NationStates Jolt Archive

What is the Nations Army Size compared to its population by %?
If other please notify what it should be based on.

What is the Nations Army Size compared to its population by %?
If other please notify what it should be based on.

i need more then 2 slimy polls

For a small nation: 5% max I would say, with maybe a bit more a conscipts in a emergancy.

For a large nation: 2%... if you are militarily powerful.

I use 1.5% of my population for the whole army... including support which takes up more then half of the personnel in my army. Anything above 10% is completely unstustainable and will bankrupt your nation, you won't be able to suppy them all and they would probably dessert for a better life.

There are numberous meantions of this in the FAQ's... you can't have alot of people in the army becuase you need those people to be in the workforce to make your economy strong enough to support a army.

Generally speaking, 5% is the maximum RL peacetime deployment in active military, and that tends to produce economic problems (North Korea.) Wartime mobilization can be higher.

I only say 10% because a small nation could do it for a while if defending.

[ooc: In my opinion, exceeding 1-2% is pushing it.]

War time the most you could push would be 2.5-5% on an offencive war, and a 10% military on defencive wars, and then thats assuming a poorly armed militia makes up everything other than your officialy trained military. For peace time *in nationstates that generaly means you aren't in the middle of all out war* a 0.1%-1% is about all you can really sustain without damaging your economy. Taka has 5% durring all out war, and 0.8% durring peace time, though if you manage to land on Takian soil, there will no be a single civilian who surrenders, they will fight you to the last man, woman, or child. Think WWII Japanese mentality.

Depends, are we talking infantry still or total army (including support, ect.) because I know that my peacetime 1.5% total army is pretty ok… after all, half of it is support personnel.

This said, even in war I don’t need more then that because I would have been invaded to need more then that.

Like I’ve said before, Iuthia is something of a defense nut. Our military and police (named “peacekeepers”) are one and the same organization. Though I’m thinking of making an entire section of the military devoted to logistical support… it needs more thought though.

If I was to put a percentage on infantry that are not support personnel from my nations total population I would say around 0.4% or less. The rest are support, navy, air and space.

And err… you would need a pretty messed up mentality to have everyone fight to the death, I mean war is terrible on moral and even Japan gave up in the end after losing too much.

((OOC: but a facinating mentality none the less, what would happen to such a nation over time? hence, Imperial Japan in space was my nation's concept. as for just infantry? Jebus, I'd say no more than 1-2.5% and even that would require massive amounts of logistics.))

Under 5% at times of mobilization, IMHO. No point in winning when you destroy your economy.

Just for future reference, the 'Japanese mentality' has been exaggerrated a great deal from whaty actually was... you had an imperial elite core who were ready to surrender, a small military junta who wanted to keep fighting (some out of a never-surrender honour ethos, some because unconditional surrender to the Allies would not guarantee the position of the Emperor) and who was willing to force the rest of the army, and general citizenry, at gunpoint, and a populace that was demoralized after spending the past ten years as cogs in a military machine, andwanted nothing more to do with the military government that had lied to them and not kept the Americans from transforming their cities into flat, flaming infernos of death.

The propaganda about US Marine initiation rites involving the eating of babies, and the horrible torture of prisoners by the Allies, motivated a very few to fight to the death, but these have been found to have not been believed by a vast majority of the populace. Still more fought to the death rather than be cut down by the bayonets of the Imperial Army, which stood behind and pushed them forward.

The Japanese as a people would not have put up much of a fight had the Americans invaded... their army would have, but the gneral populace would have been happy to be free of the government that had failed them (they did not become one of the worlds most welcoming defeated peoples overnight... that sentiment was present before the surrender as well).

And, so as not to clutter the thread with more not-quite-on-topic rambling, I say that total military should be well under 2% during peacetime... I use a force under 1%, with emergency conscription levies of another 2-3% in the event of an invasion.

My standing military is 0.5 % of my population, of course I have mandortary military service so I can draw on a extremly large pool of combat personnel in a pinch. I rather not as they are not as skilled as the regular army but they can make taking & holding my nation as difficult as it was for the USA in vietnam.

PS sorry for any spelling mistakes I'm a bit tired.

