Posted by: DrBladeSTEEL
« on: December 14, 2023, 12:54:27 PM »
Friends, Colleagues, Oracles, Scribes, I greet you today. The speaker has asked me to begin our discourse with the same presentation I delivered to the armed services committee upon the drafting of these funding propositions, as he believes there is value in the experience my long tenure as scribe to the general staff have granted me.
There has been much ridicule amongst the scholarly and administrative circles with regards to the y40 reforms, initiated by royal decree following the Lunar revolt and with broad-reaching aims to completely rework the Royal Armed Forces. While some of these are fair, such as the somewhat embarrassing fiasco at the initial design proposals calling for a 1.5cm howitzer instead of the much more capable 15cm, many are leveled by my peers who clearly have absolutely no grasp of the herculean effort of creating not only doctrine from scratch, but also every detail of implementing said doctrine.
The interstellar army reforms, a name as literal and unimaginative as many others to emerge from the halls of the somewhat blunt instrument that is the Royal Army, sought to prepare the Pharaoh's Mace for a perceived future conflict beyond the atmosphere of Earth through the reorganization and equipment of the entire department into the Imperial Army. The first challenge of the army was to identify their role in the Trans-newtonian era. After the unification wars, the army had reorganized itself into a policing force, with much of its strength divided into Regiment-sized units for counter-insurgency and police work. Armor and artillery had been maintained, though much reduced, in order to prevent the loss of operational knowledge, but even by the army’s own assessment it was not in any position to fight a full-scale peer conflict.
The most pressing issue was that no one truly knew how a war in space might be fought. Some theorized that the challenges of deploying into the inhospitable environs of many of the bodies observed in the solar system would simply preclude the deployment of infantry, others worried about the immense logistical tail that warfighting across the vast distances of space would entail. Still others debated the very existence of an army as any more than a police force, simply arriving onto the surface of planets that had been obliterated by planetary bombardment to occupy the ruins of an exterminated enemy population. This complete lack of experience in the prosecution of interplanetary warfare understood, several committees were created by the officer corps, and over the course of three years well over 60 doctrinal concepts were created, wargamed, and assessed, with five concepts selected for further exploration:
The Homogeneous Plan
A traditional divisional system, with separate tank and infantry divisions supported by organic artillery, command, and logistics at both the brigade and divisional levels. This method, though lacking in the combined arms effectiveness of some other options, proved to be the most straightforward from a logistical standpoint, and generally effective in almost all situations.
The Regimental Soup
One of the more radical concepts, the regimental soup eschewed the divisional or corps levels of organization, instead focusing on individual, specialized regiments that could be assembled into task groups on an ad-hoc basis by an overarching theater command.
Aggressively Airborne
A rather humorous submission that ended up doing shockingly well in wargames, this doctrine involved an almost complete air mobilization of mostly power armored shock infantry units, accompanied by an equally enormous air support wing. Though found to have severe limitations to occupation and defensive works, the sheer rapidity of movement across stellar bodies from the organic transport and the massive firepower brought by the air support allowed it to continue to score well on simulated campaigns.
Attack of the Drones
Referencing a very poorly written film from the early 21st century AD, this concept for a semi-autonomous army of inexpensive robots tackled the issues of environmental hazard and logistical burden by replacing the soft, squishy human with duranium plating and corbomite circuits. Though it struggled with electronic warfare, was terrifically unsubtle, and was staggeringly expensive, the merits of an autonomous force, especially the drone swarms, were undeniable.
Mechanized Division Plan
Another fairly traditional plan, involving combined-arms divisions of infantry, tanks, artillery and aircraft organized into blended divisions. Though it performed very well, the complexity of the unit and its additional strain on an already taxing logistics situation caused it to really struggle on the campaign map, even if it was dominant on the battlefield.
The army quickly concluded from the exercises that not much could be concluded, seeing as they had no idea if the scenarios they had set up would even begin to represent reality. That said, they did recognize that regardless of the situation, the simplest and most flexible designs would have the best chances at adapting to the lessons learned in humanity’s first void war, and so the homogeneous plan, with provisions for divisional reorganization by swapping brigades. Drones would be dropped on a cost axis, but robotic assets would be investigated and integrated into future formations as field experience played out.
Below is the prototypical order of battle for an imperial infantry division: [Attached]
An imperial tank division: [Attached]
The doctrine question answered, the task now became how to fit out these units to fight in any environment, from the microgravity vacuum of a theoretical asteroid, to the barren deserts of mars, to the hostile, toxic environment of planets like Venus. Building off the most recent generation of EVA suits designed for commercial space mining, as well as the existing ‘hardshell’ powered armor for the Sons of Nachtahmedt, Nitiqret-Penbuy (NPA Arms Lmt. ) was awarded the development contract based on their PTY-B48 proposal, which offered a reasonably priced, robust atmosphere suit.
Eventually developed into the Type VII infantry Combat Suit, this 13. 8kg piece of equipment utilized a Boronite-impregnated Vendarite mesh weave clad in Duranium composite plates, providing both exceptional radiation and physical protection, as well as giving the armor excellent insulative properties. A life-support pack is built into the rear of the chest shell, linked through tubing beneath the shell and into the broad-visored helmet/rebreather, which also features a heads-up display with targeting info, suit diagnostics, and tactical minimap as standard. The suit maintains 1atm pressure on the soldier in all conditions through the soldier’s body glove, which allows for localized pressure to be applied in a field trauma situation to reduce or stop bleeding. Thermal regulation is also provided by the body glove, with a head conductive webbing running along the inside and connected to the LS pack for heat exchange. Trials reports demonstrated the capability of the armor to withstand most small-arms currently in development, as well as shrapnel and blast effects from most conventional ordinance at range. Unfortunately the Boronite coating was unable to prevent a lethal dose from a tactical nuclear test detonation, even outside the range of critical damage from IR/UV flash burning as had been hoped, but it would prove to be more than sufficient for post-det exposure or protection from cosmic radiation.
