Military tactics for battle dress

[AnotherDilbert]

No one ever said war was efficient.
In fact, one significant way to make your point in warfare is to "not be efficient"

"The war has been variously termed a war of production and a war of machines. Whatever else it is, so far as the United States is concerned, it is a war of logistics."
- Fleet ADM Ernest J. King, in a 1946 report to the Secretary of the Navy

"There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war."
- Carl von Clausevitz

Logistics is basically efficiency, getting the most combat power out of your resources. At times you spend resources profligately, but only to get the needed combat power when and were you need it.

Where the bulk of the Third Imperium is "never" fully at war, it would take a war engulfing a massive amount of the Empire to drain that much of the Imperial income.
As a result, I am willing to bet the Imperial militaries can ignore value per Credit in favor of "Put them down and make a statement doing it".

Until you get into a real major power war, say the Rebellion or Solomani Rim War, that did engage the entire Imperium and exhausted the military resources of it.

You build your forces for the potential existential war, even if that means you have to fight small wars inefficiently. Any less means you plan to lose the existential war and probably cease to exist as a state.

 

[Grav_Moped]

This may be one of those rarefied nobility polices its own sort of things. The working nobles running subsectors, navies and marines have access to levels of justice and retribution that can keep the scandal quiet while punish, or go full out shaming and SOC stripping.

Not to mention the chance that some beloved progeny may be doing their turn at hero honor/SOC building in the Marines and getting those killed with substandard equipment is going to make it personal.

Remember, the Imperial Nobility are the Stationary Bandits (rather than Roving Bandits) [wikipedia link]. That is, their incentives are to stay in place for the long term so they can keep skimming off the top, and quick-payoff/high-reputational-damage ripoffs don't advance that objective. Thus, the in-group policing that you mention -- they've got a pretty sweet gig going here, don't F**k it up for the rest of 'em.

You might get "cheap", but you're unlikely to get "shoddy".

At least that's the official justification for the system. It might actually be true, much of the time.

 

[Grav_Moped]

You build your forces for the potential existential war, even if that means you have to fight small wars inefficiently. Any less means you plan to lose the existential war and probably cease to exist as a state.

This. And this is why we don't have massive stockpiles of artillery munitions to give Ukraine -- the West wouldn't need them if it was us up against the Russians, directly. We'd be using airpower instead of artillery, and it would be exponentially more effective.

 

[Condottiere]

Missile and torpedo stockpiles, since energy based point defence would handle shells.

I was rather sceptical when Mongoose Second changed Confederation Navy doctrine to be more missile/torpedo based, until I started customizing these weapon systems, and the results might not have been obvious to the writers, or their possible intent, but it dawned on me how they would be utilized.

 

[Spinward Flow]

This. And this is why we don't have massive stockpiles of artillery munitions to give Ukraine -- the West wouldn't need them if it was us up against the Russians, directly. We'd be using airpower instead of artillery, and it would be exponentially more effective.

Actually, what the artillery duels have revealed is that the "western" assumptions about the logistics mix needed to wage a major campaign against a near peer in the current day is almost hopelessly wrong.

Never mind being able to fight in 2 major wars simultaneously (a long standing mandate to the Pentagon brass to use as a deterrent against adversaries) ... the US military would struggle with logistics to supply even ONE major war against a near peer military adversary. The production and logistics tail needed to supply such efforts has been allowed to languish and atrophy to such an extent that "a lot of money" will need to be invested to rebuild the production capacity necessary to supply "a lot of artillery shells" to a front line that is largely stagnant for a significant length of time (see: attrition warfare/trench warfare).

As for airpower being exponentially more effective ... I'll remind people that in Desert Stomping Ground 91, despite total air dominance and around the clock bombing for a month ... it wasn't until the tanks and troops rolled in that the collapse began. The Douhet Fallacy remains alive and well to this day, despite being repeatedly disproven by history, since the development of air power.

That the trouble with Force Multipliers ... you need to have the FORCES before you can MULTIPLY them.
Zero "times lots and lots" is still zero ...