So it concludes that our military should run from 1-5%, 10% if invaded, am I correct? Do we agree on this?

For my active army, I use .005%.

If I ever needed to call up emergency reserves, I would draw from a higher percentage.

So the max is 10% of the nation's population can be the military (pilots, infantry, etc.)

I run with 2% but at a moments notice, I can initiate the Civilian Defense Force, which takes it to about 40%. But that's only for defending my country.

I run with 2% but at a moments notice, I can initiate the Civilian Defense Force, which takes it to about 40%. But that's only for defending my country.

You know once you do it, you'll run out of money. For one thing you dont have enough money to support that. The only way to get the money is through either ally gifts or selling their personal items for it. Which will make unhappy citizens and riots, and before you know it your civilization will fall under its own very citizens.

Personally I use around 6 Million of my nation in standing military(total). Though at a punch, i could resonably call up 90% of my nation in military forces if it came down to a total invasion, armed and trained. As with most things though there's the major downfall,(hey who's making the bullets?), then again, i don't have any veheciles(sp) so it ain't that bad....

I wouldn't suggest it though, unless you like economic collapse that is :lol:

Lord Reilock Coratha

Personally I use around 6 Million of my nation in standing military(total). Though at a punch, i could resonably call up 90% of my nation in military forces if it came down to a total invasion, armed and trained. As with most things though there's the major downfall,(hey who's making the bullets?), then again, i don't have any veheciles(sp) so it ain't that bad....

I wouldn't suggest it though, unless you like economic collapse that is :lol:

Lord Reilock Coratha

And how many of them would be children, old people, disabled etc..

If you pull up the Draft, you can get up to 20% infantry, thats all the draftees can do, it'll take em 8 weeks to be trained enough to have a chance. But like everyone said, you do that, your economy's shot...

Through simple focus of military forces on infantary alone, I have wholeheartedly gone around the buisiness of producing the best infantary in nationstates, Using the best money to work out the bugs in genetic engineering, cloning technologies and advanced subliminal training techniques i have no disabled, age barriers are not a concern, Childeren would still be in traini.. i mean SCHOOLING, so would not be included in the draft, then again a 90% draft would only be used if you looked out the window and there's a victory parade driving up main street and there not your troops....

Reilock Coratha

ALL of you tend to be wrong. Here's how I do it. My nation has .008% of the population in armed military service. .008% of my population is 64,000 (I use that number for infantry). Now for every 1,000 soldiers, there are 10,000 support personnel, logisitics, etc. That means I have 640,000 employed in my Army, with more in my Navy and Air Force. That's about .08% of my population. Therefore, this leads to reasonable military service. If I have a draft, I'll probably employ 3% of my population, but never more than that. Anything higher is pathetically unrealistic. The Evil Overlord posted in my thread concerning my military. Here's what he said, and he's totally right. (His post was made Nov. 23.)

Any military organization will be composed mostly of support units. A rough rule of thumb would be that it takes 10,000 support personnel to enable 1,000 men to fight- a 10:1 ratio.

Your post says you have .08% of the population in the service (very realistic number, BTW. Good call on your part). That makes your military total 560,000 people.

Using that as a starting point, you have 48,000 combatants listed for your army, which would require 480,000 support personnel to keep them supplied, paid, etc.

This leaves you with less than 40,000 people to be shared among your Navy and Air Force- including any support personnel. Sword and Shield is correct. You shouldn't have the ships you listed.

FWIW, I think that your breakdown on personnel is quite realistic. A small nation should start with a few aircraft and ships and concentrate mainly on ground forces. As you get larger, more and more budget assets should be diverted toward the power projection arms of the military- the Navy and Air Force.

This does not mean that you should ignore ground forces. Let's invent a number for purposes of this example. It will be a large, round number to make the math easier. This number will be 100 million (for no good reason other than it is a large number that divides easily by 10).

We'll assume that your military budget is $100,000,000 (this is just an example). At the start, we'll assume that half of your military budget ($50,000,000) is expended on the Army. The Navy and Air Force have to share the remaining budget with each other, R&D, etc.

