Military, Authority & Decisions In MSLN series

[Flar]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Actually, the manga and anime make very clear that rank is nearly everything. Good mages (or Numbers) consistently wipe the floor with even large groups of inferior combatants. A one-rank difference can be made up, but only with a huge experience gap (and as I've said before I'm guessing the headmaster's rank is being dragged down due to lack of endurance in old age - that is, she has one area that's disproportionately weak rather than a general inferiority). Above that and it becomes a complete wipeout scenario.

Good mages (or numbers) wipe the floor with redshirts. This is just indicative that having a name is the best armor a character can have. From StrikerS, in every case both opponents had a name, the theoretical weakest won in the end. This was already happening in MGLN with Nanoha vs Fate, or in A's with everyone vs Reinforce, but in StrikerS we actually had a B rank mage win against multiple numbers (who are ranked higher, according to you), and that headmaster wipe the floor with Nanoha and Fate.

I stand by my opinion that rank isn't everything, while it certainly can be indicative. The intention of the writers was obviously to downplay individual power and promote training, teamwork and hot blood, because it is the only way to introduce other main characters without going DBZ with the powerups. Too bad they totally botched the job.

Also, the only thing you have to oppose the headmaster scenario is a guess and you still treat that as fact? That sounds like denial, are you sure you're not the one who got the wrong lessons from the show?

Originally Posted by tk3997

What they really need is to get into a war with another power that actually uses tech AND magic together, if they survive a few crushing defeats they might finally be knocked out of their stupor and adapt as well as perhaps purge the morons that set them up for said defeats from the ranks.

It could be argued that Mid already uses technology and magic. After all, what's arc-en-ciel or the devices if not technological tools? What they lack is the moral deficiency to think it's ok to play god and clone and modify humans to win wars... That, and both a good R&D department and good leaders, of course.

I have to point once again that the only thing Jail has going for him in StrikerS is the AMF. Without that, he gets wiped out as soon as Fate can find him. It's a pure technological breakthrough situation, kinda like when UK used the radar in WW2, or US the atom bomb, or Germany started using jet planes (too late but they had awesome efficiency). The problem of Midchilda is they should have been the first to discover it and find countermeasures, but they had leaders who thought that fighting tanks with spearmen was cool and put research at 0%.

Jail was a moron to just attempt terrorism with his technologicaly advanced but still small army. He could have done more damage, but he was doomed from the start, once the mid army could overwhelm his hightech gizmos with massive firepower and flood of experienced powerful mages working on dangerous planetes, like Fate (I assume she isn't the only investigator around, heh). Such technology would have been useful to a standing army with an existing powerbase.

On the other hand, if he just wanted to shake Mid up to point out its weaknesses, by sacrificing himself in the process, he reached his goal. He may be a saint.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Flar

Good mages (or numbers) wipe the floor with redshirts.

Who happened to be inferior in rank. From a Suspension of Disbelief viewpoint, that's what happened to them.

This is just indicative that having a name is the best armor a character can have. From StrikerS, in every case both opponents had a name, the theoretical weakest won in the end. This was already happening in MGLN with Nanoha vs Fate,

Did the fact that they were both AAAs (though one may be somewhat more experienced) completely pass you by?

or in A's with everyone vs Reinforce,

1) Reinforce was never actually ranked.
2) Reinforce gave herself up, remember? They didn't stand a chance right up until the moment that Reinforce got convinced by Hayate inside. Only then could Nanoha even up the inner space enough to help Fate get out. The Defense Program, which is only a fraction of the power, was only disrupted by the combined efforts. Without the good old Arc, it was pretty damn clear who would have won in the end.

but in StrikerS we actually had a B rank mage win against multiple numbers (who are ranked higher, according to you),

Not only was that considered particularly clever and low-prob (along with the Numbers making a mistake), but you will notice that they were extremely fast in writing Ch11 of the manga, where they explicitly have Wendi point out that they've effectively upped 1 rank to A by Ep14.75, and their special skills are a full AA. This will make them competitive if they could bring their strong front into play, and it helps a lot that the Numbers are kind of "tilted". As it was, if it wasn't for Vice coming in at the fortuitous moment, Teana might well have gotten decapitated by Deed who was waking up. Nope, don't see the major problem here.

and that headmaster wipe the floor with Nanoha and Fate.

I acknowledged in my previous response that the scene might show that under very special circumstances a single rank of difference can possibly be made up. I made my guess of where the headmaster's relative deficiency is to create the (IMO) most plausible scenarios within the evidence arc.

I stand by my opinion that rank isn't everything, while it certainly can be indicative. The intention of the writers was obviously to downplay individual power and promote training, teamwork and hot blood, because it is the only way to introduce other main characters without going DBZ with the powerups. Too bad they totally botched the job.

Actually, the fact the Forwards actually advanced a rank in such a short time already does much to do this. And I don't see what the opposition is. A ranking system should have high predictive validity. In fact, it seems to be most functional TSAB construct. Let's not take the little bit of competence the TSAB has shown away.

Jail was a moron to just attempt terrorism with his technologicaly advanced but still small army. He could have done more damage, but he was doomed from the start, once the mid army could overwhelm his hightech gizmos with massive firepower and flood of experienced powerful mages working on dangerous planetes, like Fate (I assume she isn't the only investigator around, heh). Such technology would have been useful to a standing army with an existing powerbase.

On the other hand, if he just wanted to shake Mid up to point out its weaknesses, by sacrificing himself in the process, he reached his goal. He may be a saint.

Unfortunately, the Midchildrans won't learn peanuts. He definitely struck too soon, but then, every day increased his vulnerability. Given the fact that he waited a whole week after his first attack to really move again, I suspect maybe his hand was slightly forced. He might have realized somehow the TSAB (Acous) was hot on his trail. Since he seemed to have enough combat power (he can't possibly predict that the writers will enter lame Blaster 3 scenes), he went ahead.

[Mirificus]

Originally Posted by Nightengale

To be fair, I don't think the Air Force even participated in any battles of StrikerS. They were supposed to be red-suit wearing like the ones Vita and Signum wear when training with one another. I don't see a single one of those redshirts at all in StrikerS, while we're treated to armor wearing blue vests, which are of the Ground Force's Air unit, not the actual Supreme Air Force.

Even if that were true, it would reflect even more unsatisfactorily on TSAB Air Force effectiveness and "capabilities."

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Well, we do need a reason for why she might want to go on an exchange program to "some Earth army". Besides, "recent combat experience" would probably just mean US or Britain (even in ~2015). Sure, armies are probably fighting in Africa too but they won't be your choice.

Hayate: "It was a major failure, having Ginga and Vivio kidnapped. Several of my members were hurt."

After defeats at the HQs and the way the Cradle battles went, I would hope that Hayate realizes that something is fundamentally wrong with the TSAB. Even more difficult would be to admit that she was given command of her dream unit by TSAB but she didn't possess the skills, knowledge or experience to command it properly. She may even have begun to recognize that subconsciously at least given the way she pretty much completed ceded command to her subordinates during the Cradle battle.

Hayate: "I don't want anyone else in the world to be sad or have regrets like that. I'll use my life for that purpose."

Hayate to herself said that in episode 13. It really is the compelling reason that she should want to become an exchange officer and learn everything she can so she can return to the TSAB and help reform it for sake of the TSAB and the people it protects.

Hayate was raised on Earth and was taught Earth history so naturally an Earth military would be the first place to look. Given that the same writers would be writing for any non-Earth military, there is no better place for her to gain the skills, knowledge and experience than an Earth military.

