NationStates Jolt Archive

OK, I think I have it more or less figured out. The total military is 2 million men (1/10 of about 2 percent of a nation of my population). Granted, my nation is a little less than a billion now, but I think I'll keep these numbers until I get up to like 2 billion...and even then, the numbers aren't completely crazy. My defense budget is around 4 trillion a year as is.

Army (http://www.freewebs.com/romanorum/gensromaearmy.htm)

75,000 Dardo Infantry Fighting Vehicles

25,000 M6 Linebacker Air Defense Infantry Fighting Vehicles

12,500 Ariete Battle Tanks

7,600 PzH 2000 Self Propelled Howitzers

4,000 Flakpanzer Gepards

400,000 Vehicle Crews armed with the Glock 18 Pistol

600,000 Infantry armed with the G36 Assault Rifle and Glock 18 Pistol

The Roman Army is divided into 25 legions composed as follows:

3,000 Dardo Infantry Fighting Vehicles

1,000 M6 Linebacker Air Defense Infantry Fighting Vehicles

500 Ariete Battle Tanks

304 PzH 2000 Self Propelled Howitzers

106 Flakpanzer Gepards

16,000 Vehicle Crews

24,000 Infantry Armed with the G36 Assault Rifle and Glock 18 Pistol (18,000 in the Dardo IFVs; 6,000 in the Linebacker IFVs)

Army: 1,000,000

Navy (http://www.freewebs.com/romanorum/gensromaenavy.htm)

40 Iowa Class Battleships (72,000)

20 Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers (113,600)

800 F-35 Lightning II Attack Fighters (800)

800 Eurofighter Typhoon Attack Fighters (1,600)

200 USS Tarawa Class Amphibious Assault Ships (192,000)

1,400 Agusta A129 Mangusta Attack Helicopters (2,800)

1,000 LCAC Landing Crafts (5,000)

370 Ticonderoga Class Cruisers (133,200)

500 Arleigh Burke Class Destroyers (161,500)

900 Oliver Perry Class Frigates (158,400)

1,200 Los Angeles Class Submarines (154,800)

860 B-52 Stratofortress Bombers (4,300)

990,500 Seamen armed with the G36 Assault Rifle and Glock 18 Pistol

9,500 Air Crews armed with the Glock 18 Pistol

The Roman Navy is divided into 10 Fleets composed as follows:

4 Iowa Class Battleships

2 Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers

80 F-35 Lightning II Attack Fighters (40 on each Aircraft Carrier)

80 Eurofighter Typhoon Attack Fighters (40 on each Aircraft Carrier)

20 US Tarawa Amphibious Assault Ships

140 Agusta A129 Mangusta Attack Helicopters (7 on each Amphibious Assault Ship)

100 LCAC Landing Craft (5 on each Amphibious Assault Ship)

37 Ticonderoga Class Cruisers

50 Arleigh Burke Class Destroyers

90 Oliver Perry Class Frigates

120 Los Angeles Class Frigates

99,050 Seamen

950 Aircrews

The Roman Navy also has 20 Bomber Squadrons of 43 B-52s each.

Navy: 1,000,000

What do y'all think?

Do y'all think this should work?

You know the majority of your military would be in logistics, that's why I use private civilian businesses to bring my food and oil with a military escort, that way I have propaganda if anyone attacks my logistic trains and stimulate the economy. :D

You know the majority of your military would be in logistics, that's why I use private civilian businesses to bring my food and oil with a military escort, that way I have propaganda if anyone attacks my logistic trains and stimulate the economy. :D

Dude. The 6 million is the portion that isn't logistics. Including logistics, the whole army is like 60 million.

Like, seriously, you thought 6 million included logistics? That's an insult. I might just rp sending over a legion and a fleet because you said that. :mad:

Well, your navy is huge, and with no air support, your navy would be epic fail. EPIC FAIL!

http://wx5tvs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/fail1.jpg

I mean, seriously. The Bismarck, the Yamato, and all of the ships in Pearl Harbour, though that doesn't really count being an ambush attack.

