Does our father have a version of Mao's red book? If not can we make our own with our own communist philosophies and theories?
Oh and don't forget the poetry as well.
Oh and don't forget the poetry as well.
That Time I Became A Dictator Of A Small Asian Communist Nation
I agree with you that it's pretty clear we are never going to be able to match anyone who isn't our size in a straight engagement, so any navy we make to defend against the US or other countries is going to have to be focused around asymmetric warfare. So much more focus on numbers of DDs with ASM and submarines capable of ambush attacks. We are probably going to want to get at least one of each eventually, but whichever one we make first depends on the tradeoffs between them. Surface ships are probably going to carry more firepower than submarines and be somewhat cheaper, but are much easier to detect and sink, while being easier to defend against on the enemy's side. Submarines of similar size are going to cost a bit more due to the extra machinery needed, and can't carry as much boom, but are much harder to defend against and have a good chance of not being found and sunk in the first place.
I like @CyberEnby's suggestion for a light ship too. In the age of missiles, even if it takes 10-15 hits we don't need big expensive captial ships to sink other capital ships. So even if we don't manage to make it fully modular, having a single hull that we can out fit either for anti-ship, anti-air, or anti-submarine duty will allow for more mass production to help bring costs down, rather than having to make an individual class of ship for each of those duties. The only thing I'd consider changing is the tender portion, as that would tie much of our navy's abilities to big, slower ships that are easier targets for any submarine, airplane, or cruise missile. I think that we would be better served by increasing the size of the catamaran to give it more endurance and better stability on the open ocean.
I'm still kind of partial to the idea of making Tigerstripes though.
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Tbh Im thinking of worst case, like being unable to repel a naval attack, or maybe an airborne assault on the island. In such an event they'd be useful in defending river crossings or bridges. Or even river escorts in case we ever want to use our rivers as alternative convoy highways via river barges.
I mean, im hoping it never comes to that, but if we're making them modular, I just thought it wouldnt be too much of a hassle to maybe get a few artillery sets should we ever need em. They'd probs be faster to get in position that regular arty when it comes to assaulting or defending river or riverside locations.
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Do we have any strategically important rivers? Any naval invasion we face is likely going to land on one of the two large sides since going through either of the straights if you don't have to is a horrible idea, so any major rivers could probably be bypassed by just landing north/south of them.
As for transportation, it might be easier and more economical to just have large, high capacity cargo ships sailing straight up and down the coast to move goods rather than trying to navigate a shallow, narrower, and possible winding river. And in a military situation, assuming we haven't totally lost our air defense, the coastline opposite the one being landed on should still be usable to ship soldiers and goods as it's protected from surface ships because they'd have to pass through the straights to reach it.
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- SEAsia
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Yeah, no we have a big island. Rivers are gonna be an important terrain feature. And those cargo ships would be useless going further inland. Any wide-enough river is going to be an invaluable logistical asset when waging war in Guangchou. So what if they land on a major beach? It would stand to reason that critical targets would be inland, not stuck near enough to the coast for a bombardment. So an enemy would have to get to them via land or air. And with enough rivers, or at least a few of the right ones, by water. Having a brown water navy wouldn't hurt, and the US is gonna find this out thanks to the Vietnam War. We will, too. We have observers there, after all.
Now, the enemy can get throughout the island fastest via air transport, assuming they have enough like the US or USSR would, but those transpos are gonna be juicy targets even for unguided rocket launchers. And when it comes to land, it can be slow, inefficient and dangerous for obvious reasons. River travel wouldn't exactly be safe, either, since a boat would be vulnerable to ambush fire from the shore. So, really, there's no one foolproof way of getting around the island safely. So ignoring the chance to fill in the niche of a river-capable unit would be foolish, when an enemy wouldn't dare ignore one more possible route for logistics or use their own patrol boats for small, quick strikes via the river highway.
Ofc, only @HeroCooky has the complete picture of whether or not we have any suitable river networks, but honestly I'd assume we'd have one or two at least. We have a volcano, there's usually a river or couple to bring rainwater down from summit to the coast.
In short, high capacity cargo ships? Peacetime, sure. Transporting troops for an invasion, sure. For island defense? Yeah, hard pass. Assuming our naval assets can guarantee the ships' safety and havent been sunk by a larger fleet or a carrier strike group, the best they can do is get troops from one beach to another, like you said.