It seems like it would be best to get her to avoid the JSDF despite the shared language. She should have learned at least some English through high school so it may just be best to send her to the US Army. After she's completed OCS, a tour in Iraq as an infantry officer could help her a lot. When she came back, she'd come back not only with US Army doctrine and training but also with practical experience using and employing conventional weapons. Also, getting a lot of trigger time, and maybe even some combat shooting, with a normal rifle so that she has an intuitive grasp of marksmanship couldn't hurt her magical aim.

Officially, she could be promoting a "mutual" understanding of how each military operates

Another valuable by-product of the exchange program is, in military parlance, ' Best Practice'. This is defined as the sharing of the most effective policies and practices of each country’s military program, in order to increase the efficiency of both. In simple terms this means that whilst the exchange officer is with the host unit, he/she might see or experience something that is done more or less efficiently than at here. The exchange of proven Tactics, Techniques and Procedures helps to maintain professionalism.

I'm thinking "Does the Guard Tank Regiment" even exist? That would explain the failure to deploy - it can't deploy if it has withered to nothing eons ago.

That could be another reason. Still, a non-existent reserve is a non-existent reserve regardless of how it came to be.

Well, at least they were fighting. Remember Ep16? The ground mages were doing nothing but running. At least the Air Unit had to be shot down. They both suck but we might as well choose the arm that at least fought to be dominant.

Nightengale claims those are GF personnel. In any case, if the TSAB Air Force doesn't seem to bring anything useful that the rest of the TSAB couldn't perform. If it could provide capabilities like CAS+Combat Controllers or ELINT, it would make far more sense to keep it as a separate arm/branch.

Unfortunately, they seemed to think Nanoha did a great job. She had to refuse a promotion!

To be fair, maybe the promotion to 3rd Air Commander would come with the billet of Tactical Instructor or Command School Instructor.

In which case, her refusal is a selfless thing - after all, she does seem to be reasonably effective as a Martial Skills Instructor. Best to stick to what you know.

Unfortunately, the TSAB and RF6 seemed to rely on Nanoha to be a lot more than just a "Martial Skills Instructor."

To be fair myself, Nanoha as a TSAB instructor probably isn't doing any more damage to TSAB training than a different TSAB instructor would do in her place. For that same reason, putting her behind a desk in charge of training policy probably wouldn't change anything. Although, if Hayate ever got her act together the influence of that kind of position could help, assuming Nanoha is able to swallow her pride as well.

[Mirificus]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

Yeah I’ve always felt that a well built tech based air force would CHRUSH the TSAB “Air Force” utterly. Speed if nothing else would pwn them, at best we see mages maybe being slightly faster then helicopters, Mach 2+ Jet fighters would rape them to hell and back. Mages could probably replace attack helicopters pretty well, but not much else. This gets back to the TSAB’s retarded aversion to any kind of no magic solution though.

A 4-ship flight of Raptors @M1.7, 65k feet armed with SDBs could probably do some interesting things to TSAB bases. The TSAB seems to have pretty poor detection against non-emitting conventional weapons (it would have problems detecting the launch and flight of the SDBs) and it hasn't demonstrated any capacity to engage targets at those speeds and altitudes.

What they really need is to get into a war with another power that actually uses tech AND magic together, if they survive a few crushing defeats they might finally be knocked out of their stupor and adapt as well as perhaps purge the morons that set them up for said defeats from the ranks. I'm acutally in the beginning stages of writing a fan fic something to that effect where in they come into conflict with a smaller, but more tactically and technically competent power and get a serious bloody nose and some lessons learned from it though still win more by sheer mass then any skill or tactics.

Mind what Archangelsk said. No military is equally proficient in every area. As good as the Wehrmacht performed, its doctrine was lacking in certain areas like strategy and logistics. When it fell behind the US Army in terms of artillery TTPs during the 20s and 30s, it never really caught up. These problems didn't become apparent until later in the war but where the Wehrmacht did miss, it missed big.

Yup you've really gotta go with the US though after all by this time the US army has slapped down Russian, Liberated Cuba, Re-fought the Korean War, and saved the president while preventing a coup leader in Mexico from nuking the US.

Don't forget counter-terrorism in Las Vegas (I can't believe how many Mexicans I've killed)

[BBM]

TSAB often go for the nuke option if their mages fail. So any good enemy would need have a counter for that.

[Jimmy C]

If by "nuke" you mean the arc-en-ciel, one method would be to shoot their ships out of space the moment they drop into normal space. Planetary defense guns with enough range could force TSAB ships to arrive outside arc range. They can then be engaged by a space fleet.
Beyond the one main cannon of the XV-class, we have no information on the TSAB fleet's anti-ship capability. But a properly designed fleet of ships could at least give them a hard time. By "properly designed", I mean ships designed for deep-space warfare. Where weapon and sensor ranges are usually measured by light-seconds for short-range and light-minutes for long-range.
The arc is unsuitable for such combat. It's too slow-firing and the AoE is too limited. In open space, fleet ships can be seperated by several hundred km while in "close" formation.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

If by "nuke" you mean the arc-en-ciel, one method would be to shoot their ships out of space the moment they drop into normal space. Planetary defense guns with enough range could force TSAB ships to arrive outside arc range. They can then be engaged by a space fleet.
Beyond the one main cannon of the XV-class, we have no information on the TSAB fleet's anti-ship capability. But a properly designed fleet of ships could at least give them a hard time. By "properly designed", I mean ships designed for deep-space warfare. Where weapon and sensor ranges are usually measured by light-seconds for short-range and light-minutes for long-range.
The arc is unsuitable for such combat. It's too slow-firing and the AoE is too limited. In open space, fleet ships can be seperated by several hundred km while in "close" formation.

Several hundred? That wouldn’t be close to me that would be like “Damn we’re almost hitting each other!” I’d say several THOUSAND would be "close formation"

And yeah the Arc beam we see fired is decidedly slower then light so it’s not going to do crap at long range. Plus even the slow ass Space Shuttle can cross 100 kilometers in under 10 seconds and any sci-fi spaceship worth it’s salt is going to be faster then that so the AOE bit is also useless. If the TSAB ships only have those cannons then missile jump out as an instant option they'd always hit unless ships could outrun and had a large head start and they'd have effectively unlimited range in space they wouldn't even need warheads impacting at dozen of kilometers per second the weapon itself would have more energy then if it where made of solid TNT, if not higher. A big ship that's basically just an engine and bridge with ballistic missile sized weapons strapped all over that it just punts out at the enemy then then flies away could probably give the TSAB major headaches.

That said this isn't how I like to write space combat, illogical or not I like space opera so battles tend to involve getting closer then really makes sense and engaging in turning fights at said close ranges while absorbing more fire then any realistic ship could. This gets back to the whole “realism often isn’t that fun” thing, sure shooting the other guy with a laser cannon from 1 million kilometers and killing him in one hit is realistic, but not exactly exciting to read about. That said I don't try and argue my system is likely or even possible, but I do try to justify it in universe at least, usually via jamming/cloaking so intense it makes engagements at distances longer then point blank range futile (the Gundam solution basically). This is a "artistic" choice though and I'd never argue it makes sense from a realism point of view.

Another option for dealing with this is if one is attacking is to just engage close to TSAB population centers or troops. It would be funny to see how long they stay in power if their standard tactic when a city or major army unit is lost or under threat is to destroy it from orbit.

Originally Posted by Mirificus

A 4-ship flight of Raptors @M1.7, 65k feet armed with SDBs could probably do some interesting things to TSAB bases. The TSAB seems to have pretty poor detection against non-emitting conventional weapons (it would have problems detecting the launch and flight of the SDBs) and it hasn't demonstrated any capacity to engage targets at those speeds and altitudes.

