NationStates Jolt Archive


Goldwater Line Developement Thread [closed]

Allanea
25-06-2005, 11:07
Even as the last shots of the Last Edolian War died out, some in the Demarque Administration were well-worried about the future. The Allanean military was now smaller than it was during the First Edolian War, and there was needed a new, better way to protect Allanea against the new menaces of the world - among them, the rising red star of Hogsweatian communism. It wasn’t long until someone suggested the Goldwater Line.

Thousands of workers - most allured by even the minimal pay that was offered at the Line construction - streamed towards the Hogsweatian border. What they began doing was simple. They dug. With the aid of the Army’s combat bulldozers, they created, only five hundred meters away from the actual border, an anti-tank ditch.

The ditch - a work of military engineering to rival any other of its time of Haven - was five meters wide at it’s highest point, narrowing to two meters at the bottom. You could climb out of it - but you couldn’t drive out in a tank - especially given the various anti-tank devices strewn all over it’s bottom . The ground dug out from the ditch was laid out in gentle slopes at it’s sides - you’d be going slightly uphill when coming in from enemy side, running downhill after and if you cross. Both sides were also mined generously with inhuman amounts of anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines.

The five hundred meters of ground between the ditch and the Hogsweatian border proper were simply filled with a hellish mixture of Claymores, concrete-poured anti-tank obstacles, barbed wire and steel anti-vehicle ‘teeth’ [constituting of a rail bit driven vertically into the ground, not tall enough to be noticed from a moving APC, tall enough to stop it.]

http://armor.kiev.ua/army/engenear/ptrow-1.gif

If a luckless enemy were to stumble across all of those and still be alive, he would be presented with a fresh new problem - the LTFP’s, Long Term Firing Positions. Along the 1,120-kilometer expanse of the Hogsweatian border, two thousand simple positions were made, from the most ancient and the best fortification material ever made - earth and wood - logs for the practice were brought in from Edolia and Yasmarea, where entire square miles of pristine land were being stripped of all vegetation for the purpose. Each of those had a light weapon of some form attached to it - a Maxim watercooled machine-gun, that found its new life in the defence of emplacements, an MK-19 fully-automatic grenade launcher, or a full-blown ATGM launch system - all compact, cheap, and extremely destructive.

Those LTFP’s were constructed only about three hundred meters from the ditch, creating a deadly field of interlocking gunfire. But they were not the only positions in the Goldwater Line. Its amazing might was further reinforced by heavy bunkers - concrete monstrosities that each had supplies for about thirty troops. From those, firing was possible to all direction - with five firing ports to the left, right, and back sides, and fiteen to the front. Each such bunker was armed with six MK-19 automatic grenade launchers, two Edolian-captured 120mm cannon [both pointed towards the border], and two heavy machineguns. The rest of the portholes were to provide firing positions for the units small arms and man-portable weapons. Of those bunkers, one hundred and twelve were built, one per ten kilometers of the Line. On top of it all, each bunker housed two small 82mm mortars.

Finally, there were the DoujinBunkers - twenty incredible monsters, each based around the 30-inch ETC naval turret taken off a captured Doujin ship. They bristled with weapon ports, turrets, and were covered with thick concrete-and-steel armor. Like the Millionaire bunkers of Finland, the DB’s were protected against a hit by one and a half tons of high-explosive at the very least - the only real way to destroy one was to fight it out door-to-door.

But that wasn’t all. Throughout the Goldwater Line, tank emplacements were dug out - enough to house 1,000 George W. Bush Mk II main battle tank, the entire tank complement of the Hestonia Army Corps. Ten kilometers behind the ditch, 1,000 155mm self-propelled cannon were scattered throughout the Line, as were anti-aircraft missile launchers and weapons - and 1,000 MRLS system.
All military resources were being concentrated on the Hestonia Penninsula. A full fifth of the Army - but nearly a quarter of it’s funds. Throughout the population, propaganda and recruitment posters were spread out, explaining what to do in case of invasion:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v42/allanea/Propaganda/poster3.jpg

Anti-tank launchers were stockpiled in the basements of government buildings - schools, town halls, courts - to be unearthed and used for guerilla warfare if needed.

This was the first line of Defense in the Goldwater Line.