> At 19:23 14/03/99 -0500, you wrote:
No! Surely you are thinking Aussie dollars to English Pounds.
Seriously I'm not sure about your figures. The new Collins subs look like
becoming fully operational (mod 2 standard) at a cost of about (read OVER) $5
billion Australian each which includes infrastructure and development costs. A
lot of the overruns would be associated with the new combat system and its
problems. Anyway my take is that $10 billion for a
destroyer/light
crusier would be about right making the conversion something like 1-10
or
1-7. Just a thought.
Given cost of US ships (in 1990 dollars) to cost of FT ships (Credits), it
appears that 1 Credit is about $3. Note that the real inflation rate is
roughly 6% (despite the Official Federally Announced figures) which means that
the value of the 2002$1.00 will be about 1990$0.50, so adjust your
figures as needed. (I base things on 1988-1990 figures as they're
easier to find than 1998 figures).
One US Division (10-11 battalions) costs about $10 Billion (personnel,
hardware, housing, combat and non-combat support). If I recall
correctly
about a third of that should be up-front, and amortize the rest over a
ten
year period. That would be 3300 MCr -to purchase--which means it 's
about right, a division is supposed to cost about as much as a capital
ship--and
660MCr per year to maintain. Those of you who use brigades or other
formations, figure about 330 MCr per battalion for line infantry (that
includes each battalion's share of divisional engineer, signals, artillery,
etc.).
> At 22:33 14/03/99 +0000, you wrote:
Major Opps. That should be $5 billion for the first 6! I knew some thing was
wrong. Fully kitted out with things that go bang that should bring them to
around a billion each. Going with these numbers a space light crusier would be
$2 billion. Say thats 200 pts or 200 000 000 credits and the figures come out
at 1 to 10 when compared to dollars (so how did I get this in the first
place?). Its far too late!
> At 22:54 14/03/99 -0700, you wrote:
Terrible
> expeditionary types of forces, but enough to bloody the nose of any
I got to agree with Don here. The Swiss/Israeli model allows you
the have a much larger force at lower cost as you only really pay for the
weaponary and not wages, accomadation, medical, food etc in peace time. The
idea in Australia used to be (anyone correct me) was that the regulars would
be roughly divisional strength with the Army Reserve (militia if you like)
making up a second, doubling our field strength at very little cost. Very
cheap in fact as the reserves got all our old stuff if we could keep it
working. In Israel the reserve strength would be even greater say 4 or 5 times
that of the standing army. If I remember rightly the Israelis had 2 divisions
(relatively small organisation I think) in the Sinai campaign in '73. If you
can track down more infomation of the forces involved in that war it might
give some further ideas.
[snipped excellent figures and info]
Laserlight,
I think that many on the list, as well as myself, would benefit from a simple
comparison, after all the numbers have been crunched, of military or naval
budget (estimated) in MUcr per million population.
If necessary, you can add in a militancy multiplier (average assumed at
1.00).
What say?
Schoon said:
> I think that many on the list, as well as myself, would benefit from a
I'm still playing around with the figures myself, trying to get something that
gives me (Alarish) a reasonable but respectable fleet. I'll go through my
calculations in detail to show the assumptions, then simplify.
Per Capita income = 8000Cr (current $24000 divided by $3/Cr)
1M population * 8000Cr per capita = GNP Defense Budget = 5% GNP (The lowest I
know of has been Japan at
1%--under US
protection; the highest I know of has been Saudi Arabia at 28% with oil money;
the highest for a normal nation has been the USSR at 14%; global average is
about 5%)
Army and Navy split the budget equally. Each spends about a third of their
budget on new units--the balance goes to maintenance and support. You
may
tamper with the percentages here a bit, but not very much--weapons that
aren't maintained don't do you any good.
Navy spends about 33% on ship construction; therefore 1M *
8000*.05*.5*.33 =
66MCr per year (per million population). Figure a ship lasts 20 years (without
a major rebuild, which comes out of the construction budget), so you'd have
1320 MCr worth of ships per million population.
Army spends about 33% on raising new troops. 66MCr per year over 5 years
builds a battalion with support units; cost to maintain is 66Mcr, so 1M
population fairly neatly results in one battalion. (Cross check--the US
had
as I recall 30 divisions of 10 battalions--some were Light, Airborne etc
and
were presumably a bit smaller than a normal divisions--so let's say
250-300
battalions. US population is around 280M, so I guess this works reasonably
well). These are line troops, by the way--you'd have a lot less if you
go in for power armor like I do.
The two figures you can really juggle are% of your GNP to defense (note that
the more you put into defense, the less goes into investment, and sooner or
later you end up like the USSR), and the way the budget splits between Army
and Navy. The current US budget is fairly evenly split among Army, Navy and
Air Force. The Alarishi budget, on the other hand, goes 80% to Navy.
