NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[The Manticoran Empire]

What would the combat in a modern civil war look like if both parties are equivalent in force? I know, probably a shitshow, but I'm having difficulty visualizing some of the moving parts. Like, I'd assume the first thing that would happen is that one side would attempt to secure and maintain air superiority while the other seeks to tear that away from them; whoever gets it decidedly has an advantage for the rest of the war, denying their opponent any sizable armored forces. And what the hell does the Navy do? Fire support? Play Poker?

So if both sides have access to conventional military forces with trained personnel and leadership?

Basically, you get an incredibly brutal mix of conventional and unconventional warfare. You'll likely see small groups of aircraft launching attacks on infrastructure, enemy formations, airbases, while simultaneously trying to avoid interceptors. On the ground, you'll have a see-saw effect as one side pushes towards a key position until an equilibrium is reached and then it swings back the other way. I say this because most of the hyper advanced weapons like smart bombs and smart Anti-armor rockets will be used up in the first couple weeks of the war and production of new munitions will be too slow to meet demand. So you will inevitably end up relying on dumb munitions and could find yourself running out of armored vehicles unless there are simpler, more easily produced alternatives. This is where the unconventional bit comes in.

Groups of sympathizers behind the lines can wreak havoc on supply lines, production facilities, staging areas, and depots. The long and short of it is that any civil war will suck. A civil war with two fairly evenly matched groups is going to drag on for years and kill an enormous number of people.

[Danternoust]

But that's the modern expectation. The medieval expectation was largely mercenaries and levies and didn't involve the entirety of a town and rarely resulted in pillaging. It is possible, but not seen recently, that small organized groups under the persuasive sway of leaders will directly fight each other.

Like in the Dune series of novels.

[Gallia-]

What would the combat in a modern civil war look like if both parties are equivalent in force? I know, probably a shitshow, but I'm having difficulty visualizing some of the moving parts. Like, I'd assume the first thing that would happen is that one side would attempt to secure and maintain air superiority while the other seeks to tear that away from them; whoever gets it decidedly has an advantage for the rest of the war, denying their opponent any sizable armored forces. And what the hell does the Navy do? Fire support? Play Poker?

So if both sides have access to conventional military forces with trained personnel and leadership?

Basically, you get an incredibly brutal mix of conventional and unconventional warfare. You'll likely see small groups of aircraft launching attacks on infrastructure, enemy formations, airbases, while simultaneously trying to avoid interceptors. On the ground, you'll have a see-saw effect as one side pushes towards a key position until an equilibrium is reached and then it swings back the other way. I say this because most of the hyper advanced weapons like smart bombs and smart Anti-armor rockets will be used up in the first couple weeks of the war and production of new munitions will be too slow to meet demand. So you will inevitably end up relying on dumb munitions and could find yourself running out of armored vehicles unless there are simpler, more easily produced alternatives. This is where the unconventional bit comes in.

Groups of sympathizers behind the lines can wreak havoc on supply lines, production facilities, staging areas, and depots. The long and short of it is that any civil war will suck. A civil war with two fairly evenly matched groups is going to drag on for years and kill an enormous number of people.

Artsakh isn't "incredibly brutal", and the Azeri Army has made substantial ground gains in less than a month of mechanized combat, but they're probably stalling out now for want of tanks I guess. Also since most of those gains were made within the first fortnight due to Azeris taking advantage of the international ceasefire to surprise Artsakh and overrun them a bit, which seems to have stabilized a bit now that the Artsakh Defense Army has gained its footing again, it may not be possible for the Azeris to do that trick again (although they appear to be trying).

Then again Artsakh is really good at taking apart armored formations. I'm not sure an American brigade would do much better than the Azeris in terms of ground gained (perhaps worse), although they'd probably have fewer losses overall maybe. Neither side has run out of missiles or drones, although the Azeris might have fewer tanks than they'd like I guess. There are also no real partisans, probably because the Azeris are liquidating entire villages (and most of those villages are abandoned anyway) as they advance by shooting all the old men left behind.

What actually tends to happen is that someone reaches a particular line on a map where they can no longer drive further, for whatever reason (mechanical failures, lack of trucks, lack of motivation), stops, and then proceeds to shell the other side with the biggest howitzers they can find. Not to be outdone, the other side starts pulling out literal museum pieces, restores them, and begins shelling back. This occurs practically without fail in every post-Soviet ethnic civil war from Transnistria, to Ukraine, to Nagorno-Karabakh. It also happened in the Yugoslav Wars. In between this small raids are conducted across the now established front line by small groups for purposes of capturing prisoners, terrorizing locals, and destroying patrols. Behind the lines one side will be genociding the former occupants and burying the corpses in a mass grave, or establishing some draconian new order buoyed by faux-democratic elections, or some other method of ethnic cleansing.

If you're really lucky Bill Clinton decides it's time to intervene and sends a tank division, two carrier battlegroups, and the entire US Air Force to bomb the shit out of the aggressor and force him to the bargaining table. But this is rare. It only happened twice, and only to the Serbs. Bill Clinton (or George Bush, or Barack Obama, or Donald Trump) doesn't seem too interested in meddling in the Russian backyard.

