Replacing PDCs

[db48x]

That is valid for WW2 but not really for modern formations.

Currently for example the US army contains ( Acc. to wikipedia ) 8800 M1 MBTs and 6700 Bradley IFVs, distributed over 460 000 active personnel.

For a total of 33.7 tracked & armored fighting vehicles per 1000 men.

Hmm. I specifically compared the number of men in an infantry division to the number of tanks in an armored division. I don't happen to have similar numbers for any modern armies though; your figure could be as good as mine. Perhaps a better way to do it would be to subtract out the elements that the infantry and armored division had in common (mortars, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, artillery, engineers, headquarters, logistics, supply, etc) and compare the number of people in a direct infantry combat role vs the number of tanks. An of course, try to do the same for modern units. More work than I can do before breakfast though.

Think less 'this is the absolute physical size' and more 'this is the support draw size'. That is to say, an infantry PD only requires the infantry man to operate it effectively, but a vehicle ties up several soldiers to supply it with fuel, munitions and maintenance on top of its crew for it and its weapons, which has an effect on how many individual units you can put in a given formation because those troops need to be close to the unit for actually useful turn around times.

I absolutely agree, but I think that "dozens" is a better number than "several" On the other hand, most of those dozens are in headquarters, supply, and logistical units, which he's said he's considering adding to the simulation. For example:

That's 12 men to fire each gun, plus 31 more per gun in all of the support roles. Maybe as alex_brunius said, the ratios are better for modern units, and we can certainly assume that they'd be better still for TN ones. Even so I think the size numbers aren't large enough.

[Hazard]

At a size of 15 per Heavy Bombardment Unit that sounds about right, as that would be the gun, and all personnel handling the immediate needs of the gun.

[obsidian_green]

The ground combat framework looks great. I just hope it runs fast, that NPRs can utilize the system, and that it doesn't require much micromanagement.

There's some discussion about naval/ground weapon equivalencies: a 10cm naval laser that can engage at 40,000km is not the same as a groundside mount on a vehicle that engages at hundreds of meters. I think ground-equivalent tech should come automatic (civilian shipping loves cluttering my Technology Report with its derivative engine designs) with the basic techs we already research, or should at least be confined to designing the actual weapon/component. (Example: no 15cm laser focal size with a separate 15cm ground laser focal size---but designing a tank might be fun, although I prefer more abstraction to more micromanagement.)

[db48x]

At a size of 15 per Heavy Bombardment Unit that sounds about right, as that would be the gun, and all personnel handling the immediate needs of the gun.

I don't really think this weapon is a heavy bombardment weapon. There were much larger guns on ships, and at fixed emplacements. (We can ignore the Paris Gun as an aberration.) Maybe those are too large to bring with you, or to construct in hostile territory, but the defender should be able to use them. Or maybe TN tech makes manoeuvre warfare so effective that anything that can't be moved is of no use at all?

[Hazard]

I don't really think this weapon is a heavy bombardment weapon. There were much larger guns on ships, and at fixed emplacements. (We can ignore the Paris Gun as an aberration.) Maybe those are too large to bring with you, or to construct in hostile territory, but the defender should be able to use them. Or maybe TN tech makes manoeuvre warfare so effective that anything that can't be moved is of no use at all?

If that were true Static units wouldn't be a thing.

You are somewhat mistaken as to why heavy artillery for ships isn't the same as heavy artillery for land formations. Mostly, it boils down to ease of use and transport. A warship is generally designed around its weapon systems, and the magazines and loading systems can be trivially mechanized to support the gun; despite space being a premium on ships it's actually much more space and time efficient to have transport from magazines to the guns automated. That's at minimum 5 stories you need to lift those shells and propellant. And when you're talking heavy naval artillery of the era, every shell weighed tons. And I mean that literally.

Also critical is the simple fact that ships have a lot more freedom of movement. An Iowa class ship mounts a 16 inch, 50 caliber naval gun. This means that the gun barrel is about 20 meters long. Try fitting that through narrow, twisty streets.

This means that there are constraints on ground artillery you don't normally see on naval artillery, including that due to a lack of handling cranes shell and propellant need to be hand portable, which provides an upper limit to size, and it must be possible to transport it down a dirt road with some ease (what, you think you'll be fighting near a nice, well maintained road network? Please).

And quite frankly, you don't need a 400mm or so gun to blow up most enemy positions. High explosive shells from 100-150mm artillery generally does that quite well.

[Person012345]

Guys, if you think staticweapons are a tactical dead end, don't put tem in your army.

[Barkhorn]

Guys, if you think staticweapons are a tactical dead end, don't put tem in your army.

