Official: The Military Committee

[Drogue]

As this is an official thread, please do not post unless you are a member of the Millitary Committee.

This thread is for members to discuss publicly, and decide upon, which militaries are realistic and which are not. When we decide not, we are able to post alternative stats, however as with any committee, they are not binding. This is to add legitimacy, or the opposite, to military stats. There is also the possibility that nations that do not know how to do their stats can come to us, and if they wish, we can create stats based on their nation. However this is all for discussion.

The 5 members of the Military Committee are:

• Archaic
• Drogue (Chair)
• elijah
• Jack_www
• Urban Ranger

If you wish to post and you are not one of those 5, please PM one of those 5 to post on your behalf. This is a thread for official discussion.

Please feel free to discuss anything you wish relating to this, these are a few things I would like to bring up:

• The name of the committee. I propose to call it simply the Military Committee, although people may want a different name.
• Any rules regarding standing for election to the committee, such as their military having been approved.
• The time between elections (1 month, 2 months or anything else)
• Any methods we use for measuring things such as defense spending, military size, etc. I propose we come up with a blanket method for estimating, and then talk to the leader of that nation with regards to specifics, and anything they would like to bring up to justify their figures.
• Any action that needs to be taken with militaries that are already posted.

Anything else to discuss? Please be civil, and I trust all members to put ideological differences aside when discussing militaries on nations. Foreign affairs should play no part in this, and this committee is not to be used to wage vendettas against anybody. I probably did not need to say that, but I just wanted to make sure.

[Archaic]

The name of the committee really doesn't matter to me.

As for the rules governing elections, I'd say just a requirement for their military having already been approved by the committee.

Time between elections...at least 2 months, maybe 3. If we keep having elections all the time, it's just going to disrupt the efficient workings of the committee.

As for our blanket method, I suggest we take into consideration that topic from the NS forums where someone had written up a long essay on the point, and also take into consideration some factors he didn't address in it, such as political stability (Obviously a country that's just gone through a coup isn't going to have a military as large as the previous government could muster, though civil war, desertion, etc), trade and political factors (ie. If they're going to have modern tech with a basketcase economy, how did they get it?), etc.

We should IMO start a new thread simply for militaries that have been approved by us, and set the old topic for posting of militaries not yet approved. Otherwise, there is going to be some confusion over what's legit and what isn't.

[Whaleboy]

Agreed, we need to prepare a guideline that others can use as their reference point, i.e. x population = y soldiers. If each economist here wants to post a draft economic guidline, then you can discuss it, while I and the other scientists can post up qualitative scientific/technical info, then we can all amalgamate everything.

Its brainstorming time people!

[Whaleboy]

I think that preparing such a basis is necessary for us to decide, among other things, who are eligible members of this committee, that is, if we are going to allow only people with realistic militaries as part of this. It would be rather silly if we didnt, this is not really like any other committee we RP, it requires working knowledge of the relevant subjects, and unrealistic militaries (assuming they know the rules of RP), are indicative of that not being the case.

Maybe we should have elections halfway between the each election for the court.

I propose to call it simply the Military Committee

The Sword of Bureaucracy

With the economic side of militaries, I think we also need to clear up the ambiguities given by NS, for example, one could interpret "fair" to be "strong" etc, there is a degree of interpretation required with the remarkable lame economy model NS gives us. Obviously, we use it as the skeleton, but we provide the proverbial flesh.

In that sense, we could use any individual nation threads as a source of information, or the interpretation of the NS figures by the economists here.

[Drogue]

I think we need a basis, but we do not need a strict model. There is no need to clear up the economy on NS, as I don't think we can provide a better one, without much taking of notes of sizes of industries etc. I think we need a few things for the economic position. Arguments as to why what people post is valid, and defence spending per capita. We have a UN Report for the latter, and that directly relates to the economics, so simply post what position in the region you got the last time, and that can be used as a part to work out (As it stands, even though Akiria has the second highest spending per capita in the region, there are a few nations that have posted higher stats) I think that, as a direct comparison between military funds, is very important, as is the nations UN report, their economy and arms industry rating and suchlike.

I think for technology you should look at both what is available RL, at R&D spending (looking at the economics) and especially at the size of the arms industry. Presumably a nation that specialises in it's arms industry will be more proficient and have slightly higher tech weapons, although obviously not ubertech. R&D spending is paramount IMHO. I think we should not just stick to RL tech. Obviously use it as a base, and make sure nothing is too OTT, but many nations have more arms and R&D than any RL nation on Earth, and so would have a higher tech level. For example, super laser-rocketed space ships are ubertech, but a large battleship, should navy be your priority, is not necessarily.

