Using the Multiplier- A Newbies Guide to Naval and Air Power to make your nation more survivable

[Triyun]

Somethings been on my mind which is that a remarkable number of people have not utilized the combat multiplier while complaining about unfairness for the little guy.  In large part the issue stems from an adherence to the Anglo-American Tradition of war, which is predicated on victory at sea and large warships from which to command that victory.  This is culminated in the centrality of three platforms, the high performance fighter, the bomber, and the ship of the line in this case the carrier.  But most seem to forget thee is a reason 99% of IRL do not maintain fleets of carriers.  Even the Soviet Union, a super power only at the end began investing in a carrier fleet.  

 

I'm going to be using the Irish as a case study on going wrong, not as a personal attack, nor is this making a commentary on the efficacy of the war.  People have discussed how there is no way to resist a big power.  That's only somewhat true.  What this is is showing how poorly a military can be organized by a mid sized nation, and how it can be made better.

 

Disclaimer on what this is:  What this is not is a guide on how to beat a larger nation that knows what they are doing, but you can at least complicate targeting.  What it is also not is a guide to becoming a pocket super power.  This document is one which will heavily emphasize the primacy of defense.   

 

[b]Naval Power:[/b]

 

Fleets can be divided into three distinct missions (four if you count nuclear deterrence) commerce raiding, power projection, and sea control.  Mahan, a prominent American naval thinker emphasized Sea Control in order to blockade another nation's resources.  To do that he argued for a big fleet that could engage and destroy the adversaries battle fleet in a decisive action.  Battleships and later Carriers were the central part of these high seas fleets.  Mahan did not give much creedance to projecting power ashore primarily because of he sophistication of shore artillery in his day.  Nor did Mahan give much to commerce raiding because of the failure of Confederate Commerce Raiding in the American Civil War.  

 

In CN RP much of the considerations of the Mahanian Navy do not make a whole lot of sense, especially for smaller nations.  Smaller nations will never win battle fleet engagements against larger ones.  Sadly most players for now don't care about resources.  And rarely will they have the ability to project power beyond their shores.

 

[b]Know your goals:[/b]

 

What then is the point of the Navy then?  Well for a large super power such as Tianxia the point of the navy is simple.  Tianxia's Navy is the staging platform to launch major campaigns against other countries and hold off others from intervening in its operations.  It possesses battleships capable of bombarding shore based defenses from beyond strike range, submarines to initiate strategic surprise, massive numbers of carriers, and a significant amphibious force.  Its also backed by a global strategic command with highly accurate missiles and bombers.  It has the capacity for redundant sensors on the offense and defense, able to fly global hawks most places, has the technology for highly sophisticated sensors, and has large amounts of technical capacity in technical intel, electronic, and cyberwarfare.   Its got bases and supply depots on every ocean allowing for a 'Assured Access, Anytime, Anywhere.' type strategy.  [b]This Strategy works because Tianxia has the capacity to protect and service these platforms, and identify and destroy the adversaries' own very fast.[/b]  

 

The strength of this type of force is that it can credible project Tianxia's influence anywhere in the globe with the possible exception of the African Interior and Central-Eastern Europe.  Tianxia can show the flag, which has a nationalistic pride associated with it.  I get that others want to have this same ability.  But strategy is a choice, its about matching resources to goals to achieve those goals.  [b]Most don't have this capability.  Don't try to compete here.[/b]  Most nations get pissy when you go into their 'sphere of influence'.  MGL, Shammy, Cent, Cochin, EM, Vektor, Justits, iKrolm, and myself all come to mind at one point or another where I've been on one side of a conversation where I'm either annoyed or left with the distinct either overt or implied impression the others annoyed by someone trying to go in.  If you're sending in a battle fleet you're going to piss someone off, and unless you can defend that fleet its a big fucking easy target that [i]almost invites attack.[/i]  Its the equivalent to throwing your chin out.  At best, by venturing beyond your own shores you're putting yourself in the 'fair game' catagory, something you can't really get out of even if you withdraw back to your own borders.  Again this isn't casting value judgements on right or wrong.  I'm explaining the dynamics of the game, and its not just me whose executed these plays.

 

So what is the point of all that?  [b]If you're a small to mid size nation you have no reason for many large warships.  They are floating targets.[/b]  Fortunately for you you have something called a multiplier.  [b]Your goal should be to make yourself less vulnerable to a preemptive attack, complicate adversaries targeting, and hold major military forces from staging as far away from your territory as possible.  YOU WANT SUBMARINES and fast boats.  Lots and lots of subs and fast boats.[/b]    1 Aircraft Carrier gives you 100, 000 tonnes of shipping.  You can get 16 Los Angeles Class Submarines (and you should probably go smaller and diesel electric) for the price of one.  Assuming Ireland with its 3 carrier groups, whose only real contribution was getting Ireland almost rolled by their deployment in Sierra Leonne instead been 48 Los Angeles class submarines, and assuming that 1/2 were basing/ undergoing maintenance, but the other half were at sea (in addition to the IG submarine fleet), does anyone really think I'd have tried to land Marines on the first post?  

