2014 STGOD OOC Commentary Thread 1

[Esquire]

Wasn't there talk of starting in 2000 for easier bookkeeping, but with 2014 technology?

[Thanas]

Yeah, there was, but I think starting in 2014 is easier for all of us.

EDIT: I might decide to change my orbat considering even nations who focus largely on land warfare got 9 active carriers.

[Esquire]

Fair enough. This isn't supposed to be work, after all.

[Siege]

Nightfall deploys a couple of frigates fitted with modern 155mm cannons that will do all the coastal bombardment of those old battleships at a fraction of the cost .

[Thanas]

Indeed, as does Rheinland, though we like to keep the Dolphin around. The psychological effect of 20" guns alone would be worth it.

[Steve]

Yeah, there was, but I think starting in 2014 is easier for all of us.

EDIT: I might decide to change my orbat considering even nations who focus largely on land warfare got 9 active carriers.

If that's in reference to me, I have a 1200km long border with a potentially aggressive Communist power that actively wants to invade at least one neighbor, if not me as well, and I also have defense commitments across the Pacific against said Communist power and the hegemon-to-be of South America.

I fully expect to spend more than 5% of GDP in defense if necessary, which isn't as surprising in a non-nuclear world.

OTOH, you're controlling a nation which still hasn't rebuild from a shattering war, with millions and millions of your populace living below first world standards given your itemized GDP and per capita figures. The UOCSR and Kagaria are, last I checked, posing you almost no threat, nor is Granadia. Rheinland's defense needs are primarily naval and her army can remain small so she can invest more in the civilian economy.

Defense spending is a major issue in Cascadian politics, as the South wants the army to fight Commie invasions and the Coastal states want a Navy to protect Cascadia's sea communications, and the budget is caught in the middle of these forcs and other obligatory spending due to Klavostan's 5th Gen fighters and large mechanized army.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Arcadia's army is going to be pitifully small, I know that much. We aren't invading anyone any time soon, that's for sure.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Orion's army is more like an oversized Marine/Commando/Airborne force than anything else.

[Thanas]

OTOH, you're controlling a nation which still hasn't rebuild from a shattering war, with millions and millions of your populace living below first world standards given your itemized GDP and per capita figures. The UOCSR and Kagaria are, last I checked, posing you almost no threat, nor is Granadia. Rheinland's defense needs are primarily naval and her army can remain small so she can invest more in the civilian economy.

Indeed, which makes it even more puzzling that other nations match Rheinland's carrier number even though they are also spending on large land forces. Now, you spend 5(+?)% on your total forces and I spend about 3% - so that figure might be too low on Rheinland's part. If I only have 9 active carriers and everybody and their dog decides to have the same number of active carriers (despite having large figures invested elsewhere) then it makes no sense for Rheinland to spend that little on defence. Heck, you have 10 active carriers iirc, while Rheinland has 9.

Control of the sealane to Ostrheinland is vital to Rheinland, without it we might not even try in a war at all. Thus I crafted a Navy which sacrifices all invasion capabilities for sealane control. And yet your nation, on a budget for the Navy which almost certainly cannot be larger as Rheinland, has the same number of active carriers and also has a large number of what I term invasion ships like LPDs etc.

[Steve]

Um... I explicitly state I'm spending more on my overall defense budget.

And who else is talking about building big fleets of CVNs?

[Skywalker_T-65]

Not me. My ships are de Gaulle rip-offs and I probably won't have more than two or three at best.

[Thanas]

Um... I explicitly state I'm spending more on my overall defense budget.

Yes. You spend more. What, 5%? I spend 3%. Without having to focus on a large land war, our naval budgets should be about similar. And yet your fleet is much bigger and more capable. In essence, you have - on a similar budget - sealane control and invasion capability. Rheinland only has one of these two.

EDIT: This gets even more hilarious because the Rhein is capable of ocean-going shipping for the most part, so control of Rheinland is synonymous with controlling the ocean. Thus, having a large Navy is a matter of national survival. And if suddenly one Navy on equal budgets gets that much more capable, this turns into quite the joke.

And who else is talking about building big fleets of CVNs?

Beowulf has 9 large CVNs in his orbat. Which is fine, as we are on similar GDPs (he has 7, i have and he doesn't have a long frontier/land war to focus on.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm probably going to have 4 CVNs along with 4 large LHDs. But other than the usual escorts, most of the resources are devoted to the air force and army.

I will have special strategic units designed for the sole purpose of offloading a shit tonne of cruise missiles however.

[Steve]

You're right, Thanas. I went too far with the LHDs. They're all cut, which also cuts down my numbers of escort ships. I'll only have some LPDs to provide non-hostile invasion deployment of Marines for humanitarian requirements, etc.

[Simon_Jester]

Again, the Umerian Navy's capital ship arm consists of three sixty-thousand ton conventional carriers, one helicopter carrier built to the same scale (flagship of the amphibious task force, which consists otherwise of someone else's cast-off LSTs), and five atomic rocket cruisers of forty thousand tons (yes, that is a lot of tons for a modern surface combatant, I know).

There is no serious talk of replacing any of those or augmenting the force in the near future.

Aside from that, the only real 'ships of force' the Umerians might claim to have are their SSGNs, of which they have a fair number but not one I've settled on.

me and my big mouth.

The Umerian response to such a crisis could go in any of several truly amusing and bizarre ways.

I think there's a few rivers involved somewhere - would you want one to be the border marker or the ridgeline separating two valleys that both feed into champa?

