My apologies this is so very late. I initially forgot, and then kept putting it off, until the outage inspired me to run a couple checks.
No, I am not thus mistaking. My point is that as a Russian satellite state, they are not realistically going to be permitted to wage war against a Russian ally. Nor would a Russian ally attack a Russian satellite state without consulting Alexander IV and gaining his blessing in the matter.
As such, while the NCR doubt has the capability to fight against a notional Japanese invasion, or even to invade Cascadia in turn, their normal strategic readiness posture reflects their realities, not their hypothetical capabilities. Alexander IV would not be highly tolerant of the NCR garrisoning that border heavily. If they said "but we need to be prepared to fight Japan," Alexander's eyes would narrow suspiciously and Bad Things would happen to the Californian government.
Conversely, in the normal course of things the NCR's military deployment posture does include the need to prepare for things like pacification campaigns inland (where Russia "uses" California on a significant scale). Abruptly dropping all these activities would attract Russian attention that they cannot afford, because they need this self-coup to strike without warning.
Importantly, California is not a free agent here.
They are not just any nation preparing a self-coup and worrying about an interventionist invasion from across their border, they are specifically themselves, preparing the self-coup against an internal faction of overseers that will have power over them until the self-coup succeeds. As such, their options for troop deployment are complex and constrained.
Their status as an arms exporter with a reasonably competent if partially obsolescent military, and as a covert nuclear power has literally nothing to do with any of this.
Now see, that works great as long as you're confident that you can keep up that offensive.
That is to say, keep up the supply line for a fast-moving military offensive in the territory of a power with superior technology (if not very much of it on hand), and especially superior air and naval technology that enables them to hit your forces with smart weaponry and cut key infrastructure paths both ahead and behind you, both inside your territory and inside theirs.
Furthermore, even if the Japanese garrisons are relatively small and underprepared, the operational area (Oregon and Washington states) is quite large, and traversing it will take considerable time in the face of even minor resistance of any kind.
Over and above which, it is very unlikely that the support bases for this operation could be kept several hundred kilometers away in the Central Valey or wherever, even if the forces themselves are able to make a very long, very fast mechanized road march and be on the northern border with Cascadia before the Japanese have fully realized those forces are moving. It would greatly increase the logistical burden of the operation to do otherwise, and remember that preparing a big operation associated with the self-coup is inherently a risk for the NCR right now. Because the more people and assets become involved, the greater the risk of the Russians noticing what's happening- see above about that.
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The point remains that the more the NCR does, the more overtly they prepare for a military invasion in "the wrong direction," the more personnel they involve (because you really can't make an invasion work smoothly if it comes as a surprise not only to the enemy, and not only to your troops, but to your own logistics staff)... Well, the more the NCR does, the more clues they hand the Russians about exactly what is happening. And it is very, very clear that the NCR is hoping to achieve some degree of surprise, and indeed needs to achieve some degree of surprise to make this work gracefully.
They are clearly expecting to encounter serious problems and danger if the Russians are alerted to what is about to happen, and even more problems and danger if the Russians deduce the details.
This affects their strategic calculations and makes preparing to lightning-invade Cascadia to forestall hypothetical threats arising from there into a much riskier proposition.
Yes, but you do need a prepared military garrisoned in vaguely the right part of the country. It was hardly a secret that the Soviets had vast armies parked in Eastern Europe, prepared either to invade West Germany and advance to the Rhine.
Indeed, this was one of the least secret facts to be found regarding the entire Warsaw Pact's military posture. Everyone knew it, and everyone treated it as an obvious truism for approximately two generations that the Soviets were retaining the capability to rapidly invade West Germany, or to drop a large army on any single rebellious Warsaw Pact country, in short order.
The NCR cannot, to put it mildly, allow it to become widely known that they are similarly prepared to invade Japanese Cascadia before their uprising in the summer of 2076.
And they are still in the central part of the state/country, not the northern part. Look at your own map; the entire northern part of the state is relatively empty compared to the central and southern parts, just as the inland areas (mostly mountain and desert) are relatively empty compared to the coast except for the fertile Central Valley region.
I'm not saying there are no troops in California north of Los Angeles, I'm saying that California simply does not in the normal course of things have any need to prepare to wage war in the northern part of its territory. This would make military preparations to invade Japanese Cascadia much more conspicuous than they would otherwise be.
1)Imperial Japan is not Romania or Bulgaria. Its not even AU!Egypt.