[Jack_www]

I agree when it comes to the economy of NS best to leave it as it is. Only time I could see any changes is when a nation is in war and losing the war, thus that person nation is getting destroyed, they can possibly have a high GDP.

As for the millitary rankings, when people first posted their stats they did not know the UN rankings. Also we dont know how far a gap there is between nations, they can be wery small say with nations that are close togather on the list so that is hard to tell.
On a side note I was I think 12 place last time.

Also nations that dont have a huge arms sector can also buy arms from countries that do if they have the money to do it. Also on nation state forums their are a lot of nations that sell arms all the time. I think that for this to work it is best to keep it on current or near future tech, and things that are possible in the real world so we can rp better.

[Drogue]

Jack: I agree with the ubertech, although I think we should allow that some nation will have better tech than others. If not, why do we have R&D spending? Akiria's army is set up very much with technology, equipment quality and training rather than number of soldiers or tanks etc. If we all have the same tech, I am wasting billions of USD every year on R&D, and it makes that style of military impossible. I think we need to presume that some will have different techs. Yes we can trade, but Akiria does not sell it's best weapons, and thus other nations must develop them to have them.

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Drogue
Jack: I agree with the ubertech, although I think we should allow that some nation will have better tech than others. If not, why do we have R&D spending? Akiria's army is set up very much with technology, equipment quality and training rather than number of soldiers or tanks etc. If we all have the same tech, I am wasting billions of USD every year on R&D, and it makes that style of military impossible. I think we need to presume that some will have different techs. Yes we can trade, but Akiria does not sell it's best weapons, and thus other nations must develop them to have them.

That is true, I mean I think it is better to sick to what we know, not to have spaceships able to destroy half a planet kind of thing. But yes countries that spend lots of money on R and D would of course have better tech then other nations that dont.

[Whaleboy]

I think its sensible to allow technologies we have already to be merged together. For example, high resolution sensory equipment used in RL for astronomy, satellite tracking, as well as EM sensing on land, can be used in aircraft, ships, spacecraft etc etc.

Also the concepts of weapons in space is not far off, ABM laser satellites were possible in reagans day, ballistic missile satellites are actually easier than land based ICBM's and the idea of offensive/defensive space-based weapons really just requires rockets and guns.

Having said that, bleeding edge tech is pushing it, we should probably be more conservative there than with non-military applications, like fusion power, plasma tools and other energy weapons.

Weapons tech that hasnt been developed for decades or even centuries could be legitimately taken to new proportions here, for example, battleships, or even the longbow in battle. For example, some with some of my naval equipment, I was careful to ensure that it would be similar to what we would have in RL, had battleships been continued after WW2. Of course, I had to counter the reason they were phased out - air power, but then sensors can handle that. As long as such measures are taken, I think its reasonable to allow that kind of tech, for example, theoretically, world war 1-like frontal infantry assaults that were mowed down by machine guns, could be countered by some kind of tech like decent body armour. Such tech like 100 Mega ton fusion warheads (the largest detonated in RL was 54 megatons by the USSR in the late 50s) would be logical developments given the time taken between then and now.

Such slower, evolutionary developments would require less R&D than technologies that are a departure from what has been seen before.

[Whaleboy]

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showt...14#post2143914

[Drogue]

I think Westports is reasonable. He has a nation of 771 with "notable... compulsory military service" and a government which "concentrates mainly on Defence". I think 1% total personel and a hell of a GDP (Frightening economy) and budget makes it perfectly realistic. Indeed, I would have let the first one slide. Where did it come on military spending per capita though?

[Urban Ranger]

See, that's another screwy part of the NS program. Suppose a country concentrates mainly on defence, how come it got such a high economy? Another thing is, Westport has no income tax, so it must account for government finances.

[Whaleboy]

I wouldn't have let the first post slide, but I do concur, his is on the militaristic side of realistic, but looking at his nation, it seems plausible.

UR: It would be nice if there was another, more accurate economic model that we can pipe our nations through. Any ideas (I'd make our lives easier as part of the military committee ).