That’s probably overkill even if they saw the jet like you said they probably couldn’t do anything to stop them. Given that even a simple B-52 could fly so high any mage would die of hypoxia before they got near it, and it’s faster too (Top speed over 600 MPH) and I somehow doubt the TSAB has anything that could be consider a real air defense grid. Load it down with as many JDAM as it can carry and start dropping them from 20+ miles away. (glide bombs are fun)

If you want to be really mean you could load it up with a dozen tactical cruise missiles, or since this wouldn’t really BE a B-52 a couple dozen shorter ranged tactical missiles say a 300 Kilometer range should be more then enough and it could probably carry at least 2 dozen of the things. Make the missiles stealthy for extra pwnage.

Mind what Archangelsk said. No military is equally proficient in every area. As good as the Wehrmacht performed, its doctrine was lacking in certain areas like strategy and

Wehrmacht strategy wasn't poor at all, it was quite good when the higher ups just let the people that knew what they were doing do their fucking jobs. Anyway the war was futile from the start the US was unstoppable it had something like 50% of the war making potential of the entire planet at that point and Russia was nearly equal with Germany, and then we have Britain too. Germany was defeated the moment it went to war with Russia and Britain never mind the US, all strategy could hope to do here was slow their inevitable defeat, victory was never an option and though the Wehrmacht made it's blunders so did everyone else (and it made fewer then most). Given what they had to work with it's hard to see how they could have done all that much better perhaps if they don't waste troops on some desperate counter offensives in the last months they could drag the war out another 5 or 6 months, but that's about the best they could do.

logistics.

Logistics, the biggest issue here in my opinion was that as you get into 1943 and 44 when it starts to get really bad the issue is that they're starting to run out of stuff TOO supply. By 1944 thousands of bombers are ranging all over Germany bombing anything industrial in nature and the transport net is falling apart as bridges, rail hubs, etc are reduced to rubble by repeated air raids.

The Allies weren't idiots they targeted supply lines heavily trains, trucks, barges anything moving in the rear areas was strafed and bombed mercilessly. P-51 escorts had standing orders to use remaining fuel and ammo for that mission and we have hours and hours of gun camera footage of them flying along the tops of trains raking them with 50 caliber machine guns or blowing up a half dozen transport aircraft on the ground.

Those efforts did more to damage German army formations then the often only marginally effective close air support ever did. It’s hard to fault the logistic train for not supplying its troops when said train is being shot apart and systematically dismantled from the air.

When it fell behind the US Army in terms of artillery TTPs during the 20s and 30s, it never really caught up.

It's artillery was hardly terrible, it wasn't as good as the US which had a very clever and world beating system indeed, but it was better or comparable to most and it was more accurate then nearly anything beside the US when it got going as well. So yes they weren't the best in the world, but they where hardly incompetent.

These problems didn't become apparent until later in the war but where the Wehrmacht did miss, it missed big.

Not really IMO the Wehrmacht was the best army of WWII end of story that it held together and fought as well as it did and inflicted as many losses as it did shows that. It had the best doctrine, some of the best training, and most skilled officers of any army in the war as should be clear given that what allowed others to beat them later was basically copying the German's tactics.

Also TSAB is deficient in nearly all of areas aside from light infantry/Special Forces and even those are often used somewhat poorly.

Don't forget counter-terrorism in Las Vegas (I can't believe how many Mexicans I've killed)

Well obviously it’s because Mexicans are eeevviiillll and plotting the down fall of America.

[Mirificus]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

That’s probably overkill even if they saw the jet like you said they probably couldn’t do anything to stop them. Given that even a simple B-52 could fly so high any mage would die of hypoxia before they got near it, and it’s faster too (Top speed over 600 MPH) and I somehow doubt the TSAB has anything that could be consider a real air defense grid. Load it down with as many JDAM as it can carry and start dropping them from 20+ miles away. (glide bombs are fun)

I was assuming that the TSAB would be able to use magic or some other means as life support to be on the safe side. JDAMs/SDBs would need to be used in INS mode unless a GPS constellation spontaneously appears over Midchilda and survives intact for the period in question. SDBs (GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb) are glide bombs with INS/GPS guidance. Each Raptor will be able to carry eight of them.

Wehrmacht strategy wasn't poor at all, it was quite good when the higher ups just let the people that knew what they were doing do their fucking jobs.

Anyway the war was futile from the start the US was unstoppable it had something like 50% of the war making potential of the entire planet at that point and Russia was nearly equal with Germany, and then we have Britain too. Germany was defeated the moment it went to war with Russia and Britain never mind the US, all strategy could hope to do here was slow their inevitable defeat, victory was never an option and though the Wehrmacht made it's blunders so did everyone else (and it made fewer then most). Given what they had to work with it's hard to see how they could have done all that much better perhaps if they don't waste troops on some desperate counter offensives in the last months they could drag the war out another 5 or 6 months, but that's about the best they could do.

If you look at German doctrine from the Kaiserheer through the Wehrmacht, there is little attention paid to the political and strategic levels of war. There was no clear understanding of the relationship between policy and war. The problems you're describing are symptomatic of the almost complete absence of that level of thinking in the German military system of both world wars.

The same lack of thought resulted in the inefficiency of the German economy's mobilization efforts. Under military direction, there was no central planning, extreme disorganization, no move towards rationalization and a correspondingly low weapon production.

Originally Posted by War and Economy in the Third Reich

Britain outproduced Germany in most major classes of weapon in the first three years of the war, even though a smaller proportion of the British industrial labour force was converted to war production, and despite the fact that Germany had more than twice the steel output and a total labour force half as large again as the British.

Logistics, the biggest issue here in my opinion was that as you get into 1943 and 44 when it starts to get really bad the issue is that they're starting to run out of stuff TOO supply. By 1944 thousands of bombers are ranging all over Germany bombing anything industrial in nature and the transport net is falling apart as bridges, rail hubs, etc are reduced to rubble by repeated air raids.

Logistics was a major blind area in German military thinking. The instructor-to-student ratio at the Kriegsakademie was 1:20 for tactics, but only 1:120 for supply and 1:240 for transportation. The Germans had very effective doctrine for using railway systems for large-scale troop movements, but most other elements of their logistics system were not robust.

It's artillery was hardly terrible, it wasn't as good as the US which had a very clever and world beating system indeed, but it was better or comparable to most and it was more accurate then nearly anything beside the US when it got going as well. So yes they weren't the best in the world, but they where hardly incompetent.

German artillery never developed to anywhere near its full potential. The Reichswehr was aware of US developments in artillery during the post-war period but it chose not to adopt them and outright rejected predicted fire. Artillery remained a constant tactical weakness, particularly for its infantry divisions as they were under-gunned, and the bulk of their artillery was horse-drawn. Because of the weakness in artillery, the German Army relied heavily on the combination of tactical airpower and tanks but after 1941, the Luftwaffe could no longer be everywhere.

Not really IMO the Wehrmacht was the best army of WWII end of story that it held together and fought as well as it did and inflicted as many losses as it did shows that. It had the best doctrine, some of the best training, and most skilled officers of any army in the war as should be clear given that what allowed others to beat them later was basically copying the German's tactics.

I'm well aware of influence of German doctrine, particularly Truppenfuehrung, on FM 100-5 and other military doctrine. In fact if you look back through this thread, you'll notice that I've used quotes from both. Truppenfuehrung provided the doctrinal basis for the Werhmacht's victories during the first half of the war. It was sound, tested and comprehensive but not perfect. Truppenfuehrung excels in its examination of the conduct of operations and leadership and was a doctrinal manual well ahead of its time.

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Mirificus

I was assuming that the TSAB would be able to use magic or some other means as life support to be on the safe side.

I don’t see any reason to assume that, we never see mages operating at heights that would require it (in fact battles invariably seem to occur near ground level or a few thousand feet up at most) and we see wind whipping around their clothing and such indicating direct exposure to the air. Even if we assume they could somehow breath (I don’t) you’d still need to deal with the fact any exposed skin would be frost bitten in minutes at those altitudes. Besides their rate of climb given observed speeds would be dismal they wouldn’t have a chance in hell of affecting an intercept if the B-52 made even the slightest of defensive maneuvers.