So you get a few days of intense mechanized combat with low to moderate casualties, one side breaks through and gains a little bit of ground over the next couple of weeks, then they plant their ass in some random dirt, and a multi-decade frozen conflict, punctuated by sporadic attacks on border posts of 5-10 guys, that don't even register on an average Oaklander's or Chicagoite's radars (maybe two wounded every month?), sprouts there. Congratulations you have a new border. It's 50 kilometers away from the old border. Maybe your children's children will be able to settle the question through force of arms or something. But for now it's just sporadic spurts (fountains? showers? sprays? floods?) of violence followed by a few years or decades of peace until it starts up again.

The current situation in Donbass is probably only slightly more dangerous than, say, Chicago. To say nothing of actually violent places. Someone dies every few weeks or months due to a random mortar bomb or grenade splinter, and periodic cease fires just result in both sides shelling each other across an armistice line because the attackers ran out of steam for whatever reason.

This is probably close to the most authentic, natural state of humans, really.

[The Guvithean Confederation]

So, I was designing the basic high-level unit for my FT military. It wound up having 7,000 personnel. Which is, to my knowledge, intermediate in size between a brigade and a division. What do I call it?

If it helps, each of the three frontline "regiments" (started as battalions, but then I merged the tank and infantry battalions and kept adding things to them and decided they made more sense as regiments) in the unit consists of a C4ISTAR/EW company, 3 infantry companies, 3 tank companies, a fire support company (a battery of mortars, a few antitank platforms, and a few Terminator style vehicles that can double as AAA), and an engineering company, in addition to air defense elements and a support battalion. The remaining "regiment" consists of additional C4ISTAR/EW companies, three companies of power armored infantry (doctrinally held in reserve to mop up enemy hard points after the frontline regiment rolls through the weakest identifiable portions of the enemy line), multiple support companies, the remainder of the air defense elements, and the heavy artillery (4 batteries). Are either of these "too big"?

[The Manticoran Empire]

So, I was designing the basic high-level unit for my FT military. It wound up having 7,000 personnel. Which is, to my knowledge, intermediate in size between a brigade and a division. What do I call it?

If it helps, each of the three frontline "regiments" (started as battalions, but then I merged the tank and infantry battalions and kept adding things to them and decided they made more sense as regiments) in the unit consists of a C4ISTAR/EW company, 3 infantry companies, 3 tank companies, a fire support company (a battery of mortars, a few antitank platforms, and a few Terminator style vehicles that can double as AAA), and an engineering company, in addition to air defense elements and a support battalion. The remaining "regiment" consists of additional C4ISTAR/EW companies, three companies of power armored infantry (doctrinally held in reserve to mop up enemy hard points after the frontline regiment rolls through the weakest identifiable portions of the enemy line), multiple support companies, the remainder of the air defense elements, and the heavy artillery (4 batteries). Are either of these "too big"?

It seems a little tank heavy but that can also be fairly situational. In terms of manpower we're looking at what, around 1,500 to 2,000 men per regiment? It sounds alright to me, honestly.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

So, I was designing the basic high-level unit for my FT military.

Let me stop you right there. What is "FT" in your universe? Turbolasers and space battleships or Skynet?

[Manokan Republic]

So, what is the optimal small arms and light weapons load out for the future? Is the below viable, or can there be improvement upon it?

Pistol-caliber carbines shooting steel core bullets, LSAT LMGs for intermediate range, 2B9 Vasilek-type gun mortars with ranged fuses for counter-battery and enemy unit suppression, etc?

Thinking variable proportion of carbines versus LMGs for infantry, depending on expected engagement distances.

It varies based on people's viewpoints, but imo it will be one of the various caseless or polymer cased weapons, based on the LSAT and the later programs, using a more aerodynamic low-drag bullet with more energy at long ranges and a flatter trajectory. A key issue has been that to get bullets out to long range, they've needed bigger and bigger guns, so for long range suppression you need the 7.62mm NATO, or a .50 BMG even, but now with more aerodynamic cartridges you can get out to the same ranges with comparable energy levels, despite having a far smaller bullet with less energy at the muzzle. The .338 Norma LWWMG machine gun is a good example of a more aerodynamic cartridge being able to help out in mountain warfare, using a far smaller and lighter weight cartridge than the .50 BMG which would normally need to be used. With the creation of caseless and polymer cartridges using low-recoil lightweight guns, the dynamic of which rounds are better for each role will change, so the 6.5mm/6.8mm cartridges likely will be far superior than the 5.56mm in terms of range, making it so a .338 Norma is not necessarily needed, and may even be replaced by a caseless version of a .50 BMG. That being said, aerodynamic low drag cartridges are a force multiplier that allow a much smaller and lighter cartridge to fill the same role, within certain degrees, and lower recoil lighter weapons will allow bigger rounds to be used without as much difficulty as before.

