East Africa 1930: An ORBAT Quest
- Thread starter 4WheelSword
- Start date
- Original Alt. History
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
I certainly didn't intend to remove it, was it edited in later?
The "for the record" bit was not specifically directed at you, but everyone who's reading since things like the riot might have been forgotten. (I know I forgot stuff, I was surprised when backreading to see the civil war)
The Carabinieri have never been "just" MPs - our border fortifications and river patrol vessels are operated by them. I can see an argument for not using them as a reserve if we can push for Bantu membership in the regular army now, but I still think they are a valuable partisan/ranger force and that role is a natural evolution of what they were doing prior to the reforms.
Last edited:
Pro-Expanding Cavalry if only because that would likely be our only fast units we are capable of making and we do need fast units. We also have a supply chain prepared for more horses so it only make sense to take advantage of that fact. And as mentioned we would need to set up new supply chains if we want other kinds of fast units and the country may not have the infrastructure for other kinds of transportation.
Empress_Boog
Grand Empress
Okay yeah that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for clarifying.
If all of that is true, I really don't remember (I need to reread the opening parts of the thread again), then I would like to relegate the Carabinieri to a MP role. Maybe by expanding the army and having them take over the border fortifications. And of course by having an independent naval force and removing the river, lake, and ocean vessels from the Carabinieri grasp. Though this type of naval reform probably won't happen until after whatever version of WW2 hits this timeline, I still think that should be what the end goal is.
That sounds like defeatism, if we believe hard enough we will be able to create bicycles in the thousands for our soldiers.
Imagine the future for our great nation, everyone can go anywhere they want without needing a horse let alone being constrained to the rail lines. It would open up so much for the common person.
That and worst case scenario we can just import bicycles from the Japanese until we get an actual production line set up.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
We should invest in Mechanized Walkers as transport and artillery platforms. That'll solve all our problems.
Bikes can go offroad as long as the ground's relatively flat (which is similar to the limitations for horses, as I understand it), and bicycles are buildable in relatively small workshops with simple cutting and welding equipment (the hardest part will probably be producing steel tubing instead of just raw steel billets). Rubber's an issue, but it takes a LONG time to wear down a bike tire, and if we issue patch kits, then punctured wheels can be repaired without requiring a new inner tube (or we could go really radical and try for an airless tire).
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
Yeah, they can work - and if we really need to we can use solid tires, but that will increase weight and make the ride a little more uncomfortable. They won't be able to go quite as many places as a cavalry force but it will provide some better mobility to the light infantry (and potentially we can build trailers to haul heavier machine guns and light mortars via bike or break them into bike portable loads).
Only issue is we have so much other stuff to do before we can start on it.
- Location
- an unseen void
- Pronouns
- Any
Absolutely not. What is the point of going backwards after we put so much work into the Carabinieri and they'll have all our naval expertise? Like, sure, they are not a direct substitute for the army in maneuver, but the army has its own massive limitations and drawbacks and we just voted to build a carabinieri led brown water force instead of a deep water navy.
Set aside your assumptions about what is optimal in the abstract. We are operating as political creatures in a small country constrained by resources and history. There are path dependencies here; there's no point throwing out the carabinieri capabilities we've developed.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
I rarely jump in to comment on discussion, but I have to here. Hi, I was a bike courier and bike mechanic and very little of this is true.
- A modern rubber bike tyre in regular hard use (as would be expected of bike mobile infantry) will wear down reasonable quickly. A 1930's rubber tyre? Even faster.
- Speaking of rubber, your caliper brakes will want regular replacement and you'll want them to be rubber unless you want to replace your tyres more ofte.
- If you're riding off-road you're going to need to know how to rebalance your tyres. If you're riding off-road and in dusty environments, you're going to need to semi-regularly replace the inner workings of the bike's crank.
I am not saying bike infantry is bad, but please understand that bikes can be precocious little fuckers when you ride them day in and day out. I once even had a stamped steel pedal snap out from under me.
Empress_Boog
Grand Empress
All of that is true, but it needs to be split at some point. Allowing a paramilitary army force have its own navy and the official military not having one is just asking for trouble. Even if the naval trained Carabinieri form the core of our future navy, it should not stay under Carabinieri leadership.
