The Military Thread

Today's featured article in Wikipedia: SMS Goeben.

Hence, why the Russians typically have a different taste in military aircraft design compared to their NATO rivals; instead of placing their faith in multi-role aircraft as does the latter, they opt for specialized models and variants for whatever different purpose as needed.

Regarding the USAF, there's something that I wanted to ask the Air Force people over here, since you people are (hopefully) reliable primary sources after all:

So the Air National Guard decided to open up a new recruitment center in the locality of where I live, and part of that involves a rather aggressive advertising campaign quite obviously aimed against the well-grounded Army and Navy centers (funnily enough, which are located on opposite ends of the same exact shopping mall) just across the avenue. It should be noted that the campaign's "aggressive" not in size or scope, so you won't be seeing ANG posters and such at bus stops and the like, but in uniqueness of presentation compared to the traditional methods employed by the Army and Navy centers; from my interpretations, the ANG is trying to market itself as much more "smarter" and nerdy, and their signature MO involves placing these six-foot high display boards that come with fancy touchscreens to navigate the various information menus.

Now I've seen enough films, read enough books, and glossed over enough posts online to know that its Truth in Television that Recruiters Always Lie, so I don't plan on actually enlisting anytime time soon, or at all in my lifetime in the best case scenario. But I still wanted to ask exactly how much of those "Benefits" are true and how much are "Join the Army," They Said.

It's commonly stated that National Guard forces as a whole have got this "one weekend a month" slogan going on to differ them from the regular military forces; regarding the ANG, what the hell does this even mean? I've done enough research to assume that Guardsmen, for all of their images as a Home Guard force, are just as likely to be deployed overseas and suffer casualties as any other branch in the military, and as this very website states:

Do all of those commonly stated education assistance programs actually help to a feelable degree? Is there an actual difference regarding your ability to pay tuition(s) and the like?

Finally, the ANG being a theoretical reserve component of the USAF, there's obviously much in common between the two services. However, I want to ask how much is different, especially regarding your average S.S.D.D daily life in comparison to the regular AF personnel. Plus, how often and how would both services interact from a professional standpoint? Regarding personnel, I quite sure that the regular AF people must have some degree of beef with the ANG personnel for being Soldiers at the Rear.

edited 28th Jul '14 1:35:05 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Plausibility?

From the Ukrainian Military VKontakte portal:

Having Army and Navy recruiting stations across from each other is unusual only in that they are usually placed right next to each other along with Marine Corps and Air Force recruiting offices (as far as I can tell, either the shopping malls like to put them all next to each other, or the Do D arranged a bulk deal when renting storefront space, a lot of the time the four offices are nominally all one Do D recruiting center, but where the occupants of the four offices never stand in the same room).

ANG does have those big recruiting boards with the video screen. They actually have one at the BX food court at my base overseas. A lot of the National Guard's manpower comes from folks getting out of Active Duty; in my experience, the Guard has a disproportionate number of Old Soldier types who basically decided to go for an arrangement that allowed them to have a "normal" life away from the military at least part of the time. In my part of the Air Force (Civil Engineering), a lot of our civilian troops tend to be Guardsmen or Reservists who work for the Air Force full time as civilians and also part time as military. To them it basically means they PT on their own time and don't have to shave as often as their military co-workers.

As far as differences between the Guard and Active Duty, Barkey is probably your best SME, since he's done both sides of that arrangement, while I've only really hung out with Guardsmen I worked with. I know they'll sometimes get put on "Title 10" orders where they basically become Active Duty for a time, allowing them to get the sort of on-the-job experience they might have a hard time getting out of the "One Weekend a Month" routine, essentially getting "deployed" to an Active Duty home station unit and filling in for some lack of manpower there.

I do know that the National Guard traces its roots to the old militia system (it is the National Guard, not the Marine Corps, that claims the oldest origin, tracing back to some colonial militia regiments back in the 1600s; it is at least as legitimate as the Marine Corps tracing their history back to the Continental Marines), so historically the Militia were "stay at home" troops, eager and willing to defend their homeland, which is to say the areas around where they actually lived, and generally less and less motivated the farther from home (and their obligations at home) the war tried to take them. For a time, it was hotly debated as to whether it was legal at all for State militiamen to be made to fight outside their state borders, which is why they eventually redid that whole system when they established the National Guard around the start of the 20th century. You still see a few State militias in the form of things like the Texas State Guard.

