NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[Gallia-]

It would be nice to find good reading material on the Internet about anything.

How basic do you wanna get?

Physical paper is a good start lol.

How basic do you wanna get?

Because there's field-manuals and I'm pretty sure project gutenburg still hosts various translations of Clausewitz's "On War" and George Marshal's "Infantry in combat", just bear in mind everything in those books is dated to turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, respectively.

Then there's tankograd's blog about soviet-era tech. For tanks and anti-tank weapons, and tank and anti-tank accessories.

For me at least something covering basics regarding modern warfare and technology.

Go to your local public or school library and peruse the articles there. There's nothing good about this subject on the Internet.

[Laka Strolistandiler]

About ASAT:
1) Is it possible to establish a theatre-of-ops-wide defense for reconnaissance satellites using space-based ASAT lasers? It should work against ASM-135’s or Istrebitel’ Sputnikov’s, I suppose.
2) How susceptible would SATCOM and GPS-ish navigation systems be to jamming? How exactly do you jam them?
3) Is it even possible to detect electronic emissions from a device communicating with comms satellite?

[Gallia-]

1) Yes, this would be fairly trivial in concept. Canonically, Galla has an array of LEO Zenith Stars, with little tanker craft that dock with them in wartime orbits, that are expected to defend its anti-ballistic missile constellation of nuclear/solar-powered light gas gun-railgun orbital cannons from ASATs and Istrebitel Sputniks or Brilliant Pebbles garages, when they're swatting ICBM/IRBM buses with Endo-LEAP projectiles. There's nothing wrong with that and it probably would have appeared in a more robust SDI conops paper or something if SDI were intended to operate during a prolonged/broken-back war period of periodic nuclear exchanges and ground combat.

Naturally the issue is spending enough money to a dozen or two high energy lasers in orbit needed to swat down ASATs, and other satellite systems, and justifying a laser over a simpler defense satellite akin to the IS series.

2) Reasonably so and by using a radio transmitter. Most GPS jamming just makes it hard for a receiver to acquire satellite signal and so it dead reckons on the last bearing using local information. I'm not sure how much it would meaningfully impact INS guided munitions or tactical fighters since these can have pretty robust internal gyroscopes. It would increase the size of the CEP of something like JDAM by about double, for instance. I don't know what it would do to a tactical fighter entering a GPS zone, except a moving map display on a cell phone might revert to straight-line travel instead of following the movement of the aircraft for instance.

3) Yes. The "easiest"/most common way to do this is to have another satellite in lower orbit detect the emission. Since most comms satellites are in very high orbits (MEO or GEO) this would probably be a LEO system like the Soviet US-P passive radio detection satellites, or the US Navy's White Cloud ELINT system, from the 1980's. You could also have an airplane or something in the beam of the SHF SATCOM too. Monitoring SHF SATCOM by loitering in particularly airspace regions is probably a potential mission for a solar pseudosat like Airbus Zephyr, if it isn't something like Triton already does.

[New Vihenia]

Is it a good idea to assign UAV to individual self propelled gun ?. Thus a battery of say 6 SPG's will have 6 UAV's and can individually scout for their own target and for redundancy in case one UAV is down.

[Gallia-]

maybe a tiny one? more akin to a parachute camera than a uas

artillery spotting uas are lost so rapidly it seems like youll want half a dozen for every gun just to make it through the week

[Spirit of Hope]

Is it a good idea to assign UAV to individual self propelled gun ?. Thus a battery of say 6 SPG's will have 6 UAV's and can individually scout for their own target and for redundancy in case one UAV is down.

I could see having the battery having a UAV section for doing artillery spotting, but I don't see why individual guns would want it. For the most part you want to be employing more than an individual gun against a target.

Though you would probably be better off improving your lines of communication from reconnaissance assets and front line troops to the battery and fire control units.

On reason we have been seeing small drones used a lot for artillery spotting in Ukraine is that both Ukraine and Russia don't have a great ability to coordinate calls for fire from forward units to artillery units.

[The Dolphin Isles]

To be fair, UAVs aid target acquisition. It makes sense to give them to the battery fire control teams who also have radars and better comms links which let them have a better view of the big picture. You don't want to have individual guns going around piecemeal shooting and just looking for targets of opportunity.

[Orlesian States]

I'm a bit new to developing a Military for my nation. I have a military factbook, but I'm aware that it needs much more detail/images/the likes to be more convincing. So I'd like to ask a general question for the denizens of 'NS Military Worldbuilding' - Is it better to use real life Military vehicles, equipment, the likes, and then modify them so they're more original? Or should I create things that are entirely unique to my nation?