This is partially why Quantity Has A Quality All Of Its Own™ (or words to that effect).
It's also why "super weapons" rarely wind up being decisive enough to win wars all on their own, if they can't be delivered in large enough quantities to be useful.

 

[kilemall]

Actually, what the artillery duels have revealed is that the "western" assumptions about the logistics mix needed to wage a major campaign against a near peer in the current day is almost hopelessly wrong.

Never mind being able to fight in 2 major wars simultaneously (a long standing mandate to the Pentagon brass to use as a deterrent against adversaries) ... the US military would struggle with logistics to supply even ONE major war against a near peer military adversary. The production and logistics tail needed to supply such efforts has been allowed to languish and atrophy to such an extent that "a lot of money" will need to be invested to rebuild the production capacity necessary to supply "a lot of artillery shells" to a front line that is largely stagnant for a significant length of time (see: attrition warfare/trench warfare).

As for airpower being exponentially more effective ... I'll remind people that in Desert Stomping Ground 91, despite total air dominance and around the clock bombing for a month ... it wasn't until the tanks and troops rolled in that the collapse began. The Douhet Fallacy remains alive and well to this day, despite being repeatedly disproven by history, since the development of air power.

That the trouble with Force Multipliers ... you need to have the FORCES before you can MULTIPLY them.
Zero "times lots and lots" is still zero ...

This is partially why Quantity Has A Quality All Of Its Own™ (or words to that effect).
It's also why "super weapons" rarely wind up being decisive enough to win wars all on their own, if they can't be delivered in large enough quantities to be useful.

A lesson which is the beauty of the LBB4/Striker world- hi/lo mix to get the job done.

 

[Dragoner]

This. And this is why we don't have massive stockpiles of artillery munitions ...

We have what we need, we just don't have a peer relevant adversary. Eisenhower said economics is the basis of military power, we are 27 trillion economy, next is China at 17, and Germany tailing at less than 5. Nobody is even close, an economic peer would still have trouble standing toe to toe with us; two years total war footing and we would have scary amounts of artillery. I read a convo today where some Europeans were saying without us to defend them, they will have to depend on France.

In my setting the Earth and the Sol System occupy this position, and they ended a recent war, because it was unpopular, not because they had any fear of defeat. I think they have the luxury of not caring, and the idea of Earth coming down on the out worlders with both boots, makes any enemies shivery.

 

[whartung]

This. And this is why we don't have massive stockpiles of artillery munitions to give Ukraine

I think long term, we'd need quite a bit. Airpower is powerful, it's also expensive and fragile.

As for airpower being exponentially more effective ... I'll remind people that in Desert Stomping Ground 91, despite total air dominance and around the clock bombing for a month ... it wasn't until the tanks and troops rolled in that the collapse began. The Douhet Fallacy remains alive and well to this day, despite being repeatedly disproven by history, since the development of air power.

Indeed, a fundamental problem with air power is that you can not take, much hold ground. You can certainly soften is up.

I don't know what the fundamental warplan is, but I have to assume it's more "deter them, and hold them until we can wake the tiger up". I don't know how much of the current war planning is designed to consider a war in the continental US, vs one overseas. Don't know if they're planning on Russians and Cubans coming up through Central America and Mexico with a surprise paratrooper attack from civilian aircraft.

We are a production and logistical powerhouse, but it needs to be turned to a war footing, and that can take time. I'm guessing our current planning is to have forces enough to give us that time.

"You can have that territory, but we'll probably be back in 6 months to take it back."

 

[AnotherDilbert]

We have what we need, we just don't have a peer relevant adversary. Eisenhower said economics is the basis of military power, we are 27 trillion economy, next is China at 17, and Germany tailing at less than 5. Nobody is even close, ...

A dollar goes much longer in China.

In purchasing power (PPP) this years official estimates are China 35 G$, US 28 G$, EU (incl. UK) about the same, India 14 G$.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
PPP measures not nominal dollars, but how many loaves of bread (or guns) the economy can buy (produce).


