NationStates Jolt Archive

After the Gens Romae armed forces fiasco, we decided to put up our Army for review.

The Army of Epsilon Halo

Numbers:302,500

Hierarchy: 11 divisions of 11 regiments each.
-1 division: 27,500 people
-1 regiment: 2,500 people

Weapons:

-Rifles: HK 416, M16A4, M4A1, Masada
-Shotguns: SPAS-15, SPAS-12, AA-12
-Snipers:M40, M200
-Light machine guns: MG-4, Minimi
-Medium machine guns: M240, M60
-Heavy machine guns: GAU-2, XM307/312
-Recoilless rifles:M76, M40, Uppercut (modified, modernized Carl Gustav rifle)
-Submachine guns: Steyr TMP, MAC-11, Uzi
-Grenade Launchers: Mikor MGL, M243
-Grenades: M67, F1, MK3A2, RKG-3
-Mortars: M224, M66, M30
-Pistol: Glock 19, Five-seveN, P99
-Rocket launchers: AT-4CS, LAW

This is infantry weapons, will expand later.

Cut that back to about 100 thousand.

For reference's sake:
+Military budget: $21,484,056,510
+Per soldier: $71,021

A modern, mildly-offensive-capable force would be more around 145,000 troops, at $150,000 per soldier (~$143,000 is about the per-capita spending of the JSDF), keeping your defense budget and tax rates (I wouldn't on the latter, personally, but that's because I hate taxes period). What you have here is along the lines of Israel's armed forces (which, for comparison's sake, spends $16,170 per soldier, including reserves + paramilitary, using total budget/total number of troops). Note, however, that the IDF is heavily dependent on American aid, and doesn't have global power projection (but does well on a regional level, though whether that's because of the capabilities of its neighbors is debatable). There are two (well, three) solutions to this, should you wish to be independent and send your military around the world (which is basically all II is about): raise taxes and/or funnel more cash into the armed services, or decrease the size of the military.

Depending on what your citizens think about your nation's security, added to how afraid they are to speak out, you might get an accepting (not "supporting", note) or opposing view if you keep this size and budget apportionment. If they are afraid to speak out, however, they will snap at some point if things don't begin to change. It'll make for an interesting future, but folk pounce on that sort of thing. :p

On another note, I don't think you're particularly well-equipped to be telling someone off about the size of their military, Gens.

EDIT: Actually, converted defense budget is $47,175,104,985 USD, which translates to ~$155,950 per soldier. You're good to go, then, but keep in mind what I mentioned about society.

On another note, I don't think you're particularly well-equipped to be telling someone off about the size of their military, Gens.

I'm just going off of what I was told.

Besides, if to every man in an army there are 9 more doing logistical work, that means that his actual military size is like 3 million.

He has a budget of 62 bil. That means that his people are allotted like 20 thousand per person (max). This compares to me, which at a budget of 4.5 trillion and 20 million soldiers (2 million actual fighting) comes out to...225 thousand per person.

A millitary with top of the line, player created equipment should should have about $350,000 per person for the entire millitary. Half is training costs, a fourth is equipment costs, an eighth is supplies, whats left is pay and benifits. Like Dalnijrus, said how much you spend dpends on what you want for a millitary. If you a want a 3 week training course, and out of date weapon and ships, but OMG Numbah powerz! you spend about 10-15,000 a person. However you face the possiblity of facing a top of line force a fourth your size and getting slaughtered because your troops can't fight worth a crap. But on the other hand don't make it to small of force and spend 500,000+ per unit and have a tiny millitary, or you'll get surrounded and either killed or captured by a bunch of FNGs fresh out of boot camp. So its up to you, but don't go to either extreme and you should be fine.

You aren't doing a very good job of regurgitating the information you got handed, frankly. Consider your responses for a while after a rebuke; it looks like you're trying to overcompensate for your loss if the next comment you make on a subject you recently were trumped on is a one-liner with nothing substantiating it.

I operate under the assumption that people know "army" includes something more than "people I send to hold rifles", until I have evidence of the contrary. I figure it's only polite.

I assume you're getting your budget figures from NSTracker, which measures monetary figures in native currency (note E$ not $, and so on and so forth), rather than USD. The proper figure, then, if one chooses to use that calculator, is $47,175,104,985 USD, as I've included in my annotation, which equates to about what Japan spends on its military, with ~143,000 per soldier, as I think I mentioned as well. This is at the expense of spending a third of the government budget/ten percent of the GDP (drawn from pretty high taxes) on the military, which I mentioned folk might not be comfortable with.

Half is training costs, a fourth is equipment costs, an eighth is supplies, whats left is pay and benifits.

Actually it's the other way around. A quarter of your funding will go to pay, training, housing, food, and other general keeping the soldiers alive and well costs. Your equipment will cost roughly 50-60% of your budget in terms of maintenence and supplies for said maintenence (And ammo) alone. What's left will be split between special projects, R&D, and actually buying new equipment.

OOC: He's also got some pretty pricey hardware listed too. The Masada isn't quite production-ready yet, at least at the last 'Guns and Ammo' listing that pictured it, and it's not going to be cheap. The 416 is by no means cheap (H&K's are worth the money, but still...), and anything from Colt (biggest supplier of M16/M4 weapons, at least to the US military) isn't cheap either. All are configured to use combat optics as well, which certainly aren't cheap, so for good quality ones you're going to be looking at an additional five-hundred to one thousand dollars per weapon, depending on which you select. Trijicon AGOC's are the best, especially the new one with the Docter Red-Dot reflex-style on top. Give the troops rails and they want stuff to put on the rails, and always feel you should supply it, unless they buy some shitty Wal-Mart special because it looks cool and get their ass shot off because it wasn't meant for combat.

Then you've got a supply nightmare getting all those varied weapons serviced. The 416 isn't a conventional M4 with fancy stuff stuck to it, it's been totally redesigned from the inside out to perfect the weapon's flawed operating system, so you need additional training for troops using the weapon to maintain it, as well as unit armorers that need to fix it. It would be cheaper to just issue one rifle to the infantry instead of an entire slew of stuff. M16/M4 would be the exception, since they're basically the same weapon. You service on just like the other. Piston-rigs like the 416 are easier to maintain from a soldier standpoint, and more reliable, but take a little more time to service and repair when something does break, as good a weapon as it is it isn't soldier-proof. Nothing is, come to think of it. Same thing with the pistols, just issue one since you've got differing calibers across the board. That could be said with everything, come to think of it. You've done well using common calibers, but getting magazines for each is going to be pricey again and logistically a pain in the ass since all your sidearms and sub-guns use different mags. Between them, you'd need six different magazines. Again, pick one and stick with it for logistical ease. Shotguns are the same way, only all fall into the 12 gage range. Keep both the SPAS' variants, or switch to the AA-12 totally.

Wouldn't that raise the equipment costs? Plus roughly four-six magazines per soldier for a decent combat load, and associated ammo would get expensive, too. Unless you use that shitty South African Army surplus 5.56x45mm or gun show reloads, but then you'll be paying more in repairs and lives when the stuff jams up and fails to hit your target, resulting in the death of a servicemember you've got to pay more to replace...

Sorry, just ranting... My fault...

416's aren't cheap, neither are any other of the assault rifles, but as I told you, it's only infantry that I posted. My mechanized force is comprised of M60 refurbs (albeit superb M60 refurbs) called the Mk-88 and cheaper M2's, BMP-3's, and Humvee refurbs with a dash of more modern Strykers and a few M1117's. Yet the tankers are real good.