NationStates Jolt Archive


Creating a Military: A guide

Forum_Fluffywuffy
10-04-2009, 19:37
OOC: NOTE: All of this pertains to modern (present-2020) nations. I wrote the original post in 2004 and have edited it very slightly, as I feel it could be useful to today's players. Spelling mistakes are (hopefully) fixed. The original was written when I was 14. Interesting going back to read how I've changed.

When one first joins, or even wants to make improves to their army, the first question is obviously "how many men should I have in my army, and what should they be armed with?" Many people use 5% of the nation's population as total number of people in the army at wartime, yet some real life nations have more than that. Israel, I believe, is a nation of 5 or 6 million people, yet they have a million or so man army. That is roughly 3 times that of our limit, so I propose (amongst other things) a change in the unofficial rules: rather than make the limit a fixed number such as 5 million, make it whatever is justifiable by the nation based upon war/peace status, number of nations involved, etc.

So, why would you need 20% of your people in the army? For most nations here, you wouldn't. I would assume the government might have to enact strict food rationing etc. etc. to support it, and unless the people are die hardedly patriotic, they would complain, possibly revolt, go on strike whatever. 5% is very hard to justify anywhere either. So for most people, 2% or less is an ideal number as it doesn't eat much of the nation's resources and still allows for good number of troops. In the United States, the ratio is about 0.5% of the population in in the military.

Let's look more at the effects of conscription along logical lines. You, before the draft, were living peacefully in your country, with no intention to join the army. You then were thrust into the army, against your will, and continually defy authority, and because you are conscripted, do not give your best. Volunteer militaries are much better than conscripted militaries because the people in the military have a will to fight, they wanted to fight, etc. They will demand better training and weapons too, I would suspect, and command would be pressured to make them better. As for the cost of an infantry unit: I'd say roughly $70,000 per soldier to make it through basic training, armament, and a year's pay/benefits/housing/whatever. This is more or less, depending on your minimum wage laws, gun cost, quality of housing, electricity consumption, or whatever. Just to give you an idea of how much it takes to run, let's say, a million man army with this money, it is 70 billion dollars for no tanks, planes, ships, extra guns, extra armor, APCs, or any other equipment. All you get for this is a soldier, a gun, armor, uniforms, training, and a year's pay. This is more or less depending upon your training/armament standards etc. See above.

“We have men in the army. How many of these are actually soldiers?” Roughly half of these would be soldiers, as a military has huge logistical needs. Because of this, a million man army is really about half support troops—men driving trucks to deliver supplies—and half actual combat troops. More advanced armies, armies in the homeland, armies with smaller supply lines, etc. will all have smaller logistical needs. An army on the other side of the bloated NS Earth would need better supplies.

"Now that my army has men, how many tanks/planes/APCs/ships do I have?" Well, let's see what the ratio of military men/tank etc. is in a modern army such as the US or Russia In America, it is 312 men per tank, 107 men per infantry vehicle, 287 men per airplane, 382 men per helicopter, and 6,489 per ship. In Russia, there are 152 men per tank, 114 men per APC, 532 men per aircraft, 1,220 men per helicopter, and 5,360 men per ship. Other countries, such as many non-US NATO nations, China, and others, have much higher ratios. For example, in France they have 801 men per tank, many less tanks than America or Russia per person. (For my source, go to http://www.cdi.org/products/almanac0102.pdf Yes, you need Acrobat Reader or whatever it is called.) Use all the numbers above to create a more realistic fighting force, if you follow the America or Russia school or follow closely.

"Now that I have my air force/army/navy with numbers, how many nukes should I have?" This is an easy question to answer: it depends. Many nations such as the US or Russia do not have enough ICBMs or SLBMs to launch all of their nuclear weapons. I am sure they don't have enough bombers either. This is likely due to the end of the cold war, and your nation may not have this if you so choose, but those not engaged in a cold war would likely have the "hedge," as they call it, of nuclear weapons to be rebuilt quickly should the need arise. Regardless, there should be, if you are like the US or Russia, only one every 265 military men (counting reserves, as before)

"But even with this, should I have nukes this early?" If you are a new nation, I would suggest that you develop nukes wisely. Your first nuke is likely going to be a Manhattan Project type thing, so you won't be building ICBMs for quite a long time, not even high yield nukes. These things also, in this early development, can explode if you drop them, etc. etc. Be sure they are very crude if you are new, and you work up to nukes with nuclear power, etc. If they show competence and realism in creating nukes, then I am sure that they can get them without being ignored. Needless to say, a new nation won't be building a large nuclear force until development of ICBMs or long range bombers, and until they are larger and can afford it.

