Self-Propelled Pinecone/Spergscale

Fantastic work. An exemplar.

I completely concur with my honourable friend, Colo.

Jolly WELL Done sir

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My artwork is posted here: https://www.deviantart.com/adenandy/gallery/all

neither are finished and both will grow

as soon as i find out how many tractors and air-start generators a fighter squadron normally has, but that depends on the plane i guess, so i'd look at a mig-21 squadron i suppose

galla doesn't have a traditional "air force"

its most autonomous air branch is incapable of seizing the initiative (Air Defense Command) and is solely tasked with patrolling the large land borders of continental gallia against enemy bombers and maintaining the air sovereignty mission; to which it is equipped with a high supersonic (+M2.5) light fighter and a heavy interceptor (+M3.0) of similar speed, as well as control of all domestic radar and missile and anti-missile installations; as well as its own internal police forces

the Army Aviation is the most integrated portion of Galla's Army Air Forces, comprising a number of V/STOL equipped fighter-bomber regiments using the Saab Fox (Harrier) and Otter (P.1216) families of vertical takeoff fighter bombers; their sole job is being tasked with close air support and battlefield air interdiction of ground forces in support of specific army units, which causes them to work closely with attack helicopters and tiltrotor air assault troops

the Bomber Command is part of the Army legally, and does not have a separate police force (although it retains singular control over strategic/long range aviation); it is responsible for the ground and air-based nuclear attack mission (commanding the Army's silo-based missile and nuclear bomber force) to which it is fully equipped for with high supersonic bombers (B-70 ripoffs) and some stealth/low observable deep penetration intruder aircraft designed to attack and destroy strategic sites such as anti-missile radars and super!SAMs equipped with atomic warheads

Fighter Command is the tactical air force of the Gallan Army and responsible for seizing control of the skies, destroying enemy airbases and air forces, and supporting troops on the ground; while they overlap some with Army Aviation, the difference is that the Army Aviation comes under direct command of the ground force commander; while the Fighter Command has its own officer of similar standing to the ground force commander (possibly called "air force commander") who directs the Air Battle; and it has a lot of super high tech anime fighters like "Mauler" and "Christmas Tree/Eagle" and "<insert name here>" which is going to be a weird A/FX thing that is used by galla's Bomber Command but with less fuel and more bombs

Naval Aviation is the combined air arm of the Gallan Royal Navy, equipped with a variety of carrier- and land-based aircraft; big and smol; to move bombs and people equally, but this will just show its smol planes like Cutlass and Brigand, which are basically F-8s, because one day galla invented F-8 Crusader and saw that it was good, and continued inventing F-8s until the end of time (no F-16s here!); along with other gayer things like a F-32 ripoff because it cant get over the F-8 chin intakes

i might do a "2030" version that shows all of galla's future aircraft which by then should be sharing all the important components (engine, avionics, hydraulic pumps, other subsystems, etc.) for just a huge couple of factories that spit out all the engine and avionics you will ever need to fight WW3 [WW1?] like it's WW2

the other two "air forces" include "Transportation Command" and "Space Command" which should be obvious

im just not sure who owns the air refueling tankers

also mai "husbando" told me a secret that i can change the "?dl=0" to "?raw=1" and produce a direct link so i dont need to remove "?dl=0" and change "www" to "dl" in the url that was very polite imo :3

holy moses! that is amazing!

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kerkie, (PH)RN, (US)RN, EMT-B

Stercus accidit!

me wrote:

Because Galla is a never-ending font of innovation and human births, and because the Infantry and Cavalry are locked in an eternal duel to the death, I will try to sperg on their respective differences a bit with a brief discussion. Here is the discussion [because a picture is worth a thousand words and this is actually two pictures]:

[HOT MEME]

The top is how Galla's Infantry see the future. The bottom is how Galla's Cavalry see the future. Both diagrams are in the same operational-tactical scale, although the Cavalry one is a snapshot of a single moment, while the Infantry one is more of a discrete timeline, so the former is slowly panning towards the top right, rather than developing over time. Perhaps they are both right?!

Brigades are the new divisions.
Divisions are the new corps/armies.
Corps are the new army groups/fronts.

Such is the future.