The LSAT in 7.62mm/6.5mm for example was a mere 14.5 pounds in comparison to the 25 pounds M240 with ammunition that was half the weight as well, with the LSAT being smaller than the M249 chambered in 5.56mm, with less recoil despite a far more powerful cartridge, and ammunition of the same weight. The LSAT in 5.56mm was only 10 pounds vs. the 17 pound M249, with ammunition that was half the weight, allowing a soldier with the same load out of around 1000 rounds to shave off 25 pounds, or increase how much ammunition they can carry to over 3000 rounds. The advantages of a smaller and lighter gun, that is more maneuverable and that has lighter cartridges, let alone that are more aerodynamic and with a longer range, are quite dramatic. Imo, some variant of a 6.5mm/6.8mm caseless/polymer cased weapon will be chosen, meant to be a rather lightweight machine gun/assault rifle, and possibly being bullpup and designed to be suppressed at all times. In my opinion is that bullpups are better as they shave off about half a pound for the stock and 8 or more inches for no real obvious drawback, and move the trigger forward so it's better weighted, making them generally superior. My fictional nation state's country uses a bullpup 6.5mm assault rifle and machine gun based on the LSAT program, but the U.S. may end up going with something slightly different. The key advantage of the 6.8mm is that you can get more energy from a shorter barrel, and the polymer cased rounds have better heat dissipation, allowing for extremely lightweight machine guns and far thinner and lighter barrels, so the U.S. military may end up choosing it for that reason even though it may be about 40% heavier than the 5.56mm and a caseless round would be.

[Manokan Republic]

So, quick question for you gun nerds here:

6.8mm rounds, were they settled on for their penetrating power or for reaching power?

The 6.8mm SPC was chosen primarily as it could achieve higher power from a shorter barrel, while still maintaining superior ballistics to the 5.56mm or 7.62mm x 39mm. It performed really well in the M4 Carbine, and was competitive against match grade versions of the 5.56mm from longer barreled guns. From a 16 inch barrel, the 6.8mm Remington still has more power than an Ak-47 (over 2200 joules) with a similiar sized bullet (6-8 grams, vs. 8 grams for the 7.62mm x 39mm), yet has similiar accuracy to a 5.56mm and easily is adaptable to the 5.56mm, while from an 8 inch barrel it still retains a relatively large amount of energy and stopping power, at around 1600 joules. The BC is higher than the standard 5.56mm NATO round and the same as the 5.56mm match grade 77 grain sniper rounds, making it comparable to the 5.56mm in terms of range and bullet drop, so much so it can even use the same scope (and is also incidentally the same as the standard 7.62mm NATO cartridge), and yet it is also dramatically more powerful. It also while having a bullet around the same size as the 7.62mm x 39mm, is more aerodynamic with a higher BC that's almost twice as high, has slightly better penetration, and a slightly higher velocity. The 6.8mm remington from a 24 inch barrel has around 2700 joules of energy, vs. 1800 joules in comparison to the 5.56mm, or 50% more power with a bullet that is similiar in size to the 7.62mm x 39mm, but from a 16 inch barrel still achieves around 2200 joules, and 1600 joules from an 8.5 inch barrel, with a rather large bullet that at lower velocities still has a lot of stopping power, unlike the 5.56mm which from 10.5 inch barrel just doesn't perform very well. This means that when swapping to uppers meant for room clearing, you can have a lot more power from a far shorter gun, and yet still have superior accuracy and ballistic capabilities of a standard 5.56mm when using a 14.5-16 inch barrel. The exact numbers vary depending from round to round and cartridge to cartridge, as well as with the exact barrel lengths, but in most comparisons you can see it has a much longer range and much greater performance.

The round has far greater stopper power and energy than the 5.56mm from the same barrel length, but is also much more aerodynamic and has a higher ballistic coefficient overall. The round gives 7.62mm x 39mm like performance, with better barrier penetration and stopping power than the 5.56mm, while still having features of the 5.56mm, like being accurate and having a long range. It in my opinion is not the best cartridge you could use, but it does perform really well from shorter barrels, and so they chose it. The 6.8mm round is not necessarily better than various 6mm-6.5mm rounds, and there are less widely available bullets for it, however it does a fairly good job, particularly from shorter barrels, and so it was chosen. The key reason it was chosen was that it performed well from shorter barrels, and so while ballistically inferior from a longer barrel, it was considered superior from carbine-sized weapons which, is largely what the U.S. military is going with, and so it makes sense. Imo a bullpup weapon fixes this issue by adding an additional 6-8 inches to the barrel for the same overall length, and I would imagine you could user similiar gunpowder in a 6.5mm or 6mm cartridge, but given the U.S. military uses the AR-15 which is not bullpup, it does make sense to use the 6.8mm instead.

[The Guvithean Confederation]

So, I was designing the basic high-level unit for my FT military.

Let me stop you right there. What is "FT" in your universe? Turbolasers and space battleships or Skynet?

I'm going for the feel of the former, though with more realistic combat ranges. The main compromises to physics realism are gravitic technology (antigravity, force fields, force field breachers, etc) and my wildly optimistic take on the capabilities of miniaturization and nanotech (which are, needless to say, *heavily* leveraged for the ISTAR/EW components of the force). I'm trying to work out tactics, doctrine, and force composition as logically as possible once those "realism compromises" are taken into account. So "doctrinal realism" combined with "FT funtech" if that makes any sense.

So, I was designing the basic high-level unit for my FT military. It wound up having 7,000 personnel. Which is, to my knowledge, intermediate in size between a brigade and a division. What do I call it?

