SD.net's World OOC/Discussion thread MK VI

[MKSheppard]

I did, in fact, declare a Breeder reactor program shortly after the "Intel guy shows El Presidente the RBMK pictures" post.

How many Megawatts thermal?

[Lonestar]

Fuck if I know. I can't math right.

[MKSheppard]

Remember, electricity falls out of sockets!

[MKSheppard]

All of which would immediately entail counter-launches by the MESS. We are watching your entire airspace and if you honestly think we wouldn't begin scrambling with unplanned and unannoucned exercises then its the height of delusion.

Yes, because I'm going to announce in advance Operational Readiness Inspections to the Bomb Groups, so they have weeks in advance to prepare for a surprise inspection.

ORIs in the heyday of SAC were very comprehensive, right up to loading and scrambling the bombers in Zero Interval Takeoffs like during wartime; along with dispersing alternate landing field teams to other airports in the vinicity for maximum realism.

Shepnukistani bombers in the air is more than enough to get all of us on DefCon 2 or 3 depening upon how crazy you've been acting lately.

So all I have to do to fuck with you is to simply fly training flights to keep my SAC crews at peak performance? Even on the lowest level of performance in the Cold War, SAC had at least a dozen or more bombers in the air every day.

Also the more you preposition your forces the later Skimmer has to strike or risk detection of the strike giving us enough warning to nuke you on the ground to pre-empt your pre-emption.

Such is the great bonus of manned bombers. You can actually carry out mock attacks and emergency takeoffs on a regular basis for crew training; something you can't do with ICBMs. Hell, even the USSR fired off ICBMs from actual combat silos every so often for training -- we on the other hand sent ICBMs to Vandenburg for training.

Alternatively I need an attack swarm that just gets one lucky hit.

That's a lot of ABM missiles that won't be available later on for Saddamistani SS-20s.

The downside of your damn bombs being on hari triggers is that i don't have to get a perfect strike I only need to get lucky once.

Problem is I'm not using your normal missiles. I'm using HIBEX descendants. They accelerate at 400 gees for several seconds after firing. Add to that the already high starting velocity of the missile from being launched from a orbital bomber accelerating past orbital speed for attacks.....and well, you won't have much time to intercept my SGMs.

In fact, the only system that might stand a chance is once again, not surprisingly, Phong's Heavy ABM system which uses SUPER SPRINT, an evolution of a system which was designed to intercept incoming re-entry vehicles at altitudes of less than 20,000 feet and only mere seconds away from initation.

Moreover I'm using a targeting and tracking radar that they have never seen before. I've made it about as bluntly clear as I can for a secret weapons program that the MESS is in the process of completely replacing every radar installation across the baord with the next generation, your counter-detection technology wouldn't even know to register as being tracked and conversely if you are actively trying to track incoming threats then you just provide a better targeting solution.

Jesus Christ. My brain just pulled out a hacksaw and sawed it's way out of my skull to escape the stupid.

I think I lost IQ points from reading that.

What pray tell unobtanium solution did you pull out of your ass to solve the problem inherent to all radars?

Unlike you, I've actually studied electronic warfare a little (long story involving Harpoon the game which I won't go into here).

All radars are affected by atmospheric absorption; and this rises as the frequency rises. A radar operating in the X-Band (3 cm) has a loss factor of 3.55; while a L band (30 cm) radar has a loss factor of 1.13; meaning it can see further for the same amount of power. This is why the E-2C Hawkeye's radar and all modern air defense radars are long band; so they can achieve long ranges while not needing to be hooked up to a power plant.

The downside of long-bands is that they have a very slow data-rate -- and radars do not instantly give you the location of something after just one skin paint -- it takes several such skin paints to get the data. This is not a problem with objects coming in on a pre-set ballistic trajectory, or moving at the relatively slow speeds of atmospheric craft.

What happens however, if your target is moving so fast, and manouvering erratically in a non-predictive pattern that it actually "outruns" the capability of your radar's data-rate to keep up?