Well, your navy is huge, and with no air support, your navy would be epic fail. EPIC FAIL!

http://wx5tvs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/fail1.jpg

I mean, seriously. The Bismarck, the Yamato, and all of the ships in Pearl Harbour, though that doesn't really count being an ambush attack.

The Airforce is built into the Navy.

Only around 300 actual fighters? A nation your size would have thousands, and with a separate branch for the air force. Truly, the navy can only do so much; helicopters are useless against advanced AA systems unless the AA is surprised.

Dude. The 6 million is the portion that isn't logistics. Including logistics, the whole army is like 60 million.

Major wankage. My total armed forces including logistics is roughly 9.5 million, or about 1% of my total population. That's generally an accepted number. With a 60 million strong army I'd imagine 50 million of those would be ill-dressed, ill-trained and wielding little more than large clubs.

EDIT: Actually you can have up to 5% of your population as a general rule, but it's generally accepted that the more you throw into your army the more damage it does to troop quality.

I think you are confused. There are like 280 fighters per fleet. I have 20 fleets.

2,800 F-35 Lightning II Attack Fighters (2,800)

2,800 Eurofighter Typhoon Attack Fighters (5,600)

Don't mind the numbers on the right: Those were primarily clerical so that I could keep count of the number of men. In the whole fleet, there are ...5.6 thousand fighters.

Plus the 32 in the Praetorian Gaurd.

Major wankage. My total armed forces including logistics is roughly 9.5 million, or about 1% of my total population. That's generally an accepted number. With a 60 million strong army I'd imagine 50 million of those would be ill-dressed, ill-trained and wielding little more than large clubs.

EDIT: Actually you can have up to 5% of your population as a general rule, but it's generally accepted that the more you throw into your army the more damage it does to troop quality.

I did consider that objection, but I think that really depends on how much money is going into the military. Almost half of my budget is military, which amounts to around 4 trillion yearly. Clearly, by the time I get to 1.2 billion and beyond, I'll have a military budget that exceeds that. No? Also, as I said, I'm gonna be keeping that number until I get to like 2 billion.

Not to mention that my nation has a conscripted fighting force.

You are CA, buy CA stuff

You are CA, buy CA stuff

Uh...can I say that my troops eat CA spam?

Yeah that does play a part, but the main issue apart from supplying your troops is what those numbers do to your economy. Having such a large portion of your adult population in the Armed Forces will create job shortages elsewhere, which will in turn break your economy. People won't like the idea of getting mugged daily because all the cops are playing soldier, or their education, healthcare and other necessities being nonexistent. Basically, you can't run a military state like this. Laws of Economics won't allow it.

I did consider that objection, but I think that really depends on how much money is going into the military. Almost half of my budget is military, which amounts to around 4 trillion yearly. Clearly, by the time I get to 1.2 billion and beyond, I'll have a military budget that exceeds that. No? Also, as I said, I'm gonna be keeping that number until I get to like 2 billion.

Not to mention that my nation has a conscripted fighting force.

I say this a lot, but there are no RULES about how you RP your military size short of godmodding. There are rules of thumb for it, but feel free to ignore them if you can RP the consequences or find a way to avoid them.

All the same though, much more than 50 million TOTAL, and you'll be seeing some very serious economic problems.

You can't put a B-52 on a Nimitz. The Nimitz is something like 200 m long, and the B-52 requires well over 1000 m to take off. In addition, the stresses placed upon the ship would cause.... uh.... bad things to happen. It's just not practical. I recommend leaving the B-52s at airbases in your nation and building a lot more F-35s, enough that the approximate munitions loadout is equivalent. (The F-35s will actually be more useful; being smaller and stealthier, they can fly below the radar ceiling and deliver blows at unexpected times.) I also recommend investing in a dedicated carrier-launched air superiority fighter (Su-33 and F-18E come to mind, or comparable NS designs), to defend your F-35s as they do the above; alternately, deploy two differently configured groups of F-35s, one with air-to-surface missiles and bombs and one with air-to-air missiles.

