NationStates Jolt Archive

An overview of the defences of the Indian Soviet Commonwealth

"The whole race... is madly fond of war, high-spirited and quick to battle... and on whatever pretext you stir them up, you will have them ready to face danger, even if they have nothing on their side but their own strength and courage." -Strabo

"They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and carry off as booty, while striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses... they embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies." -Diodorus Siculus

Background

After the peaceful Igovian-lead February Revolution of 1989, when the Popular Soviets overthrew the Communist Party of India (Amalgamated Maoist-Leninist), the Soviet Army was officially disbanded, and defence responsibilities passed to the people at large.

The Commonwealth Guard, inspired by the National Guard in Paris during the Commune of 1871, enrolls all able citizens for the purposes of national and revolutionary defence. Some 40% of the population is on the Guard's register, making it in official terms possibly the largest military force in the world.

In practice, not all members participate actively in Guard activities, but retain the right to access Guard facilities and bear arms in defence of the Soviet Commonwealth.

The Guard has three branches, namely the Militia, Oceanic, and Air Guards, and these are divided into Expert and Auxiliary Corps.

It is in the Auxiliary Corps that the vast majority -more than 99%- of Guards are enrolled.

The Expert Corps essentially represents Soviet India's regular military, and its ranks account for just 0.25% of the whole population.

The Auxiliary Corps is not uniform in organisation. India's population lives chiefly in communes, called Pantisocratic Phalansteries, more than seven million in number, and most of the Militia Auxiliary Corps is organised locally through these. Each commune has a weapons locker and elects a master-at-arms -often a retired Expert Corpsman- to over-see its use and the arsenal's upkeep, and to manage on-site training facilities, which are used by the more enthusiastic Auxiliaries.

Many registered Auxiliaries take little or no part in training activities, but enough facilities exist to cope with the full membership, enabling the Commonwealth to more quickly train and equip vast reserve forces in the event of an emergency. Those who take their role more seriously, including former and aspiring Experts, train more often and frequently organise inter-communal exercises that often take the form of bruising mock battles beloved by the rowdy Geletian Celtic population especially.

Soviet citizens usually job-share, and work shorter hours than their peers abroad, leaving more spare time for those interested in being what might be called, 'weekend warriors'. Community defence schemes include team-building exercises, physical training, weapons handling drills, ideological debates, terrain and environment surveys, and historic and tactical lectures delivered by scholars and former or current Experts. Indonet, the Commonwealth's intranet, is used heavily in sharing tactical information with neighbouring communes and learning from the experiences of militia cells across the Commonwealth. Many of those on the Burmese border make a habit of instigating border skirmishes with the brutal Tatmadaw and sharing the results over Indonet.

Only a minority of Auxiliaries are associated with the Air and Oceanic Guard branches. They work part-time to maintain equipment kept in storage or reduced operational status. The Air Guard, for example, has hundreds of thousands of airframes, but enough Experts only to keep a few thousand operating to a level equivalent to that of top western airforces, and Soviet defence budgets in peacetime are not designed to keep all assets on full alert.

Air Guard Auxiliaries look after extra aircraft, and while Expert pilots get as many flight hours as anyone on earth, Auxiliary fliers rotate mothballed aircraft and keep up the minimum safe flying hours, providing a huge pool of crew with at least basic experience who can be quickly brought up to Expert level in the event of war and ensuring that aircraft are kept in good condition.

In the Oceanic Guard's Auxiliary corps, servicepeople rotate tours on active vessels, train on semi-active ships, and dedicate time to maintaining other hulls kept in port or drydock. Most Oceanic Guard Expert Corps vessels operate in peacetime on skeleton crews, and in times of need take-on Auxiliaries to fill-out non-essential posts and provide redundancy.

The Soviet Commune

The Soviet Commune is comprised of elected Guardsmen and women voted for by their comrades in arms and subject to referenda-enabled recall at any time. These act as the Guard's headquarters' staff and direct such matters as military procurement and strategy. The term Soviet Commune is loosely applied to the whole military, as all servicemen and women are members of Soviets and expect to have their will represented by their elected members within the Commune-proper. The Soviet Commune has liason officers connected to the Popular Soviets, and sends elected delegates to the Commonwealth Final Soviet in order that military funding and operations be directly tied to the will of the masses.

The Oceanic Guard and even more importantly the Air Guard of course require intensive and specialised training that makes them less universal than the Militia, since any one of sound mind and body can be easily taught to fire a rifle or throw a petrol bomb, while the operation of a fighter jet requires professional dedication. With this in mind, the AG and OG enroll part-time servicemen and women in great numbers, and these comrades continue to work reduced hours at their home Phalansteries, retaining direct involvement in civilian life and continuing to contribute to the economy while supporting the full-time military core and providing a large pool of semi-trained military recruits that can be brought quickly up to professional standard in the event of a crisis. The Soviet Commune incorporates also the less expert part-time fliers and such, who out-weigh militant special interest groups in the full-time formations, and as such can vote-down unrepresentative hawks in the Soviet Commune.

