NationStates Jolt Archive

The Evil Overlord published a really good guide to logistics a while ago. I just wanted to provide a good example of it in action. Say, we have an armored division. 300 tanks, let’s say they’re M1A2 Abrams tanks.

Let’s start small. According to the Evil Overlord, every soldier needs at least 66 pounds of gear each day (food, ammo, water, etc). We have one tank, with a crew of four soldiers. Each needs 66 pounds of stuff for himself each day. So… 66 pounds times 4 is 264 pounds. That’s reasonable.

However, we’re driving a big, giant Abrams tank here. We need ammo to put in that big 120mm gun, to blow up that T-72 parked in that little Iraqi village. Let’s assume on an average day of combat you use 100 rounds of ammunition. Every round is about 60 pounds. So… 60 pounds times 100 is six thousand pounds. Add that to the individual tanker’s stuff, and we have 6,264 pounds to give to the Abrams crew.

Of course, that tank isn’t gonna run if it doesn’t have gas. No, you can’t just stop at Chevron in the middle of the Iraqi desert. We assume that an Abrams tank, in the course of one day, uses about its entire fuel tank, about 500 gallons of diesel fuel. So, to survive, this tank is gonna need 6264 pounds of stuff and 500 gallons of fuel. Not too much.

But we’re not gonna send just one tank after the enemy, are we? No, we want a division, nearly 300 tanks. That might defeat someone. But wait… each tank needs 6,264 pounds of stuff and 500 gallons of fuel each day. So, multiply all that by 300, and you’re handing out 939.6 tons of stuff and 150,000 gallons of fuel to your division. Each day.

How are you gonna get that there? Well, you need some trucks. A standard, 5 ton truck carries 5 tones of supplies or 1500 gallons of fuel. We must divide the load we’re sending to the division among those. 939.6 tones over 5 tons per truck is 187.92 trucks, and 150000 gallons of fuel over 1500 is 100 trucks. So, about 300 trucks are needed to supply 300 Abrams tanks. Each day.

But those trucks can’t deliver supplies if they don’t have fuel and their crews don’t have food and water. So, with a crew of three per each truck, we have 66 pounds per soldier times three, and then times 300, and we’ve got about 30 tons of stuff to give them. And what about fuel? To go a distance of about 300 miles, an average 5 ton truck will need about 80 gallons of fuel. Multiply that by 300 and we have 24,000 gallons of fuel to give our trucks.

Of course, these trucks probably aren’t going to go all the way back to your factories to get supplies, and bring them all the way to the front. Unless your rear is right behind your frontlines, you will probably have either a long stretch of land or ocean in between. Over land, trains are efficient means of getting lots of supplies to a forward supply depot, to be loaded on the trucks and sent towards the troops. If you happen to have an ocean between your rear and your front, supply ships are needed. A good supply ship can carry about 30,000 tons of supplies to the front. That, or 5,000,000 gallons of fuel. But, they need a harbor to dock at. Pipelines will be great help when dealing with fuel, under an ocean or over land. But you need the pipes in place, or you need to assemble the pipe, which takes a while. Ideally, when invading a country, secure harbors, pipelines, and railroads, and use them to make sure your forward supply depots are close to the front. Conversely, if you are retreating, blow these things up, lest the enemy use them.

So, in summary, your trains or ships or whatever gets supplies to the forward supply depots is gonna have to carry supplies for the front line soldiers and the trucks carrying supplies. We go back to our division of 300 tanks and 300 trucks. We need to get 939.6 tons of stuff for the tanks and 30 tons for the trucks, along with 150,000 gallons of fuel for the tanks and 24000 gallons of fuel for the trucks. So, that is 174,000 gallons of fuel and 969.6 tons of stuff.

Sound hard? Actually, this is a complete sham. This is absolute logistical la-la-land. Unless you have a tendency to god-mod, you will take losses, which you will have to replace. Your tanks will get damaged, and you will need to send recovery vehicles to take them back to your forward depots for repair. You need to bring up the spare parts too. And what about those soldiers inside it? They need a Med-evac helicopter or field ambulance to come pick them up and take them to a hospital. They need medicine, they need food, and they need bandages. They might even need to be sent home, either in a stretcher or a body-bag. They need all the stuff they need to come up by means of your logistical support system. And, to top that all off, you will need replacements, which complicates matters even more. If one of your tanks bites it, and the crew is killed, you need a new tank and crew to come up and replace it. That doesn’t happen automatically. They need a ship or airplane or something to come take them from your rear to your front. Let’s assume that we are running at a daily attrition rate of 5%, which can happen. You will need to replace 15 of your precious Abrams tanks each day. They might be sent on ship, they might be sent by plane or train, but they won’t just pop up at a “respawn” point somewhere on the map! Say one C-17 carries 1 Abrams tank and crew to the combat zone. If you have a 5% attrition rate with your division of 300 tanks, you will need 15 flights of C-17s each day. On the way back they can take the wounded and dead.

