NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[Austrasien]

Stirling engines have a fairly poor power density and so are a poor choice for a torpedo, you want a closed rankine-cycle system like HYDROX which combines wakeless operation and depth independent performance with a power density several times higher than that of an open cycle otto fuel II engine. The steam produced by the hydrogen-oxygen combustion doesn't have to be exhausted against backpressure, it can be condensed back into water (the condenser being built into the structural pressure hull of the torpedo) and recycled back into the boiler/combustor. Which is also how SCEPS/ADSCEPS works, although HYDROX has a higher power density because it uses an aluminum/lithium-seawater vortex combustor to produce steam and hydrogen gas (which is then reacted with oxygen produced by a lithium perchlorate fuel cell) rather than using a boiler. 100 knot, 100+ km range meme torpedoes here we come. RIP Bozo to all surface ships.

Well, you could also boil the water for the closed regenerative steam turbine with a boron burner. I mention boron mostly because it would have a high enough energy density and gravimetric energy density to compete with metallic hydrogen as an exotic fuel, about 50%.

[Malian Socialist Federation]

For a large African federal socialist republic, I am attempting to decide the best course of action for a stable and functional military. My initial idea has been larger individual State run militia’s while keeping a smaller and more mechanized army. Some form of National service is required so these militia and auxiliaries function as police, fire, and militia, while any really large conflicts will these auxiliaries/militias will hold off until the military actually arrives. I was just wondering some thoughts and opinions.

[Dtn]

Stirling engines have a fairly poor power density and so are a poor choice for a torpedo, you want a closed rankine-cycle system like HYDROX which combines wakeless operation and depth independent performance with a power density several times higher than that of an open cycle otto fuel II engine. The steam produced by the hydrogen-oxygen combustion doesn't have to be exhausted against backpressure, it can be condensed back into water (the condenser being built into the structural pressure hull of the torpedo) and recycled back into the boiler/combustor. Which is also how SCEPS/ADSCEPS works, although HYDROX has a higher power density because it uses an aluminum/lithium-seawater vortex combustor to produce steam and hydrogen gas (which is then reacted with oxygen produced by a lithium perchlorate fuel cell) rather than using a boiler. 100 knot, 100+ km range meme torpedoes here we come. RIP Bozo to all surface ships.

Well, you could also boil the water for the closed regenerative steam turbine with a boron burner. I mention boron mostly because it would have a high enough energy density and gravimetric energy density to compete with metallic hydrogen as an exotic fuel, about 50%.

My first foray onto "NS" was a UUV using something like this for terminal sprint against longswords but a top mind of GE&T said jets need "02 gas" and "02 gas" isn't available in water which pretty much killed it.

[Gallia-]

If you aren't cracking your own oxygen from seawater are you even propulsing real talk.

Also imagine not using lithium to propel your underwater ramjet big sad.

[Dtn]

2009 was a different time

For a large African federal socialist republic, I am attempting to decide the best course of action for a stable and functional military. My initial idea has been larger individual State run militia’s while keeping a smaller and more mechanized army. Some form of National service is required so these militia and auxiliaries function as police, fire, and militia, while any really large conflicts will these auxiliaries/militias will hold off until the military actually arrives. I was just wondering some thoughts and opinions.

Whether a military is stable and functional will depend more on the political situation. Individual militias at the state level can turn into separatist paramilitaries or ethnic death squads pretty fast.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

Well, you could also boil the water for the closed regenerative steam turbine with a boron burner. I mention boron mostly because it would have a high enough energy density and gravimetric energy density to compete with metallic hydrogen as an exotic fuel, about 50%.

You could combust boron or boron carbide with the oxygen from the lithium-perchlorate fuel cell but then you would be limited by the heat transfer that's possible between the combustion gases and the working fluid of the boiler. With HYDROX you don't have that limit because the combustion products are directly used to drive the turbine, meaning your turbine entry temperature is significantly higher and thus so is your power density.

[The Dolphin Isles]

For a large African federal socialist republic, I am attempting to decide the best course of action for a stable and functional military. My initial idea has been larger individual State run militia’s while keeping a smaller and more mechanized army. Some form of National service is required so these militia and auxiliaries function as police, fire, and militia, while any really large conflicts will these auxiliaries/militias will hold off until the military actually arrives. I was just wondering some thoughts and opinions.

There's nothing incredibly wrong with this idea. Gendarmies are not an unheard-of concept. However, I'd also like to mention this kind of "jack-of-all-trades" means that your militia force isn't going to be particularly good at any of the tasks that you set up for it. You can set up various specialized groups like coast guard, national police, national fire that will perform well in those roles just like military police or other related military organzitions. However, these civil organizations don't transfer well into soldiering and vice versa so expect mixed results of one side or the other depending on how you specialize.