Throughout the Commonwealth Guard it is and has been standard practice for Sovietists to elect their officers. All Experts receive extensive general and some specialist training in the universities, and their records are made available within the Soviet Commune so that their comrades can take it into consideration when nominating tactical leadership. Once elected to the officer corps, Guards usually receive modified on-going training geared towards their new role specifically, while previous training will have prepared them to some basic degree.

Details to come

Links

Within this thread:
Strength (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13602587&postcount=2)
Expenditure (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13611246&postcount=3)

External:
Equipment of the Commonwealth Guard (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=520296)

Strength

In every billion head of the Soviet populace -and there are at time of writing twelve billion people in Soviet India- there are around 2.5 million Expert Corps Guards and almost 400 million Auxiliaries. Of the Experts, roughly two million will be Militia, 300,000 Air Guard, and 200,000 Oceanic Guard.

The Air Guard

With 300,000 Expert personnel in each billion citizens, the Air Guard will have 7,500 aircraft of the most modern types, and owing to the role of the Air Guard Auxiliary Corps a relatively small portion of these will be dedicated elemental, lead-in, and conversion training types, while transport and electronic and other support aircraft are strongly represented along with fighters and attackers.

25,000 other aircraft, including trainers and older types retired from Expert Corps service, are maintained in a state of reduced activity by one million Auxiliaries.

Oceanic Guard

200,000 Experts are joined by 800,000 Auxiliaries in operating 2,000 aircraft, one battleship, one ballistic missile submarine, twenty trimaran fleet aircraft carriers, twelve light carrier assault ships, twenty guided missile cruisers, twenty landing pad dock ships, ninety-six guided missile submarines, eighty fleet defence frigates (essentially destroyers), sixty general warfare frigates, thirty-two stealthy patrol/attack submarines, twenty-five corvettes, and eighty fast attack craft including small WIGs. The COG also operates four 'strategic-lift WIGs' and twenty 'heavy tactical WIGs' in each billion head of population. This is in addition to fleet oilers, oceanographic survey ships, submarine tenders, mine countermeasures vessels, rescue and salvage craft, hospital ships, ammunition ships, repair vessels, combat stores ships, and cargo vessels.

Militia

Two million Militia Experts are joined by an estimated 395.7 million Militia Auxiliaries in every billion citizens, and these operate 2,000 aircraft in the Expert Corps and 3,500 in the Auxiliaries, including combat and transport helicopters and cargo planes, along with ground vehicles.

Expenditure

Soviet military expenditure has fluctuated greatly over the last quarter century, from highs of 11% of GDP to lows of 2%. Today, expenditure of US$2.5 trillion for every billion citizens ($30 trillion in total at time of writing) represents a sum equivalent to 5%, a figure considered towards the top end of what is sustainable in concert with strong economic growth and that is indicative of growing Soviet confidence and international ambition as represented by the rise of the Calcutta Communist Contract Organisation.

This works out as just $6,250 spent each year for every Commonwealth Guard recruit. At first glance, such funding appears appropriate for the low-priority defence forces of a developing nation, but in practice the expenditure is not spread evenly across 400 million official Guard members in every billion citizens. 2.5 million Experts take the lion's share of resources, with 5 million First Auxiliaries also taking a relatively great share compared with the remaining 392.5 million Second Auxiliaries in the Militia.

It is estimated by the Soviet Commune that the equivalent of $500,000 is spent in the Expert Corps each year for every recruit, $93,000 for each First Auxiliary, and just $2,000 for each Second Auxiliary.

In practice even this figure can be further broken down, as some Second Auxiliaries in the Militia are more active than others, who by taking no part in Guard exercises during peace-time cost the state only a small initial outlay for (usually second-hand) equipment held in reserve and, little or nothing to keep on the books, as it were. Others then may consume more than $3,000 in resources by taking part in shooting practice and driver training et cetera during their spare time. Since these are volunteers with regular jobs, salaries and benefits do not enter into the equation for defence expenditure, and this explains why so many are inactive.