Its functionaries are not likely to go seeking permission for military operations in the face of provocation any more than the French and British did when they hit the Suez. I mean, this may not be the Kwantung Army of the pre-WW2 Japanese military, but the sort of revanchist sentiment the ruling administration has fostered does not lend itself to predictability.
2)It actually suits Alexander's foreign policy motives to have a situation where Imperial Russia is the Indispensable Man, keeping two hostile allies pacified and separated. Keep in mind Alexander doesnt seem to do friends, just interests. Being able to use the organic policies of one
patsy ally to pressure another is precisely the sort of thing that the man would do.
And yes, that involves military positioning and spending.
That's essentially what he did with Pakistan and India, after all, when he sold Pakistan down the river after getting himself invited in as an ally.
Not to mention that Alexander's reach is nowhere as long as he would like. If it was, California would not still be a nuclear state.
As for history, US and Soviet allies came to blows in the Cold War all the time IIRC without asking permission. Greece and Turkey are both members of NATO and have always been at daggers drawn; the Greek rearmament program is aimed fairly squarely at the Turks. Argentina and the UK were both US allies during the Cold War before coming to blows in the Falklands.
Ethiopia and Somalia went to war without asking the Soviets.
3)The permanent strategic posture of the NCR includes policing a number of internal rebel groups according to WoG, in addition to the US interior.
It also involves, critically,
keeping Cascadian rebel groups from staging out of the California side of the border, where there is a sympathetic civilian population, significant civilian small arms and chemical/bombmaking supplies, no Japanese drone strikes because the NCR Air Force is a thing, and where capture doesnt mean field execution or slow death in a concentration camp.
This in particular would have gotten increasingly important after the Uprising of 2062.
And even more so with China resurgent and Japanese ground forces increasingly sparse on this side of the Pacific.
That requires a large,
consistent military presence on the NCR side of the northern border and the permanent military infrastructure to support that many troops on the border. Large as in divisional strength plus forces, judging from the permanent forces in other such conflicts.
Heavy armor might not be permanently stationed there, but that can change very quickly across good roads.
The Japanese Occupation either got used to seeing large numbers of NCR troops and infrastructure at or near the border, or to getting inundated by rebels walking over the border for supplies.
4) I
suspect (speculation!) based on recent performance, that Japan does not have enough of a technological military edge for it to matter here.
And Japan's superior military technology doesnt really get to matter anyway if its on the other side of the Pacific, preventing the irate Chinese parking two dozen SSNs/electric-nuclear hybrid submarines off the coast of Japan and strangling their economy to death. Or trying to stem the increasing flow of arms and support equipment to the insurgencies in South Korea and the Phillipines.
Its worth remembering they literally had to reinvade Cascadia after getting kicked out the first time by an uprising using smuggled arms, and they needed Californian territory and ports to do it.
5) The Commonwealth staged an invasion across ~400km of wasteland to stage an attack on the Welland Canal area and to take Buffalo in a couple days.
They/we did it at roughly a month's notice, without much in the way of logistical stockpiles, using thirty to forty year old vehicles, an eclectic hodge-podge of equipment and weapons, across terrain that had not seen infrastructural investment in 40 years, with an army less than two years old, and where half of the troops involved having been militia on the other side of the war less than three months previously.
Yes, the Commonwealth had the advantage of water transport on the Great Lakes for logistical support, but both the NCR and Occupied Cascadia have intact air and land transportation networks, Cascadia because you cant extract resources without roads and rail.
And the NCR armed forces is a seriousface motorized/mechanized military force with the equipment and training to take advantage of it.
This should be well within their capabilities.
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I dont believe the New California Republic would want to invade Cascadia, mind.
At least not for the first couple years; wars are expensive, are better done in conjunction with diplomatic and covert prepwork, and they can make holding Cascadia untenable for the Japanese without invading anyway.
I just think they could take the place from a crash start, and will have explicitly planned for that as a contingency as part of both routine military contingency and Purge planning. Just like the US has plans to invade Canada.
And to deal with a zombie apocalypse.
The thing is, preparations for any action against Cascadia would likely make it harder for them to accomplish their current task, which is setting up the planned governmental and intelligence coup to replace the Russian-controlled officials in their government and institutions, and to cut out the less overt methods of Russian control.