[Urban Ranger]

Well, the thing is, Westport has no income tax. So he must account for all government expenditures from other sources - that's why I don't think he can have such a large military, even if his country has high defense spending.

[Drogue]

I agree completely with UR, we must look at economy and what that nation spends it on, but also on how much of that money is tax to be spent on defence. I am in the process of coming up with a formula for it, but the best I can think of is using the UN Report on it, "Military spending per capita". Take everyone's position in the region and the world and work from that. We can simply use that to give everyone a military budget, and then let eqipment and troop sizes follow from that and population. However we must also account that prices will not be the same in each nation. For that, I believe we must look at the size of that nations arms industry. The stronger the sector, the more cheaply they could produce. Also we could look at inflation, since higher inflation will mean more expensive arms, although it is hard to measure how large inflation is, usually an economy that grows more and performs better has higher inflation. Rising prosperity = rising average income = rising prices. These is obviously not perfect, but as a rule of thumb. However it does help to account for the amount of arms the USSR had compared to the much more prosperous USA.

A few ideas, what do people think?

[Whaleboy]

A good idea, however:

The stronger the sector, the more cheaply they could produce

And presumably the better quality and quantity too. But on the other hand, much of arms development, i.e. small arms, artillery, even tanks and ships to a degree, are comparable to civilian industries. For example, one can build a warship in a civilian shipyard, or a sub-machine gun in a private workshop. IMO when they refer to the arms producing sector, they are meaning the more expensive side, such as aircraft manufacture, high-tech weapons and armour, etc etc.

On a side note, how would you categorise the LF, all the nations of whom have lowish to average (but increasing) military spending, but the military is a federal institution, separate from the constituent nationstate. Presumably you'd just add each nations military stats to each other, unless the report is size per capita, in which case you'd want to multiply by population and find the average of those four positions?

[Archaic]

I think we have to ignore the taxation issue beyond what people actually declare as their tax rates. Given that we only know about income tax and not the various other methods one could use to raise funds (Such as in Alecrast, where the national armed forces are more like a group of private armies belonging to the council members, and some corporations, unions, etc, who fund their own troops themselves from their own pocket [which is often filled from hiring out these troops as mercenaries to likeminded nations], who've intertwined their command structures under the Monarch).

[Drogue]

Archaic: True, although there is only so much you can do with other taxes. I think they work where people ghaven't declared, as most that are different will declare, since most do not know enough about economics to bother trying to argue differently, and so would accept what it says. All those measures I suggested are just guidelines, nothing exact, but it does give a guideline. Somewhere with a 100% tax rate has a lot of their GDP for gov't projects, someone with 0% income tax doesn't have so much. Yes these are not exact, but they can tell us about that nations style, and availability of funds.

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Drogue
I agree completely with UR, we must look at economy and what that nation spends it on, but also on how much of that money is tax to be spent on defence. I am in the process of coming up with a formula for it, but the best I can think of is using the UN Report on it, "Military spending per capita". Take everyone's position in the region and the world and work from that. We can simply use that to give everyone a military budget, and then let eqipment and troop sizes follow from that and population. However we must also account that prices will not be the same in each nation. For that, I believe we must look at the size of that nations arms industry. The stronger the sector, the more cheaply they could produce. Also we could look at inflation, since higher inflation will mean more expensive arms, although it is hard to measure how large inflation is, usually an economy that grows more and performs better has higher inflation. Rising prosperity = rising average income = rising prices. These is obviously not perfect, but as a rule of thumb. However it does help to account for the amount of arms the USSR had compared to the much more prosperous USA.

A few ideas, what do people think?

One also has to account for countries that buy their millitrary hardware from other countries. On nationstates forums there are lots of nations willing to sell hightech weapons to people who have the money. Also dont forget natons have allies and allies can sell that nation millitary hardware or give to them in the from of millitary aid(US giving Isreal millitary aid every year.)

As for the Soviet Union and the United States. The part of the Soviet millitary doctrine was to realy on mass and superior numbers to win battles. They also kept lots of outdated tanks and other millitary equipment, anther reason why they had so much millitary hardware. The United States focused a lot of their efforts on building better weapons and spent a lot of money on R and D. That is what mainly acounted for the high cost of US arms. Inflation does not alone do it. The US could start building massive amount of cheap arms like old tanks and such or come up with a low tech tank and other arms.

[Whaleboy]

Thats true. Perhaps its easiest to assume no technical advantage, unless one nation makes a specific development and refuses to export it, which to my knowledge is only the case with Akiria.