[Spirit of Hope]

To be fair, UAVs aid target acquisition. It makes sense to give them to the battery fire control teams who also have radars and better comms links which let them have a better view of the big picture. You don't want to have individual guns going around piecemeal shooting and just looking for targets of opportunity.

I'd still say you are better off spending money and effort making it so the fire control unit can receive calls for fire from outside than try and make it so they can better spot targets. Your artillery units should be focused on delivering fire in support of other units, which is done best by allowing the units to say when and where they want artillery support.

I'm a bit new to developing a Military for my nation. I have a military factbook, but I'm aware that it needs much more detail/images/the likes to be more convincing. So I'd like to ask a general question for the denizens of 'NS Military Worldbuilding' - Is it better to use real life Military vehicles, equipment, the likes, and then modify them so they're more original? Or should I create things that are entirely unique to my nation?

How good are you at making up your own stuff? Does any real world stuff match closely to what you want?

I generally prefer to stick to real world stuff, but I also have my own ships I've drawn up and a friend drew a rifle for me. Certainly can be fun to come up with the backstory to equipment, draw it up, and put it in your nation. Plus it will more closely match what you want. However if you don't know what you are doing you can easily make some stupid looking stuff, which is why I have way more rejects than shared ideas.

[Orlesian States]

How good are you at making up your own stuff? Does any real world stuff match closely to what you want?

I generally prefer to stick to real world stuff, but I also have my own ships I've drawn up and a friend drew a rifle for me. Certainly can be fun to come up with the backstory to equipment, draw it up, and put it in your nation. Plus it will more closely match what you want. However if you don't know what you are doing you can easily make some stupid looking stuff, which is why I have way more rejects than shared ideas.

I think I'm alright when it comes to worldbuilding in general. Maybe soldiers specifically. But I'm having some trouble with Vehicle ideas, as I'd like to have things that make rational sense, then seem overpowered or utterly ridiculous entirety. Another thing to mention, is that The Commonwealth is on its own fictional continent, so that'd have to factor in somehow... I could theoretically be a mix-mash of Germany, France, etc's militaries, (Since my nation is basically a form of European in its culture) and use those to come up with proper equipment. -Sorry for doubleposting.

[Spirit of Hope]

How good are you at making up your own stuff? Does any real world stuff match closely to what you want?

I generally prefer to stick to real world stuff, but I also have my own ships I've drawn up and a friend drew a rifle for me. Certainly can be fun to come up with the backstory to equipment, draw it up, and put it in your nation. Plus it will more closely match what you want. However if you don't know what you are doing you can easily make some stupid looking stuff, which is why I have way more rejects than shared ideas.

I think I'm alright when it comes to worldbuilding in general. Maybe soldiers specifically. But I'm having some trouble with Vehicle ideas, as I'd like to have things that make rational sense, then seem overpowered or utterly ridiculous entirety. Another thing to mention, is that The Commonwealth is on its own fictional continent, so that'd have to factor in somehow... I could theoretically be a mix-mash of Germany, France, etc's militaries, (Since my nation is basically a form of European in its culture) and use those to come up with proper equipment. -Sorry for doubleposting.

My military is a grab bag of real world military equipment. Easiest answer would probably be to start out with real world equipment and then transition to your own equipment as you make it up. The Create Your Own Everything thread is great for sharing what you have made and getting feedback.

[Orlesian States]

My military is a grab bag of real world military equipment. Easiest answer would probably be to start out with real world equipment and then transition to your own equipment as you make it up. The Create Your Own Everything thread is great for sharing what you have made and getting feedback.

Thank you so much! That's very, very helpful. I'll use conventional, real life military equipment, and once finally satisfied, I will slowly transition to realistic, original military equipment for my nation. I also appreciate you linking me to the 'Create Your Own Everything' thread. You've been very kind. -Sorry for tripleposting!

