), and yes, sometimes air is referred to as a fluid, but your later comments lead me to believe you did not understand this. This is *crucial* to understanding the limitations of mobile reactors, because their efficiency will always be limited by their heat transfer to their heat sink (ie, air temperature and density).

Le quote: "The ARE was the first molten salt reactor (MSR) to be built and operated. It used the molten fluoride salt NaF-ZrF4-UF4 (53-41-6 mol%) as fuel, was moderated by a hexagonal-configuration beryllium oxide (BeO), and had a peak temperature of 860 °C. A redundant liquid sodium coolant system was used to cool the moderator and reflector materials. A secondary helium gas coolant loop was circulated around the primary coolant to transfer heat to a water radiator where heat output was dumped to atmosphere." Far be it from me to question your brilliance and genius though. I'm guessing this whole thing started as a misunderstanding and a lack on your part to be charitable.

I don't know what you expected to prove by referencing the ARE, but it doesn't really contest the point. It was a molten salt aqueous homogenous reactor (ie, the primary and fuel were mixed together in liquid form and contained within the primary loop, with heat generation controlled through moderators) with a helium secondary designed to simulate the cooling possible with high flow rarefied air at altitude, which was then run to a heat sink. It has no working fluid (which would have been the helium secondary if a turbine were to be powered), but nonetheless it was never intended to generate power for any use. I assume you're trying to prove me wrong with respect to the "working fluid has always been air" comment, in which case, sure, it's helium and not air, but it still isn't using molten salt as a working fluid, which is the bigger thing you need to understand.

I'll eventually get around to responding to the rest of this post, because a lot of what you said is straight up wrong, like shielding around nuclear fuel rods and your explanation of how an RTG works, but triplebaconation already responded to a good bit of it, and fairly comprehensively.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

If you want to put a nuclear power plant fly to the sky, you can try this---epithermal reactor like SP—100 or Topaz-Ⅱ .Topaz-Ⅱ,made by cccp,High enriched uranium dioxide fuel, zirconium hydride as moderating agent, sodium potassium alloy as cooling agent and loop radiator as heat discharge system are used.It has a thermionic energy converter to generate electricity.It was used on Kosmos 1818 and Kosmos 1867 satellites.It is also part of the rd-0410 nuclear powered rocket.Use thermionic energy converter can eliminates the need for complex turbine and thermal media.The technology was transferred to the United States in 1994.
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/25/040/25040534.pdf?r=1

[Triplebaconation]

Yes, due to the amazing efficiency of thermionic conversion, the ~1-ton Topaz II produced roughly enough power to propel an electric golf cart.

Note that space reactors like the Topaz can get away with using a shadow shield, which accounts for its relatively light weight.

I'm thinking about Nuclear gas turbine for the nuclear tank tho. a closed cycle with say maybe Helium coolant. Tho inefficient, it's the lightest option.

I don't know about the reactor, but after thinking about this I had the idea that for an actual nuclear tank a fairly long articulated design would be best. Putting the crew in an Armata-like pod in front of the turret in the first half and the reactor in the rear of the second half would let you reduce shielding a bit and you could treat the two halves as separate units - if the fighting half gets damaged, for example, you could swap it out without worrying about doing repairs around a reactor.

[Gallia-]

looks like the ogre wins again, wafvists

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Yes, due to the amazing efficiency of thermionic conversion, the ~1-ton Topaz II produced roughly enough power to propel an electric golf cart.

Note that space reactors like the Topaz can get away with using a shadow shield, which accounts for its relatively light weight.

I'm thinking about Nuclear gas turbine for the nuclear tank tho. a closed cycle with say maybe Helium coolant. Tho inefficient, it's the lightest option.

I don't know about the reactor, but after thinking about this I had the idea that for an actual nuclear tank a fairly long articulated design would be best. Putting the crew in an Armata-like pod in front of the turret in the first half and the reactor in the rear of the second half would let you reduce shielding a bit and you could treat the two halves as separate units - if the fighting half gets damaged, for example, you could swap it out without worrying about doing repairs around a reactor.

To be fair, I use this for a "Modular Ultra-Heavy Tank" since it's essentially a tracked armored land-train more than an actual tank, and serves more as an off-grid command-center/powerplant and crosses the line of practical strategic mobility by struggling along at 210 tons.