Europe has absolutely no will to go to war, but has a fair amount of population and money. If Europe actually wanted to do something, it probably could, but of course it doesn't want to. The EU is not very centralised, but not non-existant either: Talking about Germany alone is misleading.


China has the population and the economy to be relevant.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

We are a production and logistical powerhouse, but it needs to be turned to a war footing, and that can take time.

China is a production powerhouse, US and Europe are has-beens.

Steel production:
China 1019 Mton
India 140 Mton
EU ~110 MTon
Japan 87 Mton
US 80 Mton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_production


Car production:
China 30 M
EU ~12 M
US 10 M
Japan 8 M
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_motor_vehicle_production


Energy production:
Asia: 6946 Mtoe
Americas: 3347 Mtoe
Europe: 2575 Mtoe
https://www.iea.org/reports/key-world-energy-statistics-2020


Complacency is not warranted...

 

[kilemall]

The US does a lot of scrap steel production which is more efficient and decentralized from the confluence of energy and ore.

Analysis: Open market scrap demand in US could grow by almost 9 million mt through 2023

Open market demand for ferrous scrap could grow by nearly 9 million metric tons through 2023 as slated electric arc furnace capacity expansions come online.

www.spglobal.com

 

[Daidoji Dave]

I could see Battle Dress troops being urban combat specialists. They'd be the "tanks" of that environment, the real tanks being both overkill and too easy to kill. They'd be able to do the walk through walls trick, either literally or through not worrying about their own breaching charges, and just treat the environment as a 3d cube and make their own roads. And they could use gas and/or flamethrowers with built in protection from their own weapons.

Interstellar force projection would prefer Battle Dress; home defense might prefer the hi/low strategy already mentioned. The invaders knows they'll be outnumbered in almost any planetary invasion or intervention, even in a large ship universe, plus they're already spending credits for transport and control of the gravity well, so you might as well aim for outgunning the other guy. Unless up against a population both low pop and lower tech they'd then specialize in decapitation strikes, command and control, or high value supply or manufacturing rather than fighting armies in head on battles. Come to think of it though, Heinlein got here first, so not an original thought.

Keying off of Dragoner's idea of bicycles, they might have dedicated powered bikes. Maybe open frame grav bikes at the high end, but I'm thinking more of ground effect bikes or rocket sleds. Something fast, easy enough to refuel/refurbish when recovered, but still cheap enough to be treated as expendable.

It might be the Starship Troopers nostalgia, but I picture a military fielding battle dress including a missile rack or other heavy weapon option as standard. They've got the carrying capacity, they're already both armored and a target without it, so why stop at just a gauss rifle? But they might well not issue ammo depending on mission.

But quite possibly the 200,000 cr price is for partially de-milled suits. In which case carrying around the best rifle you can find is still pretty good.

An important question is what are the counter-BD weapons and tactics? You know there'll be something. Just rpgs with TL-appropriate warheads? I don't know of any rules for single-shot, burn-out-and-throw-away PGMPs, but maybe something could be worked out.

Most of any conventional fire team(5 or 4 men depending on the unit and nationality) in current western military units have mostly riflemen helping carry components to support the one or two man-portable "heavier weapons" in a team.

Things get interesting in non-Western forces that have tried 3-4 rpgmen with one rifleman for perimeter security.

This could be one approach to anti-battle dress tactics for lower tech or poorer forces. Everybody gets an rpg and a carbine, told to spread out, and wish them luck.

Then for the battle dress forces, BD as squad support weapon for a less armored infantry force is one approach; all BD heavy hitters circles back around to Heinlein's marauders.

 

[Dragoner]

Keying off of Dragoner's idea of bicycles, they might have dedicated powered bikes. Maybe open frame grav bikes at the high end, but I'm thinking more of ground effect bikes or rocket sleds. Something fast, easy enough to refuel/refurbish when recovered, but still cheap enough to be treated as expendable.

I have a scooter in my setting TL 14 40 km/h 50KCr that BD troops use. I like Starship Troopers, Mobile Infantry, though by the book MI are raiders, and they glass most enemy planets, which they don't do in Solis. I was looking over the BD in the MgT1 SRD and thought of variations, I mean I include a light version, though I don't know how interested people would be in an expanded BD supplement. Maybe someday.

