NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[New Vihenia]

So what makes LRLAP unusable in generic 155mm artilerry ? e.g M-109.

[Triplebaconation]

it was seven feet long

[New Vihenia]

it was seven feet long

Aw, i guess it really needs the longer barrel to make use of.

and automated loader too.

[Gallia-]

future warfare trends:

everything flies sometimes in space

also when i grow up i want to have 36 inch long 12 inch diameter titanium turbine engines for arms instead of...arms

it was seven feet long

Aw, i guess it really needs the longer barrel to make use of.

and automated loader too.

just use nammo's ramjet shell honestly

but any sort of ultra aerodynamic (or self powered) projectile has a pathetically tiny payload i guess

only gud for nuuk

[New Vihenia]

just use nammo's ramjet shell honestly

but any sort of ultra aerodynamic (or self powered) projectile has a pathetically tiny payload i guess

only gud for nuuk

Well, cover lack of payload with precision or shoot more for enough dakka. That's gonna also be incentive to mass produce the goods and bring down its price.

[Gallia-]

Nammo's ramjet shell is already quite precise, but it probably compares more favorably with M107 than with Excalibur or something, just without the actually dangerous fragmentation of M107. If you're shooting more precision ramjet shells to kill something then you've kind of defeated the point of precision, though. Mass production hasn't really brought down the cost of rockets all that much (SpaceX has reached Apollo era NASA levels of kg/LEO, albeit extrapolated), not sure why it would bring down the cost of something that is probably going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. It might drop it down to Excalibur levels, but then why aren't you using Excalibur?

About the only good thing it promises is the ability to outgun anything else, where it has already been defeated by M109's big barrel, and the potential of using non-ballistic flight paths to make counter-fire targeting annoying. The latter is almost good enough to justify it, but probably only for special shells like nuclear warheads or something.

Using a super expensive stealth ramjet shell for delivering high explosives is kinda dumb ngl. Airplanes do it better with a glide bomb like SDB than shooting it out of cannon, or you can make the airplane be a glide bomb like a TLAM or ACM bus that delivers SDBs. This would be smarter than using a cannon, but that's something the USN couldn't grasp in the 90's I suppose when it was thinking about LRLAP unironically.

Keep the stealth ramjet shell for artillery pieces that need to deliver atomic bombs then you're onto something.

[New Vihenia]

Tho Excalibur doesnt have 100km range the Nammo shell offers. Plus with more compact form. Every gun in the field of same caliber could use and potentially gain extra lethality.

[Gallia-]

Excalibur flies about 40 miles (65 km) fired from the ERCA testbed. The end goal is to get Excalibur out to 120 kilometers, but that'll take a couple years.

Ramjets are mostly a way to get stubby guns like European L/39s firing at the same range I guess. They're probably going to be too expensive to displace Excalibur either way. Excalibur isn't even cheap enough to displace ordinary rounds in stowage, the US Army had to make a special azimuth-only fuse kit (XM1156 Precision Guidance Kit) to do that, which seems to be actually standard for the most part. So you'll have three levels I guess: Ramjet for very long range extremely important targets (nuclear missile batteries?), Excalibur for mid-range precision targets, and then PGK fuse + HE or cargo shell for everything else.

Ramjet might also displace Excalibur, though, depending on how cheap it gets. Not really mass issue but maybe each gun can have a couple shells or something, like Excalibur, or Copperhead, or nukes.

Ramjet + nuke is probably potent for its ability to keep a nuclear capable battery from being counter-fired imo, and the inevitably high cost of ramjets probably won't be able to be brought down that much, since it's Excalibur with what might be the world's strongest jet engine attached.

I don't really see the utility of having a shell with a low payload fraction being used solely for the purpose of flying far, though. Unless you're dueling a Pershing battery, or some other enemy artillery system that has nuclear weapons, it doesn't seem like the trade off in expense-to-potential-damage is worth it. MLRS can sling long range rockets (t. Dr. Ron Barrett's VIPER or w/e that ramjet GMLRS was called) just fine without the finagling of needing to squeeze it into a gun tube and accelerate it at 10,000 gravities.

Boeing and Saab put SDB on a GMLRS too, which can be used for long-range shooting as well. Combine that with VIPER and you can probably bombard Berlin from Calais with glide bombs or something.

[New Vihenia]

I don't really see the utility of having a shell with a low payload fraction being used solely for the purpose of flying far, though. Unless you're dueling a Pershing battery, or some other enemy artillery system that has nuclear weapons, it doesn't seem like the trade off in expense-to-potential-damage is worth it.