EDIT: Oh, education benefits are pretty spiff, but getting harder to use due to the purse strings getting yanked tighter. Now you can actually get barred from using tuition assistance if you failed a PT test. Basically you enroll at a college on their approved list (it's a long list), and set up a Degree Plan (I want to major in Underwater Basketweaving, and the college says I need to take these classes to get my BS degree in that), submit the Degree Plan to the Education Office on base, then apply for the class. I take the enrollment information for the class and submit a Tuition Assistance request which has to get approved by my supervisor and then sent to the Education Office to get yay'd or nay'd. Once they approve it, I take that to the college and they do some banking magic to get the funds sent to them from Do D. Every time Ted Cruz starts grandstanding and reading kid's books on the floor of Congress, our TA benefits get cut off because no approved budget means no funds.

edited 28th Jul '14 3:09:23 PM by AFP

Maybe if it was one of those BTR-80A variants that come with the 30mm from a BMP.

Still hard to believe unless they got a few missiles in or a lucky hit.

What kind of tank was it?

edited 28th Jul '14 3:10:09 PM by LeGarcon

They might have found a brittle spot in the armor. I bet those rebels aren't consistent in having their new troops perform the hammer tap armor checks.

T-64 I'd imagine.

Probably put a few rounds through the back of the turret or the engine compartment. Still, that'd be good for a beer or two at the bar—an APC/IFV killing a main battle tank!

Short lived is the tank jockey who turns his back on an APC driver. Especially since some APCs carry anti-tank missiles, effectively making them Tank Destroyers.

World War I's Centenary

Also even if the armor defeats the first couple of rounds repeated hits in the general location have a better chance of getting through. Especially if the hit even on an edge of a previous hit that damaged the armor.

Those 30mm cannons they have on BTRs and BMPs hurt too. Same shit they mount on the Mi-28 if I remember right.

edited 28th Jul '14 7:24:38 PM by LeGarcon

Interesting how you say that, since I have yet to see one of those combined recruiting centers that you described; all of the centers that I've seen here in southern California are of those standalone variations that are often quite isolated from each other - in fact, the regular National Guard has an office right next door to my dentist's. For some strange reason, Marine and Air Force offices are rare to the point of almost nonexistence in my region.

I mentioned the big video screens because they were what made me write up that post in the first place; a lot of that stuff they said seemed unbelievably too good to be true.

I really appreciated the answer, and I'll think about asking Barkey; for all of his knowledge, he rarely if ever posts on this thread for some reason.

Regarding the discussion on Ukraine, I just remembered now that ''Modern War'' magazine had released an in-depth analysis of the militaries of Eastern Europe last spring before the current geopolitical crises even began. Part of the article dealt a fine chunk regarding the now pre-civil war Ukrainian military, sadly which has been cut off due to the online article being only a sample.

Included in the article was a useful order of battle for the entire Ukranian Ground Forces◊, luckily preserved in the sample article, which I'll post here. Please note that this was published only months before the current civil war, and that the reliability of the chart as of now can be guaranteed to be disputed. I'll also provide the standard NATO map symbols that the chart uses to make it readable.

With even more regards to the Ukrainian military, I was just reminded by an image from said analysis article◊ of how years ago I came upon a rather extensive network of - err, strange - online galleries of its female personnel such as this, this, and this. A bit of Fridge Horror comes about thinking where all those smiling young women in such photos are now, such as about how many of them chose to defect and others to stay loyal to Kiev.

Might be a California vs Texas thing in regards to the recruiting centers. Also, the Air Force and Marines are the two branches that arguably need to put the least work into recruiting, being arguably the two most attractive forces to serve in (the Marines milk the Dare to Be Badass angle for everything its worth, Air Force has best quality of life), and IIRC having the two smallest manpower requirements (the US Marine Corps is tiny compared to any other military branch).

When I enlisted, the recruiter I went through was the recruiter for all of Cochise County, Arizona, which is a region about the size of the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut put together. He'd run a circuit between the different recruiting offices, spending a day at each one before driving to the next.

edited 28th Jul '14 8:06:27 PM by AFP

My god, it's full of brigades.

I fail to understand your point. Mind explaining?

It's the sheer number of brigade-sized formations in that picture. Most ex-Soviet states go division-heavy instead of brigade-heavy, reflecting Cold War doctrine; the Russians only began shifting over to brigades instead of divisions a few years ago.

Also, good god, they have as many rotary-wing aviation brigades as they have motor-rifle brigades!

Well maybe they just had a ton of helicopters sitting around and nothing to do.