If it helps, each of the three frontline "regiments" (started as battalions, but then I merged the tank and infantry battalions and kept adding things to them and decided they made more sense as regiments) in the unit consists of a C4ISTAR/EW company, 3 infantry companies, 3 tank companies, a fire support company (a battery of mortars, a few antitank platforms, and a few Terminator style vehicles that can double as AAA), and an engineering company, in addition to air defense elements and a support battalion. The remaining "regiment" consists of additional C4ISTAR/EW companies, three companies of power armored infantry (doctrinally held in reserve to mop up enemy hard points after the frontline regiment rolls through the weakest identifiable portions of the enemy line), multiple support companies, the remainder of the air defense elements, and the heavy artillery (4 batteries). Are either of these "too big"?

It seems a little tank heavy but that can also be fairly situational. In terms of manpower we're looking at what, around 1,500 to 2,000 men per regiment? It sounds alright to me, honestly.

I figured that "too many tanks" was a better problem to have than "not enough tanks," and the tanks can always be held in reserve with the "heavy infantry" and/or not deployed to the planet at all if the situation warrants - eg, combat on a region of a planet that is thickly forested, highly mountainous, etc.

1,611 per combined arms regiment, 2,216 per C4I/Support regiment.

Still doesn't tell me what to call it, though. Is it a brigade or a division?

[The Manticoran Empire]

Let me stop you right there. What is "FT" in your universe? Turbolasers and space battleships or Skynet?

I'm going for the feel of the former, though with more realistic combat ranges. The main compromises to physics realism are gravitic technology (antigravity, force fields, force field breachers, etc) and my wildly optimistic take on the capabilities of miniaturization and nanotech (which are, needless to say, *heavily* leveraged for the ISTAR/EW components of the force). I'm trying to work out tactics, doctrine, and force composition as logically as possible once those "realism compromises" are taken into account. So "doctrinal realism" combined with "FT funtech" if that makes any sense.

It seems a little tank heavy but that can also be fairly situational. In terms of manpower we're looking at what, around 1,500 to 2,000 men per regiment? It sounds alright to me, honestly.

I figured that "too many tanks" was a better problem to have than "not enough tanks," and the tanks can always be held in reserve with the "heavy infantry" and/or not deployed to the planet at all if the situation warrants - eg, combat on a region of a planet that is thickly forested, highly mountainous, etc.

1,611 per combined arms regiment, 2,216 per C4I/Support regiment.

Still doesn't tell me what to call it, though. Is it a brigade or a division?

It has the basic components of a division so I'd call it a small division.

[The Manticoran Empire]

Granted, if you really capitalize on advances in automation, you can probably cut manpower requirements even further, particularly in support units by replacing personnel with drones.

[Immoren]

I figured that "too many tanks" was a better problem to have than "not enough tanks," and the tanks can always be held in reserve with the "heavy infantry" and/or not deployed to the planet at all if the situation warrants - eg, combat on a region of a planet that is thickly forested, highly mountainous, etc.

1,611 per combined arms regiment, 2,216 per C4I/Support regiment.

Still doesn't tell me what to call it, though. Is it a brigade or a division?

There have been brigades with paper strength of ~7000, and I think there's still way to smallest paper divisions.
Anyway those are culturo-institio-tradional things, and you can name them what you want, if it fits to your thing.

[Gallia-]

So, I was designing the basic high-level unit for my FT military. It wound up having 7,000 personnel. Which is, to my knowledge, intermediate in size between a brigade and a division. What do I call it?

If it helps, each of the three frontline "regiments" (started as battalions, but then I merged the tank and infantry battalions and kept adding things to them and decided they made more sense as regiments) in the unit consists of a C4ISTAR/EW company, 3 infantry companies, 3 tank companies, a fire support company (a battery of mortars, a few antitank platforms, and a few Terminator style vehicles that can double as AAA), and an engineering company, in addition to air defense elements and a support battalion. The remaining "regiment" consists of additional C4ISTAR/EW companies, three companies of power armored infantry (doctrinally held in reserve to mop up enemy hard points after the frontline regiment rolls through the weakest identifiable portions of the enemy line), multiple support companies, the remainder of the air defense elements, and the heavy artillery (4 batteries). Are either of these "too big"?

This is awfully "1916" for "FT" TBF.

Also, if you can afford hundreds of power armor suits, why not just have that be the main infantry of the "regiment"? Why have mechanized or motorized infantry at all? Power armor would let you run as fast as a truck and carry a really big gun, so it would obviously be better than the old mechanical troops. Power armor infantry and tanks are a natural compliment because the infantry can now move as fast as the tanks again (rather than the tanks moving as fast as the infantry), which lets everyone go 30 mph semi-constantly, can clear a house easily because they're bulletproof, and have big .50 cals or whatever as a rifle. Now all you need is howitzers that shoot on the move and you don't need to worry if someone cuts the brake lines because you're not stopping until you hit Berlin and oust the Kaiser.

You should probably start by listing technological constraints and considering the general trends instead of diving into something as niche (and frankly, irrelevant) as the organization of a "regiment". That sounds like a lot of work but it's really not. Here's an example.