The only real solution to this that doesn't involve unobtanium pulled out of your ass magi-tech detection systems for which the physics don't even exist yet, is to build a huge ass X-Band radar weighing thousands of tons, and to hook it up to a very powerful power source and simply put out so much shear power that atmospheric losses get ground out by shear power.

And such a radar will show up really quite well on any wide-band ESM system; because due to the inverse power law, ESM systems can detect radiation significantly farther away than a radar can get a paint on the aircraft carrying the ESM system; because the radar energy has to travel BACK to the radar after bouncing off the target.

Finally, you don't need to be capable of deception jamming it. All you need to know is it's position through triangulation of the ESM signal; which gives you a coordinate good enough for a SRAM launch....

I have at least 90 minutes warning by your own admission.

Actually, more like 60. I could launch the strikes on Wilkonia, the LSR and Tian Xia ahead of time of the RB-73 launches and the bomber launches against Canissia, etc. Can't do it too ahead of time, or else I give the game away...

From takeoff through transit I would be tracking your ass the whole way and launching progressively more.

With what? I was unaware that the MESS had signed a secret pact to share radar data with Vedra and the IRT. Unless you've permanently stationed a CVBG off the northern Shepnukistani coastline, you'll have exactly zero warning of my bombers' approach until they're about 500~ miles away from your coastline. And even if you do have a CVBG shadowing my northern coast, how do you know that this bomber launch is the real thing, especially if I launch it ahead of time?

If you reacted to every SAC exercise by treating it as the opening barriage to nuclear war, we'd have had nuclear war five times over in this STGOD.

With a single flight BARCAP from each of the two decks at sea and a flight of ground alert F-22s and ground alert F-16s I think 104 is pretty generous since I'm not adding any extra fighters that could easily get airborne within an hour nor am I adding any fighters from the CAGs which are shoreside and in barracks.

Let's look at your OOB; you have 3 x F-22 squadrons with 48 planes total, 3 x F-16E squadrons with 48 total, and 2 x F-15 Squadrons with 32 planes total. If we assume that each squadron contributes an alert flight of four aircraft sitting on the flightline near a pilot's ready room and all fuelled up and ready to go, that's only 32 aircraft. If we add your four carrier wings, that's still only 48 aircraft; and not all of your carrier's can be in the right place at the right time; due to the MESS' global responsibilities -- are you still enforcing the arms blockade on Terra libertia, etc; and also due to ships being in overhaul and carrier wings being ashore being trained up for deployment, etc.

Great...for the first bomber off the racks. If you want to do more than launch them at us one at a time you have to form them up, get them flying at different rates from different directions and do it all sequentially otherwise the entirey of available LSR/TX/W air defenses could be brought to bear in succession. Every bomber you get into the air has to wait for the trailing units to get up, form up, probably refuel, then launch.

Actually, no. That's not how it works. Put away your DVD of The Memphis Belle (Both versions). Bombers no longer attack in tight formations. That went away at the end of WWII, due to the realization of the uses of air to air atomic bombings.

As for takeoffs; um. Haven't you heard of MITO?

Minimum Interval Takeoff. Practiced frequently by SAC in the real world. Imagine a full bomb wing taking off with only twelve seconds of time separating each bomber (15 for tankers in tanker units)


Footage of a B-52 MITO.

And why do I need to refuel going in to strike you? Due to the short distances in SDN World; and the B-1's endurance; I can still strike a lot of targets in the MESS without refuelling, and just about all of them with only one refuelling (PS - despite me cutting my Bomb Groups, I never cut my heavy aerial refuelling squadrons; I still have 190 KC-10s in SAC; and just 92 bombers....)

I've got more than 300 interceptors available and TX and LSR have more...

Have you spent a lot of money and built a unified MESS air defense system with C3I sites all built in each country and linked together via C3I links, like the US and Canada did in the fifties with NORAD and the SAGE system? How will the ADA operators in Wilkonia be able to effortlessly pass on information to and from their counterparts in other MESS countries? Sure, you could use AWACS planes to act as airborne co-ordinators, but there really aren't many of them in the MESS, with most of you using E-2Cs for AEW; which while being adequate for radar tracking, don't have the manpower onboard them to control an air battle.