As your nation gets larger (and hopefully richer), let's say that the military budget doubles to $200,000,000. The Army would $75,000,000 (note that the dollar amount increased by $25,000,000 but the percentage of the military budget dropped to 38%). This increases the percentage of the budget to the Navy and Air Force (as well as R&D, special projects, etc). In this way, you have customized your military as you grow.

BTW, this should be considered constructive critcism only of the math in your post. Many newcomers to the game refuse to even consider using logic and actual math to build a military. The fact that you have done both speaks well for you. That you asked for input on your thoughts puts you comfortably above most newcomers. Keep up the good work.

TEO

Now, if you just got rid of those pesky naval forces you'd be able to have many more, and better trained troops at your disposal. Since boats tend to need an overhaul or an upgrade and all they really do is provide more interesting targets than that boring old Aircraft carrier....

And once you get rid of the alternate targets than the aircraft carrier you may as well get rid of the Airforce too, it's not like they'll be doing much if they can only launch from your own nation and the targets on the other side of the world...

But of course, androids have to be operated and made, plus having 20billion androids in a nation that only has 26million, your gonna hafta have at least 78%tax, so i'd say the army size should compare to your taxes..

I run at 1%... but basically my entire country is armed so I can call on more then that if needed.

I run at 1%... but basically my entire country is armed so I can call on more then that if needed.

So your economically unbalanced? You dont think you can afford all those...especially if your pop increases 2mill a day (or sometin like dat)

I run with 2% but at a moments notice, I can initiate the Civilian Defense Force, which takes it to about 40%. But that's only for defending my country.

You know once you do it, you'll run out of money. For one thing you dont have enough money to support that. The only way to get the money is through either ally gifts or selling their personal items for it. Which will make unhappy citizens and riots, and before you know it your civilization will fall under its own very citizens.

The citizens already have weapons and equipment. They bought it with their own money. It's required. They each recieve training at in large groups, and pull guerilla tactics if anyone is stupid enough to invade me. They're not going to leave the country.

(And my lip just started bleeding.....)

I use a normal percentage of .002% for a peacetime, on an alert it goes to .01%, and for wartime 1%-1.2% if I'm fighting an all out war, though usually I never go over 1%. If it is an extreme emergency (This is assuming an invasion) I can go up to 2.5%, however most of it will be fresh recruits. But I also do a lot of other things, I factor a huge percentage to Logistics, I also factor in war exhuastion, and my economy, I have frightening at the moment, so I figure I can sustain a war footing (1%) for about 8 years (Somewhere in the region of 2 RL months) after that I start to suffer all kinds of problems, also after 30 RL days of war footing I purposely handicap myself with war exhuastion, which means I won't produce replacement vehicles, ships, or troops as fast, and also I factor in debt, once War Exhuastion sets in I consider myself deeply in debt, really deep, so if I get out of the war, I won't buy anything for about the next 12 RL days (2 years by my time).

Another thing I purposely handicap myself with is time for training, going from .003% to an alert .01% will take huge amounts of money and time (for training) so it takes about 6 RL days to get to that level, and going from that to a war footing takes even longer, about 18 RL days

Well, assuming you mean regular infantry only, i have 386 Regular Infantry Legions, which totals approx. 1,737,000 men. If you mean all foot soldiers, I have 386 Reg. Inf. Legions, 6 Marine legions, 50 Mechanized legions, 10 Combined Legions, 12 Police Legions, and 13 special forces legions, totalling approx. 1,926,620 'infantry'. My population is 550 million, so my percentage is either 0.32%, or 0.35%, depending on which number you use.

In RL america, supply and logistics troops are included in the count of combat ready troops.

I run with 2% but at a moments notice, I can initiate the Civilian Defense Force, which takes it to about 40%. But that's only for defending my country.

You know once you do it, you'll run out of money. For one thing you dont have enough money to support that. The only way to get the money is through either ally gifts or selling their personal items for it. Which will make unhappy citizens and riots, and before you know it your civilization will fall under its own very citizens.

The citizens already have weapons and equipment. They bought it with their own money. It's required. They each recieve training at in large groups, and pull guerilla tactics if anyone is stupid enough to invade me. They're not going to leave the country.

(And my lip just started bleeding.....)

Then how do citizens feed themselves? they starve to death for the first few weeks of buying a gun?

AK-47s cost about $50.