In Dumblaverse's FT there is no "AI" or "faster than light", so ships have to spend a couple months transiting between orbits and the number of people you can put in the field (and their human quality/innate talent/training/whatever) is still the main concern because there's no magic singularity bullet, so people made power armor for soldiers to wear, and moving payloads is hard between planets. The only places worth fighting over tend to be inhabited planets (or the occasional oil rig/asteroid mining station), so all space combat is expected to take place near or around planetary or lunar orbits. You could in theory intercept a naval task group but this is probably hard because they move very quickly (relatively speaking), tend to hide (either literally by throwing up a umbrella painted black with white specks; or figuratively by duping you into thinking they're going to slingshot past your planet or something), and converge into a coherent, large force only when they're approaching orbit. So most space battles take place near orbital bodies and the best defense generally is to try to defeat a space task force before it embarks by attacking it first or something.

Power armor is about as normal as a bulletproof vest and the spacemans of the Corps Contraterrene have little LIDARs that let soldiers make their own sensor networks with tiny MEMS powered flying robots; the main armaments are backpack nuclear missiles and rocket guns; and spacemen (in most gravities at least) can sometimes fly. Most Spacemen are probably light infantry analogues who flit around in jetpacks and sling atomic missiles or shoot their rocket rifles at each other, and maybe a dozen infantrymen can "control" a "frontage" comparable to a modern armored brigade.

They would also be able to mulch said modern armored brigade. Since they fly around quickly, but are weak and easily defeated by contemporary weapons, they're probably more like a helicopter or something than a soldier per se. OTOH if they aren't wearing jetpacks but just walking in power armor, they can probably move around as quickly as a pickup truck or something (40-50 mph) and cover ground OK-ishly, but not super fast, and they would probably want to ride anyway to save fuel and be able to defend themselves against surprise nuclear missiles.

Because of anthropogenic climate change over the past 500 years (really more like 800, but it's deep lore that the industrial revolution in Gallaverse begins in the Great Ming after they conquer Manchuria) farmlands have become scarce and most people live in semi-arid, barren wastelands where the only food you can grow locally is in hydroponics. Cereal grains tend to be grown north/south of the tropics of Cancer/Capricorn, while anything below that isn't really suitable for widespread agriculture. It could be worse, but that's not saying much, and generally speaking farmlands are precious, so any sort of threat of attacking farms or croplands is extremely serious. Growing plants in space is probably done on a small scale, but since plants grown in space have stunting due to radiation damage and microgravity, they probably aren't viable compared to the hyper radishes and giga lemons grown by Earth (and Venus) farmers.

Since people tend to complain when food prices get too high this is probably the biggest driver of why conventional armies would still exist in Dumblaverse, rather than being replaced entirely by the nuclear missiles they carry around: they act as police forces against increasingly destructive weapons of peasant revolts. They also perform the job of expeditionary warfare against far flung colonies that might get a bit uppity.

There are "tanks", but they're just omnipurpose armored vehicles in that they can do air defense (shooting down the nuclear missiles), long range attack (shooting far away at things), and blowing up houses or VBIEDs with cannons. There are probably two types of armored vehicle: one with a really big gun, and another with a smaller gun (or a high power laser) that carries dudes long distances. Their main job is to get spacemen moving around quicker than walking with their power armor suits will go, and also keep them protected from nuclear missiles (while a dozen infantrymen might be able to stop a tank brigade, they probably won't be able to stop an armor-infantry force). And then there are the orbital starships that just zap things with high powered lasers (or antimatter engine exhausts maybe?) and nuclear missiles that might pose a big threat to the spacemen.

There are obviously no real frontlines because the spacemen will just land behind you and kill you with nuclear missiles, so defenders tend to hide in underground fortresses and bunker networks (or random shacks in the woods) that need to be cleared out by hand, or literally excavated by nuclear bombs if you can spot them (and don't care about collateral damage or fallout pollution of farmlands), and submarines have replaced all navies (with the exception of high speed police/coast guard ships I guess) since they'll just get blown up instantly by spaceships. Defenders also probably rely on various easily hidden or difficult-to-identify weapons like "man with bazooka under tarp" and "VBIED" instead of "ordinary" ground troops, because it would be trivial for a force with air superiority to just start dabbing on an armored column. OTOH it's a bit tougher for an air force to destroy the Taliban, ISIS, Atomic Waffles, or whatever, so the same issue applies here, except worse, because a starship capital laser is probably only able to get down to "small town" radius of destruction from the emitted x-rays of the beam alone.

All of this is against a background of a cold war between the relatively normal, baseline humans of the inner system (Venus, Earth) and the increasingly radical post-human forms (adapted for less sunlight and gravity, resulting in bizarre forms) of the outer system (Mars, Asteroid belt, Jupiter, S A T U R N) with the foci being Earth and Saturn, and everyone revolving around them, with Jupiter trying to play both sides.

Somehow this all sort of meshes I guess but it's honestly just sounding like 18th century Europe with spaceships if I'm being real, although that is probably pretty futuristic the way things are going IRL.