 

Now submarines do have weaknesses, they cannot independently project power.  They are vulnerable against surface escorts and ASW aircraft.  Its not that easy for them to torpedo big hulled ships on the high seas.  But you can force those big hulled ships to a range where its hard to land troops, and you have to worry about refueling aircraft at sea reducing the amount that can be put over targets at once.  Further it forces more ships, VLS tubes, and aircraft to be dedicated to ASW, dropping the amount that can be devoted to bombing you into the stone age. You'll still need surface combatants, your own ASW carriers (think your amphibious ships), but it does mitigate your damage, and complicate the attackers planning.

 

This brings us to the Air Force.

 

[b]Why you'll lose in the skies and how you can make it not matter as much.[/b]

 

Aside from a few nations you're going to get your ass kicked in head on fighter on fighter engagements with a top tier threat.  If you find air combat complicated, no matter how good a high performance fifth gen fighter you find some sucker to sell you or you develop on your own, its going to get owned.  Why?  Because the major power airpower doctrines are really well thought out, and each piece of them is a well oiled machine to guard against the others weaknesses, and on top of that they're more experienced.  Further high performance machines require large runways and advanced maintenance facilities, as we saw in the attack on the Irish, its really easy to attack those (especially unhardened).   

 

You won't win the skies, and as we've shown you won't project power, so in addition to forgetting about investing heavily in F-22s, forget about B-2s also.  There is no reason a small nation needs strategic bombers.  They're wasted slots that will get you in trouble in peace time, and die fast in wartime.  

 

What then is there?  Disaggregate, complicate, and tie up slots.  First you need to disaggregate basing.  Big nations have the option of hardening you don't, because big nations will have the big bombs and planes to destroy hardened targets.  Your goal needs to be concealment and disaggregation.  Tianxia only has so many global prompt strike missiles and B-9 bombers, and those things are going to big targets first.  Put lots of short take off and landing, and vertical take off and landing aircraft in small groups, hidden.  If you hide 4 F-35-Bs in the mountains of Scotland, and conceal them well it will be a lot harder to find than a big hardened even underground base from space, and its going to be a lot harder to put my big guns on it.  

 

[i]'But Triyun the F-35-Bs about as useful as a donkeys vagina in a dog fight![/i]  Don't get in a dogfight with it.  A proper mix of fourth gen electronic warfare and fifth gen stealth/sensor capable aircraft can attempt (you'll lose some) to provide targeting to your on ground surface to air missile systems.  This will allow you to complicate interventions somewhat and make Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) missions harder.  If you're lucky and smart you may even be able to down critical aircraft like AWACs, battlefield management systems, and mid air refuelers.  Further such aircraft have the ability to [i]if they can detect them which is hard[/b] to swarm and defeat small numbers of high performance aircraft.  

 

This won't win you air superiority but it will keep you alive a bit longer.  It will mean when Tianxia aircraft are loading out their mission armaments.  I have to put 4 anti-air missiles on my F-5 instead of 2.  Therefore it can carry 2 less air to ground bombs for hitting other targets.  It will mean I'll have to fly more electronic warfare aircraft and fly less older bomb trucks, because your SAMs will live longer.  It means I need to be more careful about how I use my bombers also, requiring more adherence to stand off weapons, which they can carry fewer of per sortie compared to large amounts of smart glide bombs (the difference between being able to hit 20 or 80 targets per mission).  Its going to mean my A-10s aren't going to be able to fly without an escort.

 

Now there are counters to all of these, and again this is about slowing down a war machine and imposing cost, not beating it, but it bears consideration and force planning.  

 

[b]Last word on ground forces and diplomacy:[/b]

 

Ultimately slowing down an air-sea intervention is about slowing down forces.  Ultimately the decisive engagement is going to be in diplomacy and land forces.  I've showed you how to complicate the supporting elements for a land intervention.  But your land forces are still going to be stressed.  In general massed land forces are going to die.  Dispersing and concealing makes the most sense.  Choose times of attack, preferably when you can hold air superiority back.  Its still going to be a hell of a fight, but you stand a better chance when there is no drone flying overhead that can spot the muzzle flash of a mortar and relay a targeting solution in seconds.  Remember guerrilla warfare doesn't yield won engagements very often, its also about imposing cost.  Its also casualty intense.  That is why people should think long and hard about the utility of armored forces and possibly even take a carrier or battleship and put it into infantry.  Standing large amounts of reserve infantry army with decentralized command and control systems.  Fighting with these forces is [b]vastly smarter than trying to fight an insurgency.[/b]

 