Even if it doesn't really hurt you, the drain on the economy itself from the defense spending, your costs will expand to fit this spending, so you can't really say it's going to improve your ability to field forces. All spending comes to a point of diminishing returns where you spend more money to get less. At 50% for example i'd think your state would be basically running for the benefit of your defense industry without much of an increase in your ability to field forces over say..25%.

You can't put a B-52 on a Nimitz. The Nimitz is something like 200 m long, and the B-52 requires well over 1000 m to take off. In addition, the stresses placed upon the ship would cause.... uh.... bad things to happen. It's just not practical. I recommend leaving the B-52s at airbases in your nation and building a lot more F-35s, enough that the approximate munitions loadout is equivalent. (The F-35s will actually be more useful; being smaller and stealthier, they can fly below the radar ceiling and deliver blows at unexpected times.) I also recommend investing in a dedicated carrier-launched air superiority fighter (Su-33 and F-18E come to mind, or comparable NS designs), to defend your F-35s as they do the above; alternately, deploy two differently configured groups of F-35s, one with air-to-surface missiles and bombs and one with air-to-air missiles.

That's something I didn't consider. I'll look into that.

I say this a lot, but there are no RULES about how you RP your military size short of godmodding. There are rules of thumb for it, but feel free to ignore them if you can RP the consequences or find a way to avoid them.

All the same though, much more than 50 million TOTAL, and you'll be seeing some very serious economic problems.

^ Also what he said, but I was sort of going off on my own little tangential area of expertise. As long as you don't implement this plan until you hit 1.2 billion, though, you should be fine. (As for right now, I guess you can just scale it down, or RP everything being slightly subpar due to the very recent upgrades and retraining, but nobody ever does that.)

Third of all, military spending as % of GDP isn't necessarily fixed. In peacetime, maintaining an army should not cost you much more than 5-10% of GDP, otherwise the army is too big and it's time to sell off some of those old tanks and send some of the grunts home to their families. You currently have 14% of GDP, which will negatively affect the economy, but not all too much -- just don't expect your citizens' lifestyles to resemble those of, say, Americans or West Europeans. In wartime, though, you can go up to 40% or more (especially if your country is under attack), with the only ill effects being a minor recession in every industry but those catering to the military -- small arms, ammunition, motor vehicles, paint, fabric, undertakers, etc.

Ok, I decided to scrap the Stratofortresses entirely and replace them with the (manwise) equivalent number of fighters. I figure that whatever I could do with bombs I could probably do with ship based missiles. No?

Third of all, military spending as % of GDP isn't necessarily fixed. In peacetime, maintaining an army should not cost you much more than 5-10% of GDP, otherwise the army is too big and it's time to sell off some of those old tanks and send some of the grunts home to their families. You currently have 14% of GDP, which will negatively affect the economy, but not all too much -- just don't expect your citizens' lifestyles to resemble those of, say, Americans or West Europeans. In wartime, though, you can go up to 40% or more (especially if your country is under attack), with the only ill effects being a minor recession in every industry but those catering to the military -- small arms, ammunition, motor vehicles, paint, fabric, undertakers, etc.

I don't really see why military spending as a % of GDP should necessarily be a bad thing for me. Granted, my military budget is like half of my total budget...but my tax rate is only a little over 30 percent.

Just fyi, both the Lightning II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II#Specifications_.28F-35_Lightning_II.29) and the Typhoon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurofighter_Typhoon#Specifications_.28Typhoon.29) can be outfitted with bombs. However, 1200 B-52s translate into about 32.4 million kg of munitions, whereas 4800 of Typhoon and Lightning apiece translate into only 31.2 million kg of munitions, approximately. (To compensate, I recommend launching more advanced surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles from your ships; as in, NS designs rather than RL ones.)

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=508486

Equip your men from here.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=508486

Equip your men from here.

No offense...but the selection on your storefront is horrible.