As for "omg, shep will have to hit us successively!" I hate to break it to you, but I timed my attack to hit all of my target countries within about 35 minutes from each other. I'm sane enough to realize that such a huge widely separated multi-pronged attack won't go off with the precision of clockwork all at T=15, but I can organize it so that you have as little warning time as possibul.

guessing that I only get 1/3 in the air with two hours of warning when 96 of those are on a ship and pretty damn easy to launch with that much wanring.

Actually, no. See, like I mentioned before, you have global responsibilities, are all four carriers permanently stationed off Wilkonia? Do they ever need to be overhauled? Common rule of thumb for ships is 1/3rd of all ships are actually ready for duty at any one time.

I don't get just 10/15 minutes of warning I get at least 1.5 hours to get everyone airborne so the entire carrier wing won't just be ariborne they will be airborne and briefed...

More like 30 minutes for the CVBG. See, you can't send everyone up the moment you hear over the horn "possible shepnukistani first strike underway" and then keep them in the air indefinitely waiting for the bombers to arrive. You'll end up with a lot of planes out of fuel just as the bombers are arriving. You launch your CAP, and then begin launching supporting CAP when you detect the bombers on the edge of your radar, about 450~ miles away, which is about 20 minutes as the B-1C flies...

SAMS for all of those units would be looking airborne. That's 4 Kirovs, 4 Ticos, and 12 Burkes. Hell I almost have more HULLs than you have bombers to send my way. I've got more than 1000 SM-2 and SM-3s along with close to 400 S-300s sitting at leat a half hour away from any viable launch point for your bombers. Its a fucking missile trap even BEFORE you get within range of my, albeit limited, ground defenses.

A Kirov/Tico can move only 0.57 miles per minute. My bombers do 22, and they will detect your fire control and search radars well before your guys get any solid skin paints on them. Simple matter of turning around the enemy task force. Fighters don't have the fuel to do this. Heavy bombers do.

As for teh SM-2s and SM-3s if I need to get near the ships; I have to point out that firstly, SM-3 is a ABM only weapon.

Secondly, SM-2ER has a maximum range of 150 miles. Not a lot compared to your detection range; and I can just decide not to engage the carrier's escorts and fly around their SAM envelope. Even your F-14s don't have the endurance to close the range fast enough for a missile launch against a B-1C cruising at Mach 2 before they run out of fuel, or the bomber escapes.

Thirdly; You can't evenly space out your ships to cover your entire coastline; because then that allows me to defeat them in detail, away from mutual support from other ships. So that leaves gaps in your radar/SAM umbrella. There's a reason the USSR bought 10,000 radars and 7,000 SAM launchers.....

If it comes to having to attack the CVBG to open a path; that's what SRAM-Tactical, with it's 250 mile range is and it's programmable inertial guidance is for...outranges SM-2ER by a hundred miles, and probably whatever long range air to air weapon you have also.

Again you've got 5 wings of 35 bombers and at LEAST 5 targets.

Four targets actually. Shinra was to be handled by Saddamistan; and well, the Red Technocracy was a retargeting of existing assets in the air left over from paving over Canissia who still had weapons onboard.

along with tracking and engagement radars you've never experienced before (in addition to those you have)

Again with your claims of magi-wank uber unobtanium detection systems. How do you propose to get around the radar horizon?

Link

Against a target flying at 50,000 feet; you only have a horizon of 316 miles. If you put the radar onto a aircraft flying at 30,000 feet; you still only get a radar horizon of 516 miles.

Of course, you can get around this with Over the Horizon Backscatter radars; but those things are notoriously unreliable and finnicky, susceptible to the minutest atmospheric interference -- and they usually fail to live up to their design promises -- a big USSR OTH radar that was to detect US ICBMs taking off from our missile fields was supposed to be able to detect launches of a few missiles -- but when they turned it against our test launches at Vandenburg, they found that it only picked up mass launches.