Wont the precision give the necessary effect ? Like isnt it that the argument for having precision weapon in the first place ?

The thing with long range, means not only dueling or standoff but also improve the coverage of the battery, you can cover more and supposedly engage way more targets as each targets now requires lesser amount of dakka to kill. I recalled Excalibur were supposed to be like 20K maybe but the initial plan was 200.000 shells which doesnt materialize.

[Kantian Germany]

Would a nation which never used spies always lose a war? (I think Immanuel Kant would disapprove of spies).

[New Vihenia]

Would a nation which never used spies always lose a war? (I think Immanuel Kant would disapprove of spies).

Yes, unless one invented a device capable of reading someone's mind.

Other than that human intelligence can provide critical intelligence like stealing or copying enemy plans, taking high resolution pics from angle other than above, talks with enemy populations or maybe get him/herself into enemy ranks and work from there. and lets not forget stealing enemy equipment.

[Kantian Germany]

Would a nation which never used spies always lose a war? (I think Immanuel Kant would disapprove of spies).

Yes, unless one invented a device capable of reading someone's mind.

Other than that human intelligence can provide critical intelligence like stealing or copying enemy plans, taking high resolution pics from angle other than above, talks with enemy populations or maybe get him/herself into enemy ranks and work from there. and lets not forget stealing enemy equipment.

What if they had allies that used spies?

[Gallia-]

I don't really see the utility of having a shell with a low payload fraction being used solely for the purpose of flying far, though. Unless you're dueling a Pershing battery, or some other enemy artillery system that has nuclear weapons, it doesn't seem like the trade off in expense-to-potential-damage is worth it.

Wont the precision give the necessary effect ? Like isnt it that the argument for having precision weapon in the first place ?

To a point, but there's a point where you're expending more money for precision than the enemy is on their weapon or the potential damage it can cause. I tried to illustrate this (poorly, in the theoretical sense, perhaps) with this chart. The howitzers can be destroyed by either CBU shells or Excaliburs with SADARMs. The CBUs appear to win, despite requiring a bit more time to deliver (you need a few more shells), they might equal or slightly overperform provided the howitzers aren't properly armored against top attack (again this comes back to how much he is investing in it).

Naturally, nuclear weapons radically shift this because a single atomic bomb can vaporize a theater airbase with multitudes of fighter aircraft or something equally dangerous. An all-out attack is needed to handle anything that might even potentially have a nuclear warhead inside it, and so the idea of tossing what amounts to a six digit dollar satchel charge out 100-150 kilometers isn't too far fetched, if you have literally nothing else.

But you shouldn't really be allowed to put yourself in that situation in the first place. Which is why I'm offering alternatives like the SDB glide kit MLRS round, which does basically the same thing as the Nammo ramjet shell.

I think partly people might be afraid that howitzers are going out of style so they're trying everything to make them ultra cool and slick because MLRS is so good, but that kinda defeats the point of howitzers. Turning a howitzer into a nuclear weapons delivery system (vice an MLRS) might make it cool again without reducing it to "lamer GMLRS" though.

Ultimately, it really depends on how much of the warhead fraction the ramjet is eating for a given shell mass/volume. Excalibur has a warhead mass of like 25 kg or something (this might include the body rather than the fill weight alone though, I don't know what the exact fill weight is probably like 5-6 kg). M107 and M549 have filler payloads of like 8 kg. I think L15A2 has a bigger payload fraction (and of course it's more aerodynamic than the American rounds).

So as long as it's around there in absolute fill weight, and not something like 2-3 kg, it should be OK in terms of shells/kill. It will also need the ability to adjust its flight path similar to Excalibur, and have a better CEP, due to its longer range.

The thing with long range, means not only dueling or standoff but also improve the coverage of the battery, you can cover more and supposedly engage way more targets as each targets now requires lesser amount of dakka to kill. I recalled Excalibur were supposed to be like 20K maybe but the initial plan was 200.000 shells which doesnt materialize.

This is true. FWIW, Excalibur stabilized at around $30K iirc, although it's spiked up and down as various upgrades tend to be eaten in whole fiscal years (which increases unit costs like 2-3x for that year) so it wasn't much more expensive than they anticipated.