I'm now absolutely furious at myself that I didn't spend the seven dollars needed to purchase that spring issue; I had no idea that such a detailed and informative article with charts as that would eventually prove useful until that whole shitstorm with Crimea broke out. Strategy & Tactics Press has been well grounded as my favorite military history magazine, since unlike other more mainstream brands such as those of the Weider History Group, their signature MO is to fill up pages with smaller 9-fonted text instead of pictures.

Anyways, according to the article, many of the Eastern European militaries found the brigade-heavy system not only much more controllable compared to the typically unwieldy division-centric system, but also as an affordable alternative as they downsized from their previous Soviet-era readiness standards.

Regarding the helicopter units, it luckily seems for Kiev that most, if not all, of them decided to stay loyal to the government - otherwise, the rebels wouldn't be making air defense such a big deal by gleefully showing off every single thing that they blast out of the sky. It's said that you can't win a war alone by air power, but you also can't totally lose if its strong enough.

One aspect of the conflict that nobody's bothered to mention yet is of the drastic effects it's going to have on the Ukrainian population as a whole - war obviously brings death wherever it goes, but Ukraine is infamously known on the World Census for its negative digit birth rate.

EDIT: Alright so I was source searching for any detailed charts of the Ukrainian military, which there seem to be saddeningly few. However, in the process, I came upon this OMG ridiculously dominative database that depicts in the entire Ukrainian conflict and every single military unit involved down to original garrison bases and estimated equipment numbers.

edited 28th Jul '14 10:33:25 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Brigades are a lot more flexible and a lot less expensive than divisions, hence why the United States "welp, deployment time again" armed forces uses them. On the other hand, divisions give high-ranking generals more jobs. And when said high-ranking generals have political or economic power, it can be hard to dislodge them, and their arguments for not introducing the disorderly process of transition to a military begin to sound persuasive.

For instance, there's this very good monograph on the VDV. Worth noting is that the VDV wields a lot of influence: it's like the American Marine Corps in terms of being an elite independent arm, only with closer ties to the Presidency and less oversight. So, when the rest of the Russian forces were transitioned to the brigade structure—over the screaming and kicking of their generals—the VDV stays in division structure, because that's just how much political power the VDV's head, General Shamanov, wields. Shamanov is reputed to be a friend of Putin's, which in Russia translates to political power and influence.

Also.
> Command
> Published by Matrix Games

Welp. That'd explain it.

edited 28th Jul '14 10:38:57 PM by SabresEdge

In our case the Army still have Divisions to consolidate the brigades. The Marines however are still in "battalion teams".

In regards to being a semi-independent military force with political connections that enables them higher priority than regular military forces, your description of the VDV really reminds me of the Waffen-SS - as much as the Russians here would hate me for comparing them to the Germans, or "Nazis" in their terms.

IIRC, the VDV's strategic usefulness as an airborne force is hindered by the Russian air force's limited pool of long range transport aircraft needed to ferry them around - although they consist of five to six divisions total, only two can be deployed into combat at a single time. In a scenario against a decently equipped military power, casualties sustained by the transport planes will only limit the number even more.

edited 28th Jul '14 10:54:18 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Kinda similar with the US: we still have divisions (for historical reasons as much as anything else; there'd be mutiny if they tried to take away the 82nd Airborne's divisional colors), but brigades are the actual maneuver units on the ground.

You might like this, then! Notes on the Russian airlift pool. I'd be absolutely amazed if they managed a full divisional drop, let alone two, given the range constraints of their aircraft; the US would need to work pretty hard to drop a whole division in one wave, come to think of it. (Also, they'd need to mobilize all of Aeroflot.) More likely the VDVs will ride to battle in the air assault role instead of paradropping.

A friend of mine was playtesting a wargame under an unspecified rule system, the classic Red Storm Cold-War-Gone-Hot scenario. I think the game designer was a little optimistic about Russian airlift. He was rather furious about the whole division of VDVs riding in magical antigravity BMDs that showed up around the Mittellandkanal. (That and the whole Soviet artillery divisions that were showing up at the party.)

If all else fails, they could just Federalize the Civil Air Reserve Fleet. While it's not exactly practical to drop paratroopers from a 767, you could at least free up the military transports that would otherwise be tied up by the logistics chain they are supporting. I'd be surprised if the Russians lacked a similar setup.

The idea of an entire military branch that answers directly to da boss or some similarly important figure rather than the conventional chain of command is common enough to be the core of several tropes.

edited 29th Jul '14 12:10:06 AM by AFP

The British government did something similar with civilian ships during the unpleasantness down in the Falklands, called the STUFT^note Ships Taken Up From Trade The most famous example was the SS Atlantic Conveyor, which sadly got into an argument with two Super Etendards. It lost.