[Gallia-]

To be fair, UAVs aid target acquisition. It makes sense to give them to the battery fire control teams who also have radars and better comms links which let them have a better view of the big picture. You don't want to have individual guns going around piecemeal shooting and just looking for targets of opportunity.

a battery is too small to know what to do with a uas when using conventional natures and too big to be controlling nuclear natures of ammunition

there are two possible futures of artillery that are not metastable/peacetime structures that exist only outside combat:

1) fire by battalion on batteries, fire by regiment on battalions, etc., i.e. conventional munition delivery
2) fire by individual gun on batteries, fire by battery on battalions, etc., i.e. nuclear weapon delivery

these futures are the past of course and there is nothing that has changed much to alter this

in the first case, the battalion or brigade/regiment, depending on if the gun is part of a combined arms unit or a homogeneous unit, should have centralized UAS control, because it is directly controlling the fire of multiple cannons and so they would be the natural control point

in the second case individual guns receiving UAS, or perhaps guns having a platoon-type section, where an officer makes sure the nuclear weapons are secure and gives their order to be used, and the UAS controllers search for targets (and have several flatpack boxes or something) makes the most sense; even crusader was supposed to have some capacity for single-gun operation shoot-scoot, but without nuclear ordnance this is rather stupid, tbh

either way give them a lot of UAS in either case

like, whatever you think is too much, and then double that

mostly, because in a fairly low intensity fight*, after 190 days of combat, a certain slavic ground force equipped with a huge number of Group 3 UAS has lost about as many UAS in a small handful of relatively brief and historically minor artillery actions as the active duty US Army has in inventory...

we can imagine that if the entire us army (or close to it) were committed to a ground offensive of the present war's level of attrition it would be completely run out of robotic spotter aircraft in about 16 months

it takes something like 24 months for FGM-148 lead times which all things considered is very simple

i can only imagine the lead times for a machine like the RQ-7B(V)2 given that they havent been in production for a very, very long time now

based on that, my assumption is that a ground brigade-size force would need something like 3-4 "night" UAS equipped with single-band MWIR FLIRs (or dual-band LWIR/MWIR if you're muscular as hell) and 6-8 "day" UAS with EO CCD camera and IR laser illuminators for a bare minimum one to two weeks of medium intensity combat against a motivated and mediocrely equipped enemy; of course you need to ditch SATCOMs in stuff like the super Shadows and go with re-transmission hubs that are either ground or airborne mounted, as you'll be losing so many UAS that integrating a SATCOM is literally burning money and not worth a lick; and this would be something like 3 operational platoons of UAS and 1-2 platoons of retransmission stations per brigade or soabouts

of you can do what the us army does and have maneuver elements serve as re-trans hubs but this is kinda stupid since they might get killed in combat or something and you lose your retrans station to a sabot round

add more if you feel like you need to, of course, or if you intend to use drones more often than either UA and RF ground forces

bear in mind this is for purely visual reconnaissance in a low to medium intensity environment offensive (whew!)

*if russian casualty numbers are actually around the 50-60,000 mark the CIA estimates (10-15,000 KIA, 40-45,000 WIA) or whatever, because they aren't the presumably several millions figure OSINTy types would like to believe, then out of the initial invasion force strength of 200,000 they've lost about...0.015%/day or so

for a historic perspective, this compares to the "Aachen Strategic Offensive Operation"/March to the Rhine, against a depleted Nazi ground force and widely regarded as "a bit wimpy", over a similar period of time (194 days) involved 4.5 million troops of the Western Allies and 275,000 casualties resulting in an intensity of...about 0.003%/day (or Operation Husky if you want a similar casualty intense combat engagement over a shorter period of time)

meanwhile while the more significant "Battle of Berlin" against the Nazis by the Red Army, which lasted 16 days, and involved 2.3 million Soviet-Polish troops and some 360,000 casualties as...1% of the force/day (the battle of hue city was of comparable "combat intensity" to the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation, if you want to know)

thus while i cant exactly think of off the top of my head a major strategic offensive operation where loss rates were, quite frankly, so low, there are ones where the loss rates were more comparable than not: the Western Allied advance across Sicily and the remaining combat operations against the Ersatz formations of the Nazi Hitlerite armies of the Wehrmacht in the waning stages of the Siegfried Line Offensive Operation were "only" about 3-5 times less lethal in overall loss rates, and which have historically allowed for great fluid movements of ground forces against a broken enemy that can no longer maintain a coherent offensive

i suspect a loss rate of 0.015%/day might seen during the major trench warfare phases of the Western Front prior to being broken by the introduction of tanks or stormtrooper tactics, and is more indicative of either side lacking the major forces in-theater to achieve decisive breakthrough/proryv, and sustain these breakthroughs with turning movements and envelopes, than not