Or maybe just the past with a few X's and I's changed. ):

to crush your enemies
to see them driven before you
and to hear the lamentations of the women

triple quintuple double ironic because the Evil Red Diamonds are An Actual Steppe Empire(TM) that polices the common pasture with BMPs

cos AZZ YEW NOE:

LTC W.P. Baxter, USA wrote:

(...)

All together, this means that each regiment in the Soviet Army must operate a fairly sophisticated agricultural enterprise out of its available personnel and materiel resources. As Marshal Tolubko implied, this requirement must have a significant negative impact on combat readiness. In a less serious vein, one can imagine the mighty Soviet war machine grinding across the Central European Plain, followed by great herds of cattle and clouds of chickens.

(...)

also big dispersion means big bombs

this isnt your dad's nookewler kkkombat toe-to-toe with the hazaras, this is fturwar 20XX where atomix are measured in megatons and force densities in "rifles per km^2" because precision weapons have rendered most obvious utilities of nuclear weapons (i.e. killing tank platoons) a bit rubbish rly

however since not every can live the GLSDB Lyfe i guess that enhanced radiation warheads/fission weapons stick around for a few more years at least as means of destroying entrenched and widely dispersed/camouflaged units with barrage fires and massive amounts of gamma rays

so there are four kinds of TNW used by the gallan army:

- 155mm 0.5, 1, 2 KT ERW for offensive counterbattery and destruction of hard targets (tanks), with a 600 m kill radius against an AFV; a gun battery can kill an opposing gun battery occupying a 2 km^2 to 8 km^2 rectangle/box with one round of erw from 4-8 guns

- 203mm 1, 5, 20, 40 KT boosted fission weapon for destruction of special targets and high value targets at long range

- 127mm rocket with 1 KT fusion weapon for offensive counterbattery beyond the range of 155mm guns; it is fired from the Rs m/270 modular multiple launch rocket system with the 127mm pod

- 227mm 1, 5, 20, 40 KT fusion weapon for destruction of hard targets at long range and neutralization of high dispersion targets (entrenched troops, dispersed tank companies, etc.) and HVTs at very long range delivered by Multiple Launch Rocket System (which can also deliver nerve, choking, vomiting, lachrymatory, and blister agents) in an inertially guided rocket; think of it as a much meatier version of Unitary GMLRS without the pussyfooting around

- air delivered thermonuclear bombs which are clones of B61 with a yield setting of 1, 5, 15, 45, and 60, 90, 180, and 340 KT for the two tactical and operational-tactical versions and 0.5 KT for the hard penetrator/bunker buster version which is intended for use against deep operational-tactical targets (POL depots, FARPs, airbases, and hard bridges) and underground command centers

yields are set by the gun crew using a special wrench (it is painted red so you know it is important) and by opening a panel on the warhead, where a screw indicates which yield setting (and the person with the wrench indirectly adjusts the distance through mechanical screw between the primary and secondary charges appropriately for the yield) aka dial-a-yield

operational-tactical nuclear weapons are:

- a nuclear ATACMS with a 150, 400, and 1200 KT yield settings for deep attack of highly dispersed or operational-tactical targets (primarily airfields and large transportation hubs behind the FLET) delivered by M270 MLRS or HIMARS truck

- single stage Pershing II with a tactical yield of 5, 15, 40, and 80 KT with a 400 kg warhead; which covers the "dead space" between the ATACMS and Pershing II two-stage operational missile; it is primarily designed to destroy large soft targets like railheads, airbases, and shipping ports

operational nuclear weapons are:

- Pershing II with a 1, 5, and 10 KT nuclear earth penetrator with a CEP of less than 8 meters at the maximum ~1,800 km range; primary target is deep underground command centers (nuclear command and control), underground airbases, and other "superhard" targets

- Pershing II with a 10, 40, 80, 200 KT yield with a similar CEP to the earth penetrator, but designed for attacking deep targets like airbases and transportation hubs

strategic nuclear weapons are:

- Peacekeeper with 10 475 KT thermonuclear RVs (a total of 1,500 warheads); primary role is counter-force/destruction of enemy nuclear missile launch means; secondary role is destruction of enemy industrial-population centers