Usually just add rail-bogies and use it as a nuclear-powered locomotive.

[Miku the Based]

What's the psyché of a person trying to justify warcrimes? Like the soldiers at the No Gun Ri massacure, they were too far from the refugees to properly identify them that night, although they can see them as white. Also the process that goes into Aircraft strafing the refugees? Any process that lead to mistaking them as combatants? The "targets of opportunity" montra that dictates indiscriminate bombings?
Also use a more modern example of a well documented case, the more controversial the better.
I'm trying to make a really morally grey arma iii scenario/campaign for fun. Want to have the player rooting for the guy he's playing no matter how bad things get or exactly who he's playing. Besically make ideological zealots out of the audiance or userbase then slowly move the perspective depending on thier willingness and ability to play the other side so to speak which I'm bad at doing since I'm terrible at Storytelling.

[Kassaran]

Doesn't feel exactly like the right kind of question in here, except in trying to build doctrine that establishes it's not okay to do warcrimes, or showing how warcrimes are dictated in the eyes of an international community.

If you want people rooting for the bad guy, go the route the nazis did, make your people desperate for an easy out, make the enemy be the easy out, and begin an attack. When the international community pushes back, show that it's obvious this is the enemy doing this and justify the radicalizing of even the moderates by showing them the atrocities committed by only your enemy.

Nonviolent resistance is hard to extremize people from because it's obvious when it happens, but even a little pushback and your public news apparatus can blow it up and make it seem like its the mainstream for the moderate group. When resistance groups use violence to strike back, put it through a loudspeaker and drown out the cries of the persecuted group your prospective war criminal is attacking.

You want them to commit warcrimes? Easy, have them plant anti-personnel mines outside of villages where it's determined 'the enemy' moves in and out of during the night or early hours of the morning outside of observation. Then, when civilians begin showing up injured, state the only way they could be injured is if they were the insurgents, or traitors in your own ranks informed the enemy. The enemy then switched to the cowardly tactic of using children and civilians to ferry their resources.

You want to root out dissent? Find the only voices not actively speaking out in menial locations, frame them and replace them with zealots. Again, not effective for administration, but effective in radicalizing your players' character and ideally enabling them to sympathize. Only at the end, really start to bring it all together so they realize they were the baddy all along.

[Miku the Based]

If you want people rooting for the bad guy.
Only at the end, really start to bring it all together so they realize they were the baddy all along.

Not looking to make a bad guy, good guy story. Just factions that attract people of certain ideas on the outset and then goes through ideological justifications to explain that thier side is right and thier oppents are wrong, no dumb twist at the end. The end message I want is that war is generally bad and war crimes will happen and there is nothing you can do about that and a international arbiter or judge will not be fair in judgment because the fact is that they are also ideological zealots. Therefore, avoid war as much as reasonably possible. There is no justification for actions of war unless it is purely self defense and self preservation. (maybe get the player to question how his freedoms get half way across the world, or how his view of ethics conflict with other peoples views of ethics and maybe attempt to reconcile that).

I might do a funny parady of a American looking for his freedoms by looking in every house on all the maps. (too much time, but funny thought)

go the route the nazis did, make your people desperate for an easy out, make the enemy be the easy out, and begin an attack. When the international community pushes back, show that it's obvious this is the enemy doing this and justify the radicalizing of even the moderates by showing them the atrocities committed by only your enemy.

Can you explain this to me, I don't really know what you mean. I don't want to go "muh nazis" route here and rather make it as abstract as possible. Was expecting a more minutia of what goes through a persons head when they did something like do a airstrike at a school that they were taking fire from and seeing civilians come out. Or don't recognise them as civilians but as combatants then have the BDA Bomb/battle Damage Assesment people conveniently list them as combatants.
Basically deny any war crimes have actually been committed and hyper focus on the transgressions of the enemy faction. (I'm not using any of this in the senario btw, just using as a example).
Or like Fallujah, the civil and were supposed to be evacuated so le they are somehow still in the city that means they must be suspect or even complicit in the perceived enemies wrongdoings, so on and so forth.
Then the time at Sadr City, 2-5 of first Calvary did a war crime by mowing down civilians. They justify this by saying the insurgents were goading the line of women and children into the protest line and marching down the street while taking potshots behind the civilians. In my opinion that is not justified but it was bound to happen anyways given the circumstances at hand.
I want to show the moral gery zone of war and how these situations happen even without any prior malicious intent. I want a very good ideological indocrination of the player of each faction to make the player believe they are doing the right thing, the naysayers are wrong, you were there and the people in the wrong are the enemy.
Edit: another example, how Chris Whitcomb justifies Waco as it was "for the children".