So to put it in the simplified form you asked for, 1 million population
usually results in about 1300 MCr (130 points) of ships and 1 line battalion
with support units.
> At 12:12 AM 3/15/99 -0500, you wrote:
> Army spends about 33% on raising new troops. 66MCr per year over 5
You may be reading too much into the US example. I realize that most of the
world seems to be heading towards the "small, professional" model of the US
and Britain (and Canada and Oz and anyone else who want's credit :-),
but your method breaks down when trying to plan for a classical
Swiss/Israeli
type of military with small cadres and enormous reserve forces. Terrible
expeditionary types of forces, but enough to bloody the nose of any attacker.
As an example my own Free State deeply wants cutting edge grav tanks, but from
a financal point of view it simply makes more sense to invest in starships
(and even more, the fighters [see the relevant posts on the 'pedia list]) to
prevent the Bad Guys from landing. So the elite armoured units have heavy
tracks and the rest soldier on with light tracks and wheeled vehicles, very
little of which can be said to be high tech. They also manage to put only a
few brigades in the real hot spots, because there's only so much shipping to
cart the troops around. Which actually reinforces my preference for fighters,
since a few squadrons can put a real crimp in the plans of an insufficently
advanced enemy, and the most advanced enemy I have is second or third rate. It
seems to be working for
me. :-)
> The two figures you can really juggle are % of your GNP to defense
Don replied:
> You may be reading too much into the US example. I realize that most of
Put in more GNP and reduce the maintenance cost.
> At 07:05 AM 3/15/99 -0500, you wrote:
I wasn't objecting so much to the GNP/new equipment cost/maintanence
info (which, BTW, I found very useful, thanks) but the following para:
> So to put it in the simplified form you asked for, 1 million population
If you go with the Israeli model, 1 Mpop will provide *much* more than only
one battalion. I'd play with numbers now, but I've got to go to work. Tonight
I'll try to do a little research and post what I come up with.
> Don Greenfield wrote:
> I wasn't objecting so much to the GNP/new equipment cost/maintanence
Yup. Not very well equipped - most would be line infantry - but a *lot*
more. As an example, the Swedish army about 10 years ago was supposed to field
approx. half a million men when fully mobilised; Sweden's population at the
time was roughly 8.5 million. Now we've reduced the army to virtually nothing,
but IIRC the Finnish army still has a fully mobilised strength of several
hundred thousand (out of a population of
4-5 million - again IIRC; 'twas over ten years I last saw reliable
figures on Finland's population).
...'course, if your battalions have about 60,000 men each (including
supporting troops) it works out to one battalion per Mpop ;-)
Later,
Then there is the question of training. National Guard units that really only
get a few days of training a month and maybe a two week stint once a year is
not going to compare to the front line units who have constant training, both
physically and mentally. It's one thing to count bodies, but troop quality
stands for a lot, as evidenced by the Gulf War.
Sure you might field several hundred thousand troops, but how many are going
to stand up to assault by an armored brigade? Whereas a line troop might break
even, it's going to take quite a few reservists to have the same effect,
especially with second line weapons.
I would think the difference between reservists and line troops is probably
the same as a green recruit fresh out of bootcamp and veterans who had been in
action for a few months. The recruit may know which end of the gun is
dangerous, but the details of survival and effectiveness in the field and in
action against the enemy are missing. I would tend to rate such formations
made from reservists as "Green".
--Binhan
[quoted original message omitted]
> I wasn't objecting so much to the GNP/new equipment cost/maintanence
Right, but I was saying (before *I* went to work) that a national service plan
like that costs more as far as GNP (a lot of labor that could go to production
instead goes to boot camp) but the maintenance is lower (because the equipment
isn't used as often, not as much ammo fired, don't have to house the troops
etc). I don't know how far you can take the Israeli analogy because I don't
know how dependent their economy is on US loans and gifts. You could
reasonably assume 10% of the population is fit for military service and give
them maybe a month of militia training per year. (No disparagement intended,
you'd get ""regular" or "veteran" militia if you work at it).
Tony said:
> Major Oops. That should be $5 billion for the first 6! I knew some
I'm talking about construction cost. You implied (in the part I just realized
I snipped) that you are talking about total cost including development and
support. Total cost is about 3 times the construction cost.
> At 19:12 15/03/99 -0500, you wrote:
Yes and no. When you are taking of a new ship design development and
construction costs tend to blur unless you start going back to the very basics
of each individual system.... Also the navy tends to regard construction costs
as that amount of money needed to spent before they take delivery and
comission it. There have been times when a ship has been built and then
heavily modified and then scrapped because it didn't work right. Where do
construction costs start and where do they end?