But you wanna get troops from one side of the river to another, the solution isn't gonna be, "go back to the beach, board a ship, then sail all the way to the other side of the island then get off, then make your way to the other side of the river from the beach adjacent to the location you're aiming for" is a bad idea. More efficient to just do the crossing from there. And if we want to keep the enemy from doing a river crossing, we can't discount what indirect and direct firepower a brown water navy can bring to the fight. Especially indirect fire, when hauling artillery pieces across possibly jungle and uneven terrain, perhaps with rainy weather and muddy ground, is gonna be a bitch to do.
Anyways, that's my take on how we can use small FAC's and patrol boats in rivers further inland in Guangchou. Not to mention we'd likely find them useful for guerrilla warfare when we transport small covert commando squads up and down river networks.
Note: I'm no military expert, and most I know I got from games like Wargame Red Dragon where patrol boats were very useful in repelling river crossings by armored vehicles and infantry while still being cheap. They're fast, agile, and small enough that they can potentially hide from aerial units. I've used them more than once in-game to take down helicopters passing by a river who thought it was safe to do so. Anyways, if I've overlooked something, please do say.
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What our defense mix should be is still very much an open question. R-27 IRBMs have a range of about 3000 km, which is similar to an Osa's operational range so IRBMs+ scouts are another option, through I'm not sure if SALT covers us because those count as strategic missiles if it does.
Ekranoplans are also an option if we want something that can go even faster than a boat.
I'm gonna bush back hard against making the catamarans bigger through because that's how you get into a vicious cycle of bigger ship needing bigger engines that need more fuel and more maintenance which means more crew which means bigger ship...
And to be clear, the SWATH tenders can still do like... 20-30 knots, that's not slow by any means. And they aren't large ships - they don't carry a lot of cargo aboard - maybe enough to refuel and rearm 3 FACs before they need to have a cargo boat come underneath so it can restock. The SWATH tender probably doesn't displace over 1000 tonnes. Their existence is the price we pay for having FACs with the performance we need. Also, they're only ever needed if we want to project force across the Pacific, otherwise FACs are going to have enough range to tool around the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea on their own.
Now, there is one really wacky thing we haven't considered yet: what if we put hydrofoils on a submarine? We have the tech for it, and that way we can make small subs that have great range and speed (on the surface) and then they can dive to get away from surface threats.
I'd say just make dedicated river boats then, it'll be cheaper than using blue water FACs in the role.
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So my impression was the island was too thin to really have a good river running down the length of it. I can imagine that there is something that flows out to sea, but there is nothing saying that we must have useful rivers going lengthwise across the country. And if they aren't going lengthwise, I am doubtful they would ever be major avenues of transportation, or that they would be useful for our naval forces.
I mean, it's a fair point that people wouldn't go back all the way too shore to get around a a river, but unless the rivers are really big, they will just make a makeshift bridge to cross the river. And if the rivers are really big, that will be noticeable and be planned around. We would build bridges and invaders would just add one more landing spot on the other side of the river.
So I need this now. I mean, this is bond villain levels of ridiculous and I am here for it! Seriously, if we could get it to work, we could make it even better. We could have a movable trailing edge on the hydrofoil to control whether it pushes the craft up out of the water or down below it. It could ride, fire and then sink beneath the waves in a flash. It might even help with sudden altitude(?) changes when below the waves for evasive maneuvers
I can even imagine the foils being somewhat deployable, so that the craft can be stored away in small (hiding) spaces when not out on patrol.
Heck, do we need to build it all like a sub. Does everything need to be reachable by a pressurized cabin, or could we leave some things 'outside' the sub and only have them for use when above water? It's at least a design question now just what shape we could end up using for the craft.
(So, reason this wouldn't work is because the high speed boats can go, and the lower speed subs go, but it would be amazing if we could get this to work. It would be the perfect embodiment of hit and run that the original catamaran design was made for)
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HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
You have some river systems, but they, at one point or another, become too small to make any kind of large river-war ship feasible.
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Just small PT boats then. Still good enough for small-scale stuff like squad transpo or supplying small units with key equipment and supplies like anti-tank or anti-air stuff. Still a gamechanger in certain situations.