Just fyi, both the Lightning II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-35_Lightning_II#Specifications_.28F-35_Lightning_II.29) and the Typhoon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurofighter_Typhoon#Specifications_.28Typhoon.29) can be outfitted with bombs. However, 1200 B-52s translate into about 32.4 million kg of munitions, whereas 4800 of Typhoon and Lightning apiece translate into only 31.2 million kg of munitions, approximately. (To compensate, I recommend launching more advanced surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles from your ships; as in, NS designs rather than RL ones.)

Right...but I was thinking about one of objections on the first page, which is to say, that without sufficient air support my navy would be uber phail. Granted, if I don't have the 1200 B-52s, then that means I have less bombardment capabilities...but that should also mean that, replaced by the fighters, my ships should become vastly more protected, no?

Right...but I was thinking about one of objections on the first page, which is to say, that without sufficient air support my navy would be uber phail. Granted, if I don't have the 1200 B-52s, then that means I have less bombardment capabilities...but that should also mean that, replaced by the fighters, that my ships should become vastly more protected, no?

Yeah, I think I may be a bit ahead of you here. I agree that replacing the B-52s with more fighters will allow your navy to better defend itself. I was thinking out loud about a replacement for the B-52; but they're not really needed in a naval setting anyway. Just mothball them in a military base out somewhere, keep a few pilots trained to fly them, and when you need to carpet bomb your enemies just magick them out and say Czardas said you could.

Yeah, I think I may be a bit ahead of you here. I agree that replacing the B-52s with more fighters will allow your navy to better defend itself. I was thinking out loud about a replacement for the B-52; but they're not really needed in a naval setting anyway. Just mothball them in a military base out somewhere, keep a few pilots trained to fly them, and when you need to carpet bomb your enemies just magick them out and say Czardas said you could.

Haha, yeah. But seriously though, the ships that I have should be able to do more or less the same that the B-52's would normally be able to do?

Haha, yeah. But seriously though, the ships that I have should be able to do more or less the same that the B-52's would normally be able to do?
[A] You have battleships, which have guns that fire shells; the appropriate kind of shell will do about as much damage as a bomb (with missiles doing more damage but being proportionally more expensive). Your fighters can also launch ASMs and drop a variety of bombs up to 2,000 lbs in weight.

[B] For long-range attacks, a submarine is slower, but stealthier and can carry more missiles. If you really want bombs, the missiles can be drones that split apart into a few big bombs, or lots of little bombs (I've seen that in NS an awful lot).

[C] The only time you will want bombers are for targets that are either too far inland to be hit by a missile, or extremely far away from your nation and requiring multiple weeks or months of sail. Hence, like I said, recycle about eighty percent of 'em as scrap and stick the others in a warehouse.

[C] The only time you will want bombers are for targets that are either too far inland to be hit by a missile

I don't think this should be a problem. Each fleet is accompanied by a legion. No?

Hey, I'd like to point out that my economy just jumped. At a tax rate of 36 percent, my defense budget being 46 percent of that 36 percent taxed, my population being 979 million, my defense budget is $4,538,871,876,739.20.

I'm pretty sure I can fund the military that I have posted. :D

Hey, I'd like to point out that my economy just jumped. At a tax rate of 36 percent, my defense budget being 46 percent of that 36 percent taxed, my population being 979 million, my defense budget is $4,538,871,876,739.20.

I'm pretty sure I can fund the military that I have posted. :D

If you're planning on having an armed forces of 60,000,000 people, then that would equate to spending about $75,000 per person. Bearing in mind that some of that would have to be basic pay, and that some of your men will be paid a lot more than others, you will barely have sufficient money left over to clothe and feed them, let alone equip them. And you still have to find some money to buy, fuel and maintain all of the tanks, planes, ships, etc that you want as well. That budget isn't just a cheque that you can use to buy $4 trillion worth of stuff, for you also need to have most of it left over so that you can maintain the stuff you already have, which costs a lot in itself.

If you're planning on having an armed forces of 60,000,000 people, then that would equate to spending about $75,000 per person. Bearing in mind that some of that would have to be basic pay, and that some of your men will be paid a lot more than others, you will barely have sufficient money left over to clothe and feed them, let alone equip them. And you still have to find some money to buy, fuel and maintain all of the tanks, planes, ships, etc that you want as well. That budget isn't just a cheque that you can use to buy $4 trillion worth of stuff, for you also need to have most of it left over so that you can maintain the stuff you already have, which costs a lot in itself.

