I did not precisely go into detail regarding the armored engagement on the Raisin, but suffice it to say that the T-55s organic to Moses Division lacking an organic amphibious option was indeed recognized as an issue. They just...kinda went anyway. They were working on it. The CMC, at least, is capable of throwing together a bridge. They just wanted the BTRs on the other bank to provide security.
And really, when there's a force of late-model M1 Abrams tanks in position to pick apart your BTRs as they float across the river, which side of the river your support tanks occupy is not going to be decisive in whether or not they survive.
Thats reasonable I think.
They're up against literal hundreds of thousands of militia, and those militia do get anti-armor equipment on occasion. They could not win the war with just that. Thus why their actions thus far have been, "Train additional forces."
Militia need time to organize and to concentrate.
The CMC were already concentrated and organized. Even the Soviets, who actually drilled for this sort of thing, could only put Category C divisions in the field in 60 days.
If they'd moved decisively in the first week, the first two weeks they should have been holding Augusta and the centers of power.
The foreign exchange reserves and the rest. Especially in the light of Victoria deliberately making it difficult for people to travel away from their hometowns by multiple measures.
THEN they'd be able to raise and equip troops, and counter-accuse Blackwell of an attempted coup.
Which is why I'm saying my respect for their military capabilities just went way downhill if they had such a decisive materiel advantage and squandered it even worse than their brethren did at Detroit.
We, the CFC, are not part of that "everybody". We're poor as shit, and people who are poor are as shit don't avail themselves of the latest luxuries - they make do with whatever they can scrounge.
Importing stuff is expensive - especially if you also have to import all your spare parts and the expertise to service everything. For poor farmers eking out a living on a smaller farm, tractors - of any kind whatsoever - are massive purchases that can only be afforded in the occasional years of plenty when a particularly good harvest happens. Cheap diesel tractors that don't need to be shipped in from the other side of the world and aren't going to cost multiple times their list price in repair and service costs over ten or twenty years are absolutely going to be competitive.
Somalia doesn't build its technicals. The DRC does not set up 1930s tractor factories. Zimbabwe does not build its own cellphones or computers.
You only see stuff like that in North Korea.
And we laugh at them for a reason.
Importing stuff is expensive. Not importing it is often a false economy.
The whole point of international trade for Third World nations is that it allows them to leapfrog entire stages of development and not crawl through every miserable level from scratch. To leverage existing infrastructure in foreign nations from people who have already built the infrastructure and can mass produce for cheaper than we can, while we focus on stuff that we can do well and build up to a point where we can do our own production.
Witness all the Third World nations with cellphones and mobile banking, and the savings in infrastructure costs from not having to roll out tens of thousands of kilometres of landlines in order to maintain national communications. Witness all the African HIV patients on antiretrovirals that cant be produced in their own countries. Witness the Ebola sufferers on monoclonal antibodies.
Specifically with motor vehicles, 1930s vehicles had terrible fuel economy and poor power to weight.
And critically, they were horribly polluting. Ask anyone who lived in the US before the EPA was invented. Which is literally an existential issue for not just the planet, but us as a nationstate as it impacts the amount of foreign aid we might be able to get.
You are literally asking us to invest in all the infrastructure of internal combustion engines again for civilian use: pipelines, refineries, gas stations, tanker trucks, fuel additives. All the stuff that's not cross-compatible with cheaper mass produced electric-powered vehicles we can buy.
Its a false economy, and ends up costing us more.
Fossil fuels for the military? Yes. We are unlikely to have a choice.
Hybrids are probably a thing for stealth and efficiency, but I dont see how they'd have improved on the convenience of transporting diesels.
Riverine traffic?
Possibly, depending on whether any alternatives can be found.
Farms? No.
There'll be cheaper stuff available, and we probably cant afford to set up segregated civilian infrastructures for both fossil fuel and electrically-powered vehicles.
You says we cannot afford to import?
I assert we can't afford not to import. For us, domestic production of 1930s antiques is a luxury. Its the sort of luxury only an ideological state like Victoria with a sugardaddy backstop can afford.
Actual poor nations import a lot of used vehicles. That I can tell you from experience.
en.wikipedia.org