But what if your enemy gets wise and starts attacking your supply lines? No matter how well you defend yourself, you will lose some of those trucks and ships and trains and planes and what have you (unless you do god-mod, in which case I wonder why you’re reading this). Again, you will need to replace those, and their crew. You may want to add some more trucks and everything, so that if you loose some it won’t hurt that much.

Anyway, that’s just a quick example of how complicated this all gets. Sure, it isn’t fun, but if you really want to be serious (and be taken seriously) you ought to RP this. It’s fine to have a division of 300 tanks sent against your enemy, just make sure you can supply them. Or else, you will lose.

I'm glad people are reading the thread. A lot of players have contributed some really good information to it. Thanks for the shout.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=275828

Part of the problem with discussing logistics in the context of NS role-playing is the (quite justified) opinion that it gets in the way of having fun with a war RP. In my opinion, it should rarely be necessary to get deeply involved in the minutiae of logistics.

A good war RP should involve logistical concerns, if only because it adds a lot of "realism" to the writing. Instead of the usual, ten armored divisions with air support assault your border forces, you could have a more involved exchange of posts. The attacking country would have to move troops and equipment to their staging areas near the enemy border, and the enemy would probably notice this (if they didn't, they deserved to get invaded). So the enemy would start mobilizing his own troops. It would become a race to see who would be ready first, and both sides would have a hard time concealing the preparations from their neighbor. There are several proven ways to achieve strategic and tactical surprise in order to offset these difficulties, which I won't bother going into.

Once the shooting starts, a good war RP should resemble a slow-motion swordfight. The invader would hurl his troops across the border (or ocean, or interplanetary gulf, or whatever), probably following a massive air and missile attack on the enemy's troops and equipment ... and his means of getting replacement troops and equipment up to the border. For example, RL NATO war plans for dealing with a Soviet invasion of western Europe specified using tactical nukes against bridges, major road networks, and other targets associated with preventing the Soviets from rapidly reinforcing their units at the front ... and making it tougher to re-supply those units.

The country in my example that is being invaded would have to try to stop the invaders from re-supplying the units at the front. Major efforts would be made to accomplish this, because it is almost always easier to destroy enemy troops and equipment when they have no ammunition and fuel. It is also usually easier to destroy fuel and other supplies than it is to destroy a tank. It's even easier to blow up bridges, roads, railroads, port facilities, etc, because they can't move. This won't directly kill off the invading troops, but it will dramatically increase the invader's difficulties in re-supplying those troops.

So our invadee starts dropping artillery-deployed mines all over the invader's re-supply routes, and has a few squadrons of aircraft dedicated to attacking these routes. The invader counters this by deploying mine-countermeasures and air-defense units along the supply routes, and a few squadrons of fighter planes to keep enemy aircraft away. The invadee destroys a couple of dams, which force the invaders to shift their point-of-attack a hundred kilometers (incidentally making the supply lines longer- and more vulnerable), and the process begins again. It's another race, this time between the invader's ability to supply his units and the invadee's ability to screw up the invader's re-supply operation.

Aside from the easy-to-understand desire to make life really tough for the Germans in WW II, why do you suppose the Allies spent so much time, effort, and blood on bombing runs over German cities in WW II? The idea was not so much to kill a lot of Germans (although that was one consideration) as to damage Germany's ability to build tanks, planes, etc. Most of those massive air raids were trying to blow up factories that made ball bearings. Without ball bearings, the Germans couldn't make tanks, planes, trucks, or the machines to make/repair those things. The US and Britain spent the lives of hundreds of young men to prevent the production of ball-bearings ... or oil ... or any of a thousand other seemingly innocuous items without which modern war cannot be fought.

That decision- a coldly calculated cost-benefit analysis that resulted in sending hundreds of men and machines to certain destruction to destroy ball-bearing factories- is why I keep repeating this quote:

"Amateurs study tactics. Generals study logistics."

TEO

hey good for you massive fan of logistics
DAK needed 35K of supplies a month got like 8K not enough to win a war
Go on people streach those supply lines

I never know what im talking about so i dont expect you to. :p

"Amateurs study tactics. Generals study logistics."

TEO
Twas my understanding Generals studied Stratergy
Logistics is for the KEsselrings of this world optimists

The Evil Overlord published a really good guide to logistics a while ago. I just wanted to provide a good example of it in action. Say, we have an armored division. 300 tanks, let’s say they’re M1A2 Abrams tanks.

Let’s start small. According to the Evil Overlord, every soldier needs at least 66 pounds of gear each day (food, ammo, water, etc). We have one tank, with a crew of four soldiers. Each needs 66 pounds of stuff for himself each day. So… 66 pounds times 4 is 264 pounds. That’s reasonable.

However, we’re driving a big, giant Abrams tank here. We need ammo to put in that big 120mm gun, to blow up that T-72 parked in that little Iraqi village. Let’s assume on an average day of combat you use 100 rounds of ammunition. Every round is about 60 pounds. So… 60 pounds times 100 is six thousand pounds. Add that to the individual tanker’s stuff, and we have 6,264 pounds to give to the Abrams crew.

