On tafl

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While I attempt to dream up suitable procurement challenges for Parvusimperator, who is much harder to challenge than I am, I have some side projects in flight. One of those is a computer implementation of tafl.

Tafl is an Old Norse board game. The name means ‘table’, and the game and its variants are also known by some others: hnefatafl (King’s Table, to my best guess), brandubh, tablut, alea evangelii, ard ri, and likely some I’m forgetting. It is mainly notable for being the best-developed asymmetric abstract strategy game of which I am aware. Common across all the varians is the central goal: one side, the king’s side, starts in the center of the board. Its goal is to get its king to escape. The other side, the besieging side, plays to prevent the king from escaping. The king escapes on edge spaces in some variants, and on corner spaces in others.

Taflmen are moved like the rook in chess, orthogonally, any number of spaces. Captures are made by surrounding opposing taflmen on two sides, though some variants require that the king be surrounded by four opposing taflmen to be captured, and others do not allow the king to take part in captures.

Some modern variants introduce innovations aimed at a more balanced game, or one less likely to stalemate: pieces in a line on a board edge can be captured by lining up your own pieces opposite them and surrounding them to the sides, or the king can escape by means of a similar formation, if he is able to move inside the surrounding formation. Other modern variants go even further from the original rules, introducing pieces which can jump to move or jump to capture, and the ‘berserker rule’: a piece which makes a capture can move repeatedly, so long as each subsequent move also makes a capture. (That one is going to be a huge pain to implement. Just saying.)

Anyway, besides its obscurity and its Viking flavor, I find two other things to like about tafl games: first, the unchartedness of the territory. Tafl is still an enthusiast community, and although it seems to be growing, research into the game is still in its infancy. It’s a chance to break some new ground in human understanding, a compelling reason to work on it.

The second reason is the probable computational complexity of tafl games. Though the rules are simpler than those of chess, it’s my suspicion that, in terms of raw possible games and average branching factor, tafl is a harder game to model than chess. Consider: concretely, taflmen move as freely as the second tier of chess pieces (the rooks and bishops), and the tafl board is bigger (attested variants range from 7×7 to 17×17 or 19×19, depending on your interpretation of the rules). Qualitatively, it feels to me like tafl is a busier game: the capture rules mean that it’s more difficult to make captures while keeping strong positions, and the escape/surround duality in objectives means that material advantage is, to a certain point, less important. Pinning a piece in place so that a piece behind it can’t deliver an attack is fundamental to chess tactics, but two taflmen in the same vicinity build upon each other, and their interchangeability means that sacrificing one taflman so that another can move into a better position requires much less care than chess tactics do.

I suppose, speaking in the most general terms, chess between evenly-matched players is a game of materiel before a game of position: gains in material advantage are easily parlayed into gains in positional advantage, because it’s easier to fix an opponent’s powerful pieces in place relative to tafl. Tafl between evenly-matched players is a game of position before materiel. It isn’t uncommon to see high-level tafl players decline to take ‘freebie captures’—when the opponent places a piece into a position where it can be captured without retaliation—because a small material gain is not worth losing a turn in the race for position elsewhere on the board.

Anyway, that’s all I have for today. As I get OpenTafl more ready for a release, I intend to go into more specifics about its variations, its strategy, and my implementation of its more curious features and work toward a reasonable AI. I’ll see you then. (Or probably before then, when I tell you which things I’ve chosen for Parvusimperator’s unseemly gauntlet-throwing.)

2015 projects and series

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Now that we’re a month into the New Year, it’s time to go on record with some plans and details for 2015. Below, in no particular order, are the major non-writing things I and Many Words collaborators and non-posting friends will be working on this year.

The Nivkh-Quechua cognate hunt
A friend of mine has been looking for and finding a surprising number of cognates between Nivkh, a Siberian language, and Quechua, a South American language. Since his dictionary source material for Nivkh is primarily in Russian, I’m lending him my Russian experience to help out.

OpenTafl
Tafl, the Old Norse board game, has long been an object of fascination to me. It’s also a very poorly understood game. One of my projects this year is to finish a computer representation of several variants of the game, so that I and a friend of mine can investigate it more deeply than has been done to date. Also because it’s cool and there isn’t a good way to play with friends and I need to fix that.

Skypirates theme
Parvusimperator and I enjoy our shared Skypirates universe a lot, but we’d like to do some more world design in places we haven’t looked at much. We’ll have some details for you on China, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany, for sure, since Parvusimperator is doing most of the work there, along with Corregidor (the Tortuga of the Far East). I’ll probably be tackling the Australian Colonies, the American West Coast nation of Pacifica, and Tortuga (the Corregidor of the West).