[Triplebaconation]

It's very simple. War crimes are justified in the same ways as any other crimes, or indeed war itself.

Either as a necessity, including self-defense, or as justice or righteous vengeance.

You can justify nearly anything using the concept of anticipatory self-defense - "This action is necessary to prevent some future harm to the nation/our way of life/my men/myself."

[Manokan Republic]

On a related note, I've actually found a reactor similiar to the design I was mentioning, which is designed specifically for long-range transportation, in this case in spacecraft, using a sterling engine with a shielded core. It uses a neutron reflector, with both controls the rate of reaction and acts as neutron shielding without being particularly heavy. Hence you can have lightweight radiation shielding largely focused around the fuel itself while the heat is still transferred to the coolant, making the overall weight of the design lighter and smaller, as well as simpler, which makes it ideal for it having to be used under it's own self propelled power.

"The reactor is fueled by an alloy of 93% uranium-235 and 7% molybdenum.[9][10] The core of the reactor is a solid cast alloy structure surrounded by a beryllium oxide reflector, which prevents neutrons from escaping the reactor core and allows the chain reaction to continue. The reflector also reduces the emissions of gamma radiation that could impair on-board electronics.[11] A uranium core has the benefit of avoiding uncertainty in the supply of other radioisotopes, such as plutonium, that are used in RTGs.[12] Uranium-235 has the distinct disadvantage that its half-life is more than 700 million years, whereas the half-life of the plutonium used in RTGs is 87.7 years. The prototype KRUSTY 1 kWe Kilopower reactor weighs 134 kg and contains 28 kg of 235." The design is capable of producing 1-10 kilowatts of power continuously for 10-15 years. An M1 abrams tank for example uses a 1500 horsepower engine, but it isn't always running at it's maximum levels and you don't need as much with a hybrid electric engine, so in theory converting the uranium power to electricity would result in a reduced power requirement. You also have a battery and capacitors, so you could quickly accelerate without needing to rev up the power of the uranium reactor itself. To directly get up to 1100 kilowats though, it would require a 150 ton engine, but a reactor weight of 15 tons is not that difficult to imagine being capable of doing a similiar job considering it won't be running at maximum levels all the time and electric drive trains usually don't require the same horsepower rating of combustion engines to produce an equivalent level of power, you would just need a lot of batteries to store the power.

Not really that bad to the overall weight of a tank or other vehicle. Bare in mind, 500 gallons of fuel is roughly equal to 1.5 tons, and the engine is usually several tons, so it could end up being roughly comparable in weight or only slightly heavier. Considering that it would have an indefinite fuel supply, this would be less of an issue as it would never need to stop and fuel efficiency wouldn't matter as much. Electric motors also tend to accelerate faster, so you don't need as much power.

[The Corparation]

I'm amazed how you calculate that the reactor would need to be 150 tons to get the equivalent power (This is likely wrong, but we can put that aside for now) and then somehow decide that it's entirely reasonable to get by with a 15 ton reactor. I'm astounded at the optimism that allows you to somehow claim with a straight face that this is entirely reasonable to claim that a 90% reduction in overall mass for a given power requirement is "not that difficult to imagine." That's a flavor of optimistic bullshit that wouldn't be out of place in a sales pitch from LockMart's marketing department to a 2-Star.

[Triplebaconation]

, in this case in spacecraft

Houston, we have a problem. Again, masses for space reactors you find on Wikipedia are irrelevant for terrestrial applications since they can use shadow shields. Nobody cares if you spew radiation into empty space.



Below is what a Kilopower (ie, golf cart power) reactor would look like on the ground. "Relaxed dose" means you can get away with putting it behind a berm near your Mars base, not sit next to it in a tank.