Large numbers of mages don’t even appear to be able to move at the fairly sedate pace of the Aces and often seem to just hover about in combat.

JDAMs/SDBs would need to be used in INS mode unless a GPS constellation spontaneously appears over Midchilda and survives intact for the period in question. SDBs (GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb) are glide bombs with INS/GPS guidance. Each Raptor will be able to carry eight of them.

For people able to fly around spaceships that must weight tens of thousands of tons in an atmosphere and able to fit advanced AI into something the size of you're palm throwing up a swarm of thousands of micro satellites for GPS coverage would be childs play. Assuming they don't have their own warships present, the amount of space needed to mount some transmitters would be a pittance and a handful of the ships could cover the globe with the proper orbits.

If you're really worried you could just using something like the purposed B-1R, speed of mach 2.2 with a payload of over 100,000 pounds including as many as 140+ SBDs and air to air missiles plus an AESA radar. Heh that'll give the phrase “Getting boned” a whole new meaning.

If you look at German doctrine from the Kaiserheer through the Wehrmacht, there is little attention paid to the political and strategic levels of war. There was no clear understanding of the relationship between policy and war. The problems you're describing are symptomatic of the almost complete absence of that level of thinking in the German military system of both world wars.

Politics and policy is a civilian responsibility and was out of their hands, and it’s kind of hard to tell the supreme dictatorial ruler that kills people he doesn’t like his policy fucking sucks. Even in the US today this is a problem the senior general in the army says he needs 600,000 troops, the civilians don’t like that number so they find someone that says we only needs 200 and they use that number instead. Like it or not the military now has to try and make due with the cluster fuck the incompetent civilian leaders have dumped on them.

It’s made all the worse by the fact Hitler fancied himself to be a bit of a general and would micro manage things at times and rarely to Germanys benefit

The same lack of thought resulted in the inefficiency of the German economy's mobilization efforts. Under military direction, there was no central planning, extreme disorganization, no move towards rationalization and a correspondingly low weapon production.

The war production issue is largely the same problem ultimately the factories, workers, and such were under civilian or governmental control. The army could ask for things or make suggestions, but they couldn’t run the stuff or even really get morons sacked as favoritism was rampant inside the civilian leadership and loyalty was often more important then competence for your assigned task. Nazi party policy was based around racism, sexism, and pretty much any other ‘Ism” you can think of this will not tend to yield enlightened or rational policies. Insane ideology for instance largely kept women out of factories until it was entirely too late.

Further that quote is misleading, yes Britain out produced Germany in the first three years, but it was also running balls to the wall and overdriving its economy because it had lost a huge percentage of its entire force of heavy equipment during the battle of France and was being bombed night and day. Germany meanwhile still had a large and intact army that had just crushed all opposition with ease and was unmolested aside from the occasional token nuisance air raid. In hindsight they should have been going balls out in production and development to build up a reverse and get ahead, but at the time they were the rulers of Europe and they had a major case of victory disease.

They expected what they had to be more then enough for sometime and production wasn’t really ramped up or development accelerated until the Russian started to field large numbers of highly effective medium and heavy tanks in the form of the T-34 and KV-1.

That said in production and war economy planning Germany indeed had a poorly thought out plan it built too many different things, didn’t ration until it was far too late, and it’s civilian leadership was not nearly as effective as the military. Further due to the style of government people with clout could exert undue influence on what was given funding, even during the war we see examples of infighting and pork being indulged in by competing factions and powerful people, but again this is the civilian side their was little the military could do but implore them to try and produce more.

Logistics was a major blind area in German military thinking. The instructor-to-student ratio at the Kriegsakademie was 1:20 for tactics, but only 1:120 for supply and 1:240 for transportation. The Germans had very effective doctrine for using railway systems for large-scale troop movements, but most other elements of their logistics system were not robust.

Well first off while complex in some ways logistic and transportation isn’t AS complex as combat in many others and tends to work with set rules thus you wouldn’t need quite the same ratio to begin with I’d think. Logistic/shipping is something you can teach fairly effectively in a classroom setting to a large number of people at once, combat isn’t really. You don’t need much drilling or training to learn how to drive a truck or pack boxes of shells for example and fill out a few types of forms. Even today the advanced training for most of the logistic troops in the US army is around half of what the combat branches get.

I’ve worked in shipping before, and yes military logistic is different but even so large parts of the process are very similar (and indeed the modern army has skimmed many things from civilians in this regard) and while you need a few skilled people to oversee the process 99% of the actual work can be done effectively by minimum wage expendables with a few weeks of training. We even handled hazardous stuff like chemicals, oxidizers, flammables, vehicle parts, and small arms ammunition so the cargo isn’t even that different in many cases.

It really isn’t like combat where even low level leaders need to know allot of stuff and might well have to employ it. Most logistic work happens behind the lines and under supervision and in communications with other units and leaders (by necessity you can’t arrange for supplies if you can’t talk to anyone!). A Sergeant taking small arms fire probably won’t have time or even the means to ask his platoon leader what to do and will need to take charge and deal the problem himself, but some clerk that gets a truck load of widget B instead of widget A can probably just pick up the phone and ask where his widgets are and what he should do with these. Now he can’t be ragingly incompetent obviously, but at the same time given he’s so much more likely to have time and be in communications with more skilled supervisors he doesn’t need to know as much either.

Also when they HAD stuff to issue and a way to move it, it tended to find its way to the troops in a fairly timely fashion. They might not have focused on it as much as they should, but until the allies really started targeting their logistic train on mass it worked for the most part. You can also look at Britain and the US in this regard despite all efforts during the earlier war Britain came awfully close to starving due to U-boats. The logistic train wasn’t poorly planned or laid it, it was just being killed before it could get the stuff there!

German artillery never developed to anywhere near its full potential. The Reichswehr was aware of US developments in artillery during the post-war period but it chose not to adopt them and outright rejected predicted fire. Artillery remained a constant tactical weakness, particularly for its infantry divisions as they were under-gunned, and the bulk of their artillery was horse-drawn. Because of the weakness in artillery, the German Army relied heavily on the combination of tactical airpower and tanks but after 1941, the Luftwaffe could no longer be everywhere.

Well the horse thing was a killer yeah, it's kind of hard to support mechanized troops with animal drawn guns, but several others where nearly as bad Britain just tended to blanket areas with gunfire which was quick to come but not that accurate, Russia could barely use artillery outside of massed barrages on planned targets, and of course as in everything besides ships and aircraft Japan was a bad joke. The US had the best artillery of the war no doubt (and about the only area it had a clear advantage over anyone), but compared to some of the others Germany artillery didn't look quite as crappy.

I'm well aware of influence of German doctrine, particularly Truppenfuehrung, on FM 100-5 and other military doctrine. In fact if you look back through this thread, you'll notice that I've used quotes from both. Truppenfuehrung provided the doctrinal basis for the Werhmacht's victories during the first half of the war. It was sound, tested and comprehensive but not perfect. Truppenfuehrung excels in its examination of the conduct of operations and leadership and was a doctrinal manual well ahead of its time.

Which is really what I'm getting at, despite a few weak areas Germany had a massively superior grasp of what the fuck it was doing compared to pretty much everyone, and even the area it was weak it these weren't like glaringly, blindingly obvious blind spots like you see in other armies or the absence of entire branches as we see in the TSAB.