On the one hand, I see your point.  One of the best parts about Aurora is how much freedom you have for role play.  If I want to build a gigantic cannon a la Ace Combat, I should be allowed to, even if its really dumb.

On the other, another amazing strength Aurora has is its attention to detail and having things make sense.  Thanks to counter-battery fire, active protection systems, anti-radiation missiles, and precision airstrikes, static weapons would be completely pointless in a conventional war between modern nation-states.  It seems like a spacefaring empire could deal with static weapons as easily as the US dealt with Iraq's thousands of T-55 tanks in the first Gulf War.  If static weapons are pointless now, I can't see them being anything but a complete joke against even-more-advanced weapons.

Barring ground-to-orbit static weapons, which will be useful just because you have no other options.

[bean]

If that were true Static units wouldn't be a thing.

"Static" does not mean "dug in forever and ever".  Towed artillery counts as static.  If someone can come up with a better name, please do.

You are somewhat mistaken as to why heavy artillery for ships isn't the same as heavy artillery for land formations. Mostly, it boils down to ease of use and transport. A warship is generally designed around its weapon systems, and the magazines and loading systems can be trivially mechanized to support the gun; despite space being a premium on ships it's actually much more space and time efficient to have transport from magazines to the guns automated. That's at minimum 5 stories you need to lift those shells and propellant. And when you're talking heavy naval artillery of the era, every shell weighed tons. And I mean that literally.

The process is more manual than you'd think.  Everyone except Germany sized their powder bags to be hand-carried from the powder tanks to the guns.  Iowa's were 110 lb each, and there were 6 per shell.  And the largest naval shells were the 3200 lb 18" off the Yamatos.

And quite frankly, you don't need a 400mm or so gun to blow up most enemy positions. High explosive shells from 100-150mm artillery generally does that quite well.

What really killed off heavy artillery was the increased capability of aircraft and missiles.  A 16" shell is impressive, but it's very rare that you need so many that airplanes aren't a better and cheaper way of delivering the firepower.

[Hazard]

"Static" does not mean "dug in forever and ever".  Towed artillery counts as static.  If someone can come up with a better name, please do.

If manoeuvre warfare is so effective that you can't have set fortifications that can't be moved when you are the defender and thus plonking your defenses right in the path the enemy's forces will take you need something that can pick up and go instantly because they are going to be flanked. And that means no towed guns.

The process is more manual than you'd think.  Everyone except Germany sized their powder bags to be hand-carried from the powder tanks to the guns.  Iowa's were 110 lb each, and there were 6 per shell.  And the largest naval shells were the 3200 lb 18" off the Yamatos.

And with shells weighing in at 800 kilograms or more for the Iowa's 16 inch guns, and heavy naval artillery doesn't seem to come lighter than a few hundred kilograms. In theory you could create a sling and haul it with crewmen, so long as the stairs permit it anyway. Realistically though? If the hoists are dead so is the gun.

What really killed off heavy artillery was the increased capability of aircraft and missiles.  A 16" shell is impressive, but it's very rare that you need so many that airplanes aren't a better and cheaper way of delivering the firepower.

Strangely we may see a return of heavy gun artillery; if the railgun currently in development by the US Navy is developed to the point it's as good as promised it's effective range with a properly guided munition is hundreds of kilometers at a minimum. It'd be much cheaper per shot than a missile and not risk a human pilot.

[Barkhorn]

Strangely we may see a return of heavy gun artillery; if the railgun currently in development by the US Navy is developed to the point it's as good as promised it's effective range with a properly guided munition is hundreds of kilometers at a minimum. It'd be much cheaper per shot than a missile and not risk a human pilot.

Missiles go much MUCH farther than a few hundred kilometers.  The Tomahawk cruise missile goes between 1300km and 2500km, and that's just the variants that are listed on wikipedia.  I would not be surprised at all if there were more-modern, classified variants that go even further.

Further, a modern conventional symmetric war is unlikely to be long enough for cost to matter.  Modern weapon systems are simply too expensive and time-consuming to build.  There will be a few decisive battles, one side will lose most/all of their modern gear, and will be unable to replace it fast enough to continue the war.  It's not like in WW2 where they were churning out a Liberty ship every week or a Sherman tank every 30 minutes.  The navy's railguns are best used against irregular opposition.  They don't have anti-ship missiles to return fire with, so its safe to get close, and they're likely to be quite spread out, meaning you'll need a lot of rounds on target.

[QuakeIV]

I'm not personally convinced that we are finally right about a modern symmetric war ending quickly.  Its happened so many times, and I am really just not sure we wont find some way to drag things out.