- Midgetman with 1 475 KT thermonuclear RV (accuracy equivalent to Peacekeeper), primary role is counter-force

- Air launched supersonic missiles with a yield of 200 KT designed for delivery from high altitude high supersonic nuclear bombers of Bomber Command (B-70 knockoffs shooting SRAMs); primary target is enemy radar sites and airfields, with the intent of "sanitizing" a corridor for a bomber stream-type attack on industrial-population centers

- Air dropped megaton-yield thermonuclear weapons with a maximum yield of 1.2 MT, so basically B77; primary target is industrial-population economic centers and primary use is destruction of worker population and industrial capacity of the enemy (read: nuking cities)

- Trident II knockoffs with 12 475 KT warheads a piece, carried by the Royal Navy's SSBN force

- three types of nuclear interceptor missiles that are designed to operate in a high radiation/high ionization environment and protect industrial-population and strategic nuclear weapon means from enemy attack; they are basically ripoffs of Improved Spartan (the loitering version of LIM-49 that was never built), Sprint, and LoADS/Sentry; for the purposes of long-range area defense, close-in terminal defense of area targets, and close-in terminal defense of point targets, respectively; galla has a full-up Sentinel defense system designed to defeat portions of attacks from its closest neighbour; not enough to stop the country from being injured severely but enough to preserve enough war materiel and people to win the war that comes after the bombs fall

also Peacekeepers are housed in superhard silos capable of resisting overpressures of 6,500 atmospheres so it's basically "crater zone or bust"

sure it's not HARD ROCK/Deep Underground Base (aka "bury the missiles a half mile under the biggest granite slab in North America with tunnel bore machines and a small army of construction engineers and Air Force missileers; when the bombs fall you dig them out of the base with the TBMs and fire your nuclear wad six months after the fact), but Galla isn't as crazy as the USAF is irl

random fact: the first operational SSBN used by the Gallan Royal Navy was named Sólfar after the ancient (c. 2000 BC!) Proto-Gallan solar barque that hauled the sun across the sky; and since the advent of the atomic age the Gallan military has tripled down on sun worship memes for the past 70 years and shows no sign of stopping since the Atomic Force has a sun cross in its insignia, the Royal Army and Royal Navy both use solar crosses to mark/proof their ammunitions, and the Army has adopted an arsenal of fusion weapons to replace all fission weapons because it wants to bring the Sun to Earth to share its glory with the tengriists and catholics

The Airbase/Missile Defense platoon is a formation that is unique in the Gallan military. An A/MD platoon is part of an A/MD company, which is part of an A/MD battalion, which is the largest Airbase/Missile Defense organization. The A/MD battalions exist as part of the Atomic Force, the strategic nuclear weapons arm of the Gallan military, and are primarily found at nuclear missile silo fields; nuclear equipped airbases; and providing close security for the Royal Army's operational-level Synnergren II nuclear missile battalions. Each Synnergren II missile battalion (equipped with 27 TELs and missiles) has an organic A/MD company, which is comprised of a headquarters section, three A/MD platoons, a UAS section, a REC section, and a maintenance/POL/services platoon.

Typically, a single platoon is assigned to each missile battery (responsible for 9 missiles), providing the battery with local defense and armored mobility firepower in the form of 40mm grenade launchers, anti-tank guided missiles (RBS 157 "Short Range Anti-Armor Weapon" and RBS 148 "Tank Breaker"), three .265" machine guns, three 3.3" recoilless rifles, and a plethora of small arms and machine guns. The A/MD platoon is mounted in bulletproof, mine resistant, ambush protected trucks; based on the chassis of the Gallan Tgb 1050 family of medium tactical vehicles. These squad transport vehicles are equipped with a remote weapon station mounting a 1.6" automatic grenade launcher and a .265" machine gun. The squad is comprised of 11 men, with an organization unique to the Atomic Force. It comprises a vehicle team of two men: a commander and a gunner; a four-man "rifle team"; and a 5-man "weapons team". This is generally referred to as the "rifle team" or "infantry team" of the section.