Oops.

Your bombers are coming through too confined a space and in too few numbers against what can be thrown against you.

Actually, that only applies for the attack package going into the Lone Star Republic. Against Wilkonia, we've got a rough 500 mile corridor we can attack through, Tian Xia about 600-700. As for "too few numbers"; that might be the case if I was using HARMs for air defense suppression. Instead, each route package is carrying 234 SRAM-Tacticals, which have 250 mile ranges and 225 kiloton warheads for the destruction of enemy air defense systems (fighter/ship/radar/SAM site).

Alternatively the vast majority of my IADS is located well the fucks offshore

So you essentially have your navy as your air defense? Great. That means only about 1/3rd of it is going to be ready at any one time, due to the others being tied up in port and undergoing scheduled maintenance/overhauls, etc.

You may have a SAC sized airforce but SAC only had one nation to attack, you have a half dozen

Stop insulting my intelligence. The USSR had 2,200 fighter-interceptors, 8,000 SAM launchers, and around 10,000 radars spread over a continental landmass of 22 million square kilometers, with several major target packages widely separated by a lot of distance. The MESS is significantly smaller both in land mass and in defensive firepower.

By splitting your attention there is no way more than 2-3 squadrons of bmbers are goig againt each nation and the vast majority of them are likely to be shot down going against the kind of missile and fighter swarms they are likely to face

Shooting down 35% of the attacking bombers is a victory if they're conventionally armed. It's an utter disaster if they're nuclear armed.

(and which I'll note you didn't even bother trying to write them as penetrating)

Where would the fun be in that?

"Hey WSO, we got some F-15s coming up, should I take them down?"

"Give them some instant sunshine."

*F-15s get blotted out of the sky by a 225 kiloton warhead, or 1 megaton warhead depending on how mean the WSO is feeling at the moment*

If you tried the same trick as against TF-23 half your munitions are going up by concurrent detonations when they hit the CVBGs we have out patroling and if you try closer launches its that many more fighters to deal with.

Except that I don't need to attack the CVBGs. I can fly around them. They're just mobile airbases and SAM batteries that can move 17 miles in 15 minutes, while my bombers can move 330 in the same distance. And you can't evenly space out your ships to cover your entire coastline; because then that allows me to defeat them in detail, away from mutual support.

only about 30 minutes later every air field, control tower, and depot you have was gonna be a piece of charred cinder when the sub-launch counter-attack followed on.

Too bad that I've already sent out alternate landing site preparation teams who have set up civilian Class III airports into alternate landing strips. Again, this was SAC policy. Mike Kozlowski did it many many times during his time in SAC -- drive the fuck away from Barksdale AFB as fast as you can -- because the Soviets have got a SLBM on a depressed rajectory with it's name on it; to alternate landing sites. Of course, unlike SAC, I've also made my highways into alternate landing strips; like TBO.

You get one shot with your bombers before Shepnukistan gets turned into a cinder by the counter-strike

Nope. I've planned for a long nuclear war, with a very large number of alternate landing site teams amongst my Bomb Groups, and large amounts of equipment and ordnance dispersed across the country near these alternate landing sites.

and the number of bombers you have split amongst all of your targets means that you don't have the numbers to eve approach parity with the defenders let alone gain enough strength to brute force your way through to more than a handful of succesful launches (which would, admitteldy be catastrophic).

Yes, because the 828 nuclear tipped SRAM-Tacticals I have on my bombers don't exist, and won't be used to burn radar sites, SAM sites, enemy warships, and groups of enemy fighters from 250 miles away...

It's a whole lot different ball game when instead of sending a HARM with a pre-fragmented tungsten warhead to shred a radar site, the enemy vaporizes it with a 225 kiloton warhead.

Moreover if you want to claim a chem-bio attack 48 hours after the first strikes then you can only be doing it with rocks given the tonnage unleashed against Shepnukistan.