Operations Detachment and Iceberg, regarded as some of the toughest fortresses ever cracked, were ~2-3% either deadlier than the current Russian offensive, as well, and the American desants were offensive assaults against cut off, isolated, besieged, starving Japanese peasants who had periodically resorted to human cannibalism just to sustain themselves; thus while the loss rates do not reflect this, the tenacity and grit of the defenders certainly does! imagine how much harder the Japanese would be to crush if they had access to ammunition and ration supply lines and weren't simply Ersatz rear guard formations of old men and garrison troops!

alternatively if you compared the deployed forces to the loss rates of Russian ground troops in the current campaign at the higher end of US estimates (~80,000 casualties over 190 days), you might come to the conclusion that the Ukraine War is a recurrence of Operation Iceberg, which was hardly a stalled or failed offensive, merely a grinding and slow attrition campaign by the United States Navy, the Navy air forces, and the Marine infantry

conversely, deployed force loss rates of ~1%/day are comparable to the worst combats and bloodiest battles during Stalin's Ten Blows, the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation, and the more notable ground campaigns of the American-Vietnamese War

historically the us army has considered anything less than ~1%/day (or maybe 0.1%) to be "low-intensity" (colonial/guerrilla/brushfire wars), between ~0.1-1%/day to be "mid-intensity" (ww2/korea experience factors), and anything higher than that to be "high-intensity" (ww3 or worse); so the historic, cold-war us army would classify the current ukrainian "Special Military Operation" as a low-intensity war punctuated perhaps by brief mid-intensity skirmishes and small unit encounters

in other words, the "Special Military Strategic Sanctions Offensive Operation" is about as dangerous as a typical colonial brushfire war, at least as far as dead men numbers are concerned; it's just dragging because both sides are sufficiently motivated to fight and neither is going to run out of materiel or manpower anytime soon, but they're neither are fighting particularly hard in any case

further, the russian attempts at squeezing more ground troops out of boomer soviets/dad's army or whatever isn't about "replenishing losses", because the loss rates are simply not large enough to materially affect the outcome of the ground offensives: russia is winning, just not as fast as it would like, so it's an attempt to increase the COFM to allow the ground offensive to go from "Okinawa" to "Sicily" i guess, or perhaps ideally "Siegfried Line"; whether that's possible is an open question that no one knows right now

that would also demand more drones, but they have tons in warehouses (they have about 12x more than they've lost by 2017 estimates) so they can keep throwing robots at the problem of the Orlan losses easily

so while not a terribly huge threat or imposing battlefield environment to the RPVs, they're still being lost in significant quantities compared to typical Western thinking, which I guess presupposes them having twice or thrice better survival rates than they actually do it seems, and perhaps quadruple or quintuple the production rates to makeup for that? given how few RQ-7s were produced im not sure they can be made very quickly after all, but they are comparable to the Russian Orlan-10 in the most immediate (both are Group 3 UAS)

western economies in general are also averse to material stockpiling for ground wars since the end of the Cold War, and tend to have fits and starts of rapid production followed by long lull periods, and the Shadow TUAS from the early 2000's are supposed to be replaced sometime this decade with a new robotic aircraft, probably more comparable to Orlan-10 in general, so there's that

at least going by loss rates of personnel though, since Cold War soviet vehicles aren't known for their fighting compartment isolation and post-penetration protective qualities, it can probably be assumed to be directly translatable to equipment losses at various war intensities including RPVs; so while the current Russian quagmire is essentially minor as far loss rates of equipment and manpower are concerned, at least compared to the literal mountains of munitions and materiel the russians and ukrainians are both sitting on, it's the only realistic data point for potential loss rates of RPVs in ground gaining offensives so far

a dozen RPVs per brigade would probably last about as many days, plus or minus a couple, in a low intensity combat action like ukraine

in a high intensity (2-3%/day loss rates, which would resemble the Yom Kippur War), ww3 type of combat, well i think GEN Maxwell Taylor's quote regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons by Castro during a American invasion of Cuba: "There is no experience factor on which to base an estimate of casualties," is applicable to RPV losses or necessary stockpiles

whether it would result in a linear increase of losses that could be met by giving every brigade 30-40 drones (throw a dart in between there) or something like a logistics curve where loss rates stabilize at some point is an open question and depends on how you use drones i imagine

perhaps you (general you) can extrapolate from this, but it would depend on the proliferation of air defense systems, ultimately, and their individual system effectiveness might be enhanced by certain characteristics such as possessing of radars or being easily concealed under tarps in pickup trucks and whatnot (the tor versus stinger dichotomy of LAADS i guess); drones dont like being ambushed and tors are easily spotted from far away, after all, and this is easier with some air defense systems than others