[Drogue]

Jack: They could have, but inflation was still a factor. Teh Soviets had near 0% inflation for 30 odd years, and it meant that cars and arms cost much less. Indeed, the fact that nominal GDP was much lower than when meaures by the purchasing power parity method shows this. The PPP measures what you can buy with the average GDP, rather than at the exchange rate.

Also with regards to tech, yes you can buy high tech weaponry from some nations, however with the 2nd highest arms industry, and a ban on arms exports to any nations that we do not have formal agreements with (and top secret tech may not be shared with them even) we do possess something of an advantage in some ways, with regards to tech and price. I think we have to look at a whole nation when deciding.

[Whaleboy]

The thing with secret tech is that development tends to be limited only by science, thus should be more related to education. Actually implimenting something that is barely more than theoretical, like the Manhattan project, is actually relatively cheap, when compared to other efforts, for example, that examples contemporary drive to produce B29's.

In terms of quality of arms therefore, for the most part, I think we should assume that for nations of a large size (>100 million imo), the ceiling is identical. We are also limited by such things as what is physically possible, which is something I am more qualified to talk about . Secret tech again, I think all nations with a tolerable economy and a large size can certainly manage it. There is a misconception that such things require massive investment, but we are dealing with largely engineering and chemical problems in weaponry, not precision microbiology as pharmaceuticals. Only implimenting it on a massive scale requires such investment, but that goes with everything.

And with regards to secret tech, if you dont RP it, it doesn't exist . RP'ing it will of course render it a non-secret, as presumably we assume a verification mechanism that will provide at least some assessment of how such a hypothetical tech will work. Assuming that is not the case leaves us with a situation where claims can easily be regarded as spurious, for example, warships armed with ..extreme weaponry that can travel 4 times light speed .

[Whaleboy]

Being an OOC thread, I presume we refer to our nations in the third person Drogue

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Drogue
Jack: They could have, but inflation was still a factor. Teh Soviets had near 0% inflation for 30 odd years, and it meant that cars and arms cost much less. Indeed, the fact that nominal GDP was much lower than when meaures by the purchasing power parity method shows this. The PPP measures what you can buy with the average GDP, rather than at the exchange rate.

Also with regards to tech, yes you can buy high tech weaponry from some nations, however with the 2nd highest arms industry, and a ban on arms exports to any nations that we do not have formal agreements with (and top secret tech may not be shared with them even) we do possess something of an advantage in some ways, with regards to tech and price. I think we have to look at a whole nation when deciding.

One thing I would like to point out is that with inflation in countries with Good economies you also have rising wages as well. In fact it is a theory of economics were rising wages causes rising inflation since business have to raise prices in order to make money and pay workers more. Also rising inflation cause wages to go up as workers demand more pay due to rising cost, thus a sprial effect.

[Drogue]

elijah: This is not an OOC thread. this is a committee elected by the national delegates to discuss military sizes. We still refer to ourselves as the leader of that/those particular countries.

Jack: That was exactly the point I made above. Better economy = higher incomes = higher inflation, usually.

[Whaleboy]

This is not an OOC thread

It was, thats how I proposed it. Its designed so that us players can keep an eye and a realistic approach on the game of other players, namely in this case, what they state to be their militaries. There would be no need for this in RL obviously because the laws of physics and economics prevent unrealistic militaries.

Such a thing in RP would simply either fail, or just not be realistic.

[Drogue]

Hmmm.... I didn't think we had OOC threads here. The occasional point yes, but a thread out of character? Welcome to if you wish I suppose. Nothing against it. I will still post as Drogue, since that is my character in game and out.

[Jack_www]

Originally posted by Drogue
elijah: This is not an OOC thread. this is a committee elected by the national delegates to discuss military sizes. We still refer to ourselves as the leader of that/those particular countries.

Jack: That was exactly the point I made above. Better economy = higher incomes = higher inflation, usually.

Forgot to metion too with Higher incomes means higher tax income for the government of the country as well. That is what I was trying to say but forgot to put it into the post. Thus the rising wages would mean a government would have more money to spend. ALso even with inflation prices for many things have actually fallen. Also the high cost of modern weapons also comes from the fact that they are high tech, and require skilled workers to put them togather and highly educated people to design them.

[Whaleboy]

So do we want to get some guidelines down? I think the economists should start...