NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[Gallia-]

The Sinosphere has a lot of dank ass memes tbh.

[Gonswanza]

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

Darn.

[Mitheldalond]

What attachments are needed/carried on a modern assault rifle? That combat load report lists an ACOG and PEQ-2/PAQ-4 laser for basically everybody, but that's from 2003 so I'm sure some things have changed since then - I know the Army and Marines are switching from the ACOG to a variable optic for one. Also, is that laser just a laser sight, or is it a designator for laser-guided weapons or something?

I've seen pictures and helmet cam footage where it looks like the soldiers have a flashlight on one side of the handguard and something else on the other side, and some pictures where it looks like they have a reflex sight mounted on top of the optic (or maybe it's part of the optic), but I'm not sure about any of these.

Also, is mounting backup iron sights worth it? I've seen both images where they have them, and those where they don't.

[Gonswanza]

I have no idea, sadly, but I did have a curious question that can serve as a side tangent:

If a nuclear war breaks out between major powers, is it better to remain neutral and, once the dust settles with most/all the warheads of the participating countries exhausted, to then engage in a sudden strike to eliminate what little remains prior to attacking their territory? Or would it be better to instead attack in a conventional war after the dust settles to claim territory in their absence?

Or would the only real winning move be to not even bother at all and instead focus on more internal things, especially with the presumed nuclear winter climate event occurring in the shadow of such an exchange?

[Austrasien]

I have no idea, sadly, but I did have a curious question that can serve as a side tangent:

If a nuclear war breaks out between major powers, is it better to remain neutral and, once the dust settles with most/all the warheads of the participating countries exhausted, to then engage in a sudden strike to eliminate what little remains prior to attacking their territory? Or would it be better to instead attack in a conventional war after the dust settles to claim territory in their absence?

Or would the only real winning move be to not even bother at all and instead focus on more internal things, especially with the presumed nuclear winter climate event occurring in the shadow of such an exchange?

The winning play is not being involved at all, yes.

Immediately after a nuclear exchange, a state's vulnerability to additional strikes can be expected to be much lower, things that were easy to nuke have probably already been nuked. They also are probably willing to use nuclear weapons almost immediately in the event of a conflict. Basically, the nuked state has comparatively little to lose by going through another round of nuclear strikes while the pristine state is still fully vulnerable and so could suffer massive damage from even one warhead.

[Dayganistan]

What attachments are needed/carried on a modern assault rifle? That combat load report lists an ACOG and PEQ-2/PAQ-4 laser for basically everybody, but that's from 2003 so I'm sure some things have changed since then - I know the Army and Marines are switching from the ACOG to a variable optic for one. Also, is that laser just a laser sight, or is it a designator for laser-guided weapons or something?

I've seen pictures and helmet cam footage where it looks like the soldiers have a flashlight on one side of the handguard and something else on the other side, and some pictures where it looks like they have a reflex sight mounted on top of the optic (or maybe it's part of the optic), but I'm not sure about any of these.

Also, is mounting backup iron sights worth it? I've seen both images where they have them, and those where they don't.

An optic, flashlight, and infrared laser/illuminator are pretty much standard across most Western armies. The infrared laser is visible under night vision and is your primary aiming device when shooting with NODs, as well has having an illumination mode for better visibility under night vision. As for optics, there's no right or wrong choice there really including choosing to not issue any sort of optical sight at all and just using iron sights.

Anything beyond those three items plus maybe a vertical foregrip and/or suppressor (or an underslung grenade launcher for your grenadiers) is just dead weight.

[Laka Strolistandiler]

How feasible would it be to utilize something like the SLRC super long-range canon system on a battleship? I know that it’s supposed to have a 1000-mile range, which, I suppose, makes for a fairly effective coastal bombardment system eh?

[Antipatros]

What attachments are needed/carried on a modern assault rifle? That combat load report lists an ACOG and PEQ-2/PAQ-4 laser for basically everybody, but that's from 2003 so I'm sure some things have changed since then - I know the Army and Marines are switching from the ACOG to a variable optic for one. Also, is that laser just a laser sight, or is it a designator for laser-guided weapons or something?

I've seen pictures and helmet cam footage where it looks like the soldiers have a flashlight on one side of the handguard and something else on the other side, and some pictures where it looks like they have a reflex sight mounted on top of the optic (or maybe it's part of the optic), but I'm not sure about any of these.

Also, is mounting backup iron sights worth it? I've seen both images where they have them, and those where they don't.

I'm not sure that stuff is necessary per se. It can make a unit more effective, but iron sights work fine too.

The PEQ attachments are for night fighting. The lasers are for pointing/aiming, they have illuminators too.

A lot of people are becoming comfortable enough with the durability and reliability of combat optics that they skip backup iron sights. Some people are more conservative.