The main purpose that governments employ a military force into a civil emergency is not because they are particularly good at those roles, but they provide a rapid increase in manpower on the ground that can follow orders and has a ready-made command structure.

On top of being less effective at both the civil role and military role, they will be more expensive too as you have to "cross-train" your wildland firefighters to fire ATGMs and your militia garrisons on how to perform riot de-escalation.

Of course, there is nothing stopping you from making this decision anyways. My nation's "army" has basically been turned into a militia that runs a national police department, maritime policing/rescue, etc. and there are plenty of real life examples of paramilitaries turning into proper gendarmies. However, you have to recognize that this is not going to be a necessarily effective arm of the military if a conflict ever comes. They can maybe perform delaying defensive tactics, rear security, and guerilla operations but if you are looking for something that can actually hold a line for more than a day (and probably more in the term of hours if you are facing a proper mechanized enemy), you would be better off instead investing those resources into a slightly larger professional army to protect your borders.

[Gallia-]

For a large African federal socialist republic, I am attempting to decide the best course of action for a stable and functional military. My initial idea has been larger individual State run militia’s while keeping a smaller and more mechanized army. Some form of National service is required so these militia and auxiliaries function as police, fire, and militia, while any really large conflicts will these auxiliaries/militias will hold off until the military actually arrives. I was just wondering some thoughts and opinions.

A stable and functional African military can build roads, construct irrigation ditches, and mend fences. You know, things that actually affect the more politically stable states in Africa.

I'd imagine the local militias would be more a problem for a very centralized government in a Marxist state since it allows provincial governors to make claims to the Politburo or something, at the very least, even if they aren't anti-Armenian death squads or something, they are a good vehicle for particular populists who are unhappy with the government (or just power hungry/ambitious) to use as a physical and political weapon. It was something of an issue during the perestroika/collapse of the USSR in the 1980's where local Red Army units of Azeris, Chechens, and Moldovans ended up taking up arms from local storage depots to murder their neighbors over grievances dating back to the civil war times, and required the intervention of Soviet Russian troops at times.

[Malian Socialist Federation]

For a large African federal socialist republic, I am attempting to decide the best course of action for a stable and functional military. My initial idea has been larger individual State run militia’s while keeping a smaller and more mechanized army. Some form of National service is required so these militia and auxiliaries function as police, fire, and militia, while any really large conflicts will these auxiliaries/militias will hold off until the military actually arrives. I was just wondering some thoughts and opinions.

A stable and functional African military can build roads, construct irrigation ditches, and mend fences. You know, things that actually affect the more politically stable states in Africa.

I'd imagine the local militias would be more a problem for a very centralized government in a Marxist state since it allows provincial governors to make claims to the Politburo or something, at the very least, even if they aren't anti-Armenian death squads or something, they are a good vehicle for particular populists who are unhappy with the government (or just power hungry/ambitious) to use as a physical and political weapon. It was something of an issue during the perestroika/collapse of the USSR in the 1980's where local Red Army units of Azeris, Chechens, and Moldovans ended up taking up arms from local storage depots to murder their neighbors over grievances dating back to the civil war times, and required the intervention of Soviet Russian troops at times.

My state is however not an extremely centralized Marxist Leninist state so that’s good

[Malian Socialist Federation]

For a large African federal socialist republic, I am attempting to decide the best course of action for a stable and functional military. My initial idea has been larger individual State run militia’s while keeping a smaller and more mechanized army. Some form of National service is required so these militia and auxiliaries function as police, fire, and militia, while any really large conflicts will these auxiliaries/militias will hold off until the military actually arrives. I was just wondering some thoughts and opinions.

There's nothing incredibly wrong with this idea. Gendarmies are not an unheard-of concept. However, I'd also like to mention this kind of "jack-of-all-trades" means that your militia force isn't going to be particularly good at any of the tasks that you set up for it. You can set up various specialized groups like coast guard, national police, national fire that will perform well in those roles just like military police or other related military organzitions. However, these civil organizations don't transfer well into soldiering and vice versa so expect mixed results of one side or the other depending on how you specialize.

The main purpose that governments employ a military force into a civil emergency is not because they are particularly good at those roles, but they provide a rapid increase in manpower on the ground that can follow orders and has a ready-made command structure.

On top of being less effective at both the civil role and military role, they will be more expensive too as you have to "cross-train" your wildland firefighters to fire ATGMs and your militia garrisons on how to perform riot de-escalation.