Because yes, SAC bombers can only operate from long, beautifully paved runways -- nevermind that one of the major design parameters in the B-1A and B-1B process was for operation from austere emergency fields -- it can operate from FAA Grade III fields -- IOW, something that is defined in FAA regulations as handling "Scheduled Small Air Carrier Aircraft (10-30 seats)".

[Beowulf]

It has come to my attention(that is to say, I bothered to look and count) that Shep never counted his carrier based fighters against his initial allocation of jet fighters/bombers. If the MESS had done the same, each would receive about 50 fighters more per carrier owned. The MESS collectively owned 17 original allocation carriers. This comes out to roughly 850 extra fighters.

[Coyote]

Really, Shep, face it-- you had a wargasm all over Canissia because we were close, not because we were a threat. We had the least nukes, and what we had was tactical-level TLAMS, maybe a couple hundred, max. That's it. The attacks you made on an essentially harmless (to you) nation really would have given the rest of the MESS more than sufficient time to turn the UAR into a giant slate of polished glass. The LSR was virtually untouched on that attack progress map, where Canissia had so many red bursts on it, it was like smallpox and the LSR only had a couple li'l red pimples on it.

Your posturing and gesticulating and grandstanding and bean counting essentially boil down to this: you wanted to jizz nukyoolar spooge all over everything, and you got your wish. Yippee-ki-yay, man, seriously.

Now the world has moved on, and let's try not to have a repeat of this; it's tiring.

[Shroom Man 777]

Man, that is apt and succinct.

Shep, this is why we can't have nice things!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Not to mention, I don't see a bloody point of a nuclear war when it will be so pyhrric that it ain't even funny.

[K. A. Pital]

This also you know, applies to Stas' Cobalt bombs...1 million square km is a biiiig place...

Shep, I exploded a few dozen tons of the stuff. With the fallout plume extending for hundreds of kilometers, and Co-60 dispersed into very fine dust, you'd be looking at ~1g/m.sq. concentrations in urban centers, which means near-immediate extermination.

I mean, come on. Moscow is a city of 10,000,000 people or more, and it covers one of the biggest metropolian areas (~1000 km.sq). If you explode a ton of cobalt in a small nuclear device over it, especially one with low-altitude fireball so that no fallout escapes into stratosphere to become global, you will have concentrations around one gram per km in the metropolitan area. Needless to explain how fucking deadly that is, and how hard it would be to deactivate anything with the shit lying just about everywhere.

Besides, I specifically poisoned the largest freshwater sources in target nations with Co-60.

In fact, 1 gram per 100 m is deadly enough to kill most of what's in the countryside, and that concentration is easily attainable. It's pointless to say that 1 million sq. km is a big place, since all of it be irradiated to the point of not being suitable for life. Of course, all people will not be dead immediately, which is not the point of cobalt, but instead, after long months or even maybe a year, they will perish.

[MKSheppard]

Really, Shep, face it-- you had a wargasm all over Canissia because we were close, not because we were a threat.

During the New Years' Nuclear Scare, you shelled my coastline with superguns, and also launched a nuclear attack against Shepnukistan. That's going to influence Shepnukistani planners to consider you a dangerous threat, considering your alliance with the MESS and the absurdly short distance between our nations.

Secondly, in the real world, SAC had plans for Cuba in 1962 -- involving six B-47s dropping two 10-20 megaton gravity bombs onto the SS-4 and SS-5 missile sites if TAC couldn't take them out. When you pull out a pie cutter and look at a map of Cuba, you'll see that SAC was planning to essentially blow the entire western half of Cuba into radioactive dust to get a few missile sites.

Considering that in Shepnukeistan, SAC is the primary arm of the military....

It's nothing personal, really. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong crowd.

In the next game, I suggest you ask that your nation be placed very far away from Shepistan, and that you eschew great power alliances.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Really, Shep, face it-- you had a wargasm all over Canissia because we were close, not because we were a threat.

