3 Commando Brigade

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Posted: Sat Jan 16, 2016 12:30 pm     Super secret spam barrier
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Hey big (military) spender. Africa Edition


Is there a standardised price list?


Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 12:31 pm     Super secret spam barrier
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Mh, tough game for people who aren't into military news/prices that much.. but anyway, let's give it a go from a slightly different perspective. To make it a bit easier I'll assume a landlocked country (roughly based on a fictional, smaller and landlocked DRC) so I don't need to worry too much about naval aspects. Given that they're currently spending roughly $60m a year, I'm going to ballpark the armed forces at around 100'000, most of them a rag-tag bunch off ex-regular forces, ex-militia and badly trained new recruits with widespread corruption who don't get paid regularly.

1.) Paying the personnel:
I'm aiming for a salary of roughly $75/month for grunts, $100 for NCO's and $150 for CO's (with tiers in-between that I won't bother modelling). This should be a very very attractive wage in the country so we’ll deduct all housing, clothing and food expenses from that. Underpaid troops are uncontrollable and useless so this will be a large portion of the budget.

2.) Structure
I’m aiming for a grunt-heavy force with a section at 8-12 grunts + 2 NCO’s, 4 sections + 5 man command element per troop and 4 troops + 10 men admin/HQ per company for a total of 180 grunts, 50 NCO’s and 5 CO’s per COY which should cost roughly $250’000 a year/COY, including all running costs (admin, logistics, training, small-arms ammo, fuel etc)

3.) Size:
Maintaining the 100’000 strong army would eat up virtually all my budget so we’re going to drastically reduce the size: Everybody above 55 (~30’000) will be discharged, so will many of the incompetent  officers (10’000)  and anybody who would rather leave than stay in a ‘new’ army (10’000). Severance of 2 months of (new) salary will be provided, so roughly $10m in severance and the army is now at a more manageable 50’000 men remaining, costing me (including specialists like pilots) $55m a year. This means that even if outside support ceases up in a few years, we’d always be able to pay our troops since we’re below our self-achievable $60m budget.

4.) International conflict (i.e. non-domestic, non-civil-war stuff)
Since this might eat up money quickly I’ll get this out of the way first. My primary concern here is to find an effective (and affordable!) way to counter the overwhelming airpower that modern industrial nations can bring to bear on less well equipped nations. I’m not overly worried about large scale ground invasions, confident that my ground forces could recreate Korea/Vietnam for any first-world invaders.
The threat of sustained air campaigns, however, is incredibly high since the middle east has shown that, while air campaigns can’t decide wars by themselves, they will tip the balance slowly but surely.

I can’t afford the kind of air-force or even AAA that would be able to maintain even air parity in an all-out battle for the skies so I can see two or three possible solutions: First: Invest a very large portion of the budget over the next few years into developing a decent second tier air-force focussed on being able to inflict maximum casualties on enemy aircraft and pilots, trying to undermine public support for the air campaigns and/or force the enemy to deploy fighters to support their bombers/multi-roles, making airstrikes more expensive and more complicated to pull off. Second: Invest heavily into first-tier MANPAD, trying to provide organic protection for all units. Third: Create a highly decentralised network of supply routes, tunnels, jungle-paths, etc. Interleave military and civilian installations. Make sure strategic installations are either underground or cheap enough to give up and rebuild later.

Option one worked well in Korea and Vietnam however failed horribly for Yugoslavia. Since it’s also the most expensive, leaving you with an airforce that’s pretty useless otherwise, I’m ruling this one out. I’m going to put the focus on option three, investing $10m anually to diversify, conceal, protect, etc military installations. I’ll also make available $5m (every few years, starting  in second year) to acquire first tier MANPAD (e.g. Stingers), probably on the black market since the US are getting a bit more sensible about handing these out to random people.

5.) Domestic Conflict
Protecting against militias, both those entirely ‘homegrown’ as well as these with support from neighbouring/rival states, will mostly be the duty of the army/ground forces. The most important asset will be training, however certain support elements should be present to make live easier. I’m going to invest roughly $5m into mortars/RPGs/UGLs and $10m into lightly armed, lightly armored light vehicles. Anything that’s better than a technical, basically.

That leaves $5m which I’ll use as initial payments for contracts to equip and train my air-force with the intention of using $10-$20m each year to build up skills and inventory (Mi-8’s/Mi-24’s?) to create 6-8 air assault capable companies over the coming years which will be able to out-manoeuvre more conventional milita forces. Parallel to those efforts, I'll try and invest into cheap towed artillery guns - quantity over quality - to provide organic artillery support for all brigades. Tanks aren't high on the priority list because they're very limited in terms of terrain so I'm going to look into BTR's and BMP's instead, trying to mechanize at least two companies within the first few years.
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Okay, so this was less a “short list of military toys” and more a little rant about what I’d like to change if I was handed a crappy military but I hope it isnt’ too off-topic :)


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