Of course, there is nothing stopping you from making this decision anyways. My nation's "army" has basically been turned into a militia that runs a national police department, maritime policing/rescue, etc. and there are plenty of real life examples of paramilitaries turning into proper gendarmies. However, you have to recognize that this is not going to be a necessarily effective arm of the military if a conflict ever comes. They can maybe perform delaying defensive tactics, rear security, and guerilla operations but if you are looking for something that can actually hold a line for more than a day (and probably more in the term of hours if you are facing a proper mechanized enemy), you would be better off instead investing those resources into a slightly larger professional army to protect your borders.

Overall, I suppose I’m not necessarily trying to make this large auxiliary force anything more than that. My state is neither expansionist nor very unstable so mostly if any conflict comes the Auxiliary and Militia would merely be there to slow down an advance until the more mechanize ACTUAL army can come to help with that threat.

[Gallia-]

A stable and functional African military can build roads, construct irrigation ditches, and mend fences. You know, things that actually affect the more politically stable states in Africa.

I'd imagine the local militias would be more a problem for a very centralized government in a Marxist state since it allows provincial governors to make claims to the Politburo or something, at the very least, even if they aren't anti-Armenian death squads or something, they are a good vehicle for particular populists who are unhappy with the government (or just power hungry/ambitious) to use as a physical and political weapon. It was something of an issue during the perestroika/collapse of the USSR in the 1980's where local Red Army units of Azeris, Chechens, and Moldovans ended up taking up arms from local storage depots to murder their neighbors over grievances dating back to the civil war times, and required the intervention of Soviet Russian troops at times.

My state is however not an extremely centralized Marxist Leninist state so that’s good

Then, unless it is a fairly ethnically homogeneous state like Botswana (majority Tswana), and unlike Mali (plurality Bambara, dozens of substantially sized minorities), it will break along tribal lines of armed militias because there is no central government to corral ambitious governors. Probably. Disputes between the various tribes over relatively simple-to-mediate-things for a central government, like property or land rights, would probably be solved by either communed tribal or religious courts or gunfire, depending on the tribes in question and the people involved, and uppity tribal governors might use their militias to genocide random villages they deem to be intruding on their respective Mandestans or just for the heck of it.

And there is no one really to bother stopping that, because it's not a centralized state with control over an army or ability to raise taxes.

The ideal West African military is one that is capable of taking legions from random tribes and putting them into different parts of the country, like the Askari in German Africa, and developing a separate soldier caste that fights for the state rather than for their tribes. Local militias would probably only work in a place like Botswana where everyone is of the same tribe, or where there is a powerful soldier caste that is capable of enforcing the state's will from afar, and keep an eye on militias. So long as the various tribes don't intermingle within poorly defined borders they are unlikely to fight, though. So if all the tribes are corralled into clearly defined areas, like the various Cantons in Switzerland, violence won't be a big deal. Militias can be cops and if they try to pull a Chechnya and invade neighboring Mandestans they get smacked by T-62s and Mi-24s.

Also you have an AK in your flag why aren't you using Proven Leninist Nation-Building Techniques?

[Dtn]

Overall, I suppose I’m not necessarily trying to make this large auxiliary force anything more than that. My state is neither expansionist nor very unstable so mostly if any conflict comes the Auxiliary and Militia would merely be there to slow down an advance until the more mechanize ACTUAL army can come to help with that threat.

This is kind of the opposite of how peacetime conscription usually works - it's to build up a large reserve for the regular forces.

TBH if you want to build national unity you should post graduates in other states than their home like Nigeria's non-military national service. Military national service should be actual military training to create an effective reserve force rather than just a pile a warm bodies.

Having a small professional army at lower readiness than a huge militia doesn't really make sense.

[Malian Socialist Federation]

My state is however not an extremely centralized Marxist Leninist state so that’s good

Then, unless it is a fairly ethnically homogeneous state like Botswana (majority Tswana), and unlike Mali (plurality Bambara, dozens of substantially sized minorities), it will break along tribal lines of armed militias because there is no central government to corral ambitious governors. Probably. Disputes between the various tribes over relatively simple-to-mediate-things for a central government, like property or land rights, would probably be solved by either communed tribal or religious courts or gunfire, depending on the tribes in question and the people involved, and uppity tribal governors might use their militias to genocide random villages they deem to be intruding on their respective Mandestans or just for the heck of it.

And there is no one really to bother stopping that, because it's not a centralized state with control over an army or ability to raise taxes.