The Casino Job
Parvusimperator is also planning on actually putting out a story in the Skypirates universe, featuring his own crew and his own zep. I won’t spoil anything besides the title.

An unspecified app project
Since my friend and I are slow workers, I’m not going to say anything about this until it’s nearly ready for prime time.

Projekt Archangel
I’m planning on modernizing a Mosin-Nagant rifle (don’t worry, collectors, there are tens of millions of them, and I have one to keep original) toward the end of this year. Pictures and build details when they happen.

Picking up the gauntlet
I guess I have to answer the challenges Parvusimperator threw down. Let no man say I am a poltroon.

Throwing down the gauntlet
The other half of the above.

On the Throwing of Gauntlets

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OY!
FISHBREATH!

Come out, Fishbreath!

I expect and demand to see procurement postings for the following four big-ticket items:
–An Infantry Carbine, complete with reasoning on choice of caliber and overall configuration (conventional or bullpup)
–A Sidearm
–A General Purpose, Medium-sized Utility Helicopter
–An Attack Helicopter

Pick up the gauntlet and respond if you dare, or be forever known as a poltroon and lazy shirker!

Procurement 4D: Lightning Squalls

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Richard Bong’s Ghost, I appear to have left out the F-35A from my procurement discussions. How could I have?

To be honest, I came into this not liking the Lightning II at all. It’s heavy, ugly, has relatively poor handling characteristics on paper, and is riding a massive hype machine. Oh, and it’s really, really expensive. It’s just not what I would have considered. But, I can’t have a discussion of modern fighter procurement without at least touching on it. And that means admitting that the F-35A is about as desirable as an independently-wealthy supermodel in a dating show. Which is to say, unfathomably desirable. I have great respect for the Israeli air force, and they’re on The List. I also respect the South Korean Air Force, which is also in a threatening location, and they cheated on the requirements (no really, they rewrote the requirements) just so they could get a piece of that Joint Strike Action. Neither of these air forces were part of the original partnership group, so they’re not trying to preserve local jobs. And despite the sticker price, Singapore calls it ‘economical.’ So, what am I missing? Well, a classified-level briefing and some fancy mathematical models of air combat, certainly. But beyond that, it’s probably important to figure out why the F-35A is so desirable to the world’s air forces. So let’s take a closer look at the Pride of Fair Columbia.

The F-35A is stealthy, and it’s in production now. Where else can you get both of those? Go ahead, look around, make a few calls. I’ll wait.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Right there is something that you can get nowhere else without violating our rules. Stealth is cool. Is it as stealthy as a B-2A Spirit? No, but the Lightning II isn’t a big heavy bomber either. Its stealth is X-band optimized, and with internal weapons carriage its radar signature can’t be beat in its class, unless you want to look at prototypes or things that the US Congress says You Can’t Have. And unlike some people, I’ll hold myself to those rules. If you want stealth this is the only game in town. And you know the stealth is going to work, because Lockheed Martin has plenty of experience with those materials and that design. Which reminds me, just in case you’re not sold on this whole ‘stealth’ thing, go blow the dust off your VCR and put in your CNN Archive tapes from Gulf War I. Pretty cool. Operating with impunity over the heart of one of the premier air defense systems at the time. Stealth is a massive gain for survivability in the face of modern, integrated air defense systems.

I know what you’re thinking though. First, you’re going to gripe about the F-117A shot down over Serbia. And yeah, okay, you got me. Stealth isn’t perfect, and I never claimed that it was. This is not a cloaking device. It just makes it a lot harder to detect on radar. And in Serbia we’re talking about a really clever piece of surface to air missile operation, plus somewhat sloppy route planning package on an aircraft that had no systems to warn it of an incoming missile. Credit where it’s due, that was a hell of a shot. But it’s not really an indictment of stealth technology as worthless. We still have a phenomenal sortie:loss ratio here. The next obvious gripe is that the F-35A can only carry two JDAMs internally (with two AMRAAMs, or six AMRAAMs without the bombs). And it’s true, that’s not the greatest loadout ever. But we need to be precise–that’s the sneaky loadout. Two 2,000-lbs-class precision guided munitions is exactly what the F-117A carried. It can carry more in low-threat environments, when we’re less worried about our radar signature. But, unlike an F-16 (say), the F-35 can also sneak in and blow stuff up like an F-117. Which was pretty freaking useful despite its smallish loadout. And the Lightning II has really good range performance with only internal stores too.