 

[Spinward Flow]

We are a production and logistical powerhouse, but it needs to be turned to a war footing, and that can take time. I'm guessing our current planning is to have forces enough to give us that time.

Bringing this back to air power for a moment ... it has long been a (hopelessly false) token of faith that if there was a "major war" (whatever that might mean, it seems to be kept deliberately nebulous) that US aerospace companies would be able to design, produce and field an entirely new aircraft for battlefield use in ... { wait for it } ... 7 YEARS ... during a wartime economy.

I would point out that the F-35 has been "in production" (making "mistake jets") for over a decade already (more like a decade and a half at this point) ... and the F-35 still isn't ready for prime time deployments to theaters around the world for even routine/ordinary patrol missions. If we're lucky, the software for it might start becoming functional for routine mission deployments by squadrons by 2030, easily 20+ years after the first (mistake) jets were produced.

"Overrunning to the right" on charts has become such a joke in procurement circles that it is now assumed to be the norm, rather than the exception.



The notion that the Front Line will hold long enough for the logistical tail to sort itself out "in a timely fashion" ought to have been put to rest by the economic snarls we saw in global supply chains as a result of a global pandemic. Now factor into your calculations that a "major war" will have a broadly similar impact on ... { wait for it } ... global supply chains as a worldwide medical emergency.

Or to put it in more accessible household terms ... how long do you expect your front line to hold out with no toilet paper before "the quartermasters in the rear" get their logistics sorted out to supply the front line fighters?

Interstellar force projection would prefer Battle Dress; home defense might prefer the hi/low strategy already mentioned.

I agree.
Offense needs every advantage it can get in order to achieve success, but as an invading force (as opposed to a follow up of reinforcements) making an opposed insertion, you're going to want Battledress.

For defense and garrison duty, Combat Armor is going to be adequate.

You want Battledress for the smaller/tighter formations that rely on skills, expertise and equipment to win the day (so more towards Special Forces types) ... and Combat Armor for the broader/heavier formations that rely on numbers, massed forces and sheer weight of manpower and machinery (the Regular Army-O).

 

[Enoki]

What enemy are we talking about?

Against a near-peer enemy you have the normal situation: If I can see you, I can kill you.

Against a mid-tech enemy with heavy weapons: If I can see you, I can kill you (but you have a better chance of survival).

Against low-tech troops without heavy weapons, you slaughter them.


Since BD is quite costly, a non-BD enemy is likely to have a lot more troops with a lot more firepower.


Against any enemy that knows that you are coming, they will come armed with heavy weapons that can reach out and kill you. BD is then mostly protection from artillery. So, if you have BD, don't fight fair, hose down the area with artillery, mop up any survivors, and move on?


Grav belts are a great addition to BD, but not standard fit in any edition, as far as I can recall.


P.S. I know nothing about real combat, so feel free to ignore anything I say...

This would go further. BD allows you to become both a mobile armored vehicle of sorts and a computer augmented combat information center. I'd think that a BD unit would have drones the size of coins out scouting ahead of them, along with an array of other sensors, that tells the wearers what's on the battlefield ahead and around them.
With precision guided weapons and everyone having indirect fire capability, anything and everything that's a target is found and obliterated not just by direct fire. For example, two BD soldiers are on two streets in an urban area. One spots a target, the other knows about it immediately. The spotter doesn't engage because it might draw return fire, while the second releases some PGM that arcs into the target from a totally unexpected direction and blows that target into the next time zone. The first soldier (spotter) doesn't have to worry about blast, fragmentation, or the like as he's protected.
Against like units, the fight is hide and seek. Against ones of less capability, it's usually a one-sided contest that sees the weaker side decimated without even knowing why they're being wiped out.