Paired with the suit was a whole suite of infantry small-arms developed for the trans-newtonian age, most notably Iuwlot-Suty’s Type II rail rifle, which beat out Pasherdjehuty Precision Arms’s Type IIB coilgun by a slim margin, namely the reduced complexity of the impulse generation and better sighting system integration with the Type VII’s helmet. Capable of single or automatic fire, the weapons fires fin-stabilized neutronium slugs from a mercassium sabot, with an overall projectile diameter of 8mm from a detachable 25 round box magazine (that venerable and inescapably useful design). Controlled feed is accomplished by a sprocket and stepper motor, necessary for effective feed in extreme gravity environments, and a canteen-sized micro pebble bed reactor affixed to the waist provides the energy source to charge the rifle’s integrated capacitors.
This whole process of equipment development took six years, though it was largely concurrent with the doctrinal development. Vehicle development (including the infamous Grizzly) took an additional six, though was much simpler for a number of reasons. While the development of all five base hulls could be examined in detail, we shall focus on the development of the ‘Chariot’ main battle tank, as it offers an example of the developmental hurdles without any complications from industry shortcomings or political meddling.
The Type XLII main battle tank was a perfectly serviceable terrestrial vehicle, designed and produced just before the TN revolution. It was reliable and rugged, with a powerful electrochemical DC drivetrain and well-proven 12cm conventional cannon developed from the venerable Rheinmetall L44. Conventional, rolled homogeneous steel armor provided respectable protection from smaller cannon, while a variety of active protection elements protected against ATGMs and some tank-caliber shells. Thus having a superb template to work from, ‘all’ Karasi-Sun needed to do to create a winning design was bring this well-loved template into the trans-Newtonian age.
The armor was easy, as High-Density duranium plate of a suitable thickness was already rolling off Xia-Sung heavy industry’s foundry floors by the kiloton for the navy’s planned Khepri class of frigate. The gun likewise proved to be simple, PPA’s CIWS-80 ‘Aegis’ having already provided that company an complete weapons system to bring to the table centered around the G80-1 gauss cannon, capable of chucking neutronium slugs at such velocity that point-blank range extended to the horizon. The engine proved to be the most difficult, with the immense power requirements of the gauss cannon (relative to the chassis size) a conventional chemical or electro-chemical power plant would fall far short. Eventually, despite many of the conservative generals on the procurement board, Tet-Ka Inc. was able to convince the board to trial their V-3302 reactor. At almost four fifths the size of the Type XLII’s original powerpack, the tiny pebble-bed reactor was capable of generating a truly staggering 14MW off of its twin helium turbines, while the self-throttling nature of PBBs allowed for a startling level of simplicity. In short, despite the fears of many of the brass with the concept of what might occur should the reactor be struck by a shell, they were forced to recognize that the engine did exceed every single one of their requirements for acceptance.
I have made the above sections brief and simplistic for the sake of brevity, but I wish to make it clear that the processes outlined were not simple, nor brief. Hundreds of proposals, thousands of tests, hours upon days upon years of experimentation and study were not spent in idle foot-dragging, as some of my esteemed colleagues might suggest, but in the dogged and thorough examination of territory so uncharted as to bar all historical comparison. Even the great technological revolutions of the 1890-1950 AD period did not include such challenges as fighting a truly unknown enemy, whose behaviors, characteristics, and even biologies they could only begin to predict. Even still, they had to consider how they might prosecute a war on ground unlike anything that could be experimented with on earth, using only the bodies of Sol and speculative wargaming to guide them.
“But what of the Navy?!” I hear my colleagues ask, gesturing fervently to the roaring (bureaucratic) success of the Khepri class, designs coming in both under budget and under tonnage in truly spectacular fashion. What about them? They faced a much simpler task: find and destroy an enemy much like them, in the same environment, and sustain themselves on the campaign… almost exactly like they had during the ‘wet navy’ times. In fact, the explosion into the stars spurred by the TN revolution has given the navy plenty of opportunity to develop the basics of voidmanship, and their logistical burdens remain almost unchanged, despite the increase in the distance scale. Not to discount the wonderful efficiency the naval design office has displayed with its doctrinal documents and design studies, and truly they do deserve great praise for the cohesive and grounded doctrine they have prepared, but I emphasize again that their challenges were not equal nor comparable to the army’s.
In short, as we prepare in the coming days to develop and manage the budget for the imperial army, I do hope we bear the challenges in mind, and not allow some false perception of shortcomings or obsolescence to cloud our judgments. We are responsible for the readiness of the empire in its march across the stars, as is the will of the Pharaoh. If we falter in our duties, either through the maligning of opinion or through the desire to see one branch succeed at the expense of another, we shall inevitably be brought to account for our failings. Thank you, fellow Scribes, those entrusted by Nachtahmedt, let us begin.
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Science! Well, science fiction at least. I would appreciate some guidance as to how exactly I attach images inline with the text, and thank you all for reading! Feel free to comment as well, and let me know if there are any stories or perspectives you might want to see covered. This is as much setting exposition as it is pure chronology.