But there’s more to the F-35 than just the stealth option. Even if we load up all of the external stores, we still have all of the electrics. And the electrics and sensors on the F-35 are second to none. On the front aspect, the F-35’s IRST is basically a built-in Sniper XR targeting pod, and that model is top of the line. So it’s got all of those features without needing to blow a hardpoint on a TGP. That’s not all though. There are six IR sensors around the airframe, arranged for all-around, always-on coverage. You read that right. Always-on. The computers integrate all this for the pilot to identify and track things all around him. When he turns his head, he sees what the appropriate sensor sees, right in his helmet, but the rest of the sensors are still feeding the computer data. No sensor panning. With the computer’s sensor fusion, this gives him the best situational awareness anywhere. Infrared and radar data is combined for identification and tracking purposes. The distributed IR system gives not only awesome infrared searching and tracking, but also missile approach warning, all in one system. But that’s not all. The F-35A has one of the top radars in the world, the AN/APG-81. It may not have the raw power of the IRBIS-E, but it’s cleverer, with fancy LPI modes and built-in electronic warfare capabilities. It’s got everything you’d want for reconnaissance too, with multiple ground moving target detection and tracking, high resolution mapping, and combat identification modes. But wait, it gets better. The F-35A has an integrated electronic warfare suite. It can provide all the SAM radar ranging data and jamming support that it might need, no bulky pods or separate EW aircraft needed. The F-35A has a datalink as well. While it’s not the first fighter to have one (cf. Fishbreath’s post on the Gripen), it has a particularly good one with some compelling features. Specifically, it can datalink to things that aren’t aircraft, such as long range surface to air missiles in order to provide guidance data. It’s like having an extra wingman when you’re fighting near friendly ground forces. Call it a home-field advantage.

Okay, so the F-35 has a lot of really compelling features that you can’t get in any other fighter. Awesome. But what about handling? Well, it gets some help from the internal stores. Anything inside clearly creates no drag. According to many sources, the F-35A with internal stores handles about like an F-16 with a similar weapons load. Now, there are a whole bunch of caveats here, but since I’m not about to try to make a fancy 3D comparative graph of performance data on these two planes, so I’ll take them at their word of “Roughly F-16-grade handling”, and it ought to be good enough for the purposes of this argument. Is ‘Roughly F-16-grade handling” enough? While the F-16’s handling is pretty darn good, the Rafale’s is better, as is that of the Sukhoi Su-35S, the most likely near-term opponent (anything more advanced isn’t in production yet, so it’s a lot harder to predict what the production version will be capable of). So what does that better handling get you? To know this, it helps to know why we bothered going for handling in the first place. At the start of the “Fourth Generation” of jet fighter design, a missile could reliably engage a bogey regardless of its aspect. But the missile had a limited envelope, which is to say the zone in which it could see a target to engage it. Call this envelope a roughly 60-degree cone with the apex at the nose of the launching fighter. Better maneuverability meant that you could get your cone on the other guy first, and so you got first shot. Does this ensure a kill? No, because PK is never one. But it helps, because it usually gets the other guy to go defensive, which meant he had something better to do than try to kill you. Getting first shot is always better. Now, the F-35’s designers say that given the fancy sensor fusion and all-aspect sensors, as well as missiles that can engage a target on any relative bearing, we don’t really need all that agility. You’ve got first shot if you can see him and if he’s close enough. You also get the stealth on your side, to reduce your radar signature, and thus the range at which the other guy can lock you up and get his shot off. All points in the Lightning II’s favor. And there’s the aforementioned integrated electronic warfare, to make an opponent’s life worse.

But what if we’re wrong? What if the Pentagon and Lockheed got their vision of the future wrong? Well, we’d still have all the nifty strike and EW support aspects that I mentioned previously. As for the dogfights, let’s look at some history. The F-4 Phantom II is, on paper, rather a poor dogfighter. It’s big and doesn’t have the handling of it’s Russian contemporaries. In Viet Nam, we saw that it’s vaunted AIM-7 Sparrow missiles weren’t very good at their jobs. And, since the USAF and USN didn’t train pilots in dogfighting, they weren’t very good at it. So the Americans got their butts handed to them by the Vietnamese. But then, the Americans decided that something had to change. So the TOPGUN program and the Red Flag exercises were created, to train pilots in dogfighting. Even dogfighting with opponents who flew different planes, with different strengths and weaknesses than a pilot’s own. And the pilot training emphasis meant that afterwards the Americans gained a favorable kill ratio against their Vietnamese opponents. Similar results happened in the Arab-Israeli wars, where superior training on the part of the Israeli Air Force made up for any shortcomings in their fighters. Looking even further back, General Chennault’s Flying Tigers had an impressive kill:loss ratio against Japanese pilots in China, despite flying aircraft that looked terribly inferior on paper. So, if we do our part with a good training program, we can make up for any shortcomings that a fighter might have. But to be fair, we don’t know these shortcomings yet.