The ideal West African military is one that is capable of taking legions from random tribes and putting them into different parts of the country, like the Askari in German Africa, and developing a separate soldier caste that fights for the state rather than for their tribes. Local militias would probably only work in a place like Botswana where everyone is of the same tribe, or where there is a powerful soldier caste that is capable of enforcing the state's will from afar, and keep an eye on militias. So long as the various tribes don't intermingle within poorly defined borders they are unlikely to fight, though. So if all the tribes are corralled into clearly defined areas, like the various Cantons in Switzerland, violence won't be a big deal. Militias can be cops and if they try to pull a Chechnya and invade neighboring Mandestans they get smacked by T-62s and Mi-24s.

Also you have an AK in your flag why aren't you using Proven Leninist Nation-Building Techniques?

Because I’m overall not a big fan of Leninism. Not sure how I feel about developing a separate soldier caste that’s just a no, I do appreciate all the input however. And the tribes have been put into separate SR’s with a lot of state “incentive” to move. Overall this is kinda like “villigization” was used as seen in Tanzania. I do appreciate all the input thank you

[Malian Socialist Federation]

Overall, I suppose I’m not necessarily trying to make this large auxiliary force anything more than that. My state is neither expansionist nor very unstable so mostly if any conflict comes the Auxiliary and Militia would merely be there to slow down an advance until the more mechanize ACTUAL army can come to help with that threat.

This is kind of the opposite of how peacetime conscription usually works - it's to build up a large reserve for the regular forces.

TBH if you want to build national unity you should post graduates in other states than their home like Nigeria's non-military national service. Military national service should be actual military training to create an effective reserve force rather than just a pile a warm bodies.

Having a small professional army at lower readiness than a huge militia doesn't really make sense.

Meh I’ll consider it but I don’t much agree. Thanks for all the input!

[Gallia-]

Then, unless it is a fairly ethnically homogeneous state like Botswana (majority Tswana), and unlike Mali (plurality Bambara, dozens of substantially sized minorities), it will break along tribal lines of armed militias because there is no central government to corral ambitious governors. Probably. Disputes between the various tribes over relatively simple-to-mediate-things for a central government, like property or land rights, would probably be solved by either communed tribal or religious courts or gunfire, depending on the tribes in question and the people involved, and uppity tribal governors might use their militias to genocide random villages they deem to be intruding on their respective Mandestans or just for the heck of it.

And there is no one really to bother stopping that, because it's not a centralized state with control over an army or ability to raise taxes.

The ideal West African military is one that is capable of taking legions from random tribes and putting them into different parts of the country, like the Askari in German Africa, and developing a separate soldier caste that fights for the state rather than for their tribes. Local militias would probably only work in a place like Botswana where everyone is of the same tribe, or where there is a powerful soldier caste that is capable of enforcing the state's will from afar, and keep an eye on militias. So long as the various tribes don't intermingle within poorly defined borders they are unlikely to fight, though. So if all the tribes are corralled into clearly defined areas, like the various Cantons in Switzerland, violence won't be a big deal. Militias can be cops and if they try to pull a Chechnya and invade neighboring Mandestans they get smacked by T-62s and Mi-24s.

Also you have an AK in your flag why aren't you using Proven Leninist Nation-Building Techniques?

Because I’m overall not a big fan of Leninism.

Wow rude. It's the best way to make a functional country out of a ton of little tribes, even if it was weakly implemented before the stroke arc.

Not sure how I feel about developing a separate soldier caste that’s just a no,

There's nothing wrong with a large national army. Having a strong national army is a good way to prevent genocidal warlords from killing all the random minorities in their province with a local militia, after all.

I do appreciate all the input however. And the tribes have been put into separate SR’s with a lot of state “incentive” to move. Overall this is kinda like “villigization” was used as seen in Tanzania. I do appreciate all the input thank you

TBH, "state incentive" manifests itself as gruff military types forcibly dragging people out of their homes and putting them into trucks to be moved. Ujamaa differed from Stalin's dekulakization and collectivization of farms mostly in marketing and magnitude, rather than method, and was abandoned after several years anyway. Gruff military men still forcibly loaded families into trucks and drove them to their new farms. This is simply how mass population transfers are done: in mass.

There's not much an alternative to it, especially in a highly rural society that has little access to personal cars. Villagization in Africa is the model example of Leninist/Stalinist forced collectivization, population transfer, and dekulakization. So it's weird to me you're saying you dislike Leninism but use one of its primary methods of economic reform: forced concentration of rural peasantry from singleton landholders to collective farms and Stakhanovite recognition medals.

[Malian Socialist Federation]

Because I’m overall not a big fan of Leninism.

Wow rude. It's the best way to make a functional country out of a ton of little tribes, even if it was weakly implemented before the stroke arc.