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

I don’t see any reason to assume that, we never see mages operating at heights that would require it (in fact battles invariably seem to occur near ground level or a few thousand feet up at most) and we see wind whipping around their clothing and such indicating direct exposure to the air. Even if we assume they could somehow breath (I don’t) you’d still need to deal with the fact any exposed skin would be frost bitten in minutes at those altitudes. Besides their rate of climb given observed speeds would be dismal they wouldn’t have a chance in hell of affecting an intercept if the B-52 made even the slightest of defensive maneuvers.

Well, breathing is actually the trickier part, though the worst case says to carry along an oxygen tank. As for frostbiting, barrier jackets do seem capable of blocking high temperatures, thus they are capable of blocking out transfer of temperature at least for some time.

If you're really worried you could just using something like the purposed B-1R, speed of mach 2.2 with a payload of over 100,000 pounds including as many as 140+ SBDs and air to air missiles plus an AESA radar. Heh that'll give the phrase “Getting boned” a whole new meaning.

Actually, such a thing would be stopped with a barrier, not a shot. Simply lay down the barrier under GCI guidance and let the plane fly into a wall. Since the AESA cannot see the magic field, the chance it can evade is approximately zero. Or just lay a 10 mile barrier field and shrink it. The plane will have to hit it eventually.

Politics and policy is a civilian responsibility and was out of their hands, and it’s kind of hard to tell the supreme dictatorial ruler that kills people he doesn’t like his policy fucking sucks. Even in the US today this is a problem the senior general in the army says he needs 600,000 troops, the civilians don’t like that number so they find someone that says we only needs 200 and they use that number instead. Like it or not the military now has to try and make due with the cluster fuck the incompetent civilian leaders have dumped on them.

Ah, here comes the Wehrmachite favorite - blaming every mistake of strategy they made on the good old Fuhrer and the civvies. Politics and policy is the responsibility of the civilian leadership. Military strategy is actually the responsibility of the military.

You might also remember, that sometimes, the Fuhrer was right. The Fuhrer was a lot more enthusiastic about hitting France than his generals (and from the POV of Results at least it ended up about as well as anyone could have hoped), and it has at least been argued that his Stand-Fast order was the thing that kept Moscow 1941 from escalating into a German rout altogether.

Further that quote is misleading, yes Britain out produced Germany in the first three years, but it was also running balls to the wall and overdriving its economy because it had lost a huge percentage of its entire force of heavy equipment during the battle of France and was being bombed night and day. Germany meanwhile still had a large and intact army that had just crushed all opposition with ease and was unmolested aside from the occasional token nuisance air raid. In hindsight they should have been going balls out in production and development to build up a reverse and get ahead, but at the time they were the rulers of Europe and they had a major case of victory disease.

You know that "victory disease" is a catastrophic failure of strategic planning, do you. In fact, it is worse than a mere failure - it is a failure to even put forward the effort to seriously look ahead.

That said in production and war economy planning Germany indeed had a poorly thought out plan it built too many different things, didn’t ration until it was far too late, and it’s civilian leadership was not nearly as effective as the military. Further due to the style of government people with clout could exert undue influence on what was given funding, even during the war we see examples of infighting and pork being indulged in by competing factions and powerful people, but again this is the civilian side their was little the military could do but implore them to try and produce more.

They could certainly have rationalized some things. The biggest and most obvious, of course, is the good old Tiger tank. Yes, the darn thing has nice kill ratios (tactically successful), but it was so hard to make they could only squeeze out 1450 (or thereabouts) of them in three years (strategically not so). If the German Army had ordered a Technotactical Requirement that was more in keeping with Germany's actual productive capabilities, they'd have been able to build more tanks. Sure, they'd still be outnumbered, but at least not by that extent.

Well first off while complex in some ways logistic and transportation isn’t AS complex as combat in many others and tends to work with set rules thus you wouldn’t need quite the same ratio to begin with I’d think. Logistic/shipping is something you can teach fairly effectively in a classroom setting to a large number of people at once, combat isn’t really. You don’t need much drilling or training to learn how to drive a truck or pack boxes of shells for example and fill out a few types of forms. Even today the advanced training for most of the logistic troops in the US army is around half of what the combat branches get.

Actually, logistics in combat requires many things in addition to the normal difficulties. Such as the additional requirements of deception and secrecy so the enemy don't see that you are stockpiling ammunition in particular units and figure out that you are about tell it to attack. Or allowing for the fact that in war, your trucks will regularly be bombed, roads will regularly be made unusable (or maybe there aren't any usable roads to begin with).

Also when they HAD stuff to issue and a way to move it, it tended to find its way to the troops in a fairly timely fashion. They might not have focused on it as much as they should, but until the allies really started targeting their logistic train on mass it worked for the most part. You can also look at Britain and the US in this regard despite all efforts during the earlier war Britain came awfully close to starving due to U-boats. The logistic train wasn’t poorly planned or laid it, it was just being killed before it could get the stuff there!

Can anyone explain 1941 to me? The Germans pretty much had everything going for them when they invaded Russia. They quickly acquired air superiority, they had more or less complete control of the initiative, with a huge experience advantage. That's pretty much had as good a situation as a military could seriously ask for. Yet their logistics crapped on them. Fortunately for the Wehrmacht (though perhaps a quick end would have been more fortunate for the German people than the 4 year see-saw that actually entailed, let alone the Soviet), thanks to the Russians making a bigger mistake back in June 1941 (and of course the whole purge in 1938), they are hundreds of miles inside enemy territory.

Don't blame the mud or the winter or even the distance. A military logistician has to work with such facts of life, not hope they don't exist.

[Mirificus]

Originally Posted by Tk3997

The war production issue is largely the same problem ultimately the factories, workers, and such were under civilian or governmental control. The army could ask for things or make suggestions, but they couldn’t run the stuff or even really get morons sacked as favoritism was rampant inside the civilian leadership and loyalty was often more important then competence for your assigned task. Nazi party policy was based around racism, sexism, and pretty much any other ‘Ism” you can think of this will not tend to yield enlightened or rational policies. Insane ideology for instance largely kept women out of factories until it was entirely too late.

Industry was excluded from decision-making and manufacturers were assigned subordinate roles by military authorities. The officers responsible for procurement rarely consulted the manufacturers and saw no reason why they should. Civilian ministers were tolerated only to the extent that they continued to supply the men, materials, and machines to fuel the armaments sector. The Wehrmacht had adopted practices in procuring weapons which strongly militated against the introduction of mass or automated production. There was little incentive for industry to rationalize production. The poor coordination, inter-service rivalry, and the relatively exclusion of industry from decision-making resulted in a steady decline in efficiency.

Further that quote is misleading, yes Britain out produced Germany in the first three years, but it was also running balls to the wall and overdriving its economy because it had lost a huge percentage of its entire force of heavy equipment during the battle of France and was being bombed night and day. Germany meanwhile still had a large and intact army that had just crushed all opposition with ease and was unmolested aside from the occasional token nuisance air raid. In hindsight they should have been going balls out in production and development to build up a reverse and get ahead, but at the time they were the rulers of Europe and they had a major case of victory disease.

They expected what they had to be more then enough for sometime and production wasn’t really ramped up or development accelerated until the Russian started to field large numbers of highly effective medium and heavy tanks in the form of the T-34 and KV-1.

With the outbreak of war in September 1939 the demands made of the industrial economy for military production expanded rapidly and substantially. The proportion of the industrial labor force engaged on orders for the armed forces leapt from 21 to 55 per cent by early 1941, and was not much higher than this by 1944. In the metalworking and engineering industries, where armaments production was concentrated, almost 70 per cent of the work-force was committed to military orders by the summer of 1941, and remained at or around this level until 1944. Both these figures exceeded levels of mobilization by Britain. At the same time, the output of goods for the civilian market declined sharply; by late 1940 most of the consumer industries were devoting 40 and 50 per cent of their output to the military, leaving very little for the civilian population.