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Let's do that 1d12+4:
So a total of 13! Is that good?! Stay tuned!
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HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
13 American sailors had an goose egg thrown into their face by the Farmer Wu Chuck before he could be restrained by the Guangchou Army.
Dagnit Farmer Chuck, We coulda eaten those eggs. If you must through Eggs, Make sure they are the inedible ones.
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
do you still need the 2d100?
HeroCooky
Unverified Monstergirl
Too late for that, if the 2d100 had been thrown, Chuck would have used his Eggapult against the American Menace.
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
Eggapult? Do I want to know what that is Really?
@Anon500 pretty much summed up my opinions on our rivers. I just don't think our island geography allows for a strategically useful river system. Judging from Taiwan, we're generally only around 100km wide. That's what, 2 hours drive at non-highway speeds? Moving goods and people overland rather than on rivers is completely feasible at that short a distance. And any river transportation lengthwise is going to have to compete with bulk freighters in the ocean when I don't think there's a town in Guangchou that's more than 6 hours from a harbor/port.
Defense-wise I'm not sure where you got the idea of walking all the way back to the coast to cross a river, and I agree that that's a horrible idea. It was always more along the lines of that with the large coastline we have available, any invaders could just choose to land on whichever side of the river mouth means they can advance upstream to their targets without having to cross the river. I imagine we'd have all our important targets inland, if only for tsunami protection, and in any other country rivers would be good for striking inland. For 100km wide Guangchou though, inland is just 20-30 minutes more overland. Going overland also means that your forces aren't stuck following a path where the defenders know which way you are coming.
Overall I'd say our rivers are useful tactically, but not strategically, and could be adequately defended for cheaper by just making some camouflaged emplacements along the banks to staff with soldiers carrying rocket launchers to sink anything trying to make it's way upstream.
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Honestly were probably worrying about the wrong thing. The weapons platforms are just one part of a six step kill chain, while scouting and communication (the other 5 steps are all related to these) are areas we haven't addressed at all yet.
When someone gest around to making a movie based on the incident...
They are going to wonder how the hell to portray Farmer Wu Chuck Realistically.
So... yeah, radar, both for air and naval attacks is really important, and we just don't have it. We need something for long range detection, and there is nothing. I am relatively ok if we miss the spy planes overhead, but we really need something long range for our eyes.
We are going to have to start rolling for radar development, aren't we? Or has someone got ideas for a ridiculous version of this that we could use
When someone gest around to making a movie based on the incident...
They are going to wonder how the hell to portray Farmer Wu Chuck Realistically.
Hollywood will remeber it as the battle of the USS iwa jima where 13 sailors faced off the goose legion of Wu Chunk.
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We don't really need to develop our own, there's plenty of Soviet ones we can use.
Like, designing an IADS for us would mean taking the Soviet S-75, S-125, and S-200 systems and swapping the software over to native electronics, then possibly using Tigerlink to integrate it all into a coherent system where the various radars talk to each other and some of the manual steps are automated (important given our relatively untrained soldiers).
The next step up would be to get an airship based AWACS craft - we don't have satellites and having high altitude airships is the next best thing. It'll also be great for civilian communication and surveying.
And we'll definitely need an interceptor, probably something MiG-25 based, but Iron Tiger tech opens the door to significant amounts of Belkan Witchcraft when it comes to our airfleet.
At sea an ASW VTOL would be great for dealing with American submarines - you can't torpedo something in the air, and if you shoot it down with a sub-launched missile it's got twelve friends who will vector in on your position faster than you can get away.
Hmmm, for dealing with marine surface targets I'm increasingly preferring the Ekranoplan. We can build some very nice hybrid-electric Ekranoplans that keep the turbines high and dry while using electric props that blow over the wings. They'll go way faster than any FAC. And it's not like the FAC will be any more survivable.
Wireless communication technology will be the key button that we need to mash every-time it comes up because that's how we get sensor fusion, and once we have that we'll be playing a whole other ball game than everyone else.
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The question about this is... what game in particular.
What military conflicts are actually coming up, since Vietnam, at least OTL, isn't going to last long enough for us to use any of these cool toys... even if we did want to start a war with America.