Last edited:
Huh, that's surprising, I used to ride a fair bit and was speaking from my own experience (although definitely not enough to have a pedal snap on me!). I wasn't riding on pavement very much so my tire wear was probably lighter than should be expected, and I had disc brakes so rubber calipers were a non-issue. I was also assuming that for the most part these would be infantry who use bicycles for operational mobility and not for daily patrolling, so I think my level of "riding often" was fairly low (like, an hour a day on average to stay fit, and if they're moving around urgently during wartime, we accept the higher rubber consumption and dip into stockpiles).
- Location
- an unseen void
- Pronouns
- Any
I mean it's part of the military. It is a branch.
I think we should compromise and just disband our entire armed forces and invite the Japanese to protect us militarily from foreign threats, just think how much money we could save.
And we could even make back some money from our current investments, we can sell the arms factories, the horses and maybe the ship back to the Japanese.
We can then focus on improving the life of our people, such as investing into more mines for steel mills (and expanding the steel industry in general) so we can sell more steel to the Japanese.
We could also try to develop tourism and try to get Japanese tourists to visit us, perhaps some would like our country so much that they move here permanently.
I see absolutely no downside to this.
And we could even make back some money from our current investments, we can sell the arms factories, the horses and maybe the ship back to the Japanese.
We can then focus on improving the life of our people, such as investing into more mines for steel mills (and expanding the steel industry in general) so we can sell more steel to the Japanese.
We could also try to develop tourism and try to get Japanese tourists to visit us, perhaps some would like our country so much that they move here permanently.
I see absolutely no downside to this.
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
In our case, we will also have a lot of training - basically every soldier will need to learn to ride from scratch and we'll also be wanting to do practice route marches with them to get them used to the daily riding and maintenance, so I think even just at peacetime levels we are probably looking at some decent wear and tear.
- Location
- USA
We probably want to transition the Naval Branch into its own separate Branch as a full armed forces at some point even if we keep it small.
- Location
- Earth, Milky Way
How do we do that? I'd like to see what they have to say without using a turn or commiting to whatever they suggest.
Although in truth the only reason I want to ask the guy is so he can go "Horses of course!" and then we go horses and can stop talking about bicycles and their sheds.
Last edited:
- Location
- Somewhere in the stacks
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'll jump in as well to point out that countries that employed bicycle infantry (Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium all come to mind) tended to deploy them as defensive forces who would usually be doing their route marches along fairly modern metaled road systems in their home countries as a supplement/more mobile infantry force as a budget replacement for motorization or to supplement motorization. It was also usually adopted in countries that already had civilian populations that made larger use of bicycles in day-to-day life.
In the '30s bike infantry isn't a replacement for horse-mounted cavalry in terms of all-terrain mobility and flexibility of maneuver, it's usually a budget stop-gap for armed forces expecting to fight defensively in their own countries and on their own infrastructure.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Just ask us! We don't wanna get too many 'questions for the liasons' but it's not like we're gonna be sad answering your inquiries.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
If we finish our Type 3 development at some point could we use them to fulfill as our intial Anti-Air capabilities?
- Location
- Buskerud, Norway
There are probably far More Reewinites who know how to use and Treat a horse than a Bike and that even making a Carabineri Cavalry reserve force could be useful for us sine a lot of the more rural population uses horses in their daily loves so would be constantly used to riding them
- Pronouns
- He/They
Overall, I think that a conscript army would serve Reewin best. As a small country surrounded by larger, often expansionistic ones, the ability of a conscript army to develop a mobilizable reserve seems vital. While it would probably be possible to meet the new field army target on a volunteer basis, the reserve target would likely be hard. And even the current targets is for a moderate-sized peacetime military - any expansion beyond that would more or less be from scratch.
Thus, I'd argue that we should plan for a three-tiered mobilization scheme. First the Army and whatever Carabineri happen to be in the line of the conflict; second mobilized Army reserves (from recent year's conscripts) and mobilized Carabineri; third newly raised troops. I don't think that expanding the Carabineri as a 'professional irregular' force will give us as much as an Army which can fulfill the same roles plus mainline combat, while generating a far larger pool of reserves.