It's still not cheap enough for general issue though. XM1156 was developed to give ordinary ammunition Excalibur-esque capability (nowhere near as accurate, and one axis rather than two, but still) at longer ranges. This increased the costs of shells from like $1,200 to $3,000-4,000 USD per shot, with the bulk of that being the PGK deep fuse kit which clocks in around $2K per fuse. This is an order of magnitude cheaper than Excalibur and means it can be issued at "around" the same amount as ordinary 155mm rounds.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

for Tl;dr

"Quantity is a quality all to its own"

Sometimes you just gotta saturate the gridsqure with explosive ordnance, and it's cheaper.

[Gallia-]

Missed the point by a country mile I guess.

tl;dr Excalibur is already expensive. Putting a ramjet inside it will make it more expensive. Improving on PGK is probably better, but I'm not sure how you could do that without the expensive GPS guidance kit of Excalibur. Thus, a ramjet shell is probably better used for delivery of nuclear warheads that can demand any expense and still be worth it.

I guess you could go Copperhead and give it a HEAT warhead for anti-armor duty but XM1158 is probably going to be as expensive as Copperhead ($60-80K/round) and only available in small amounts. At that point you might as well sling Excalibur from an improved, superzone ERCA with SADARMs (or a wide footprint PGM like Damocles or PRAXIS) and save a bit of change I guess. Which is why I said the ramjet is mostly about giving European L/39s a competitive gun range without buying new howitzers. The small quantities of shells stockpiled European troops are probably tiny enough to be wholesale replaced by ramjets and still be cheaper than buying 80-90 Archers, Pzh 2Ks, or K9s.

[Cossack Peoples]

Why are we seeing an abundance of newer Russian frigates and corvettes rather than other ships? Do they believe that the smaller ships can be as capable (maybe not individually but in pairs or small groups) as larger contemporary vessels, or is it merely to fill the gaps in their coastal defense and ability to respond to naval threats?

Edit: Or is this even indicative of a global shift to smaller littoral or patrol vessels being emphasized in contrast to heavier and similarly-armed capital vessels?

[Gallia-]

Cynical answer: Russia is collapsing, as all industrialized states are (with the exceptions of India and Israel, for now), and this is simply a result of industrial atrophy that affects every developed economy of the world.

Moderate answer: Russia doesn't have a functional carrier and is emphasizing a possible land war in the Caucasus/Southwest Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Far East, over a war with the United States. It doesn't need the large escort vessels because it no longer possesses the ability to contest American (or Norwegian) airpower in the Arctic Ocean, nor does it seem too keen on recovering this, despite qualms from the Northern Fleet. Since submarines are also deemphasized beyond deterrence patrols in the Arctic Ocean, probably their SSBNs are patrolling not far outside the Barents Sea, there's also no real need for big carriers. Smaller ships are fine for anti-submarine guard duty, because they will likely remain in range of coastal airbases and heavy fighters like Su-27 or Su-57, and their associated maritime patrol squadrons. The entire point of the Russian Navy's carriers was to provide long-range aviation cover to the submarine forces in the North Sea (where Nimrods and P-3s would run roughshod over Novembers and Kilos), but because that no longer exists, the Russian subs are just going to stay in the Barents where Su-57s can protect them from marauding P-8s and their F-35 escorts.

This is mostly a result of the breakup of the USSR and Russia's focus away from the world stage and more on its own backyard, basically. Russia could entirely build a supercarrier battle force of 3-4 carriers supported by Lider supercruisers. It almost certainly has enough welders, engineers, and drydocks in shipyards, but it won't, because it has no perceived need for that. It would rather focus on trying to build high technology tanks and aircraft to keep itself from getting assblasted by PRC developments in the same, i.e. preparing for when the PLA attempts to invade Siberia or whatever.

[The Akasha Colony]

Why are we seeing an abundance of newer Russian frigates and corvettes rather than other ships? Do they believe that the smaller ships can be as capable (maybe not individually but in pairs or small groups) as larger contemporary vessels, or is it merely to fill the gaps in their coastal defense and ability to respond to naval threats?

Edit: Or is this even indicative of a global shift to smaller littoral or patrol vessels being emphasized in contrast to heavier and similarly-armed capital vessels?

Despite what Putin and RT would have you believe, Russia's economic resources are quite finite, and it must prioritize spending to the projects that are most relevant to Russia's defense requirements. And those are the SSBN fleet, the fighter force, and the ground forces given Russia's long borders with potentially hostile powers. Maintaining or expanding the surface fleet is not a particularly high priority, so Russia is only able to fund a few new frigates and corvettes here and there, and some basic modernization to keep the old Cold War workhorses sort-of in service. It keeps the shipbuilding industry from collapsing into complete non-existence, but that's really all Russia can afford.