Of course, that tank isn’t gonna run if it doesn’t have gas. No, you can’t just stop at Chevron in the middle of the Iraqi desert. We assume that an Abrams tank, in the course of one day, uses about its entire fuel tank, about 500 gallons of diesel fuel. So, to survive, this tank is gonna need 6264 pounds of stuff and 500 gallons of fuel. Not too much.

But we’re not gonna send just one tank after the enemy, are we? No, we want a division, nearly 300 tanks. That might defeat someone. But wait… each tank needs 6,264 pounds of stuff and 500 gallons of fuel each day. So, multiply all that by 300, and you’re handing out 939.6 tons of stuff and 150,000 gallons of fuel to your division. Each day.

How are you gonna get that there? Well, you need some trucks. A standard, 5 ton truck carries 5 tones of supplies or 1500 gallons of fuel. We must divide the load we’re sending to the division among those. 939.6 tones over 5 tons per truck is 187.92 trucks, and 150000 gallons of fuel over 1500 is 100 trucks. So, about 300 trucks are needed to supply 300 Abrams tanks. Each day.

But those trucks can’t deliver supplies if they don’t have fuel and their crews don’t have food and water. So, with a crew of three per each truck, we have 66 pounds per soldier times three, and then times 300, and we’ve got about 30 tons of stuff to give them. And what about fuel? To go a distance of about 300 miles, an average 5 ton truck will need about 80 gallons of fuel. Multiply that by 300 and we have 24,000 gallons of fuel to give our trucks.

Of course, these trucks probably aren’t going to go all the way back to your factories to get supplies, and bring them all the way to the front. Unless your rear is right behind your frontlines, you will probably have either a long stretch of land or ocean in between. Over land, trains are efficient means of getting lots of supplies to a forward supply depot, to be loaded on the trucks and sent towards the troops. If you happen to have an ocean between your rear and your front, supply ships are needed. A good supply ship can carry about 30,000 tons of supplies to the front. That, or 5,000,000 gallons of fuel. But, they need a harbor to dock at. Pipelines will be great help when dealing with fuel, under an ocean or over land. But you need the pipes in place, or you need to assemble the pipe, which takes a while. Ideally, when invading a country, secure harbors, pipelines, and railroads, and use them to make sure your forward supply depots are close to the front. Conversely, if you are retreating, blow these things up, lest the enemy use them.

So, in summary, your trains or ships or whatever gets supplies to the forward supply depots is gonna have to carry supplies for the front line soldiers and the trucks carrying supplies. We go back to our division of 300 tanks and 300 trucks. We need to get 939.6 tons of stuff for the tanks and 30 tons for the trucks, along with 150,000 gallons of fuel for the tanks and 24000 gallons of fuel for the trucks. So, that is 174,000 gallons of fuel and 969.6 tons of stuff.

Sound hard? Actually, this is a complete sham. This is absolute logistical la-la-land. Unless you have a tendency to god-mod, you will take losses, which you will have to replace. Your tanks will get damaged, and you will need to send recovery vehicles to take them back to your forward depots for repair. You need to bring up the spare parts too. And what about those soldiers inside it? They need a Med-evac helicopter or field ambulance to come pick them up and take them to a hospital. They need medicine, they need food, and they need bandages. They might even need to be sent home, either in a stretcher or a body-bag. They need all the stuff they need to come up by means of your logistical support system. And, to top that all off, you will need replacements, which complicates matters even more. If one of your tanks bites it, and the crew is killed, you need a new tank and crew to come up and replace it. That doesn’t happen automatically. They need a ship or airplane or something to come take them from your rear to your front. Let’s assume that we are running at a daily attrition rate of 5%, which can happen. You will need to replace 15 of your precious Abrams tanks each day. They might be sent on ship, they might be sent by plane or train, but they won’t just pop up at a “respawn” point somewhere on the map! Say one C-17 carries 1 Abrams tank and crew to the combat zone. If you have a 5% attrition rate with your division of 300 tanks, you will need 15 flights of C-17s each day. On the way back they can take the wounded and dead.

But what if your enemy gets wise and starts attacking your supply lines? No matter how well you defend yourself, you will lose some of those trucks and ships and trains and planes and what have you (unless you do god-mod, in which case I wonder why you’re reading this). Again, you will need to replace those, and their crew. You may want to add some more trucks and everything, so that if you loose some it won’t hurt that much.

Anyway, that’s just a quick example of how complicated this all gets. Sure, it isn’t fun, but if you really want to be serious (and be taken seriously) you ought to RP this. It’s fine to have a division of 300 tanks sent against your enemy, just make sure you can supply them. Or else, you will lose.
Alamein by John Latimer is a good example of these concerns it gives a good breakdown of everything including the british tank recovery companies who would repair so many tanks a day.

Tag, for future reference. Good stuff here. :)

Wow Bonstock, I'm surprised (and somewhat impressed).

Really, really good! Thanks to both The Evil Overlord and bonstock for this!

I learn as long as I live