if all that about "offensive operations' tempos and ultimate outcomes can be quantified fairly trivially by committed force percent loss rates/day" sounds "too simple", just keep in mind that Clausewitz tells us that in war all things are simple, but the simple is difficult, which is to say that quantifying the outcomes is easy, but discerning true knowledge beyond a widely fluctuating (how many troops has russia lost? 40,000? 50,000? 60,000? 80,000?) series of error bars is hard

this is especially hard for ground forces like ukraine and russia which are rather rusty since their respective last major ground offensives were in ww2, but they learned so much and so ingrained that knowledge that they can still muddle through major ground gaining offensives (both of them) without getting clobbered in a single operation (unlike the Arabs or Egyptians excepting maybe Jordan lol), and although russia learned a lot of theory in chechnya it never put it into practice, because the general staff's payroll records department is a far more formidable foe than any ethnic Chechen SSR's motor rifle division gone full warlord and now running amok through dagestan trying to make a islamist caliphate on the backs of T-62s and the Podnos mortar

which is why the number of RPVs is probably in the double digits, but whether you're looking at a "mere" three fold increase or an order of magnitude more for a brigade's UAS visual recon element is debatable

and of course when in doubt err on the side of pessimistic conservatism rather than excessive optimism, as it will temper your offensive operations' objectives and what you can expect to see ground forces accomplish

so give each brigade a TUAS (EO) Company with several 5-tons with flat packs of drones of trucks, four to six catapults (1-2 per battalion), and six to eight ground stations and maybe 30-48 UAS in a 1:3 $$$ FLIR:cheapo EO camera ratio if you can afford it

if not have a TUAS Visual Recce Platoon with a dozen drones flatpacked and two cats and two GCS for the entire brigade and they only spot for the fires battalion of 3-4 6" gun batteries and a 5" MRL battery

that should last them a couple days or a week in a major war against the ghost of the Red Army and if it doesnt theyll be able to call down a lot of gunfire on EVERYTHING in the universe

the snail is a powerful creature but the General Staff's table of norms is Lot's wife

I'm a bit new to developing a Military for my nation. I have a military factbook, but I'm aware that it needs much more detail/images/the likes to be more convincing. So I'd like to ask a general question for the denizens of 'NS Military Worldbuilding' - Is it better to use real life Military vehicles, equipment, the likes, and then modify them so they're more original? Or should I create things that are entirely unique to my nation?

unless you enjoy drawing pictures or something on the computer there's not much a reason to use fake ns stuff tbh

think of it as a cheap way to have a miniatures hobby without needing the space or time to assemble a scale model

most people who do that stuff (lyras mainly) do it because they enjoy drawing pictures on the computer first and else 2nd

How good are you at making up your own stuff? Does any real world stuff match closely to what you want?

I generally prefer to stick to real world stuff, but I also have my own ships I've drawn up and a friend drew a rifle for me. Certainly can be fun to come up with the backstory to equipment, draw it up, and put it in your nation. Plus it will more closely match what you want. However if you don't know what you are doing you can easily make some stupid looking stuff, which is why I have way more rejects than shared ideas.

I think I'm alright when it comes to worldbuilding in general. Maybe soldiers specifically. But I'm having some trouble with Vehicle ideas, as I'd like to have things that make rational sense, then seem overpowered or utterly ridiculous entirety. Another thing to mention, is that The Commonwealth is on its own fictional continent, so that'd have to factor in somehow... I could theoretically be a mix-mash of Germany, France, etc's militaries, (Since my nation is basically a form of European in its culture) and use those to come up with proper equipment. -Sorry for doubleposting.

IDK how a vehicle would be "overpowered" since there's no acutal stats or anything to game?



this is a dumb APC i drew for dumbla a couple years ago

it's something akin to kurganets-25 or k21 and really fat but it's not like it's unreasonable for a modern afv

something akin to it could probably be built in the 1990s if people had wanted to i guess but they didnt

but that is because it's based on a us army CAD drawing from like 1992 or something

[New Vihenia]

based on that, my assumption is that a ground brigade-size force would need something like 3-4 "night" UAS equipped with single-band MWIR FLIRs (or dual-band LWIR/MWIR if you're muscular as hell) and 6-8 "day" UAS with EO CCD camera and IR laser illuminators for a bare minimum one to two weeks of medium intensity combat against a motivated and mediocrely equipped enemy; of course you need to ditch SATCOMs in stuff like the super Shadows and go with re-transmission hubs that are either ground or airborne mounted, as you'll be losing so many UAS that integrating a SATCOM is literally burning money and not worth a lick; and this would be something like 3 operational platoons of UAS and 1-2 platoons of retransmission stations per brigade or soabouts

Feelsbad. Guess im not turning my NotCrussader into a precision mass killing machine if i were to loss many of the UAV's.