"Now that I've got numbers, can I afford it?" Depends. Using a GDP calculator, such as the pipian (http://www.pipian.com/stuffforchat/gdpcalc.php?nation=) or thirdgeek (http://www.thirdgeek.com/nseconomy.php) calculators, calculate your budget. Military should never be more than 50%, unless you are in a cold war/real war and need to catch up with someone. 30% is good, I'd say. "How should I organize my army?" It depends on what your army is to be like, your doctrine, and your style. US divisions differ from European ranks, and Russian divisions are differant from other European divisions I think. Look up ranks of nations, adopt one of them, or develop your own.

"How should my newly developed weapons be?" For a new nation, somewhat crude, slight improvements on modern designs, not all that innovative for a little while. For an older/established nation, look up modern weapons very similar to your design and then create something from scratch. Don't make it outrageous, like a super nuke that destroys Earth, or a super invincible tank force field generator of death. Also, if at all possible, make sure it fits your doctrine. A land locked nation wouldn't have developed a carrier. Well, this so far concludes my thing, feel free to ask/donate more questions to the cause! Donated stuff (to be cont'd, forum is dying)
Leistung
10-04-2009, 19:43
OOC: The Israeli Defense Force has about a million people available for service, but this doesn't mean that they're ready. The actual army has about 175,000 if I remember correctly - just so that people don't read the first paragraph and stop, saying to themselves, "lol I haz million men in ma army."

Other than that, well written :D
United States of PA
10-04-2009, 19:55
OOC:indeed well written, but one thing i wanna point out, the way i say my Army is that of almost Doppelganger to the real US Army etc etc., when though i have a somewhat bloated Navy and Air Force, i would say (yes i know this is a high proportion) about 1.5-2 million of my people are in the Armed Forces in my NS Country[/SIZE]
Fictions
10-04-2009, 20:02
Useful, been looking for something like this for a while, will definitely take your advice ^_^
Forum_Fluffywuffy
10-04-2009, 20:13
OOC:indeed well written, but one thing i wanna point out, the way i say my Army is that of almost Doppelganger to the real US Army etc etc., when though i have a somewhat bloated Navy and Air Force, i would say (yes i know this is a high proportion) about 1.5-2 million of my people are in the Armed Forces in my NS Country[/SIZE]

1.5 to 2 million is going to be a serious drain on your economy. I'd cut that in half for now, once your nation is bigger it will be realistic. That is, of course, unless a lot of those are reserves, like in Israel.
Fictions
10-04-2009, 20:38
what I imagine the budget to be though is what your government pays towards a certain thing, but if something (defense industry say) is RPed as being privatized then maybe the budget is just what they subsidize? Then again I may be WAY off with that...
Forum_Fluffywuffy
10-04-2009, 20:45
If you RP an industry as being privatized (taking defense as an example), I'd just come up with budget numbers on your own, as a percentage of GDP. The economic calculators will give you what your GDP is.
Kaprany
10-04-2009, 20:54
I wrote the original post in 2004 [...] The original was written when I was 14.

[I] have edited it very slightly.

This is where you went wrong tbh.
Hryvatia
10-04-2009, 20:57
OOC: NOTE: All of this pertains to modern (present-2020) nations.

The year is 2009. Anything later is early PMT.

When one first joins, or even wants to make improves to their army, the first question is obviously "how many men should I have in my army, and what should they be armed with?" Many people use 5% of the nation's population as total number of people in the army at wartime

Generally speaking having that volume of active troops will rape your economy.

yet some real life nations have more than that. Israel, I believe, is a nation of 5 or 6 million people, yet they have a million or so man army. That is roughly 3 times that of our limit, so I propose (amongst other things) a change in the unofficial rules: rather than make the limit a fixed number such as 5 million, make it whatever is justifiable by the nation based upon war/peace status, number of nations involved, etc.

Firstly: NO THEY DON'T (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_troops_per_thousand_citizens).

Secondly: your proposal is extremely vague considering you're trying to change the 'rules'.

So, why would you need 20% of your people in the army? For most nations here, you wouldn't. I would assume the government might have to enact strict food rationing etc. etc. to support it, and unless the people are die hardedly patriotic, they would complain, possibly revolt, go on strike whatever.

Actually your nation would probably just starve regardless of rationing. Unless this "20%" is a reserve, that are working and for the most part civilian (a point you should be very clear about if this is what you mean) then it is ridiculous. Keep in mind a good percentage of your nation are children, elderly, busy raising children, and NOT benefiting the economy. You've just hired most of your nations workforce to fight. Let's see who feeds you now, eh?

I got this far and stopped reading, because to be brutally honest with you, it's not looking very promising. Actually I wasn't brutally honest there, I held back quite substantially.