[Spirit of Hope]

What attachments are needed/carried on a modern assault rifle? That combat load report lists an ACOG and PEQ-2/PAQ-4 laser for basically everybody, but that's from 2003 so I'm sure some things have changed since then - I know the Army and Marines are switching from the ACOG to a variable optic for one. Also, is that laser just a laser sight, or is it a designator for laser-guided weapons or something?

I've seen pictures and helmet cam footage where it looks like the soldiers have a flashlight on one side of the handguard and something else on the other side, and some pictures where it looks like they have a reflex sight mounted on top of the optic (or maybe it's part of the optic), but I'm not sure about any of these.

Also, is mounting backup iron sights worth it? I've seen both images where they have them, and those where they don't.

Lasers on rifles are just for sighting and signalling, they are not for controlling laser guided weapons. A good modern laser system will include visible and IR lasers along with vissible light (in multiple colors) and IR light. Older systems generally couldn't fit all this in one package, so you could see a light and a laser.

Depending on the optic and the weapon some modern sights have a red dot/reflex sight on top. This is generally done for optics with more than 4 power since your sight box through the sight can start getting rather restricted.

While forces are talking about fielding variable power optics they haven't hit widespread adoption and deployment.

Iron sights depends on the reliability of your optics. My general take is that of something takes out the sight it most likely takes out the rifle and or the user, but that depends on a host of factors. Back up irons don't cost much and are light weight, so there isn't a huge cost to issuing them.

[Gonswanza]

How feasible would it be to utilize something like the SLRC super long-range canon system on a battleship? I know that it’s supposed to have a 1000-mile range, which, I suppose, makes for a fairly effective coastal bombardment system eh?

I recall the navy intended to have it on a kind of warship more akin to a mobile artillery battery, where you'd have a few of these guns on the deck plus some minor defensive systems... But I don't think it could be viable against naval targets due to the existence of CIWS. But it does offer a major edge against targets inland when cruise missiles are not cost-efficient and the target lacks C-RAM or similar systems.

[Gallia-]

How feasible would it be to utilize something like the SLRC super long-range canon system on a battleship? I know that it’s supposed to have a 1000-mile range, which, I suppose, makes for a fairly effective coastal bombardment system eh?

"SLRC" was canceled because, in a sudden attack of lucidity, the US Army realized it was stupid.

Here is the actual SLRC.

It will fit on any surface ship that can fit a Trident II launch tube.

[Laka Strolistandiler]

How feasible would it be to utilize something like the SLRC super long-range canon system on a battleship? I know that it’s supposed to have a 1000-mile range, which, I suppose, makes for a fairly effective coastal bombardment system eh?

"SLRC" was canceled because, in a sudden attack of lucidity, the US Army realized it was stupid.

Here is the actual SLRC.

It will fit on any surface ship that can fit a Trident II launch tube.

Sometimes we create things on NS not because they are not stupid (like I understand that my nation’ military strategy of basically industrially self-genociding while dealing as much damage as possible to the enemy is idiotic), but because they are fun. That being said, I don’t really understand what’s so stupid about the it? I mean, large cannon goes boom is epic and fun))))

[Gallia-]

It's dumb because it's a gun that shoots a rocket that is probably more expensive than a cruise missile and slower than a ballistic missile. So it's in a weird halfway house where it isn't faster to shoot the SLRC than it is to shoot a Pershing/Trident/ATACMS, but it's still gonna cost more than a Tomahawk missile to fire, and probably cost more than a Arleigh Burke to fill up the ammo stores. This is why the US Navy never purchased the super special rocket shells for AGS, incidentally, which ended up costing as much as a Tomahawk or ATACMS missile.

Anyway, understandable rule of cool stuff, sure.

I guess you could, though a cannon the size of SLRC is rather undersized for a battleship. SLRC was going to be a towed, mobile gun not much bigger than an M65. You could probably fit on a barge and be mostly okay, actually, because it isn't very big at all (and certainly smaller than any actual battleship gun). Probably comparable in size to a 5" gun mount on a Knox frigate or something (60-90 tons) on its mount in total mass. Would probably be more a heavy cruiser if it were armed with solely SLRCs I guess.

If you want a big battleship gun why not just use a HARP to fire hypersonic RVs into orbit or something?

Continental Siege Battleship when it has nothing but Pershings, Tridents, and HARP guns. Maybe SLRC secondaries? So yeah you could probably put a few on a battleship. Like a dozen or two. The 5"/54s on the Montanas could potentially be a good placement start I guess. If the USN can cram a 100-ton Mark 11 GMLS into a twin 5"/38 spot you can probably cram a 10-12" 90-ton gun in a twin 5"/54 spot.