During the New Years' Nuclear Scare, you shelled my coastline with superguns, and also launched a nuclear attack against Shepnukistan. That's going to influence Shepnukistani planners to consider you a dangerous threat, considering your alliance with the MESS and the absurdly short distance between our nations.

Secondly, in the real world, SAC had plans for Cuba in 1962 -- involving six B-47s dropping two 10-20 megaton gravity bombs onto the SS-4 and SS-5 missile sites if TAC couldn't take them out. When you pull out a pie cutter and look at a map of Cuba, you'll see that SAC was planning to essentially blow the entire western half of Cuba into radioactive dust to get a few missile sites.

Considering that in Shepnukeistan, SAC is the primary arm of the military....

It's nothing personal, really. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong crowd.

In the next game, I suggest you ask that your nation be placed very far away from Shepistan, and that you eschew great power alliances.

Oh really Shep? Nothing personal? Yeah, like that nuke attack on the Shinra Republic taskforce was nothing personal. Yeah, nothing really.

[MKSheppard]

Oh really Shep? Nothing personal?

Byzantium only narrowly escaped nuclear attack, just so you know.

"So, what was the plan finally adopted?"

"Well, you see; originally, we included Byzantium in our first strike, using the remaining 150 or so nuclear armed Blackbeard land attack missiles; but President Sheppard vetoed that part of the plan; and so those weapons were then placed into the Strategic Reserve."

[PeZook]

Well, I figured it was about time we moved towards closure.

[Shroom Man 777]

Man, I wonder how I'm gonna do this!

But, yeah. I guess after this, the game basically wraps up and we can finally move on to the Redux.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'll post something later. Give me a while.

[PeZook]

How about Bean drops a KKV on the studio?

[MKSheppard]

How about Bean drops a KKV on the studio?

On William "Bill" Shroomkite? The most beloved BBC correspondent since the war, who is interviewing Marina? He'd also kill quite a few of the best "61 Minutes" BBC team.

[PeZook]

How about Bean drops a KKV on the studio?

On William "Bill" Shroomkite? The most beloved BBC correspondent since the war, who is interviewing Marina? He'd also kill quite a few of the best "61 Minutes" BBC team.

Yeah, yeah, I know...

...but goddammit, she's such a huge bitch

[MKSheppard]

...but goddammit, she's such a huge bitch

There IS a reason she got the nickname "butcher of terra nova" -- she killed about a couple million MORE than Shepperd ever did; because she continued to fight the war according to the UAR's "Protracted Nuclear War" doctrine

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm going to haul that bitch and try her in court.

This is where the Crusaders actually prove their usefulness.

[MKSheppard]

I'm going to haul that bitch and try her in court.

That would be rather hard to do, given that she's under the personal protection of Hussein the Second (formely known as Uday Hussein); Saddam himself survived the attacks and died of old age about 15 years ago. He survived due to his mobile command post, which was a nuclear powered land convoy constantly roving around the great wastes of Saddamistan for protection.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm going to haul that bitch and try her in court.

That would be rather hard to do, given that she's under the personal protection of Hussein the Second (formely known as Uday Hussein); Saddam himself survived the attacks and died of old age about 15 years ago. He survived due to his mobile command post, which was a nuclear powered land convoy constantly roving around the great wastes of Saddamistan for protection.

GAH! *posts bounty: WANTED: Dead or Alive: 10million Reward*

[PeZook]

That would be rather hard to do, given that she's under the personal protection of Hussein the Second (formely known as Uday Hussein); Saddam himself survived the attacks and died of old age about 15 years ago. He survived due to his mobile command post, which was a nuclear powered land convoy constantly roving around the great wastes of Saddamistan for protection.

Some protection, if she has to personally kill would-be assassins

[MKSheppard]

Some protection, if she has to personally kill would-be assassins

Marina is that bad-ass. I'm sure she lives in a survivalist retreat writing her tell all book about the war, and picking off trespassers with her personal SMLE.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Lemme see if she can dodge a few Predators with Hellfire missiles.