However, the stickies (that EVERY newbie should read, but rarely do, and then get huffy when someone tells them to) cover much of this topic, particularly in the war section (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13242837&postcount=4). So instead of 'pretending' to read 'em and claiming that you have [points fingers across the forums], actually do, they're a good source of information.
No endorse
10-04-2009, 20:58
Just to interject, this sort of thing may be useful for an early nation. However, after long enough, you build up a unique national identity. As this occurs, you get very characteristic traits that can skew any general guideline to pretty much the breaking point.

For example, no one would argue that North Korea hardly fits the above guide (or any guide) except in the most general ways. Yet there it is, a horribly repressed nation that still maintains almost 100% control of its populace. No one would argue that mine really fits any guide either, but then again, most people don't willingly RP the outcomes of nuclear/biological/chemical strikes compounded with a society essentially on the decline.



For any weapons design, I'd like to bump an offsite forum that's generally pretty good:

http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?
Defense Corporations
10-04-2009, 21:45
Comment - non-combat troops doesn't just mean truck drivers. Support troops include military police, military press, graves registration, medics, mess officers, supply coordinators, clerks, staffs, officers (above company level, officers generally don't fight), maintenance workers, engineers, signals troops, intelligence troops, and so forth. Don't skimp on them; don't assume that you can just automate all non-combat jobs.

And NSD is excellent for weapons design. Highly recommended.

With regards to early nations, I'd look at Ireland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Defence_Forces) for peaceable states and Finland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Defence_Forces) for more militarized states. Both are forces of around the same size as early nations, have generally received little outside support (unlike Israel, which received fairly large amounts of military aid, making it an atypical state), and have all three branches represented, to varying degrees.

As for your first nukes, go for implosion-type nukes - India did for its first nuke, and they're a good model to follow if you're receiving no technical assistance from friendly states.
Crookfur
10-04-2009, 22:01
Also the more advanced and well equipped your military the higher the percentage of troops assigned to support duties will be.

There are a number of different ways to figure out your military numbers: methods such as has been mentioned, things like Yantarias calcultor spread sheet and other weird things like making up a number of brigades per unit of popualtion (i.e. for a western european style nation you would have 1 active combat brigade (or equivelent formation) per 5-10million people).

As to equipment, rough things like so many tanks per soldiers doesn't work terribly well it is much easier in the long run to actually put the work in to come up the equipment tables for you brigades and divisions this also helps with budgeting.
United States of PA
10-04-2009, 22:04
1.5 to 2 million is going to be a serious drain on your economy. I'd cut that in half for now, once your nation is bigger it will be realistic. That is, of course, unless a lot of those are reserves, like in Israel.

OOC:when i say Army i usually count Reserves as well, only about 350,000 Regular Army, 120,000 Regular Marines, 500,000 Navy, 135,000 Air Force, everything else are mostly Army Reserves
Defense Corporations
10-04-2009, 22:18
Just account for the problems inherent in maintaining such a force. You may want to mothball most of your fleet, bringing it into service when you've brought in enough people.

As a side note - don't forget air defense forces. In many countries, especially Russian-influenced countries, they are a separate branch of the military, maintaining interceptors, ground-based SAMs (in bunkers, on railcars, etc.), and radar stations (both ground-based and airborne radar pickets).
Forum_Fluffywuffy
10-04-2009, 22:25
Hryvatia, I've been playing NS since 2003 with Fluffywuffy. Search for the name "Fluffywuffy" in the handy search box and you will find the original post in which I put this guide forth. At that time, some of the 'rules' were different, such as the modern tech / PMT distinction. Remember the audience of the time.

As for Israel, Israel has a total military force of ~10%, counting reserves. At the time of the original post, I likely was misinformed. I can't say, that was 5 years ago. I didn't edit the post for any factual information, only spelling errors.

As far as the stickies, this post predates the stickies.

Crookfur:

That spreadsheet idea is interesting. I'll have to edit the post to include mention of that.
Forum_Fluffywuffy
10-04-2009, 22:28
Comment - non-combat troops doesn't just mean truck drivers. Support troops include military police, military press, graves registration, medics, mess officers, supply coordinators, clerks, staffs, officers (above company level, officers generally don't fight), maintenance workers, engineers, signals troops, intelligence troops, and so forth. Don't skimp on them; don't assume that you can just automate all non-combat jobs.


This is very true, and part of what my original post lacked. I will take suggestions such as these and edit them into the original post, so that I can update the guide and make is more relevant to the NS of today. With all of the suggestions you guys put forth, I can improve the original even more.
United States of PA
10-04-2009, 23:56
Just account for the problems inherent in maintaining such a force. You may want to mothball most of your fleet, bringing it into service when you've brought in enough people.