At the most, my army is at 20 million, that includes logistics.........

OOC: At 1.2 billion with a 60 million man army, your in the same situation as North Korea. In fact they have less troops per citizen then you. Ever wonder why their economy sucks? Because all of their capable population is in the military, and the military is unable to do the economic jobs needed. So yea, you can have this military, just remember you're going to be no better off then North Korea, which is very very bad.

If you want to be in a situation closer to that of say, the US, you want to keep an army under 6 million. You can keep a decent reserve force just a little under that number as well, bringing a total of around 10 million avalible if you're invaded, but those are still only reseves.

OOC: At 1.2 billion with a 60 million man army, your in the same situation as North Korea. In fact they have less troops per citizen then you. Ever wonder why their economy sucks? Because all of their capable population is in the military, and the military is unable to do the economic jobs needed. So yea, you can have this military, just remember you're going to be no better off then North Korea, which is very very bad.

If you want to be in a situation closer to that of say, the US, you want to keep an army under 6 million. You can keep a decent reserve force just a little under that number as well, bringing a total of around 10 million avalible if you're invaded, but those are still only reseves.

I took that into consideration, Dostanuot. The way I figure it, since it's a conscripted army, they really don't have a lot of say in how much they get paid. So, I figure that the average pay may as well be right around the "GDP per Capita," which right now is about $30,000. So, alright, I have $75,000 to spend per person. However, between food, pay, healthcare, etc...each is only getting about $30,000.

This means I have $45,000 per person to spend on ammunition, new purchase, and maintanence of old stuff per year. At 60,000,000, this means that I have... 2.7 trillion yearly on top of what they are being paid (And for the record, understand that I am basing this number on my current budget at only like 980 million. This is supposed to come into effect when I am at 1.2 billion, and so when I'll have a much larger budget).

Well, let's say that I have 20 trillion dollars worth of hardware. Does it really cost the entire amount to maintain every year? Or only a portion? Let's say I pay a tenth of that yearly to maintain. That number goes down to 2 trillion yearly. This means I still have 700 billion yearly in surplus. No?

Nonetheless, I still bet you are skeptic. So let's see if I'd still be able to buy it wholesale. Well, let's take one of the IFVs. I have $45,000 per person, and there are 9 people to one IFV (Which costs, according to Elite Arm's storefront, around 1.3 million). However, the 9 people in the IFV is only 1/10 of the total force, including logistics. So, there are actually 90 people to that one IFV. 90 * $45,000 = $4,050,000. So if I were spending the whole thing on maintanance, I'd have the money to purchase that one IFV like 3 times over. So yeah, I think I have enough.

But you say "But the land forces are the cheapest amount!" I say "You're right." Well, there are about 1,800 men per battleship. However, this is only 1/10 of the amount. So there are actually 18,000 men per battleship. 18,000 * $45,000 = $810,000. This is more than half of the amount to purchase the battleship outright.

There are like 5,600 people per Carrier. This means that there are 56,000 people per carrier. 56,000 * 45,000 = 2.52 billion dollars.

OOC: You might want to look at an actual defence budget report before you start crunching numbers. Try this, taken from the following 2005 release of the predicted 2006 budget.
http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2006/fy2006_greenbook.pdf

Total US defence budget for 2005 was $423,604,000,000 USD. Or roughly $424 billion dollars.
Of that, 25% ($106 billion) went to keeping the soldiers alive. Plus a further $4 billion for military housing, so $110 billion goes to the soldiers and their upkeep directly, including pay.
Maintenence of existing equipment alone cost $138 billion, and that was down from the $190 billion of 2004 from equipment cuts. That's right, your equipment alone will cost 55-60% of your budget just to maintain it.
Procurement, at $78 billion, is a mere 18% of the budget.