[Danternoust]

Why are we seeing an abundance of newer Russian frigates and corvettes rather than other ships? Do they believe that the smaller ships can be as capable (maybe not individually but in pairs or small groups) as larger contemporary vessels, or is it merely to fill the gaps in their coastal defense and ability to respond to naval threats?

Edit: Or is this even indicative of a global shift to smaller littoral or patrol vessels being emphasized in contrast to heavier and similarly-armed capital vessels?

Despite what Putin and RT would have you believe, Russia's economic resources are quite finite, and it must prioritize spending to the projects that are most relevant to Russia's defense requirements. And those are the SSBN fleet, the fighter force, and the ground forces given Russia's long borders with potentially hostile powers. Maintaining or expanding the surface fleet is not a particularly high priority, so Russia is only able to fund a few new frigates and corvettes here and there, and some basic modernization to keep the old Cold War workhorses sort-of in service. It keeps the shipbuilding industry from collapsing into complete non-existence, but that's really all Russia can afford.

Russia became quasi-autarchal during the Soviet period. Production constraints are a matter of capability to automate, energy input, and access to raw materials. They could scale up production of domestic resources, at the cost of comparative advantage. Furthermore, they, like most western countries have excessively large service sectors, they could also increase their mining laborforce substantially.

As for energy... modern technology allows better simulation of reactors.
The boiling water reactor could have reduced shielding requirements, relying on distance and burial to reduce the impact of radioactivity, as well as a reservoir to flood the reactor in case of the risk of a meltdown. There could also be a rupture disk that connects the reservoir with the containment vessel. This would reduce the capital costs of reactors substantially, bringing it closer in line with coal power.

If the reactor is still at risk of catching fire or melting down, then the reactor could be sandwiched between boron sand above and below. Finally, Russia has one great advantage: low population density, unlike Europe, China, or America (for the exception of Canada and Alaska), the Russians can place reactors prone to Three Mile Island-severity incidents a thousand miles away from urban centers... practically in Siberia, if not literally.

The Russians have no interest in any of that, they are conceptually playing the reverse role of the United States during WWII, that is a ready reserve of support with no immediate interest of intervention. The absurdity of direct response by the US to Russia's interventions make it impossible for any response to be made, as a result, the Russians have the ability to act while the US is forced to react. This makes Putin comparable to Bismarck. Furthermore, in terms of immediate great power politics, the Russians are simply a balancing factor, they have no risk of invasion (WMD has only been used against an opposing force without access to it post WWI), and are behaving as a Princely State did during the Renaissance, they provide mercenaries, and reap the profits, they trade, and reap the profits. Their citizenry is in a state a step above slavery, and their best programmers are operating the world's botnets from Russian datacenters (never to be nullrouted by the rest of the world for some reason).

Mobilizing their reserves to engage in great power competition is obvious still. They just have to pay their top minds as much as they currently make through fraud and subterfuge.

[Austrasien]

Why are we seeing an abundance of newer Russian frigates and corvettes rather than other ships? Do they believe that the smaller ships can be as capable (maybe not individually but in pairs or small groups) as larger contemporary vessels, or is it merely to fill the gaps in their coastal defense and ability to respond to naval threats?

Edit: Or is this even indicative of a global shift to smaller littoral or patrol vessels being emphasized in contrast to heavier and similarly-armed capital vessels?

https://russiandefpolicy.com/2018/02/04 ... -tsushima/

Production of large surface ships in Russia is troubled. Some ships have been WIP for 10-20 years. Russia has had a lot more success reconstituting its capability to produce large nuclear submarines, likely because they are far more important to Russian security. Getting production of large warships back on track would require significant investment the Russian government hasn't yet been willing to make - probably because other defence sectors are a higher priority.

Russia really needs foreign partners to help revitalize their shipbuilding and they were moving in this direction with the Mistral deal before 2014. Though China could be a potential partner the Chinese don't show much interest in anything other than technology transfer agreements. Probably because their own capacity for producing everything is so much greater than Russia's. India has a lot of cash but not much skills or technology it can offer to make up for Russia's shortcomings.

[Danternoust]

Russia really needs foreign partners to help revitalize their shipbuilding and they were moving in this direction with the Mistral deal before 2014.

It becomes a matter of being able to reload in port vs at sea, or what technology are we talking about?