[Gonswanza]

I mean I guess you could, but a cannon the size of SLRC is rather undersized for a battleship. SLRC was going to be a towed, mobile gun not much bigger than an M65. You could probably fit on a barge and be mostly okay. It isn't very big at all.

If you want a big battleship gun why not just use a HARP to fire hypersonic RVs into orbit or something?

Orbital cannons are based and you can't prove otherwise.

[New Vihenia]

I wonder if Gerard V Bull ever design or maybe consider to design a Tank gun.

Seeing his obsession toward long range artillery and an actual gun that can shoot Satellite, i guess he would be able to design a marvellous tank gun.

[Gallia-]

His guns aren't that special they just have big breeches for their time and don't adhere to JBMOU.

It's telling that the US Army was able to make a gun that outshoots all of his guns in about 20 minutes or so by dragging some 1980's howitzer out of the scrapyard.

[Gonswanza]

His guns aren't that special they just have big breeches for their time and don't adhere to JBMOU.

It's telling that the US Army was able to make a gun that outshoots all of his guns in about 20 minutes or so by dragging some 1980's howitzer out of the scrapyard.

You haven't heard of Project Babylon then.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

His guns aren't that special they just have big breeches for their time and don't adhere to JBMOU.

It's telling that the US Army was able to make a gun that outshoots all of his guns in about 20 minutes or so by dragging some 1980's howitzer out of the scrapyard.

You haven't heard of Project Babylon then.

That utter waste of time, space, money? :thinking:

[Gallia-]

His guns aren't that special they just have big breeches for their time and don't adhere to JBMOU.

It's telling that the US Army was able to make a gun that outshoots all of his guns in about 20 minutes or so by dragging some 1980's howitzer out of the scrapyard.

You haven't heard of Project Babylon then.

You mean a bunch of tubes the US Army found in the dirt in 2003?

Lol. There's nothing Gerald Bull did that couldn't have been done by anyone else in the 1980's. People did it. XM1299's main gun is from 1987, albeit with a new breech. The '80's gun used a interrupted screw and the modern one uses a falling block type breech. The issue was that a lot of NATO countries like BRD didn't want to do it because of JBMOU concerns, and no one wanted to be the first to break it until America did, but America had zero interest in building new artillery pieces period. It was rather silly, to the point that XM2001 Crusader was basically an American Pzh 2000, instead of something somewhat decent.

But naturally America pulled a gun out of its pants and went from being outshot by some South Africa 3rd World howitzers to having a piece that outshoots every other piece in the world.

[Gonswanza]

You haven't heard of Project Babylon then.

You mean a bunch of tubes the US Army found in the dirt in 2003?

Lol.

Well that was Big Babylon, but yea, 1 meter caliber and meant to be like L/152 or something like that, with a range to slam Israel from where it was, last I heard. Never completed.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

You mean a bunch of tubes the US Army found in the dirt in 2003?

Lol.

Well that was Big Babylon, but yea, 1 meter caliber and meant to be like L/152 or something like that, with a range to slam Israel from where it was, last I heard. Never completed.

unironically the scuds were far more worthwhile than this epeen project.

[Gallia-]

You mean a bunch of tubes the US Army found in the dirt in 2003?

Lol.

Well that was Big Babylon, but yea, 1 meter caliber and meant to be like L/152 or something like that, with a range to slam Israel from where it was, last I heard. Never completed.

More like it was a embezzlement scheme that Bull used under the pretenses of "orbital space gun" because that is what Bull was known for. He apparently had a end-of-life crisis and tried to relive his younger years through Saddam's petrobucks. Perhaps he used all the money to remodel his house or something and that was why he was killed.

Again nothing Bull did was particularly revolutionary. There's nothing novel about slapping a 52 caliber barrel and 25 liter breech on a 6.1" howitzer. Literally everyone did this one way or another in the '70's or '80's, but only a few people actually went and bought it because it would be the artillery equivalent of adopting a caliber that isn't 5.56mm. He stopped being especially interesting around the time HARP ended because after that he had nothing particularly new or insightful to contribute. It was just rehashes of earlier works. Yawn.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

saddam should've convinced the ussr to fire-sell him a few RSD-10's. that would've made Israel far more uncomfortable than any trillion petrodollah epeen failure.

[Gallia-]

The giant cannon was Bull's idea because he was obsessed with using big guns to shoot satellites into orbit. This may have part of his PhD thesis or something.

The Iraqis just wanted help with their Scud missiles and eeking out a few more miles. The big cannon was what they had to pay for Bull to help them.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

The giant cannon was Bull's idea because he was obsessed with using big guns to shoot satellites into orbit. This may have part of his PhD thesis or something.

The Iraqis just wanted help with their Scud missiles and eeking out a few more miles. The big cannon was what they had to pay for Bull to help them.

rest in rips