Basically, because of the convergence of a lot of relevant technologies (power armor, jetpacks, miniaturized antimatter nuclear bombs, MEMS propulsion/electrical power) everything has sort of squished down to the lowest levels. "Tank" is now a pair of vehicles that differ only by what gun they are carrying. Either a "big gun" that takes time to reach its targets, but can fire NLOS, or a "small gun" that can shoot anything that flies but can't fire over hills. "C4ISTAR" as a separate entity is almost irrelevant because every soldier (or at least every unit) has a direct connection to the starships in orbit, and every soldier is smart enough to be able to make his own decisions if he has to, and they work in pairs if they get in really close quarters. They also have their own little UAV networks that give them information, and lets them talk to other soldiers using LIDARs or laser scatter. Also everyone has nuclear missiles, so they aren't wanting for firepower in the slightest, and they need to be able to act as a translator, interpreter, field commander, and ditch digger all at once. So they're probably really clever. Too clever to be naturally born maybe. So they're probably grown in vats. The tanks OTOH might have some combination of brain-computer techno-organic system that lets them learn and discern targets with experience, and human crew that actually control them. Since everyone wears power armor they probably all have anti-tank rifles that can defeat tanks too (and failing that they have nuclear missiles) and so they aren't exactly hurting in that department. Since all formations are supported by orbital superiority the warships probably just bring a flying factory with them that produces anything the troops might need from asteroids or comets and send it down on a pod, which really shortens the supply chain via literal just-in-time logistics.

The hardest part of warfare becomes the age old question of deciding whether or not that farming village is an enemy fortress, or if there are only a couple bad eggs in there that need to be removed, and what that really means is you either turn it into Hiroshima, or you sweep and clear every nook and cranny after rounding up the villagers (or knocking them out) and start looking for AK47s under the floorboards. This is something that can't be easily solved by technology and requires things like practice and local cultural knowledge to discern. Meanwhile the farmer in the truck approaching your hyperspectral blind might be driving towards you with a VBIED, or he might just be bringing in fertilizer to help with the fields, and you have to decide what is happening there without knowing who he is or where he's been.

Of course when you're a 160 IQ super diligent, genetically improved, hyper thinking ultra-man who speaks a dozen languages it's probably a bit easier to figure out what people are saying and what cultural idioms (and body language) they're using after a bit than if you're just some schmuck who got plucked out of Anytown and put in some fatigues, but that's relatively minor, and more indicative of modern real life trends than anything. The question itself is still hard to answer because even supersoldiers of the far future will grapple with the same problems that old soldiers did with the "other side of the hill". The only difference is the "hill" is cultural (bizarre techno-Bedouins), or linguistic (Norwegians), or outright special (post-humans, ultra-octopi, hyper-delfin, or whatever) instead of physical. It's one thing to be able to see over a hill, which anyone can do with an observation balloon, and it's another thing to be able to understand a (literal?) alien culture and figure out that this farmer is saying that his neighbor is a bombmaker because he wants to take his neighbor's land so he can grow more Space Cocaine to sell.

The actual human insects of Dumbla probably nuke the village because they're turning into negative utilitarians though.

[Triplebaconation]

sadtech

[Gallia-]

):

[New Vihenia]

Imagine staring up to the skies only to find that something up there is looking back at you.

[Purpelia]

Just to provide a counterpoint to the G man and show how different FT can be here is my own FT setting that I use:

Space is big, really big. Like crossing over from one edge of a giant space nation to another running your engines flat out takes a couple months. It's also essentially an ocean only in 3D with all the incessant streams of warships, trade ships and everything that goes with it. FTL is both extant and nonextant in that there basically is no magic to it. C just isn't the limit. If you want to travel at 100C you just fire up your engines and burn some more fuel for a longer time. So what's with the long travel times? Well, when you are traveling really really fast through normal space you end up in the somewhat uncomfortable situation of every speck of dust hitting your hull doing so at the equivalent energy of its mass in atomic bombs. Not a huge deal with dust but much more so if you were to say run headlong through an uncharted asteroid the size of a minivan. So your travel is very much restricted by the quality of your space charts and by having lanes cleared for you. Not a huge deal overall but it does give the defender a definite strategic edge in terms of speed. This will be important later.

Moving on for a moment to planets and places where people live in general. A lot of settings like to depict space like the pacific, an endless expanse of empty sea with the occasional tiny island (Planet) dotted throughout it. That's frankly bollocks. Space is an endless expanse of resources just waiting to be collected. And tying your self to planets, especially if you only go for habitable ones, is denying your self the bounty of gods dinner table because you didn't like the seating. Worse yet, habitable planets are about the worst place you can extract resources from to begin with between the environmental concerns and the costs of shipping your products out of the gravity well and atmosphere. It just ain't worth it if the alternative is to simply plop a cheapo prefab mining base next to a bunch of space rocks and crack them open for their bounty.
What this all leads to is a galaxy where most of the inhabited systems don't even have habitable planets. And those that do serve more as tourists resorts, nature preserves and administrative centers than as centers of industry or population. The vast majority of people live and work in space telecommuting from their habitation cylinders to remote controlled facilities, mines and infrastructure. And your typical star system isn't an empty void with a lil blue ball at its center but a massive thriving three dimensional metropolis sprawling over a couple light years worth with endless small encampments of mostly self sustaining communities each centered around the extraction, processing or production of things and their export to the greater whole. And far from having your starship enter a system only to zip in and enter orbit while the captains log still hasn't done playing any traveler with find him self navigating a biblical scale traffic jam and spending more time traveling to his destination in system than he did between them.