Whatever the outcome of the military campaigns, the high levels of military demand and of government spending made it necessary to convert the economy to war, on Hitler's instructions, as fully as possible from the start. There was no major turning-point in the German war effort in the winter of 1942/2, or later in 1943. The biggest increases in taxation came between 1939 and 1941. The fastest growth of military spending came in the same two years. Personal consumption and civilian output also fell faster during 1939-41 than at any other time in the war, and the mobilization and redistribution of the work-force was carried out largely before the spring of 1942, not thereafter.

German military and civilian expediture, 1938/9 - 1943/4 (RM '000m., current prices)

Military expenditure:
17.2 (1938/9), 38.0 (1939/40), 55.9 (1940/41), 72.3 (1941/42), 86.2 (1942/43), 99.4 (1943/44)
Civilian expenditure:
22.2 (1938/9), 20.0 (1939/40), 24.1 (1940/41), 37.8 (1942/43), 30.6 (1943/44)
Total state expenditure:
39.4 (1938/9), 58.0 (1939/40), 80.0 (1940/41), 100.5 (1941/42), 124.0 (1942/43), 130.0 (1943/44)
GNP:
115 (1938/9), 129 (1939/40), 132 (1940/41), 137 (1941/42), 143 (1942/43), 160 (1943/44)

Consumption 1938-1944

German consumer expenditure (RM '000m., 1939 prices):
70 (1938), 71.0 (1939), 66.0 (1940), 62.0 (1941), 57.0 (1942), 57.0 (1943), 53.0 (1944)
Index of real per capita consumption in Greater Germany:
100.0 (1938), 98.0 (1940), 80.2 (1941), 74.4 (1942), 68.0 (1943), 67.2 (1944)
Index of real per capita consumption in Britain:
100.0 (1938), 97.2 (1939), 89.7 (1940), 87.1 (1941), 86.6 (1942), 85.5 (1943), 88.2 (1944)

Industrial labor force working on orders for the Wehrmacht 1939-1943 (%)

All Industry: 21.9% (1939), 50.2% (1940), 54.5% (1941), 56.7% (1942), 61.0% (1943)

That said in production and war economy planning Germany indeed had a poorly thought out plan it built too many different things, didn’t ration until it was far too late, and it’s civilian leadership was not nearly as effective as the military. Further due to the style of government people with clout could exert undue influence on what was given funding, even during the war we see examples of infighting and pork being indulged in by competing factions and powerful people, but again this is the civilian side their was little the military could do but implore them to try and produce more.

Rationing was introduced in Germany in September 1939. The rationalization of production was a different matter entirely.

[Avatar_notADV]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

Can anyone explain 1941 to me? The Germans pretty much had everything going for them when they invaded Russia. They quickly acquired air superiority, they had more or less complete control of the initiative, with a huge experience advantage. That's pretty much had as good a situation as a military could seriously ask for. Yet their logistics crapped on them. Fortunately for the Wehrmacht (though perhaps a quick end would have been more fortunate for the German people than the 4 year see-saw that actually entailed, let alone the Soviet), thanks to the Russians making a bigger mistake back in June 1941 (and of course the whole purge in 1938), they are hundreds of miles inside enemy territory.

Don't blame the mud or the winter or even the distance. A military logistician has to work with such facts of life, not hope they don't exist.

What's your point? Of course I'll blame the mud and the distance. Some things are just HARD. Invading Russia from the west is one of those difficult things. It's proverbially difficult! The logistics effort involved would have been extremely complicated even without the mud, just because of the distance involved, and it would have been extremely difficult if it had been right next door to Germany, much less across half of the continent. Combining the two, yeah, that's gonna have some effect.

Don't forget the Greeks. If the Germans hadn't delayed Barbarossa in order to prosecute the Greek campaign, they might have taken Moscow before winter set in, with disastrous results to the Russians. It was a close-run thing as it was, so another month may well have proven decisive.

And now we're totally off topic, guys. We haven't seen ANY sign that the TSAB has any sort of logistics whatsoever. No supply officers. No supply units. No supply vehicles. (Shari almost qualifies, but she's the only one of the Long Arch staff that's in maintenance - everyone else seems to be an officer or a bridge bunny.) The only evidence we have that there's any supply effort going on at all is that the characters are regularly supplied with food (in copious quantities - damn, if being a magician makes you eat like that, it's a good thing Nanoha's folks ran a restaurant!) and ammunition. We don't even see a cook, though as a SF show, maybe there ain't one?

Obviously doing a stint with the SEALs or Delta Force would do any of the characters a world of good. The only problem with exchange is that it may well have a negative effect if the characters look at, well, Japan. Let's be honest, that's the first military that the girls would have looked at, because it's closest and they can actually talk to people in it. Sure, we can view the JSDF with some contempt, being Americans, but we've already established that the writers aren't up on their militaries to start with - it's probable that they simply don't understand the difference in doctrine and quality. And it's entirely possible that one of 'em took some time off, went home, chatted up the local military folks and grabbed some of their manuals, and came back saying "yeah, they do things pretty much the same way we do." (What, like the JSDF folk are going to say "now, what you really need to do is talk to the damned Americans"? Some of 'em, maybe, but they have their pride too.)

That works for Hayate - we can fault her command style, but hey, she's not doing bad on the admin end, especially for freakin' 19! That works for Fate - she's a lone wolf investigator type anyway. But it doesn't work for Nanoha, not if she's really as concerned about doing a good job as she's portrayed as doing in the show! It's not like she can learn much about combat instruction from the JSDF, after all, and she's the one that would have been likely to crack open the history book and notice "hey, wait a minute, we LOST that war." Again, writer myopia...

[Mirificus]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

What's your point? Of course I'll blame the mud and the distance. Some things are just HARD. Invading Russia from the west is one of those difficult things. It's proverbially difficult! The logistics effort involved would have been extremely complicated even without the mud, just because of the distance involved, and it would have been extremely difficult if it had been right next door to Germany, much less across half of the continent. Combining the two, yeah, that's gonna have some effect.

"Nothing could be more dangerous than to follow sudden inspirations, however intelligent or brilliant they appear, without pursuing them to the logical conclusions, or to indulge in wishful thinking, however sincere our purposes. We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusion, with disciplined intellect, strong enough in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates." -Ludwig Beck (one of the primary authors of Truppenfuehrung 1933)

The campaign planning for Operation Barbarossa was full of that kind of wishful thinking like the highly optimistic assumption that the Red Army's capacity for resistance would be completely destroyed west of the line Dvina-Smolensk-Dnieper (conveniently close to the frontier) and the high reliance placed on the capture and utilization of Russian rolling-stock to meet German supply consumption. Of course, when locomotives and wagons failed to materialize in the desired quantities, it became necessary to convert the lines to German gauge, an operation which was not technically difficult but which required more railroad engineer troops than the Germans had available and the supply situation suffered accordingly.

Don't forget the Greeks. If the Germans hadn't delayed Barbarossa in order to prosecute the Greek campaign, they might have taken Moscow before winter set in, with disastrous results to the Russians. It was a close-run thing as it was, so another month may well have proven decisive.

The Germans had little choice in the matter. The original launch date for Operation Barbarossa of May 15 was precluded by a spring muddy season that started and lasted later than usual. There was no question of launching offensive operations against the Soviet Union before the ground had dried sufficiently to conduct mobile operations.

And now we're totally off topic, guys. We haven't seen ANY sign that the TSAB has any sort of logistics whatsoever. No supply officers. No supply units. No supply vehicles. (Shari almost qualifies, but she's the only one of the Long Arch staff that's in maintenance - everyone else seems to be an officer or a bridge bunny.) The only evidence we have that there's any supply effort going on at all is that the characters are regularly supplied with food (in copious quantities - damn, if being a magician makes you eat like that, it's a good thing Nanoha's folks ran a restaurant!) and ammunition. We don't even see a cook, though as a SF show, maybe there ain't one?