I'm kinda imagine something like Crusader with mix of Ramjet shell and conventional one. Ramjet for long range sniping while conventional for area of effect. and the UAV will provide the laser illumination for my Ramjet shell.

[Gallia-]

The only good "sniper" is a tactical ballistic missile or saturation reactive artillery with cassette/cargo warheads.

A field howitzer, even Crusader, is still going to be used for support of battalions and companies in contact with the enemy. It also isn't clear if Crusader is high enough performance to push the necessary weight of fire for a company in contact down from a battalion to a battery or something. That's pretty much entirely because it never entered service.

None of those are bad ideas, especially for the demographically challenged, though you shouldn't expect dramatic, nuclear-like results from them. An atomic weapon firing howitzer with 1960's support apparatus can reduce the required artillery quantity from a unit (battalion) to a sub-unit (battery). A high speed, high accuracy, long-range piece might reduce this to a sub-sub-unit (single gun) using nuclear ordnance, but replicating this level of destruction is going to be difficult in general, even with XXI support apparatuses. AFAIK there are no real accurate post-mortems on updating artillery norms yet published from a certain ongoing Eastern Europe war but the use of artillery is still units assigned to sub-units (although Puzikas would tell you that companies are now units) which indicates that the need for IDF has grown in the past several decades. Crusader might just be keeping pace in that case.

Firing laser guided munitions would be limited to individual guidance channels for instance, unless you have a really powerful LIDAR or something that can allocate portions of beam strength to illuminating multiple targets for the Copperheads, or used autonomous guided rounds but that carries a risk of over-kill and wasted munition so you'd need a buffer of munitions deployed. Back to square one. Rapid fire of ICM/cassette shells is not going to replicate large caliber rocket artillery's weight of fire either (although it probably isn't bad) and Crusader's "lone wolf" operating scheme seems to be rather senile for a mere 40 kilometers range piece, but it was the 1990's and the US Army was not exactly the mega mind it used to be by that time.

Generally speaking most of Crusader's design choices would reduce statistical losses by a few percentages (fractional or whole points who can say) per thousand fire missions I guess rather than improve the capabilities of field artillery itself. It was not a particularly long range piece and its practical rate of fire was still comparable to Paladin in reality (rather than on the range, where people believe in "health and safety", because a MG is staring at your gun crew from the open door) but it did cut the required crew in half. Maybe.

Overall a high performance field piece like Crusader might offset the loss rates enough that the SPH becomes competitive with towed artillery in terms of survivability, but it is probably not appreciably going to be more lethal per fire mission. There's a sizeable gap in lethality that needs to be overcome. While a high performance PGM akin to Copperhead II might drop the required shells to suppress/destroy a certain river crossing object from 1,000 to 100 or so, an atomic bomb would only need a single shell to do the same.

Artillery's most important virtues are how quickly it can deliver a quantity of fire, with what accuracy, and at what range. This is why, unless you need to fire successive missions (lol just flatten it), rocket artillery is king of conventional pieces. Crusader could deliver conventional shells with tremendous accuracy out to 40-50 kilometers, and potentially further with guided shells, but they were still conventional shells. It might kill a single tank with one round. It would need to be a mightily impressive piece to be comparable with a single Korean War field gun firing half a dozen 2 KT warheads inside a minute that can single-handedly destroy a dug-in company or neutralize a mobile battalion with minimum accuracy needed. Such a job would ordinarily require about 4,000-6,000 conventional shells and demand a regiment of field guns or two to do so, even with observation.

UAS allow you to observe targets easily and cheaply without deploying razvedki forward of the main body, which reduces the overall requirement for footmen and levies, but they don't meaningfully reduce the number of munitions you need to kill a target. So far only nuclear weapons do this. All other conventional weapons, besides hypothetical terminally guided PGMs like Copperhead II, essentially function to reign in accuracy errors. This reduces the time needed to demolish a target, but not the fact that your guns are going to be sitting at a site firing hundreds of shells (even PGMs like Copperhead II might require an allocation of 100-200% beyond target counter to account for munition overkill) and either be dug-in to resist counter fire or relocate to avoid it. Of course an atomic battery doesn't even need observers, and it might be counter productive to it anyway, provided it has a GSR observing the enemy troops coming and going. It can hit them with map plotted fire and just eat the accuracy error.