This is ludicrous, this is like saying the US industrial sector has collapsed simply because it was outsourced for some reason after the union influence in politics were crushed.


A rough ballpark estimate would put Russian economic potential capacity at $30 trillion, if they were to focused on easily cast pieces of equipment or anything else produced at what qualifies as heavy industry. Furthermore if they had a strong economy drive for energy production, more expensive types of material inputs become more feasible. All titanium T-90s for instance.

In any case, GDP is per annum, if equipment depreciates at 50% per year, it still counts towards GDP. What really should be measured is Net National Product.

[Austrasien]

This is ludicrous, this is like saying the US industrial sector has collapsed simply because it was outsourced for some reason after the union influence in politics were crushed.

It is rather more dramatic than that. The Soviet Union was a somewhat backwards industrial economy. Russia is a commodity producer with a significant amount of military industry left. Russia today has a higher per capita output than it did under the USSR but a relatively far smaller and less advanced industrial economy. Discounting military industry Russia's manufacturing sector is almost insignificant - the value of all its machinery exports are less than the value of its wheat exports. And this is not a testament to Russian agriculture, which is grossly inefficient.

Its imports on the other hand are dominated by manufactured goods and machinery.

https://oec.world/en/profile/country/rus

With 1 in 5 manufacturing in Russia is directly related to military industry and probably an absolute majority tied to it indirectly, and most of its major defence producers insolvent, the government's investment decisions carry a lot of weight in determining the state of the industry as a whole. There aren't any other significant players. Though the Russian government has more revenue than is sometimes imagined (a lot of people wrongly think Russia is perpetually broke) having to drag along a whole sector of the economy: Prioritizing investments, keeping insolvent firms afloat, supporting academic research, training new skilled workers, is a huge task for a state which now at least nominally pays market prices and balances books.

Every other state of comparable economic heft that has built a competitive military industry has focused on particular areas of excellence and cooperated with international partners to acquire the full range of capabilities. Russia has definite areas of excellence (spacecraft, space launchers, submarines, surface to air missiles, radio electronics, can be counted among its major successes), but it has not been so successful at finding actual partners as opposed to customers.

[Danternoust]

the value of all its machinery exports are less than the value of its wheat exports.

I don't know how to argue against that, but GDP could rise by switching to growing feed for animals and competing with the Chinese for frozen food production.

Though the Russian government has more revenue than is sometimes imagined (a lot of people wrongly think Russia is perpetually broke) having to drag along a whole sector of the economy: Prioritizing investments, keeping insolvent firms afloat, supporting academic research, training new skilled workers, is a huge task for a state which now at least nominally pays market prices and balances books.

Yes, they, like many European countries, have a sovereign wealth fund.

They have likely lost much of their economic planning capacity, but towards the end of the Cold War, the Soviets technically outsourced it to the US. They simply mirrored US actions, to the point of developing a Buran shuttle for no reason at all.

Still, that is excessive pressure on labor demand, while I'm not clear on the most common service industry jobs in Russia, it is probably jobs that can be largely automated or quasi-automated, like fast food, accounting, or trucking. In fact grocery stores were not originally self-service. Rationing could be imposed if someone begins pining all patriotically for national defense.

But this can be simplified greatly: focusing on producing a few hundred critical weapon systems for a war, if that was a requirement. Furthermore, boats are not complex, except for damage control, ballast control, and the engine. Fortunately turbines are available for everything now.

In fact one major source of labor consumption, mechanics, can be substituted by using military-style power packs. Trains can also be turbo-electric powered, and railroads are mostly automated in laying for a century, reducing demand of drivers.

This leaves food production, which could be solved through dehydrated ingredients in a pressure cooker, an advanced third world technology.

[Gallia-]

Russia just needs to promise putting Su-57's zillions of radars into KF-X or something and get Korea fully on board.

Then we can begin the prequel to Analogue: A Hate Story by joining the Russian SLV industry and Korean space programs at the hip.

[Danternoust]

Russia just needs to promise putting Su-57's zillions of radars into KF-X or something and get Korea fully on board.

The SU-57 is classified, how do you distinguish one SU-57 from another? Besides, building a fighter aircraft from a first principles materials analysis is not available. Learning cost curves and initial production costs for common aircraft imply that scaling up production could... potentially... halve the price of advanced aircraft if the production runs are allow to be quadruple that of other same generation aircraft.

Still, Russia is the world's largest operator of biplanes in the world, if they automated them, they would have an immense fleet of close air support aircraft.