OVERVIEW

STRENGTH at population 12 billion

Militia Expert Corps: 24 million
Air Guard Expert Corps: 3.6 million
Oceanic Guard Expert Corps: 2.4 million
Total Experts: 30 million (0.25%)

Militia First Auxiliary: 38.4 million
Air Guard Auxiliary: 12 million
Oceanic Guard Auxiliary: 9.6 million
Total First Auxiliaries: 60 million

Further Militia Auxiliaries: 4.71 billion

Total Guards: 4.8 billion

EXPENDITURE: $30 trillion

EQUIPMENT at population 12 billion

Aircraft

Air Guard Expert: 90,000
Air Guard Auxiliary: 300,000
Militia Expert: 24,000
Militia Auxiliary: 42,000
Oceanic: 24,000
Total: 480,000

Capital Ships
Battleships: 12
Fleet Aircraft Carriers: 240
SSBNs: 12

Major Surface Combattants
Cruisers: 240
Light Carriers: 144
Destroyers: 960
Frigates: 720

Other Submarines
SSGNs: 1,152
SSKs: 384

Other Surface Combattants
Corvettes: 300
FACs: 960

Primary Amphibious Assets
LPDs: 240
Strategic WIGs: 48
Tactical WIGs: 240

[ Updated ]

[OOC: 40%? 40%? Forty percent of your population in the military is ridiculous, even if inactive reserves. That's almost half your population, which would mean both genders, probably with so large a variety of people that it would be irrespective of any medical condition or any other preoccupation, at all. Fielding an army 40% of your population would not just collapse an economy five times over, you wouldn't even have one in the first place. In the event of a major, major war, a country with subscription, such as Britain in WWII, only fielded an army roughly 6% of it's population. And it's economy felt the effects for a couple of decades. A modern country with national service, including inactives, will typically have only about 10% of it's population as reserves or regular military at any given time. To put this into perspective for you, the US has about 1% of it's population in the military, all branches, reserves or otherwise. It sounds like you're just trying to better other countries without looking at the facts, and, with a population of eleven-point-something-billion, you don't need to try to be better than everyone else, because the likelihood is, you're bigger than them. Other than that, this is quite interesting]

[OOC: 40%? 40%? Forty percent of your population in the military is ridiculous, even if inactive reserves.

(OOC: So's y'face. Heh, no, sorry, kidding there. But you're still wrong on this one. Basically, I know what I'm doing. Note that expenditures are broken-down as per expert, first-auxiliary, and second auxiliary, and a total given (a rather high but usually sustainable 5% of GDP).

We have 0.25% of the population in regular service, 0.5% in ready reserve or part-time duty, and communities built with defence planning in mind and the means to put 39.25% of the population in a position to resist invasion or counter-revolution locally.


Doctrine

Graeme Igo, ideological father of the Commonwealth, said that democracy was nothing unless it extended into the economic sphere. The drive to force democracy into every societal facet soon put paid to the Soviet Army of the First Commonwealth, which was in truth no more Sovietist than had been anything in the USSR after 1921.

The Second Commonwealth tried to replace the military with an entirely populist non-professional militia, and pledged to consider defensive tactics in street-to-street fighting when raising new communities. It soon became evident that this organisation would be unable to maintain modern fighter aircraft necessary to retain air superiority or warships with which to contest hostil landings, and so the Expert Corps was raised.

The role of the Militia Second Auxiliary Corps is still local defence, in the model of the Territorial Defence Forces inherent to the Second Yugoslavia's doctrine of Total National Defence, the Workers and Peasants Red Guards of North Korea, or even the likes of Britain's Home Guard during the Second World War.

In the event of invasion, weapons lockers would be broken open at communities close to advancing enemy forces and local Militia Auxiliary members would answer to their elected Master-at-Arms and/or a second elected officer, unless the Expert Corps had been able to send an advisor or liaison officer to the community -or cluster of communities- in question. Typically, some of these Auxiliaries would be former Experts now retired, and these would likely be elected to lead sections within a local defence area, while others would be mix of those who have chosen to practice shooting and attend lectures and drills part-time, supervised by more experienced comrades, and -more numerous- those who have no experience but are assigned duties pertinant to the community's defence, be it in raising of barricades, scouting for enemy activity, managing rationing, repairing or driving community vehicles, or manufacturing improvised weapons and munitions according to information available over Indonet's militia server.

The Militia Second Auxiliary Corps is not a mobile fighting force with formations that can be treated as reserve divisions or the like, each formation being typically tied to its local area, which it knows well and is prepared to defend. Second Auxiliaries can only confront the enemy when said enemy approaches their positions, although communal motorpools can be taken into Militia use to provide varying degrees of mechanisation for individual units. Typically, cars, trucks, motorcycles, agricultural vehicles, and land-cruisers would be used to scout for appraoching threats, conduct small-scale hit-and-run and harrying attacks on enemy scouts or supply lines, and are likely to be used also to quickly deploy small infantry sections to pre-planned defensive positions, in the manner of traditional Geletian horse-mobile infantry, who would dismount to fight after exhausting their steeds in a rush to be first upon the high-ground.

The presence in Beddgelert of a four or five billion strong militia is supposed to be a powerful psychological deterrent to would-be aggressors, though in practice the whole of the Auxiliary Corps is never symultaneously active at one given moment, rather piecemeal area-by-area in response to the presence of particular threats.

[On-going]

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