Naturally conquering such a thing with military force is essentially impossible. You can threaten them with destruction if they fail to surrender and change flags but that's about it. Actually boarding each individual station would even with the best of intention take you centuries. And just going for the planet if one is present at all at best represents a spit to the face. At worst, it means you have to fly through the entire system exposed to all the weird and wonderful defenses your host might have hidden for you to find among the many suburbs (and even if not, a nuke launcher meant to crack open planeloads for their ore is indistinguishable from one meant to crack open your hull) and headlong into a defenses around the planet it self. And of course if you do that and go for the whole submit or die spiel odds are they will call your bluff because they know destroying them would mean you loose the very thing you came to conquer making your whole campaign a colossal waste of time.

Thus battles are rarely if ever fought on the ground or even within inhabited systems. Not unless you are literally doing spoiling raids on the enemy economy. Instead combat happens in open space in between these centers of commerce and between massive fleets of giant multi kilometer long warships whose hulls are built to withstand not just the endless streams of atomic fire thrown out by their counterparts but actually traveling at speed through space mostly unknown. When ground combat does happen it's going to mostly be boarding actions or targeted landings against important sites on a world and conducted by elite teams of high tech operators including 3m tall mecha suits with swords, wings and mortars on their backs that may or may not have been organically constructed out of demon DNA.

[Gallia-]

Rifle, Caliber .260", Ak21



i edit him

it's no longer 6.8 SPC it's now 6mm Unified but more Sweden ("6.5mm "Enhetlig""?)

the original m16 will be 6.8 SPC tho

he'll get a silencer at some point on the end probably a combination of RM277's FATBOI and a Gemtech HALO

everyone gets 7 magazines on their vest one is stored on the webbing belt with the rifle grenades for launching

the one time you really do like having a buffer tube on your rifle because it gives you the BIG spring for the titanic bolt this fucker probably has

[Purpelia]

Is it just me or are the stats of the 8mm Carcano basically a 7.62x39mm but in a full sized case?

[Pentaga Giudici]

What would the combat in a modern civil war look like if both parties are equivalent in force? I know, probably a shitshow, but I'm having difficulty visualizing some of the moving parts. Like, I'd assume the first thing that would happen is that one side would attempt to secure and maintain air superiority while the other seeks to tear that away from them; whoever gets it decidedly has an advantage for the rest of the war, denying their opponent any sizable armored forces. And what the hell does the Navy do? Fire support? Play Poker?

You can have air-superiority, but not really be able to put much into the air. Air-superiority tends to mean the other guy can't use planes, but it doesn't mean you can.

Pretty sure the people in this thread aren't big fans of ground assets being depended on to shoot down aircraft, but if AA systems are close to armored units, they can certainly protect them from helicopters or slow moving aircraft like the A-10 or Soviet equivilent. Something like a F-16 or even a F-35 is a whole different matter...but who exactly is up to their eyeballs in resources during a 50/50 civil-war?

No. That capability was removed iirc.

It wasn't necessary because Russia discovered trains. I'm not sure they ever used BT's swappable road wheels in any serious capacity either. The Christie suspension's, uh, "versatility", was sort of like the Pierre Sprey of 1930: why put a tank on a road or a railroad when you can put two or three, or two or three dozen, on a truck or a train and drive them that way?

People liked it because it didn't require much volume in the tank, torsion bars sucked, and it gave pretty good rides over smooth-ish terrain at high (faster than walking) speed. Which is why you see light tanks using it mostly.

That said you don't need a special anything to do it. You could probably swap the wheels on a T-34 and drive it normally without any significant modification to the hull. The suspension/drive unit would be changed obviously but this is relatively minor: the Christie suspension (and AMX-10RC) only run one drive wheel on either side.

I'm going to draw a 6.5mm Unified-esque super AR-10 I guess for Dumbla for 202X.

I think I've seen two different videos from The Chieftain or The Tank Museum going on about how the Christie suspension used up a good bit of internal space, and that was one of the reasons the Soviets moved away from it.

I'm interested in the BT, because I'm trying to stat something like the "GLA" from C&C Generals. The idea is for a fast, light tank, that morons can drive properly. Plan is for it to see a lot of use in something like Africa, so not expecting a ton of railroads.

So, quick question for you gun nerds here:

6.8mm rounds, were they settled on for their penetrating power or for reaching power?

Primarily the shift in focus to conventional peer-level warfare and the proliferation of body armor.

Effective range will probably be around 600 meters.

The takeaway is that GPC nerds trying to squeeze an extra kilometer or whatever out of an M4 because they read in a blog that the US was outgunned in Afghanistan are stuck in fantasy land.

I've seen a lot of good documentation about the new ammo being tested, along with some good videos, but no one so far has seemed to figure out why the Defense branch wants 6.8 instead of 6.5 or .224

Frankly, I'm also not sure why .224 Valk was such trash. My best bet is a lot of the time they used bullets heavier then what a 1-7 twist likes....and then fired them out of guns with a 1-7 twist.

[Gallia-]

They picked 6.8mm to make people who think 6.5mm Grendel/Creedmoor/Swedish is the future, like Arfcom and SOCOM and THRcom and all the -coms, upsetti spaghetti.

[Purpelia]

I think I've seen two different videos from The Chieftain or The Tank Museum going on about how the Christie suspension used up a good bit of internal space, and that was one of the reasons the Soviets moved away from it.

I'm interested in the BT, because I'm trying to stat something like the "GLA" from C&C Generals. The idea is for a fast, light tank, that morons can drive properly. Plan is for it to see a lot of use in something like Africa, so not expecting a ton of railroads.