Here's a possible timeline I've been looking at for a very army-focused plan which moves towards that. We have been neglecting training for a long time, and pushing off expansion until after that was theoretically done, thus leaving us with neither. We now have a deadline on expansion, which means we need to move decisively if we want to establish the training pipeline first. This timeline calls for closing the Carabineri office before the crunch period to accomplish this, but I'm not against opening it later - we have simply neglected the main branch for too long and now need to get the institutions in place. In the future, the Carabinieri would benefit from the basic training infrastructure I hope to build up.
Vital actions to fill the ???s are Maneuver, Cavalry and Artillery training, but I figure those and others have more wiggle room than establishing the basic institutions and the path to expansion.
This turn, I'd argue for:
Thus, I'd argue that we should plan for a three-tiered mobilization scheme. First the Army and whatever Carabineri happen to be in the line of the conflict; second mobilized Army reserves (from recent year's conscripts) and mobilized Carabineri; third newly raised troops. I don't think that expanding the Carabineri as a 'professional irregular' force will give us as much as an Army which can fulfill the same roles plus mainline combat, while generating a far larger pool of reserves.
Here's a possible timeline I've been looking at for a very army-focused plan which moves towards that. We have been neglecting training for a long time, and pushing off expansion until after that was theoretically done, thus leaving us with neither. We now have a deadline on expansion, which means we need to move decisively if we want to establish the training pipeline first. This timeline calls for closing the Carabineri office before the crunch period to accomplish this, but I'm not against opening it later - we have simply neglected the main branch for too long and now need to get the institutions in place. In the future, the Carabinieri would benefit from the basic training infrastructure I hope to build up.
| 1933 | Q1 (finishied) | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
| Carabineri Maritime | Naval Base | Naval Base | Naval Base | |
| Ordnance Office | LMG | HMG mount trials | HMG mount trials | ?Ordnance? |
| 3rd Pt (Carabineri) | Rangers | ??? | ??? | Restructure the Office |
| 4th Pt | Navy | Chaco | Chaco | Chaco |
| 5th Pt | Foreign Ideas | Foreign Ideas | Infantry School | Infantry School |
| 1934 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
| Carabineri Maritime | Naval Base | Small Ships | ?Navy? | ?Navy? |
| Ordnance Office | ?Ordnance? | ?Ordnance? | ?Ordnance? | ?Ordnance? |
| 3rd Pt | Institute Conscription | Institute Conscription | Officer School | Officer School |
| 4th Pt | Chaco | Purchase Rifles | Purchase HMGs/Mounts | ??? |
| 5th Pt | Infantry School | Infantry School | Expansion | Expansion |
| 1935 | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 |
| Carabineri Maritime | ?Navy? | ?Navy? | ?Navy? | ?Navy? |
| Ordnance Office | ?Ordnance? | ?Ordnance? | ?Ordnance? | ?Ordnance? |
| 3rd Pt | Officer School | Officer School | ??? | ??? |
| 4th Pt | ??? | More Officers | More Officers | More Officers |
| 5th Pt | Expansion | Expansion | ??? | ??? |
| 6th Pt | ??? | ??? | ??? | ??? |
Vital actions to fill the ???s are Maneuver, Cavalry and Artillery training, but I figure those and others have more wiggle room than establishing the basic institutions and the path to expansion.
- Navy: Naval Base
- Ordnance Office: Write-in to trial dedicated mounts for/which could be adapted for the Hotchkiss HMG. It will be a fine AT/AA weapon for now, but the current dual-use mounting on basically a wagon isn't ideal. I would love something like the little Soviet Maxim gun carriage for the infantry/AT role.
- Carabineri Office: Some useful 6-month action
- Free Point: Send observers to the Chaco War
Last edited:
- Location
- Earth, Milky Way
If we want to move decisively let's move decisively and cut the Carbinieri office sooner. We can either finish six months early or we can have some buffer in case a wrench gets thrown into our plans.