The "vehicle team" of the section consists of a single Btr 150 light armored vehicle, equipped with a .50" caliber machine gun (Dover Devil ripoff) and a 1.6" automatic grenade launcher in a single-man turret. The gunner of the vehicle resides inside the turret, while the driver and vehicle sit up front. Externally, the vehicle is almost identical to the Military Police Btr 1117 security vehicle. However, significant differences exist with the most obvious being the rear half. In the back, the rear hatch has been deleted from the vehicle and replaced with a solid armor plate bulkhead. Instead of a crew access tunnel, there is a computer console with a table and radio equipment, manned by the UGS operator. The UGS operator controls the two robotic security vehicles, which are equipped with a wide variety of weapons on modular chassis. In the image, the UGS are equipped with the same 1.6"/.265" remote weapon station as the infantry carriers. The UGS is bulletproof against .30" caliber ball ammunition and has run-flat tires. It can drive itself autonomously using LIDAR and known coordinates, or it can be teleoperated from within the Btr 150 by the UGS operator.

In general, the UGS lead the section and the convoy, while the Btr 150 remains further back, within the convoy of missile carriers, support vehicles, and infantry carrier in the rear. The UGS provide the convoy with an inherent route reconnaissance capability that is not reliant on dismounting infantry or conducting an reconnaissance by the armored vehicle crews themselves, which makes reconnaissance more aggressive and more willing to "fight" for information about the enemy. The UGS's bulletproof nature means that most forms of ambush are not terribly effective on it, and its advanced thermal sensors and ability to drive on roads autonomously gives the UGS operator enough freedom to fight two UGS at once. A future version of the UGS will incorporate a more modern thermal imaging system, replace the 1980's era LIDARs and computer electronics, and give the UGS the ability to engage infantry and vehicles automatically with appropriate authorization from the operator. The reconnaissance can be supplemented by company-level REC section ground surveillance radars, ESM detectors, and company and battalion level UAS.

In the event of a successful ambush or infiltration, the platoon is believed to have sufficient firepower and protection that it can attack and destroy any commando forces or special operations units threatening the nuclear missile battery or airbase directly.

Kattsun wrote: *

November 17th, 2016, 9:43 pm

Nice work on the missiles, but I think you mean Bendix SAM-N-8/RIM-50 Typhon LR, not the RIM 60?

Kattsun wrote: *

September 7th, 2017, 4:13 am

me wrote:

LTC W.P. Baxter, USA wrote:

Interesting fluff. RTL or AU: however, the tactics are rather straightforward when special munitions are employed: special weapons are barrier effect weapons because of radiation and terrain effects, not breachers. The bigger they are the more impeding to movement. Offensive use is to channelize enemy movement into choke lanes, where conventional weapons (artillery not men) are employed.

The font is just screwy. The "5" looks like a six because ~reasons~. There's like a one pixel gap opening up the five.

Anyway this is a good reply. I appreciate the criticism. I'll try to explain my thought process behind the sperg, in a way that's more "how Galla sees it" than "how I understand it":

Breakthrough use can be used if troops advance under armor in IFVs or tanks. As long as you don't stop, or intend to hold the ground, it's OK. No one is in the contaminated zones long enough to breathe the stuff in, and no one gets out or opens the hatches so the vehicles aren't contaminated except possibly externally. The shock effect of the atomic detonation is adequate to let mechanized troops roll over the defenders, especially if they are poorly trained or drilled, and when time is the most important consideration it becomes more difficult to employ conventional artillery. Perhaps a more "post-industrial" solution would be to use PGMs like GL-SDB, but destroying widely dispersed targets like entrenched sub-units (companies) and units (battalions) is really hard without an almost excessive number of PGMs being expended; which results in gun batteries being detected and destroyed, units and sub-units moving out of the kill zones of artillery, the enemy becoming aware of the location of the main attack, or all of these things at once.

FWIW, re: arrows; they're not as specific as they should be, and the nukes probably need more information to show the size of the intended area, or perhaps labeling to describe their use. Most of them are being used for radiation barriers or to fix units for destruction by troops moving along a non-contaminated path.