Lastly on diplomacy.  Diplomacy is not about being right, its about getting your way.  If someone's really emotional in their hatred of someone and they're giving you advice on how to deal with that power, you probably shouldn't listen to them because you're probably being used.  Acting like bat shit crazy insurgents will win you a few people, but you'll always be in the minority and probably lose.  I've been on that on both sides.  I've seen people in #nordic and people I've been 'oppressing' both claim eternal insurgency only to collapse a few days later.  You're probably not going to be the exception.  So don't act crazy, act calm, afterall if you do change your mind and decide to reroll it helps not being a hothead.  If you act calm but fight smart people will respect you and you'll have the best chance of attracting support.  Mudd was a great example of this reclaiming his territory after a massive gang bang, because his actions changed people's minds and got them to willingly lend support to him.  Suicide bombing, sending kids to die, firing chemical weapons, etc all does the opposite.  Everyone may view hegemony as evil, but it becomes the lesser of two evils compared to you.

 

So that concludes this advise.  If there are questions post them here, don't PM or query me. 

[Centurius]

Great guide, illustrates some really useful tactics to delay and perhaps even win.

[lkfht]

Although I was used as an example, it does outline some very important points which I will take under consideration if I ever do RR.

[Horo the Wise Wolf]

Noted, time to start hiding my Air Force Bases :P

[Triyun]

Haha, that actually brings up a good point Horo.  For you it doesn't matter as much because you're under my umbrella so to speak, and therefore you should structure yours more to like a NATO European/Japan/ROK military.  This is for an independent power without a super power cavalry guaranteed to come stampeding in.

[KaiserMelech Mikhail]

That was long.  In the future, you should put pictures or gifs of corgis in there to keep people interested.

[Evangeline Anovilis]

That was long.  In the future, you should put pictures or gifs of corgis in there to keep people interested.

If you can't read the post, which is rather clearly written, then why bother with a military at all? Most textwalls of military moves contain less understandable technical lingo that is also not coming with pictures.

[Mogar]

I actually appreciate you posting this Triyun, although you have already RP'd creating methods of defeating both of the particular suggestions you have given to making a survivable navy.

[Markus Wilding]

If you can't read the post, which is rather clearly written, then why bother with a military at all? Most textwalls of military moves contain less understandable technical lingo that is also not coming with pictures.

We, the players of CNRP, should pool our funds together to buy Eva a new joke detector for her birthday. How long do we have?

[Evangeline Anovilis]

We, the players of CNRP, should pool our funds together to buy Eva a new joke detector for her birthday. How long do we have?

If you want to get me a nice present, please buy some chocolate bar for it. Would be much more appreciated. Thanks.

[Horo the Wise Wolf]

We, the players of CNRP, should pool our funds together to buy Eva a new joke detector for her birthday. How long do we have?

Doubt we could afford one that would be powerful enough to work!

[Triyun]

 Another thought for newbies (and Russian lovers).  

 

Foxbat Zerg Force:

 

For some background, the Mig-25 is an interceptor but it has also been used to terrible effect as a bomber because of its speed.

 

Read more here:  https://medium.com/war-is-boring/c9f05be6e6a0

 

The Mig-25 is also a third gen aircraft.  This means it counts under top tech tier for an additional X3 Multiplier.  A nation with 2014 tech can produce 3 Mig 25s for every F-22 it doesn't.  If you suck at modern combat, but you have a big enough country to actually have the air fields for this, a nation with 85 squadrons and an X3 Multiplier you can go to 9,180 Mig-25s as your max aircraft.

 

Now modify that In flights of 5-6, give one a dedicated jammer and less strike package, and equip all of them with the ability to deliver precision guided bombs. 

 

These things will be flying very high and very fast, when they show up on radar, they can hits lots of targets and having jamming and speed to keep them from getting completely mowed down.  You can essentially then saturate enemy defenses.  If 500 Mig-25s charge an area protected by F-22s, assume 10 F-22s are dedicated to air field defense, each F-22 only carries 6 missiles.  It has to catch the migs before it bombs the air fields, and have enough ammo to shoot all of them down.  No easy task combined with jamming and speed.  Therefore in order to keep a Mig-25 zerg rush from overtaking forward deploy positions, an attacking air force would have to station huge amounts of fighters on permanent air patrol, which means less to do strike missions into your territory.  

[PresidentDavid]

What is the best way for one to fight off a D-Day style invasion in modern terms? I assume it would just be a lot of shooting transport planes out of the sky but that seems to be a big simplification. 

[Evangeline Anovilis]

What is the best way for one to fight off a D-Day style invasion in modern terms? I assume it would just be a lot of shooting transport planes out of the sky but that seems to be a big simplification. 

Air superiority.

[Horo the Wise Wolf]

What is the best way for one to fight off a D-Day style invasion in modern terms? I assume it would just be a lot of shooting transport planes out of the sky but that seems to be a big simplification. 

Nuke their population centres.

[Uberstein]

Don't man your sea bunkers with soldiers on R&R.

[Captain Enema]

Needs moar potato guns.