After all, something like Crusader or Paladin have practical rates of fire of between 6 to 12 rounds per minute, so a battery of guns might fire ~36 to 72 rounds/minute at a given moment. Against a dug-in motor rifle platoon with observation from UAS, the requisite quantity of conventional munitions is about 680 rounds, for the neutralization/suppression mission (temporary disabling of the unit to conduct counter-fire in close combat for approx. 1 to 2 minutes), with allocations being approximately 180/180/320 conventional shells for a three-battery battalion. Cassette rounds are inadvisable due to presence of overhead cover within the platoon fortification, and fire is being concentrated on the three rifle squads' positions predominantly. As the fire mission calls for a battalion, this would require a five minute preparation from the first two batteries and a 9 minute preparation from the third. You can reduce this to approximately four minutes for all batteries by adding a fourth battery to the battalion equipped with Paladins. A Crusader battery would be able fire the same 180-round conventional preparation in about 2.5 minutes.

A typical WLR counterfire mission requires about 3 minutes if the initial 15 seconds or so of fire is detected by radar, transmitted to a battery command post/fire direction center, and then plotted, planned, and allocated to a gun battery, the guns/rocket launchers are directed and laid on order, begin firing, and first shell/rocket lands. Crusader would be able to meaningfully shorten the fire mission time from 4 minutes to 2.5 minutes, perhaps giving it just barely enough time perhaps to squeeze out of the way of a WLR counterfire mission. Naturally this will vary between something like 3 to 9 minutes or so depending on how sleepy/bad the counter-preparation crews are, so even a Paladin might be able to escape, but a Crusader would be able to escape more reliably.

Considering "shoot/scoot" and evading counterfires was definitely part of the US Army Artillery's conceptualization of missions has always includes an "evasion" element (even towed guns like M119 or M198 were required to limber up, mount their prime mover, and displace 200-300 meters within two minutes after cessation of firing, at the height of the Cold War), so this makes a lot of sense. It has some obvious issues and basic conceptual questions attached, but within the brain spaces of the Artillery Branch it isn't completely dumb.

But it isn't going to approach tactical nuclear weapons in unit-for-unit lethalities even if we assume it is using high-accuracy precision guided weapons. A high precision artillery complex like Copperhead II, combined with high explosive Excalibr-type munitions, would likely call for a total 40-60 rounds per battery or platoon, with maybe half a dozen Copperhead IIs and a couple dozen Excaliburs being fired (about 2-3 per major weapon system [crew-served machine guns, ATGW, main battle tanks, forward observers, and infantry fighting vehicles] in the platoon), which means a solid minute of firing for a single battery of Crusaders or abouts, or two to three minutes of firing for an M109. So you have successfully pushed down the fire requirements by a single unit and managed to make even Paladin quite useful in the modern battlefield, good job.

A 2 KT nuclear shell requires a single airburst detonation within about 200 meters of the trenches, which can be delivered by the most absolutely laziest map fire and a single field artillery piece, though. Much like the precision guided weapons complex, the platoon is not simply neutralized, it is annihilated, and will no longer function as a significant obstacle for an offensive. You still can't beat that, even after 70 years. Even economically the nuclear shell is probably coming out on top. The cost is about the same overall, which makes sense, as they are killing the same target, but the nuclear weapon is still an order of magnitude fewer troops.

I guess it depends on if you want lieutenants and sergeants in charge of nuclear fire missions though. A lot of people find this objectionable.

tl;dr Tube artillery is DPS. Rocket artillery is alfa. Nuclear tubes are "omfg hax0r FUCK YOU". Tube artillery can replicate rocket artillery with advanced PGMs, but it still cannot approach nuclear weapons, merely approximate them.

[Mitheldalond]

So, two questions:

1. Is there a way to protect satellites from ASAT missiles that doesn't involve sticking weapons on them? Is there anything spy/recon satellites can do to avoid being shot down, other than not flying over the bad guys?
   
2. Is there a way to stop satellites from spying on you without destroying them? I assume radar satellites could be jammed? Are ground-based lasers actually capable of blinding optical satellites or other sensors, and are they viable in that role?

[Allanea]

What is the definition of 'spying' here?

That's to say, there's a range of measures people can take to somewhat limit the information that satellites can collect / deceive the people who are interpreting the satellite reconnaissance.