I tried to show barrier use with the arrows being intercepted by mushroom clouds, though. The bulk of the use, aside from the handful of breakthrough uses (I drew three), is in canalizing and protecting flanks of wide maneuvers where conventional artillery is too weak to perform the job. The breakthrough use of nuclear weapons is mostly done as a time expeditious measure, though. If there's adequate amounts of conventional artillery, then conventional weapons are used, but Galla doesn't think there's going to be enough conventional weapons to do that. It also believes that its enemy thinks the same.

Galla is also a heavy believer in the concept of fire strikes, and IMO its been shown as useful in the Russo-Ukraine War. So the bulk of "breakthrough" is probably more supporting the attacking unit by destroying enemy strongpoints and units/sub-units that could attack them along the way, rather than bombing things directly in the path of the tanks. So destruction of self propelled gun units and sub-units, and destruction of mobile reserves, is probably the top priority of nuclear targeting in a breakthrough. Secondary priority is suppression of the position to be attacked or penetrated, preferentially using conventional ammunition, DPICMs and PGMs, non-persistent chemical agents, and then nukes; probably in that order.

Wide mechanized maneuvers, less so, since neither side in the Ukraine War has taken much ground using it, but Galla hasn't collectively discovered that you can't simply take a mail fist and sucker punch your enemy to death. Apparently, neither has Russia, so it's seemingly forgotten the last two years of the Great Patriotic War, but then again so did the Soviet Union.

That said, the tactics and images are deliberately anachronistic. Almost everything in that post is copied straight from W.P. Baxter's Soviet Air Land Battle Tactics, though. The stuff from pp. 106-109. The nukes are American, which is about it, but the tactics are pure WW2 Soviet stuff.

I like to joke that Galla is the Soviet Union through a glass darkly [or a bee hive], so it has a similar hard-on for nukes; but it's neither a despotic death state nor a communist dictatorship, rather a boring European-type Social Democracy.

There's a heavier emphasis on proryv-type breakthroughs, which is where the special weapons are used to destroy things that would otherwise require excessive time using conventional artillery, or when the targeting information is too fuzzy to accurately employ PGMs.

This is mainly to address problem that comes with PGMs being both expensive and useful against only single point targets. This means that the cost of using them rises linearly with target dispersion and size, at a faster rate than with nuclear weapons. A single ERW can neutralize a mechanized infantry or tank company, or destroy a gun battery. You'd need many four to six times as many PGMs (or more) to do the same. Big units like gun battalions can be neutralized with ERWs costing maybe $4-8 million in total; while the quantity of PGMs needed to do the same amount of damage is similar in cost (SDB II costs $250k FY14, and 12 SDB II is $6mn; so an artillery shell or rocket with similar capability is probably even more, but the SDB II also requires fuel and a fighter-bomber to deliver it), but takes more time.

With an adequate atomic economy, plutonium can probably be sourced cheap enough that the ERWs can be brought down in cost. You could also recycle plutonium pits from older weapons.

PGMs are great if the things you want to bomb has their location known to a small area, if it's not a lot of things, and you don't have a lot of time. As any of those factors increases, the utility of the nuclear bomb increases commensurately. Because the cost in time and money of using PGMs rises faster than using nuclear weapons, as the locations of tanks and occupied infantry entrenchments increases. The same is true for cargo shells, because they also have an area of effect, but cargo shells are in-between PGMs and nuclear weapons. Their lethal area is smaller than an ERW and so their time cost increases faster, but they are also the cheapest of all three of those munitions.

So in the grand stockpile of Big Gun Natures of Ammunition, Galla is: 1) DPICM; 2) PGMs; 3) Nukes. Discounting the accumulated stockpile of conventional ammunition and chemical weapons.

I'm not going to try to address the terrain factors, though, just the generic cost:benefit ones that involve quantifiable economics, time, and space values. That said, there's clearly room for debate in the matter since there's more than one way to stop a Motor Rifle Regiment skin a cat (the lower three panels have zero breakthrough use of nukes for Galla, since the Cavalry thinks that is stupid, but it thinks that The Enemy would think otherwise), but that's more or less how I think Galla would view it.

Of course, that's insofar as Galla has a single opinion on the matter, since the use of nukes between the Cavalry and Infantry branches of the Army is subtly different. Basically the difference between the 1942 and 1945 Red Army, respectively.

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