EDIT fixed quote tags

Ridgelines are neater; drawing an international border along a riverline in a narrow valley invites both countries getting into disputes over 'their' ethnics on the opposite side of the river. Also over fishing and water rights, anything that threatens to pollute the river, commerce on the river. And those disputes can escalate so easily into "grouchy and deranged infantryman randomly fires a burst of rifle fire at those cheese-smoking smugdogs on the other side of the waterway!"

Yep. A ridgeline makes things so much neater and simpler.

Therefore, the border should probably be drawn along a riverline.

I've said several times (including in the OrBat) that I fully realize the Arcadian Navy is anachronistic. Hell, they probably realize they are, since any Navy with half a brain would be telling them as much. That being said, they have (in their mind) valid reasons for keeping the ships around. That, and despite using the Montana as a valid RL comparison, the newest Arcadian BBs are built from the ground up to modern designs...and that includes absolutely bristling with missiles.

In my opinion, it's actually likely that they would 'neck down' to smaller-caliber main guns, using rocket sustainers or some such to achieve the same range. Guided shells are also a possibility.

This allows the ship to carry far more ammunition (good for shore bombardment), because the number of rounds you can fit in a magazine of fixed size scales with... either the inverse square or the inverse cube of the gun caliber, it depends.

Combined with faster-firing (automatic loading mechanisms), you can reduce the number and size of guns required, freeing up more deck space for missile launchers and close-in defensive antimissile weapons.

Also, the smaller caliber guns have less blast, which reduces one of the main problems with heavy artillery on modern warships: the blast physically wrecks sensitive antennas and other systems.

Nightfall deploys a couple of frigates fitted with modern 155mm cannons that will do all the coastal bombardment of those old battleships at a fraction of the cost .

Or, hell, freighters with MLRS launchers bolted on the deck and umpty thousand tons of reloads underneath.

Arcadia's army is going to be pitifully small, I know that much. We aren't invading anyone any time soon, that's for sure.

Orion's army is more like an oversized Marine/Commando/Airborne force than anything else.

The Umerians have a largish but frankly not very well funded land army, although they have a very well-drilled and well-equipped artillery branch.

For it is written, in the Little Blue Book, "Infantry is the queen of battle. Artillery is the king of battle. What do king do to queens?"

[Eternal_Freedom]

Your comments on the big guns are interesting Simon. I think I may add some details about Orion developing rocket-boosted guided shells and improved loading mechanisms. We'd keep the same calibre though, since when you are really pissed off nothing expresses it quite like an 18" artillery shell landing on your enemies. And since we can't have nuclear shells like the Iowa's were supposed to have, a 3000 pound shell will have to do.

[Steve]

Holy shit, I never realized the Army cost that much, I figured the Navy and Air force cost more for the toys. This is what I get for forgetting military budgets.

FUCK.

[Skywalker_T-65]

And that is why my army is going to be tiny.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yup, having 1000 tanks sounds good, but at $4 million or more a pop...ouch. $64000 dollars a Hellfire sounds awful, and then you realize you might use thousands in a full-scale war.

[Steve]

Funny thing is... I don't really want a big awesome Army. I just need a big enough one to deal with Klavo if he gets aggressive.

[Steve]

Uponk reconsideration, since my prior writeup was maximalist.... I'm going for only a 6+1 CVN fleet and a Navy focused on the East Pacific, with Fuso being relied upon for West Pacific problems. There will be non-carrier forces kept at Chuuk and western Nova Scotia for local operations, but no major surface fleet units. The Hawaiians get antsy when we post heavy forces to Chuuk anyway.

We'll probably maintain an LHD-centered force on special deployment out of the leased base at Sydney Harbor, in the Falklands, so two overall; one in South America, one at home either in R&R or operating in home waters for training and emergency assistance. Whenever in actual field operation beyond humanitarian assistance, they are merged with the local CVN group to form JCOGs.

As for the Army.... I'll deal with that later, because my teeth hurt and my head hurts and I'm tired and have work tonight.

[Simon_Jester]

Your comments on the big guns are interesting Simon. I think I may add some details about Orion developing rocket-boosted guided shells and improved loading mechanisms. We'd keep the same calibre though, since when you are really pissed off nothing expresses it quite like an 18" artillery shell landing on your enemies. And since we can't have nuclear shells like the Iowa's were supposed to have, a 3000 pound shell will have to do.

The Umerian counterargument is that if you need the impact of an 18" shell and are willing to go to the great trouble of delivering an 18" gun to the battlefield, you might as well hit the target.

And since an 18" shell only contains 30-60 kilograms of explosive, you might as well pack a larger warhead into a cruise missile that can fly several times farther and hit more reliably with modern guidance systems.

The great advantage of artillery gunfire as an alternative to missiles and airstrikes is not in very large cannon rounds, it is in being able to fire off enormous masses of relatively smaller rounds, either to saturate an area or to provide sustained fire on a single target. Even in the height of naval gunfire support missions in World War II it was far more normal for battleships to fire off huge numbers of 5" shells from secondary guns, than to risk burning out the (short-lived) barrels for the main armament.

If the target is worth firing 16" or 18" shells at, it's valuable enough that the added cost of launching a cruise missile or three at it won't matter very much.

This is not to say I'm somehow going to assert Umeria being objectively superior in this regard on the battlefield should the issue arise- but I wanted to lay out my own reasoning.

[Eternal_Freedom]

True. Still, I would imagine with continued development of battleship guns and improved metallurgy we can reduce the life-expectancy problem for the barrels.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, but how are you going to get past the part where you're only actually delivering sixty or so kilograms of explosive, with a typical hit rate measured in the single digits, at a range a small fraction of what a missile could achieve?

[madd0ct0r]

maybe it's anti armour rounds that simply can't be delivered in smaller diamters?