[Barkhorn]

Oh I don't believe the war will end.  It'll just stop being symmetric.  The official military may disband, the government may capitulate, but there will be factions that will continue fighting basically indefinitely.  It won't be two information-age nation-states slugging it out; it will be one information-age nation-state struggling to put down an insurgency in their former enemy's country.

Aurora, unfortunately, does not simulate asymmetric war at all, so I didn't bring it up. 

[QuakeIV]

No I mean, they figured in world war 1 that the mobile artillery would destroy everything, a winner would quickly emerge, and the war would be over by christmas of 1914.  To be fair, they didn't overstate the destructive power of their guns particularly, whenever someone heavily shelled a section of the enemy lines, they would kill almost everything.   They just weren't quite good enough to eliminate every last man, and those last men tended to be in fortified machine gun nests that they had no way to quickly deal with.

I don't mean to say that machine gun nests will stop the guided missiles, the lasers, the railguns and the tacitcal nukes, but the devil is in the details.  Modern war only has more weapons systems available to muddy the analysis, not less.  I think its quite possible that on into the far future wars might last much longer than people tend to assume at the time.  Conventional wars between equal powers, not insurgencies.  I do think insurgencies could be really cool for aurora though.

[alex_brunius]

Further, a modern conventional symmetric war is unlikely to be long enough for cost to matter.  Modern weapon systems are simply too expensive and time-consuming to build.  There will be a few decisive battles, one side will lose most/all of their modern gear, and will be unable to replace it fast enough to continue the war.  It's not like in WW2 where they were churning out a Liberty ship every week or a Sherman tank every 30 minutes.

I disagree with modern conflicts being short by nature.

Yes the pattern where you have a modern army vs a semi-modern one ( like Iraq or Egypt ) and a limited geographical area of conflict tend to be over very quickly, but no one in their right mind though a Soviet attack on Western Europe would be over or decided in a day or a week had it materialized during the cold war.

If we move forward to today's tech what happens when two equal sides fight a conventional war and both start by shooting down or disabling all the opponents satellites for Coms, Recon and even GPS? What happens when no or very few missiles or strike planes can get through to hit key targets because of the dense layers of SAM, Interception, E-War and Point defense? What happens when neither side can deploy troops, supplies and equipment the fast way with air-lift right to the frontlines due to the risks involved, and anything shipped must be coordinated to be heavily escorted?

Sure state of the art tech nations today have the tech to win quickly vs a WW2 tech level enemy or even a semi-modern one, but they also have invested just as much in denying a more equal tech enemy the ability to use that all that fancy tech...

The aurora equivalent is a fight where neither side have the missile numbers to deal a decisive knock out strike but PD, AMMs and shields handle 99% of them... Then a decisive war can only happen if both sides risk their valuable assets in a close range knife fight, and if either side has a clear advantage in a close range engagement the other side ( in reality ) is very likely to have the ability and means to avoid it and return to within own territory.

Such a war is decided by how deep the strategic stockpiles of missiles are, how much the factories can output once you know more about what equipment you actually need to gain an advantage and by the boots on the ground, all which will take time. About stuff being expensive and time consuming to build that's what people said before WW2 as well, but changed priorities increased production output level by 1000-fold and reduced time from order to delivery by 10-fold in many cases. Before WW2 there were about 40 million passenger cars in USA, today there are over 200 million despite each car of today being endlessly more high tech, so I don't think more advanced equipment necessitates smaller production numbers at all if priorities were set to military production instead of civilian.

Due to MAD and economical inter-dependencies on Earth today I think it's pretty unlikely we would see such a war happen though.

[bean]

If manoeuvre warfare is so effective that you can't have set fortifications that can't be moved when you are the defender and thus plonking your defenses right in the path the enemy's forces will take you need something that can pick up and go instantly because they are going to be flanked. And that means no towed guns.

I never said that.  I was pointing out (again) that people were misunderstanding what the 'static' classification meant. 

And with shells weighing in at 800 kilograms or more for the Iowa's 16 inch guns, and heavy naval artillery doesn't seem to come lighter than a few hundred kilograms. In theory you could create a sling and haul it with crewmen, so long as the stairs permit it anyway. Realistically though? If the hoists are dead so is the gun.

I'm pretty sure there's manual operation on the hoists, although as a practical matter, they'd be too slow to matter.  There's no way at all you could manhandle a shell up to the gun.  "Stairs" are near-vertical on a battleship, and the shells themselves are really heavy.

Strangely we may see a return of heavy gun artillery; if the railgun currently in development by the US Navy is developed to the point it's as good as promised it's effective range with a properly guided munition is hundreds of kilometers at a minimum. It'd be much cheaper per shot than a missile and not risk a human pilot.

Yes, but each round is going to be relatively expensive.  Not as much as a missile, but a lot more than a gun round.