 

[kilemall]

This would go further. BD allows you to become both a mobile armored vehicle of sorts and a computer augmented combat information center. I'd think that a BD unit would have drones the size of coins out scouting ahead of them, along with an array of other sensors, that tells the wearers what's on the battlefield ahead and around them.
With precision guided weapons and everyone having indirect fire capability, anything and everything that's a target is found and obliterated not just by direct fire. For example, two BD soldiers are on two streets in an urban area. One spots a target, the other knows about it immediately. The spotter doesn't engage because it might draw return fire, while the second releases some PGM that arcs into the target from a totally unexpected direction and blows that target into the next time zone. The first soldier (spotter) doesn't have to worry about blast, fragmentation, or the like as he's protected.
Against like units, the fight is hide and seek. Against ones of less capability, it's usually a one-sided contest that sees the weaker side decimated without even knowing why they're being wiped out.

Don’t forget ortillery.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Never mind being able to fight in 2 major wars simultaneously (a long standing mandate to the Pentagon brass to use as a deterrent against adversaries) ... the US military would struggle with logistics to supply even ONE major war against a near peer military adversary. The production and logistics tail needed to supply such efforts has been allowed to languish and atrophy to such an extent that "a lot of money" will need to be invested to rebuild the production capacity necessary to supply "a lot of artillery shells" to a front line that is largely stagnant for a significant length of time (see: attrition warfare/trench warfare).

As for airpower being exponentially more effective ... I'll remind people that in Desert Stomping Ground 91, despite total air dominance and around the clock bombing for a month ... it wasn't until the tanks and troops rolled in that the collapse began. The Douhet Fallacy remains alive and well to this day, despite being repeatedly disproven by history, since the development of air power.

The thing is, we're not expecting a long war if we're going "toe-to-toe with the Rooskies." If it comes to that, it'll either be a quick victory or will escalate to nukes, in which case the ammo stockpile size won't matter much. Actually, the fact that we don't plan for a long war and expect escalation is part of a deterrence strategy. (Not a particularly sane one, but nuclear deterrence policy has always included a large helping of lunacy at its core, and acknowledged it.)

Airpower wins tend to happen when we're leveraging someone else's ground forces (concentrate to confront our indigenous allies and we rain down airstrikes; disperse to avoid airstrikes and they'll defeat you in detail -- see Kosovo for how that works.)

In extreme cases, enemy units have been known to surrender to helicopters -- or news crews. (This is what adherence to the Laws of Armed Conflict buys you.)

I think long term, we'd need quite a bit. Airpower is powerful, it's also expensive and fragile.

Maybe we should be planning for a longer war. Would be nice to have that kind of industrial base, but we don't do industrial policy here.

NO_THAT'S _SOCIALISM.gif

But big stockpiles aren't the answer either. Hasn't really helped the Russians much as they regress back through their TL tree by bringing out progressively older hardware.

 

[Condottiere]

Ukraine is a master class in modern (current) warfare, and each generation has to, apparently, relearn the lessons thereof, every generation.

However, Nagorno-Karabakh pretty much already demonstrated the affordability and practicality of drone warfare.

But it's still only a part of combined arms approach - you still need planes, tanks, artillery and infantry.

 

[mike wightman]

TL15 - planes are gunships which the fanon insists are called grav tanks
drones are widely used, the Imperium doesn't use warbot does use drones lol - they are the same thing (and see MT)
rapid fire fusion point defence
meson artillery
a RAM grenade can take out BD.

Your BD troopers need to be spread out so they lose no more than one per meson strike
BD does not need grav bikes and other such since they have integral grav belts
a simple drone with a RAM grenade (launcher) can hunt BD.

 

[Spinward Flow]

pretty much already demonstrated the affordability and practicality of drone warfare.

The attrition rate for drones is INCREDIBLY HIGH (in a shooting war) ... so you need a "pipeline of logistics" to keep feeding the front lines with what amount to "disposable" drones that on average can only be used 3-6 times before being destroyed (either by mishap or by opposition). There's a reason why such a significant fraction of commercial drone products are winding up in the Ukraine theater of operations.

Of course, it's definitely the case that it's "cheaper to sacrifice a drone than it is to sacrifice a soldier" because the drones ARE cheaper to buy (and replace) than people, but that's one of those "economics of war" things.