But it's not plausible to prevent satellites from taking photographs of major installations, detecting large-scale troop movements, etc. Even countries that don't have their own photo satellites at all can buy the photographs.

[Hrstrovokia]

For a modern main battle tank, what would the ammunition loadout for the main gun consist of? Is there a typical configuration, depending on the era of tank?

[Laka Strolistandiler]

What would be the cheapest way to increase Chieftain Mk 10’s combat effectiveness and primarily survivality in a modern combat environment? I suppose slapping on a couple of Iron Fist APS’ and updating it’s optics should do the job?

[Laka Strolistandiler]

So, two questions:[list=1]

[*]Is there a way to protect satellites from ASAT missiles that doesn't involve sticking weapons on them? Is there anything spy/recon satellites can do to avoid being shot down, other than not flying over the bad guys?

AFAIK you could place Skif-ish space-based high-power laser systems in orbits near to your sattelites, they should be able to damage the ASAT’ missile IR homing device.

[Gallia-]

What would be the cheapest way to increase Chieftain Mk 10’s combat effectiveness and primarily survivality in a modern combat environment? I suppose slapping on a couple of Iron Fist APS’ and updating it’s optics should do the job?

ERA or Burlington applique and new thermal optics is fine. Chieftain is a very modern tank, so it doesn't need much.

So, two questions:[list=1]

[*]Is there a way to protect satellites from ASAT missiles that doesn't involve sticking weapons on them? Is there anything spy/recon satellites can do to avoid being shot down, other than not flying over the bad guys?

AFAIK you could place Skif-ish space-based high-power laser systems in orbits near to your sattelites, they should be able to damage the ASAT’ missile IR homing device.

TBH a proper space laser would probably just puncture the weapon's onboard propellant tanks and leave it listless while the satellite lazily moves out of the way.

That would require a very muscular chemical laser though. Which means it is heavy.

The ultimate in lightweight is to have little Starlink-sized (100-200 kg) parasite defense missiles/satellites that attack incoming weapons or something by kinetic impact. It's not a "weapon" it's a "parasite perimeter control beacon".

[Gonswanza]

Or have agents on the ground warn of an upcoming launch and maneuver the target satellites accordingly well ahead of time, given ASAT missiles are purely kinetic (afaik)... Though if we are talking killer satellites, that's something else entirely.

[Gallia-]

That's like having "agents on the ground" warn of a tank gun firing tbh.

Practically speaking ASAT launches are hard to interdict without something like Brilliant Pebble or Zenith Star in very close proximity to the target or launch path of the missile. The easiest method is to have a parasite defense craft attached to the satellite at launch and act like a "space APS". The hardest is to launch a constellation of separate Istrebitel Sputniks or something to form a Maginot Sphere around the satellite.

Just have military only orbits and if anything strays into that inclination/plane it's vaporized because it's clearly a hostile target. Unlike airliners or cargo ships, satellites don't just "get lost". Orbital mechanics is too simple.

No orbit zone enforced by KKV garages and laser defense grid.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

For a modern main battle tank, what would the ammunition loadout for the main gun consist of? Is there a typical configuration, depending on the era of tank?

Soviet Union favored APFSDS, as they found out that soft-steel APFSDS pretty much handles like PELE (Penetrator, enhanced lateral effect) due to greater mushrooming/spalling while being cheaper than HEAT-MP. HEAT was usually reserved for long-range harassing-fire on armor, and HE for anything else (infantry/fortifications, blindly shooting at gridsquares).

Which really just left how much of "the good stuff" APFSDS a tank would be issued.

For towed AT guns up until the 1990s (MT-12):

A standard unit of fire consisted of 80 rounds divided into the same ratio of 50% APFSDS, 30% HEAT and 20% HE-Frag

Hope that helps. Note: "Unit of fire" is a logistics-term. Essential a small ammo-dump's worth rather than what was ever carried into battle.

What would be the cheapest way to increase Chieftain Mk 10’s combat effectiveness and primarily survivality in a modern combat environment? I suppose slapping on a couple of Iron Fist APS’ and updating it’s optics should do the job?

ERA or Burlington applique and new thermal optics is fine. Chieftain is a very modern tank, so it doesn't need much.

Basically this and better ammo, maybe even re-bore the tube to 125mm smoothbore. Could even add a laser and radar warning receiver and a bucket of chaff in one of the smoke-chuffer tubes.

Aside from that, maybe a remote weapons mount if you wanna get fancy.

Oh, and for god's sake, give her a better engine.

[The New Rio Grande]

Child soldiers?