Now apply those ratios to your own budget. Assuming a $4 trillion budget even, for simplicites sake, that's $1 trillion alone going to your soldiers. It's going to cost you almost just as much to feed, clothe, and train your soldiers, per year, as it does to pay them, so let's assume to keep it simple that you pay your troops $30,000 a year, all of them. Or rather that's what we'll call the average. That means each soldier sucks up $60,000 a year just himself. That means you have enough funding to have 16.6 million soldiers. You can double that to 34 million soldiers, but now your troops are making half the per capita income on average (Meaning there will be a few making more, and many making far less), and the training quality is about on par with the army of Zambia. To get 60 million, your soldiers are now starving to death and so poorly trained they'd lose to a group of Somalian children.

So take money from maintenence you say? Well there goes either the quality of your equipment overall, or you have a small number of working equipment and a huge number of scrap.

The short end is. You can have a 60 million man army, if you don't feed them, sleep them in tents, and they have no training.

OOC: You might want to look at an actual defence budget report before you start crunching numbers. Try this, taken from the following 2005 release of the predicted 2006 budget.
http://www.defenselink.mil/comptroller/defbudget/fy2006/fy2006_greenbook.pdf

Total US defence budget for 2005 was $423,604,000,000 USD. Or roughly $424 billion dollars.
Of that, 25% ($106 billion) went to keeping the soldiers alive. Plus a further $4 billion for military housing, so $110 billion goes to the soldiers and their upkeep directly, including pay.
Maintenence of existing equipment alone cost $138 billion, and that was down from the $190 billion of 2004 from equipment cuts. That's right, your equipment alone will cost 55-60% of your budget just to maintain it.
Procurement, at $78 billion, is a mere 18% of the budget.

Now apply those ratios to your own budget.

I'm not sure that these ratios are universal. These ratios are true of the United States Military, but I'm not sure that these ratios are intrinsic to all militaries. What if the United States has it set up so that they have just enough to keep the soldiers alive and maintain their stuff, but aren't in the process of getting a whole lot more equipment, nor do they want a military surplus?

Assuming a $4 trillion budget even, for simplicites sake, that's $1 trillion alone going to your soldiers. It's going to cost you almost just as much to feed, clothe, and train your soldiers, per year, as it does to pay them, so let's assume to keep it simple that you pay your troops $30,000 a year, all of them.

I fail to see why this is necessarily the case. That said, I didn't say that the soldiers are paid $30,000 a year. I said that, between feeding, clothing, healthcare, and pay, that they are permitted as much as the average GDP.

The short end is. You can have a 60 million man army, if you don't feed them, sleep them in tents, and they have no training.

I wonder if it would solve the problem if the army, though conscripted, were only drafted in phases? Like, if the vast majority of the army were kept on reserve, and only portions were phased in and out in active duty, except in times of war?

For example, let's say that the Army were divided into 10 groups, only 1 of which at any time was on active duty for say...a period of 3 months, the other 9 permitted to have jobs on the side, unless there were an actual war. Would that solve the economic problem?

On the other hand, according to wiki the US Army currently only has a combined strength of 1 million people. My budget is only 10 times that currently, and will probably be less than 15 times that when I get to that size. Bah, I suppose y'all are right in saying that I should scale it down.

I'm not sure that these ratios are universal. These ratios are true of the United States Military, but I'm not sure that these ratios are intrinsic to all militaries. What if the United States has it set up so that they have just enough to keep the soldiers alive and maintain their stuff, but aren't in the process of getting a whole lot more equipment, nor do they want a military surplus?

They're intrinsic for any mechanized force. If your force is mechanized, most of your funds go to maintaining that mechanization, always. The only way to avoid that is to not have vehicles, and walk everywhere like it's 1912.

And the US military is not getting a whole lot of new equipment. In fact it's getting very little new equipment, with any serious gains spread out over decades for just that reason. It's expensive. And no surplus means no military. The US keeps an extensive surplus going back 25-30 years in terms of production, and they keep it because they may need it. As new stuff comes in the old gets scrapped, sold, or given away.