If its for the modern day your only good choice is the T-55. The thing is still a beast unless you literally run into modern tanks with it. And the skills needed to run and maintain it are essentially those of a middle of a century car mechanic. So like if you can run a toyota pickup you can run a T-55.

[Pentaga Giudici]

I think I've seen two different videos from The Chieftain or The Tank Museum going on about how the Christie suspension used up a good bit of internal space, and that was one of the reasons the Soviets moved away from it.

I'm interested in the BT, because I'm trying to stat something like the "GLA" from C&C Generals. The idea is for a fast, light tank, that morons can drive properly. Plan is for it to see a lot of use in something like Africa, so not expecting a ton of railroads.

If its for the modern day your only good choice is the T-55. The thing is still a beast unless you literally run into modern tanks with it. And the skills needed to run and maintain it are essentially those of a middle of a century car mechanic. So like if you can run a toyota pickup you can run a T-55.

Can you explain to me, why Lybida had such a hard time using them during their war with Chad, and the tanks were basically operated as bunkers?

I've read and heard many times that tanks are a lot harder to drive then a truck, and so I've considered wheeled TDs, or tanks that can operate on just wheels.

The Ratel and other vehicles like it seem to do well in parts of Africa, and the BTR-80 does well in most of Russia, so I think things should work out.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Pretty sure the people in this thread aren't big fans of ground assets being depended on to shoot down aircraft, but if AA systems are close to armored units, they can certainly protect them from helicopters or slow moving aircraft like the A-10 or Soviet equivilent.

You won't win any air dominance battles without an actual air force actually contesting the air with own fighters but I reckon SHORADS especially IR/EO based will keep the enterprising A-10 pilot and the attack helicopter entirely out of Eyeball Mk 1 range. I.e. above 20,000 feet and beyond 10-20 km's.

Can you explain to me, why Lybida had such a hard time using them during their war with Chad, and the tanks were basically operated as bunkers?

I've read and heard many times that tanks are a lot harder to drive then a truck, and so I've considered wheeled TDs, or tanks that can operate on just wheels.

tfw when you almost get it then drive your Toyota off a cliff of associative thinking.

This was a war in real life, not GI Joe and Cobra charging each other Saturday morning.

Again, here's what happened in the major battles of the Toyota War, which was a brief phase of the larger conflict.

In March 1987, Gaddafi orders the local commander, Col. Khalifa Haftar, to take back Fada, which had been captured by the Chadians in January. Haftar isn't crazy about the idea - he wants to fortify his base at Ouadi Doum as much as possible, then draw the Chadians to it and destroy them. He eventually assembles a force to retake Fada, but he tells them to take their time.

The Libyans have lost their Chadian allies, and they refuse to actually get out of their vehicles and do reconnaissance or any kind of route security. FANT is watching them the entire time, with their own patrols, French special forces, and American satellite imagery. The Libyans manage to travel a grand total of 80 kilometers in a day, then set up a laager just outside the pass at B'ir Kora.

Around dawn, FANT troops with Milans have dug in on the hills and fire on the Libyan T-55s. The tanks return fire ineffectually as they're taken out one by one. The Libyan commander orders the rest of the convoy to reinforce that direction and counterattack. Hassan Djamous then has the bulk of his forces attack from the opposite direction. They slam into the Libyan's rear and engage the BMPs at close range with RPGs, LAWs, and LRACs. In fact the fighting is so close some are actually killed by the blast from their own weapons.

Since the Libyans don't like to dismount, most of the casualties are infantry burnt alive in their BMPs, trying to return fire through the dumb firing ports.

Haftar sends out a relief force. For some inexplicable reason, they stop 20 kilometers from B'ir Kora and bivouac for the night. Surprisingly, Djamous hits them in the exact same way in the early morning.

For the next two days scattered groups of survivors return to Ouadi Doum. Haftar is absolutely certain the Chadians won't attack him in his stronghold, so when the Libyans see dust clouds on the horizon they assume it's more survivors and open the gates! The Chadians roar into the base at top speed (erroneously thinking this will protect them from mines, so they lose about 12 trucks including the one carrying Djamous) overwhelm the perimeter, the engage the Libyans from within the base itself.

Only a small number of Milans were provided by France. They were important because they allowed the Chadians to throw the Libyans into confusion at night due to their thermal sights. Libyans had no effective night vision. (Yes, we all know Wikipedia says T-55 and BMPs have night vision.)

The importance of the Toyotas, on the other hand, was that combined with the incompetence of the Libyans they allowed the Chadians to attack at a time and place of their choosing, not zip around sniping tanks at long range.

None of the pictures of Manokan has posted as gotchas are from the Toyota War, they're just random trucks from 30 years later that pop up when you type Toyota War into Google.

One has to wonder why these guys are carrying big bags of RPGs on their backs: https://youtu.be/2fbzyy4kG_8?t=1385

[Gallia-]

A-10s were semi-regularly strafing Rolands and ZSUs in Desert Storm and 2003 without much issue tbf. AH-64 also dismantled a large portion of Iraqi SHORADS with Hellfires, even after 3d ID's failed helicopter raid.

AAA in general doesn't seem to offer any substantial protection for ground troops against air attack, TBH.