I haven't taken a look at TSAB logistics because as with the rest of the TSAB, it would probably fall apart like a house of cards under any kind of examination.

Obviously doing a stint with the SEALs or Delta Force would do any of the characters a world of good. The only problem with exchange is that it may well have a negative effect if the characters look at, well, Japan. Let's be honest, that's the first military that the girls would have looked at, because it's closest and they can actually talk to people in it. Sure, we can view the JSDF with some contempt, being Americans, but we've already established that the writers aren't up on their militaries to start with - it's probable that they simply don't understand the difference in doctrine and quality. And it's entirely possible that one of 'em took some time off, went home, chatted up the local military folks and grabbed some of their manuals, and came back saying "yeah, they do things pretty much the same way we do." (What, like the JSDF folk are going to say "now, what you really need to do is talk to the damned Americans"? Some of 'em, maybe, but they have their pride too.)

It doesn't need to be SOF and it can't be for Hayate. She would have little or no chance of passing SOF selection with her physical and mental condition. Rather, I was thinking of having her complete officer training and then a tour as an infantry platoon commander (assuming women those positions are open to women in Nanoha earth). From what you've said before, the JSDF should be avoided if at all possible. Culture shock isn't necessarily a bad thing here.

That works for Hayate - we can fault her command style, but hey, she's not doing bad on the admin end, especially for freakin' 19! That works for Fate - she's a lone wolf investigator type anyway. But it doesn't work for Nanoha, not if she's really as concerned about doing a good job as she's portrayed as doing in the show! It's not like she can learn much about combat instruction from the JSDF, after all, and she's the one that would have been likely to crack open the history book and notice "hey, wait a minute, we LOST that war." Again, writer myopia...

What should Nanoha have been doing instead WRT to her personal development and training the Forwards?

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by Mirificus

I haven't taken a look at TSAB logistics because as with the rest of the TSAB, it would probably fall apart like a house of cards under any kind of examination.

Most anime that I've seen that feature armed forces don't place much emphasis on logistics. They want to show firepower after all. Talking about stocking the ammo for that firepower is boring. Only in LoGH have I seen the consequences of not looking after your supply lines.

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

That works for Hayate - we can fault her command style, but hey, she's not doing bad on the admin end, especially for freakin' 19!

That depends on how you look at it. If she was fresh out of Officer School, her performance might be "satisfactory, but needs improvement". But she's a ten year veteran! Also, she's been aiming for a unit command where she can have all her knights under her all that time. She should have been much better than this.

This is speculation on my part, but I don't think the girls ever had much chance to realise they had much to learn about strategies and tactics from Earth's militaries. Ask yourselves, how old were you when you first realised the importance of superior tactics and strategies in the military? I can't pin it down in myself, but I was well older than 20 before I understood there were more important things to winning wars than just firepower.
Ever thought about their lives between ages 9 to 15? Between absorbing academic studies and TSAB training and actual missions, they might have been too busy learning how the TSAB did things. Given the TSAB's cultural bias towards "conventional weapons=certain death=really bad" that they would have picked up, they probably shied away from the military history section in the local bookstores. That's their only real hope finding something important about Earth militaries in Japan. Watching the right war documentary by chance is too much to ask for, and if they're staying away from the right books, you can forget about wanting to look up the information on the Web.
After they graduated middle school, all three of them moved to Midchilda to work full-time for the TSAB. The chances of them learning much about Earth's military practices are now reduced to nearly zero. Even now, not one of them probably has any idea how formidable Earth's militaries can be.

[Anh_Minh]

I've learnt that superior tactics and discipline can beat superior numbers in elementary school. As for the practical applications of that knowledge - what tactics work and why, how to instill discipline and so on... I still haven't learnt. I've never had enough interest in it.

Hayate, OTOH, has supposedly wanted command for a long time. Then again, she probably studied only the military doctrines of Midchilda - that's what she'd be tested on, and, considering how different the technology is, ought to have been much more relevant than Earth's.


I wonder what Gil Graham would think of all that? IIRC, he was an officer before he even came to Midchilda, and he's vastly more experienced than Hayate. He ought to have seen much more of the problems of the TSAB.

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I wonder what Gil Graham would think of all that? IIRC, he was an officer before he even came to Midchilda, and he's vastly more experienced than Hayate.

He was not! If you're referring to his flashback in A's ep3, he doesn't look any older than 13 there. And he was wearing a school uniform at most.

[Avatar_notADV]

Hayate's not a ten year veteran, at least not the same way that Nanoha and Fate are.

At the end of A's, Nanoha had been in two major operations, both of which were resolved not incidentally due to her having huge amounts of firepower when it was necessary. Fate was a veteran at the start of S1, and her awkward "ex-enemy" incarceration and re-education phase happened between S1 and A's. (Look at it this way - in StrikerS, nobody's bothering Fate about her criminal record. She's been through that already.)

Hayate wasn't even a rookie at this point. Okay, she's got a staff, she's got her knights, she's got a couple of good friends to help her out. But she's lacking any kind of experience in using magic whatsoever, aside from shooting the Book defense program a couple of times. She has no device. She's still under a big cloud of suspicion, one that still taints her record ten years later (though part of that might be due to the lack of anyone who actually died and could thus have the blame pinned on them - Fate was obviously being manipulated by Precia, but who was manipulating Hayate? Nobody really.) And incidentally, she still can't walk yet.

We don't really know how long Hayate's rehabilitations - magical, physical, and political - actually took. We know that she was walking six years later, and had Rein by that point, so we can assume it was done by then. But we have no idea how long it actually took - it could have been a year, a couple of years, five years. And even at that point she would have been at the same spot where Nanoha was, say, by ep 4 of S1. (Then again, we have the comics that says that Hayate was at least functional six months later... though she still couldn't walk except when she was using her device, and she got pwned by Nanoha and Fate, not that THAT is anything to be ashamed of.)

Anyway, it's still not totally fair to just harp on the shortcomings of the TSAB without pointing out that their threat profile is radically different. US military doctrine simply has no answer for a little girl who's invulnerable to guns, planes, tanks, and can take down a whole battalion without working too hard. (Note that I said 'totally'. TSAB's advantage lies entirely in the individual abilities of its members, most of which aren't enough to write home about, but some of which range on up to "frickin' amazing". Their disadvantages are in having really crappy doctrine. But theoretically they could get good doctrine...)

The reason that US forces have good doctrine is that we've been in several major conflicts this century, and built up from having a pathetic military to, well, heh. It cost us a lot of blood and treasure to learn those lessons. And those lessons are difficult to translate to other militaries, even ones here on Earth that should be able to pick them up. I mean, there's no reason that the French army can't kick as much ass as the US army, pound for pound... except that they're French. ;p We don't have any idea how heavily engaged the Mid armed forces have been since the formation of the TSAB - hell, we don't know if they've had one war. Maybe it's no surprise that, tactically and strategically speaking, they look like a certain other military that was built not to go to war...

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by Mirificus

I haven't taken a look at TSAB logistics because as with the rest of the TSAB, it would probably fall apart like a house of cards under any kind of examination.

At least here though if they had too they can probably steal experts from their own civilian population we know delivery services and such exist and many of the principles could be adapted. It's not as good as having a decent system in place obviously, but at least they'd have the skills and experience to pilfer when they realized they needed it.

It doesn't need to be SOF and it can't be for Hayate. She would have little or no chance of passing SOF selection with her physical and mental condition. Rather, I was thinking of having her complete officer training and then a tour as an infantry platoon commander (assuming women those positions are open to women in Nanoha earth). From what you've said before, the JSDF should be avoided if at all possible. Culture shock isn't necessarily a bad thing here.

