The Military Thread

I need help here: I'm writing a story where, much like Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the United Nations becomes a bit more centralized due to the discovery of heavily armed alien life, what should be the service rifle of the UN armed forces?

If NATO is anything to go by, whatever the US tells them to use.

Then how come the British keep to their S A80s? Likewise with France and the FAMAS?

Because they're idiots. At least France is coming around and ditching them.

Because the SA80 is still compatible with STANAG things like magazines and more recently optics.

edited 27th May '15 6:01:32 AM by Deadbeatloser22

The world is your oyster. Something that is functionally up to par and either already plentiful or easily mass produced would work. Use your imagination, have them make a variation on an existing design with an agreed-upon UN-standard cartridge, a new rifle entirely, or just pick a widespread rifle and use it.

Gather the best gun builders/designers in the world and have them design one. The first prototype shall be completed just in time for earth to be annihilated.

Well there is the SCAR line of rifles.

Apparently it is a favorite among US and NATO spec ops.

NATO isn't the Warsaw Pact; the organization's command organization is notoriously decentralized, and armies take command from their home governments. If, say, NATO needs a Dutch armored brigade to hold the line but Brussels wants it to come home because it has reports of VDV paras landing behind the lines, there'd be real trouble.

This applies to equipment as well.

For NATO there is the NATO standard. Pretty much all the small arms have a certain amount of compatibility for magazines and ammo across multiple platforms.

In terms of a truly unified world military you want weapons that do the job you need without excessive cost. Most modern militaries have several varieties of small arms not just one uniform rifle. Each design fills a niche or job that catch all type weapon really can't do.

One question about the British Army: If there's a 1st Division and a 3rd Division, what happened to the 2nd Division?

Disbanded in 2012.

Why?

Defence cuts.

Thanks

You know that whole identification playing card deck thing we did in Iraq? Have we done that anywhere else?

I dunno why but it just seems like such a cool concept.

I agree.

Though if it occurs long enough, that might become a macabre trading card game.

"I have a first print Saddam card! I'll trade it to you for a Joesph Kony..."

Thanks to a new book I've gotten, I've learnt that the ZSU-23-4 Shilka is simultaneously more and less technically accomplished than I anticipated. For one thing, its targeting computer can retain a target "in memory" for 8-10 seconds and predict its flight path. It then lays itself on the predicted flight path so that when the target leaves cover/concealment it can open fire immediately.

Conversely, its radar's cathode ray power supply suffered issues. It had to be frequently reset due to the fact that it lost effectiveness trying to track high performance aircraft for long periods of time.

I think the Ukrainians made a deck of the separatists. You might have to search for them though.

Flanker: That sounds familiar. Apparently one of the defenses or best ways to bypass the ZSU position was to come in low over a ridge like a bat out of hell an directly overhead. Their elevation mechanisms would rapidly hit their limit and their traverse rate isn't quite fast enough to spin around lay the guns back on target before a fast craft is starting to exit its engagement envelope. Of course that is assuming your just dealing with the ZSU's and there aren't several of them in layered ambush.

The ZSU's radar was also vulnerable to jamming.

The ZSU has also some issues with the cannon overheating resulting in an uncontrollable firing until it ran out of ammo.

Still a damn scary gun system. The Russian Meat Grinder spits out those nasty 14mm heavy machine gun rounds. Those are some nasty bullets.

No wait I am thinking of the other SPAAG for the 14mm guns.

Oops derp. The 14mm AA system is the Towed ZPU-4

edited 28th May '15 5:00:39 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Yeah, the Shilka is showing its age today, but it's still terrifying to run into at short range. (Ideally you can stand off and kill it with Mavericks, but Shilka is designed to work in conjunction with SA-11s and other similarly nasty missiles.) Lots of countries still run modernized Shilkas: the Polish Biala, the Russian ZSU-23-4M5, et cetera. Bolting light SAMs to the turret seems to be a favorite modification.

Slight correction to my earlier point - the Shilka's computer would provide 8-10 seconds of steering data with which to automatically lay the guns. It's still impressive, though.

That's interesting! Another tactic was to limit your pop up times to 30 seconds. Limiting your altitude to no more than 10m above your concealment (due to the Fire Can's susceptibility to ground clutter at less than 60m above ground level) and attacking at stand off ranges also helped. A more complex technique was to have an attack helicopter and scout helicopter unmask simultaneously. The scout helicopter would provide data to the attack helicopter and hopefully distract the Shilka whilst the attack helicopter went in for the kill.

Yeah, although the Shilka was apparently resistant to passive countermeasures.

That was true of the earlier air cooled variants; however, they were later replaced with water cooled guns (but Soviet field commanders still preferred to keep them away from friendly infantry).

Incidentally, I used to have trouble figuring out which ZSU was which until I realised the first number is the calibre (the Shilka has 23mm autocannons) and the one after the dash is how many it has (the Shilka has 4 - hence ZSU-23-4).

And it seems like all Soviet SPAAGs were named after Siberian rivers - you've got the Shilka, the Yensei^note A competing design that was ruled out in favour of the Shilka and the Tunguska.

edited 29th May '15 3:37:37 AM by Flanker66