I fail to see why this is necessarily the case. That said, I didn't say that the soldiers are paid $30,000 a year. I said that, between feeding, clothing, healthcare, and pay, that they are permitted as much as the average GDP.
Then, like I said, Somalia will have better trained and equipped troops then yours, with much more experiance and much much more morale and motivation. Your armed force is a competitive buisness, especially in a Capitalist economy, where it needs competitive pay. If you're not paying them enough, they're not going to put effort into it, and then no matter how many men you have they will get crushed by an army that actually pays their troops.


I wonder if it would solve the problem if the army, though conscripted, were only drafted in phases? Like, if the vast majority of the army were kept on reserve, and only portions were phased in and out in active duty, except in times of war?

For example, let's say that the Army were divided into 10 groups, only 1 of which at any time was on active duty for say...a period of 3 months, the other 9 permitted to have jobs on the side, unless there were an actual war. Would that solve the economic problem?

You mean like the Soviets? They had the problem out of over a hundred divisions, a dozen would be anywhere near operational capacity, maybe two dozen more would be useless and take months if not a year to make even remotely combat ready, and the majority of their "divisions" existed only on paper, run by old retired, and reserve officers, with no troops, and equipment decades old.

Like I said, you can't afford a 60 million man armed force with the equipment you want, especially not one that will be able to actually fight. You need to ask yourself why you want an armed force so large. A smaller, better trained one, with reserve surplus and a decent reserve capable force is a much better fighting force.

On the other hand, according to wiki the US Army currently only has a combined strength of 1 million people. My budget is only 10 times that currently, and will probably be less than 15 times that when I get to that size. Bah, I suppose y'all are right in saying that I should scale it down.

Entire US armed forces, reserves included, is roughly 3 million right now. We're talking entire forces here. If you want just your army to have 60 million men it's even less likely then what you're proposing now.

EDIT: Allow me to say it like this. You're proposing an armed force 10 million stronger then mine. And I have more then twelve times the defence budget you do. The larger your forces get, the more they cost to run per number.

Alright, in light of the comments here, I've decided to go ahead and scale it back to a third of the originally proposed size. How's it look now? More importantly, does it look kickass? Should I be able to actually whip people's asses?

Wipping ass will depend how well you RP them.
A third will do it, but it won't be the most top notch on NS. Quite well off for an aggressive nation of your size none the less.

Alright, in light of the comments here, I've decided to go ahead and scale it back to a third of the originally proposed size. How's it look now? More importantly, does it look kickass? Should I be able to actually whip people's asses?

Maybe not. My total's about 1,500,000, about which 40% are reserve, and of that 900,000 active, 600,000 are active but not on the front line. My total pop.'s about 36,000,000, so at any given peacetime moment, I have 300,000 people shooting, about 0.8% of the population, because of draft. with 20 mil over 1 bil, you have 5%, the maximum practical size of a military. I think 10 million works better, since you have about 25 times more people than me and only 2 times my budget.

Maybe not. My total's about 1,500,000, about which 40% are reserve, and of that 900,000 active, 600,000 are active but not on the front line. My total pop.'s about 36,000,000, so at any given peacetime moment, I have 300,000 people shooting, about 0.8% of the population, because of draft. with 20 mil over 1 bil, you have 5%, the maximum practical size of a military. I think 10 million works better, since you have about 25 times more people than me and only 2 times my budget.

By my calculations, you should only have an army 720,000 stong, with a total of 72,000 actual fighting people. That said, your defense budget (http://nsdossier.texasregion.net/main.aspx) is only like 62 billion. Mine is over 4 trillion. My budget is over 60 times your own.

5% is not the maximum practical size of an armed force, it's the maximum size you can get without flushing your economy down the drain completely. As you approach it, your economy is either shifted completely to a war footing, or it starts to suffer horribly. And your economy can't survive on a war footing for very long, maybe a decade if needed. The longer it stays like that the longer it has to be off war to recuperate. You can, if you're desperate (Like Germany 1945 desperate) go above 5%, maybe as high as 10%, but your country is going to look North Korea look like paradise if you manage to win that fight, and you'll only be able to hold those numbers for a shot time (A few months to a year, maximum).