*Imagines the WTFery if the coup fails, and Russia suddenly is ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL of the NCR.*
I cannot see a scenario in which that is even vaguely possible now that Alexander and Victoria are no longer rocking plotshields.
Back in the Cold War, it took 17 Soviet divisions to put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and 500,000 WarPact troops to stop and reverse the Czechoslovakian reforms of 1968. These were places where the Soviets had a land border, and were able to bring in heavy armor.
Notably, not a situation that Cali is in.
I mean, Alexander has successfully avoided committing Russian troops to North America for almost forty years.
I rather doubt he's going to change that policy now that the foes on his borders are awake.
All told, we have three (edit: four) calibers for small arms and light weapons, two calibers for auto-cannons (one of which should be either retired or replaced), between one and three calibers for mortars, and three calibers for cannons (two for artillery, one for tanks).
- Consolidate small arms calibers from four to two: 6.8mm for rifle and SAW, and .50 cal for HMG.
- Consolidate autocannon ammo from three to one: 30mm or 35mm, being about the size necessary for a modern programmable or guided package if necessary without being so large as to markedly reduce the amount of ammo that can be carried.
- Increase mortar calibers to two: 81mm and 120mm. 120mm being towed or vehicle-mounted, and 81mm being manportable.
- Consolidate artillery to 155mm, whether self-propelled or towed. Because logistics.
- Tank cannon is whatever is NATO/NCR standard: 120mm to 140mm.
Seven calibers.
Not counting whatever you choose for a sidearm, but that's largely irrelevant from a warmaking perspective.
While I do agree that the 25mm is in very limited use, it is also one of the smallest calibers of auto-canon it is practical to make. Furthermore, it is the smallest NATO standard caliber auto-cannon round, and before the collapse was in service with almost every major nation in Western Europe. With all that going for it, it is extremely likely that there are still nations who both use it and would be willing to export it. As such, if we are going to standardize on a light auto-canon the 25 mm is likely to be the best option available.
The 40x365mm round is also a NATO standard round, and also in use by almost every major nation in Western Europe. In addition, it is also the smallest round for which we know proximity fuses can be made without using semiconductor-based technology. This means it is likely the smallest round which we can domestically manufacture proximity fused ammunition for. This is highly desirable for an anti-aircraft/anti-small boat/light shore bombardment weapon, all of which are roles a heavy auto-canon may be expected to fulfill.
Its worth noting that we will have domestic access to 1980s-level technology.
And be able to import more modern stuff. We are unlikely to be limited by an inability to get our hands on programmable fuses.
Not everything has to be domestically built.
Yeah, but we won't necessarily be getting our weapons from a European nation. It's one possible source, but far from the only one, especially since some of the European nations are in quite bad shape themselves.
True.
Worth noting though that Alexander probably thoroughly torpedoed the export trade of the Imperial Russian arms industry after his intervention in Pakistan and screwing over their nuclear deterrent. No one who isnt literally getting the equipment given away is going to pay cash money for Imperial Russian gear that might have shit slipped into it by the Okhrana, and the relative strength of the ruble makes Russian military exports uncompetitive to boot.
Which helps explain the health of the Californian military export trade.
Though they are probably licensing a lot of local production in order to reassure local buyers.
Basically, I dont really expect Imperial Russian tech standards to be widespread outside the core Russosphere.
The problem with the Centauro is a rather glaring one; none will have been built for over two and a half decades by the time the Collapse comes about, let alone the interim until Italy pulled itself back together with the EU.
Furthermore, going by the specs on the page you linked to, the Centauro has the exact same operational range, is a slight bit faster and can mount a slightly bigger gun, has worse armour, and far fewer standard configurations. The Patria can be a mortar carrier, IFV, APC, tank destroyer, C2/C3 vehicle, E-War vehicle, ambulance, bigger ambulance via an expanded hull, mobile workshop, ATGM vehicle, scout vehicle or an SPG.
If you were looking for a modern 8x8 AFV analogue? Try the
Artec Boxer.
Explicitly modular, with the drive module and the payload module being built separately and the payload module being fields wappable in ten minutes or so, turning your ambulance into an ATGM carrier or SPG or whatever.
Known variants include ATGM, IFV, SPG, APC, AA, ambulance, bridge layer, command post, missile carrier, recon, self-propelled howitzer, tank recovery vehicle. Operated by Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Australia, and possibly Slovenia.
Licensed to Algeria for domestic manufacture.
cleantechnica.com