In the US anyway Military Police allows women as officers even in the field and in places like Iraq the difference in use between MP and infantry is fairly marginal in many cases, and their is debate about lifting these restriction all together by 2015 one could easily see it happening if a few things go right. Anyway even if it didn't MPs are often used more in areas expected to be hot as convoy escorts and such and are in high demand for peace keeping so she'd still get plenty of experience (One female MP recently got the sliver star for killing a bunch of insurgents in close combat during an ambush.) Actually even if all positions were open an MP post might still be best as it somewhat fits with the TSAB role which seems to often be something like a gendarmerie force.

Though sending Hayate to some place like Iraq would be shocking to say the least…

[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Mirificus

I haven't taken a look at TSAB logistics because as with the rest of the TSAB, it would probably fall apart like a house of cards under any kind of examination.

Since the TSAB operates out of hyperspace ships and bases, all supply lines are effectively very short in time. This should make it easier on them.

However, their Force Preparation times are extremely poor. In the Nanoha A manga, it was stated that prepping a mere platoon (40 people) to move will take three hours. We are talking about putting on a barrier jacket and grabbing a Storage Device - somehow, this is supposed to take 3 hours.

Imagine any Terran platoon taking 3 hours to grab their assault rifles, put on its combat fatigues and move out of its barracks in some kind of formation!

And of course, in StrikerS, we see this again - the air mages take an hour to reach the scene (more if they've been fighting the fire for some time). When they finally come, we see at most 20 mages (a very small platoon!)

In combat conditions, as of 1978, a Soviet division was expected to complete its combat preparation in 3 hours (of course, that's not to say that they don't take more time when it is available) from receipt of order. A company on alert (in assembly) was expected to get its butt into formation (thus moving) in 5 minutes. The Reinforced Regiment (read, coordinating a bunch of newly attached subunits) moves in under 120. Just a couple of things to show how criminally slow the TSAB is in comparison.

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

Hayate wasn't even a rookie at this point. Okay, she's got a staff, she's got her knights, she's got a couple of good friends to help her out. But she's lacking any kind of experience in using magic whatsoever, aside from shooting the Book defense program a couple of times. She has no device. She's still under a big cloud of suspicion, one that still taints her record ten years later (though part of that might be due to the lack of anyone who actually died and could thus have the blame pinned on them - Fate was obviously being manipulated by Precia, but who was manipulating Hayate? Nobody really.) And incidentally, she still can't walk yet.

Actually, it is obvious from the Auris scene in Ep18 that Hayate took on more responsibility than the facts warranted. According to Auris, apparently the official record is that the attacks on TSAB mages, for example, were on her orders - which as we all know wasn't the case; in fact it was the exact opposite. IMO that was probably to protect the Knights from being rapidly executed.

Fate probably, with Chrono's help, slothed off as much responsibility as possible. Hayate is the inverse.

We don't really know how long Hayate's rehabilitations - magical, physical, and political - actually took. We know that she was walking six years later, and had Rein by that point, so we can assume it was done by then. But we have no idea how long it actually took - it could have been a year, a couple of years, five years. And even at that point she would have been at the same spot where Nanoha was, say, by ep 4 of S1. (Then again, we have the comics that says that Hayate was at least functional six months later... though she still couldn't walk except when she was using her device, and she got pwned by Nanoha and Fate, not that THAT is anything to be ashamed of.)

What p3wned. You must be reading a different comic from me. The final exchange of fire was a tie.

Basically, being able to walk when using your device is as good as functional in the TSAB. She was already and Officer Candidate at the same time as Nanoha and Fate. She's less than a year's experience behind Nanoha, and maybe 2 behind Fate.

Anyway, it's still not totally fair to just harp on the shortcomings of the TSAB without pointing out that their threat profile is radically different. US military doctrine simply has no answer for a little girl who's invulnerable to guns, planes, tanks, and can take down a whole battalion without working too hard.

The take down whole battalion thing can be done with a tacnuke, or even a few aircraft with the right weapons.

It'd be a little difficult on the US due to their limited range of air defense equipment (basically it is Patriot then Stingers). If they go against an army with competent air defense, the story becomes completely different. Mages have few answers to things (missiles and bullets) that are supersonic except to raise a all surrounding barrier, and if they are raising it they generally don't attack - they often don't even continue maneuvering. And their attacks are generally based on direct fire.

With AA defense being capable of tracking things of smaller and smaller RCS, locking onto a flying mage won't be too hard, and then it is a matter of using a mix of fragmentation and AP to lethal effect. If the mage decides to shield, fire intermittent bursts for suppression. Sooner or later, she'd want to attack, and then you "squirt her" and let bullet momentum do its work (Barrier Jackets are soft).

The reason that US forces have good doctrine is that we've been in several major conflicts this century, and built up from having a pathetic military to, well, heh. It cost us a lot of blood and treasure to learn those lessons. And those lessons are difficult to translate to other militaries, even ones here on Earth that should be able to pick them up. I mean, there's no reason that the French army can't kick as much ass as the US army, pound for pound... except that they're French. ;p We don't have any idea how heavily engaged the Mid armed forces have been since the formation of the TSAB - hell, we don't know if they've had one war. Maybe it's no surprise that, tactically and strategically speaking, they look like a certain other military that was built not to go to war...

Actually, the French army suffers from its desire for universal military service

BTW, is the JSDF really that bad (in competence; perhaps they do have similar mentalities)? They have to work with the Americans after all in exercises, and it takes a lot of sinking to sink all the way down to TSAB levels...

[Tk3997]

Originally Posted by arkhangelsk

The take down whole battalion thing can be done with a tacnuke, or even a few aircraft with the right weapons.

Even just a single B-1 with 144 SBD or a bomb bay full of clusters bombs could probably do mean things if it caught them in camp...

Also 99% of TSAB mages (even the aces) never show firepower much higher then small aircraft weapons, often considerably less. This is what 2000 pound aircraft bombs do...

Spoiler for Now you See, Now you don't:

The only things that even approach this level are the various breaker style trump cards none of the stuff they use more often holds a candle to this level of damage. People are two quick to throw out crazy high numbers or just rattle off how "invulnerable" something is without actually looking at the evidence and using math and psychics as well as real examples to truly gauge the events energy level.

I’ve always felt that large caliber firearms would kill most TSAB mages with sustained fire while auto-cannons could deal with most of the rest, and any kind of heavy weight aerial weapon would totally ruin their shit. This is all modern stuff too presumably someone working with Nanoha's often distinctly science fictional tech could do better.

It'd be a little difficult on the US due to their limited range of air defense equipment (basically it is Patriot then Stingers). If they go against an army with competent air defense, the story becomes completely different. Mages have few answers to things (missiles and bullets) that are supersonic except to raise a all surrounding barrier, and if they are raising it they generally don't attack - they often don't even continue maneuvering. And their attacks are generally based on direct fire.

With AA defense being capable of tracking things of smaller and smaller RCS, locking onto a flying mage won't be too hard, and then it is a matter of using a mix of fragmentation and AP to lethal effect. If the mage decides to shield, fire intermittent bursts for suppression. Sooner or later, she'd want to attack, and then you "squirt her" and let bullet momentum do its work (Barrier Jackets are soft).

Modern Fire Control radar can lock onto, track, and engage a mortar shell with a 20mm auto cannon. We also have examples of various hard kill systems mounted don vehicles that target, track, and shot down incoming RPG and ATGM approaching the vehicle. The Fire Control is really already in place.

Now hook that up to say… a High Intensity Laser cannon. The mage is a bloody cloud of vapor before they can even blink or realize they’re being attacked.

The sky is not a friendly place with modern or god forbid near future AA defenses scanning it.