As a side note - don't forget air defense forces. In many countries, especially Russian-influenced countries, they are a separate branch of the military, maintaining interceptors, ground-based SAMs (in bunkers, on railcars, etc.), and radar stations (both ground-based and airborne radar pickets).

Navy only operates the Ships, Naval Aviation Aircraft, and the needed Docks and Mechanics etc. etc., 3/4ths of the Fleet is mothballed when not needed
Dostanuot Loj
11-04-2009, 05:04
Fluffy: I wrote a more detailed guide to what it costs in finances and manpower (And maintenance hours) for an armoured force here:http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=543991

You might want to look at it, as your numbers for tanks are, well, very very very rough. 70% or more of Russia's tank force, for example, is in an unused reserve state, most people on Ns don't consider this and instead simply assume they can throw them all around, but it costs a lot more then that. The Us keeps at l;east 1/3rd of its total tank force in stored reserve, and a huge chunk of the "active" in simple active reserve, only a small number are ever deployable, or even employable unless you're being invaded.
Third Spanish States
11-04-2009, 05:59
The Confederacy military is anything but conventional: It is run and funded by a private organization inside an anarchy rather than by a government, and I assume the consequences of that, which include the fact they can't really force to keep a poorly executed war effort or the usual NS-grade quality RP massed Zerg deployments, and that if they take too many losses they may call back an entire war effort even if they were strategically winning it.

Because while the gross of NSes may have ridiculous numbers as an excuse to dismiss tactics and consistent strategy altogether and just keep spamming 3-lines long post about their wars with RTS Tactics (http://http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodTactics) and ZERG FORCES KEKEKE, Third Spanish States don't have reserves (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeHaveReserves) to be wasted in human wave assaults and failspam.

I don't believe there is a 100% correct guide to RPing war anyway, but I've never seen an arguably "advanced" guide dealing with the subtleties of combining character development, storywriting, war drama, tactics, strategies and operational aspects(designs) in the same RP, because that would be more than welcome in face of so many RPs which are barely beyond repetitions of ORBATS and "I deploy/launch/move x y. POST LOSSES" to perhaps convince a few to try going beyond that. Unfortunately, I don't have time or will to write one myself.
Forum_Fluffywuffy
11-04-2009, 17:19
I am currently working on a spreadsheet to automagically generate an army based on a temporary army model I'm working on for Fluffywuffy. It breaks down everything into divisions / armored divisions, corps, armies, army groups, etc. It gives you your military budget, total military size (currently 0.25% of population), and reserve numbers for much of these. If anyone would like a copy, please telegram me (Fluffywuffy, not forum_fluffywuffy) with your email. Please keep in mind it is in a very confused and crazy state at the moment, awaiting cleanup. The calculations are all that matter at this point.
Bears Armed
11-04-2009, 17:30
How not to handle a war: RL example, pre-modern _ Paraguay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Triple_Alliance).
The Fanboyists
11-04-2009, 17:37
Also, don't fight wars over Birdshit (literally, and metaphorically). Doesn't end well. No matter how big or well-equipped your military is, it is advisable not to just throw it around like a badly-used yoyo.
Vojvodina-Nihon
11-04-2009, 22:51
Creating a military: a one-minute guide, by Vojvodina-Nihon.

1) Make up a bunch of numbers. If someone calls you on them, lower (or raise) them until the other person is satisfied.

That's also my guide to designing weapons. Remember, this is a game, where rules are enforced by the community and its standards; nothing is expected to work in real life, so as long as the community agrees that your military sounds pretty realistic.

What I think NS needs, far more than a guide to "making a military/tank/fighter plane/gun", is a guide to how to use those things: a guide to strategy. A guide to tactics would also be very helpful for those who like to RP at the squad or company level, but since practically everyone RPs at the First Grand Field Army level, strategy's a must. (Didn't Daehanjeiguk have something like that a while back?)
Dostanuot Loj
11-04-2009, 22:53
What I think NS needs, far more than a guide to "making a military/tank/fighter plane/gun", is a guide to how to use those things: a guide to strategy. A guide to tactics would also be very helpful for those who like to RP at the squad or company level, but since practically everyone RPs at the First Grand Field Army level, strategy's a must. (Didn't Daehanjeiguk have something like that a while back?)

I'm already working on this for armoured forces, as it is my expertise. At least organisation and employment of various forms of said organisation.
No endorse
14-04-2009, 22:21
*is really surprised that people are critiquing this instead of appreciating it as a blast from the past, and remembering the 'good old days'*