Not sure how I feel about developing a separate soldier caste that’s just a no,

There's nothing wrong with a large national army. Having a strong national army is a good way to prevent genocidal warlords from killing all the random minorities in their province with a local militia, after all.

I do appreciate all the input however. And the tribes have been put into separate SR’s with a lot of state “incentive” to move. Overall this is kinda like “villigization” was used as seen in Tanzania. I do appreciate all the input thank you

TBH, "state incentive" manifests itself as gruff military types forcibly dragging people out of their homes and putting them into trucks to be moved. Ujamaa differed from Stalin's dekulakization and collectivization of farms mostly in marketing and magnitude, rather than method, and was abandoned after several years anyway. Gruff military men still forcibly loaded families into trucks and drove them to their new farms. This is simply how mass population transfers are done: in mass.

There's not much an alternative to it, especially in a highly rural society that has little access to personal cars. Villagization in Africa is the model example of Leninist/Stalinist forced collectivization, population transfer, and dekulakization. So it's weird to me you're saying you dislike Leninism but use one of its primary methods of economic reform: forced concentration of rural peasantry from singleton landholders to collective farms and Stakhanovite recognition medals.

Meh I just like some parts of Leninism but mostly it would be implemented far differently in Mali. Mostly small shareholder farms being integrated into a single political and economic unit using supply and marketing cooperatives, with local villages being supplanted into Village Communes. And I don’t think widespread oppression, destruction, and murder are the way to go. Incentivization systems, taxation and other ways are far more convincing in making someone believe it’s their own idea to move, especially among younger people who given the chance often rebel against established social Norms.

In regards to military action, I just don’t know the feasibility of defending my porous borders especially with for instance Tuareg Raiding, even with their own SR I’d assume would be an issue. Just finding a way to deal with these external threats that it seems would
Be hard for a standing army to constantly attempt to maneuver around, and attempt to get to in time.

[Dtn]

In regards to military action, I just don’t know the feasibility of defending my porous borders especially with for instance Tuareg Raiding, even with their own SR I’d assume would be an issue. Just finding a way to deal with these external threats that it seems would
Be hard for a standing army to constantly attempt to maneuver around, and attempt to get to in time.

You might want to read this about the role factionalism plays in Mali's security problems and possible solutions, particularly the security forces and local assemblies the Malian government was supposed to set up under the Algiers Accords but didn't:

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/p ... _RR892.pdf

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Some thinke.

[Gallia-]

yixin btfo

[Gonswanza]

Some thinke.

Im laughing at this because it almost sounds like the USN is using NationStates for ideas... Unless they just so happened to snatch a random image and build some weird documents off that instead for the sake of it.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Some thinke.

Im laughing at this because it almost sounds like the USN is using NationStates for ideas... Unless they just so happened to snatch a random image and build some weird documents off that instead for the sake of it.

To be fair HESCO-Raid may have been an NS-idea.

But yeah, this isn't the first time this mistake has been made.

Sumer/Stairius had their Nakils listed as actual tanks on Iran's inventory.

And Mac''s write-up on a fictional "CETME XR" ended up being mistaken for a secret Spanish military project.

I don't even want to think about where my designs keep ending up.

I think Hurti service pistols got adopted for Kingsmen... full auto APS-Stechkins with underbarrel shotguns.
-You're welcome

[Gonswanza]

Honestly, this is why I prefer grabbing random images off the net, crediting the artist where credit is due, and then rolling off that.

Unless it's a photographer, then I have no real thing to link as credit, sadly, but oh well, such is life. I don't claim the images as my own anyway (outside of a certain gun, that I made myself, out of sheer boredom.)

[Dtn]

Im laughing at this because it almost sounds like the USN is using NationStates for ideas... Unless they just so happened to snatch a random image and build some weird documents off that instead for the sake of it.

To be fair HESCO-Raid may have been an NS-idea.

It wasn't.

But yeah, this isn't the first time this mistake has been made.

Sumer/Stairius had their Nakils listed as actual tanks on Iran's inventory.

Iran's inventory? What does that mean? Or was it just an unsuccessful attempt to troll some dumb forum?

And Mac''s write-up on a fictional "CETME XR" ended up being mistaken for a secret Spanish military project.

Top minds of draftroom never figured out this was most likely due to a language barrier.

The main takeaway from this is that military blogs/twitter dudes are really bad and breathlessly "analyze" crappy military art.

[Gonswanza]

Could be worse, could be Chinese state media (supposedly) using Ace Combat gameplay footage for some weird and wacky story.

[Dtn]

That's a Chinese meme, it's an edit of military exercise footage from CCTV.