With all that said, the advantages of the Lightning II outweigh the disadvantages of lower payload and less agility when compared to the Rafale. We’ll suck up “good enough” 4th gen fighter handling (or better depending on which reports you read) for the avionics, situational awareness aids, and stealth features. Stealth provides an extra option for the Lightning II; if we choose not to use it on a given mission we get a F-16/F/A-18 with stupidly good avionics and integrated ECM. That’s a fine package. Also, being American, the F-35 is dominant in the 4th dimension of aircraft design (i.e. the political one) as well.

Comment on our procurement posts in the Procurement Games comment thread.

Procurement 4C: The Right Stuff

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Now we get to the good planes. The planes that made the cut. The planes that have the right stuff. So which will win?

First to go is the Eurofighter. This is another case of reality making an otherwise excellent fighter not work out well in practice. It should be a great choice, being optimized for air-to-air engagements first, and having what is by all accounts an excellent cockpit. In simulated dogfights, it’s even beat the Raptor a few times–and when it did the planes weren’t fitted with IRST or helmet-mounted sights. And that hints at one of the problems. Stinginess on the part of the builders because of a hippie ‘peace dividend’ has not only reduced the procurement numbers, driving up the costs, but they’ve also looked to delete things no sane person would remove. The Germans bought fighters without the suite of jammers and warning systems. The British considered deleting the gun. And everyone is dragging their feet on the latest sensors. IRST and AESA radar integration are proceeding slowly. Who knows if or when the fancy AESA radar will actually fly on production fighters–which means Borgundy might have to shoulder the cost of integration of something that really ought to come standard on a modern fighter. Plus, the fact that there are three countries as primary contractors instead of one means that you get to deal with politics and all three. Hello delays, cost overruns and a sticker price that is embarrassingly high. The Rafale is slightly less dogfight optimized than the Eurofighter, but it has one prime contracting nation that is actually upgrading, and it’s a whole lot cheaper. The Rafale also carries more. Both the Super Hornet and the Gripen are significantly cheaper as well. So, the Eurofighter gets the axe.

Next down is the cheap and cheerful Gripen. I’ll go light on the summary, because Fishbreath has written on it extensively. Suffice to say it’s cheap to buy and cheap to maintain. I could make this elimination much easier by looking at the Gripen-C that’s actually flying as opposed to the Gripen-E that has been offered/promised Brazil, but that’s hardly fair. Also, Fishbreath would whine. So, why not the Gripen-E? Well, again, where’s the radar? It’s promised an AESA unit, but very little is known. I can tell you it won’t be a very powerful unit, because power requires transmit/receive modules and the Gripen has a tiny nose. Will it be good enough? Will it have the features that we’ve come to expect on such excellent units as the APG-80? We don’t know. We could probably take a chance on the radar, but the Gripen’s small size means it’s rather payload and range limited. It’s certainly not going to be very capable of a deep interdiction tasking. In terms of dogfighting, its small size is a benefit, but it doesn’t help it as a bomb truck and we need to do both. Borgundy is also concerned about the EW systems, or rather, the lack of a strong integrated EW suite. We’d probably have to pay for more of that, especially as SEAD capability is notably absent from the Gripen-E. Honestly, the Gripen’s low cost and ease of maintenance led it to fare much better than I thought it would, but at the end of the day, we want fancier electrics and more hauling capacity.

That leaves the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, which I will refer to as ‘Rhino’ like US Navy pilots and aircraft handlers, and Dassault’s Rafale. The Rhino has a significant price advantage, but otherwise they’re very similar fighters. Both have plenty of carrying capacity and hardpoints, with the edge going to Rafale for overall capacity. The Rhino has had an AESA radar for longer, and it’s currently widely in service. Rafale is just now getting those pushed out to the Armee de l’Air’s fleet. The Rhino’s radar is a bit better according to the published statistics, but the Rafale has an IRST unit. Both have a serious avionics suite built around making information easily available. Due to the IRST and the superior EW-suite, the Rafale does more with sensor fusion in it’s cockpit. On the EW front though, the Rhino beats all comers with its specialized EW-variant called the Growler, which is a phenomenal addition to the support fleet of any air force.

Handlingwise is where the Rafale edges out the Rhino though. The big Rhino could really use more engine power than it’s got, and in embiggening the Hornet, the spry handling has suffered. The Rafale has a more recent aerodynamic design and better power for its weight. The Rafale can still get decent range with conformal fuel tanks and no fewer than five hardpoints plumbed for droptanks. And, with nine other hardpoints, the Rafale is still capable of hauling a heavy warload. It’s got the interdiction capabilities, the dogfighting capabilities, and the sensor capabilities that we need. So it’s our choice for modern multir—hold on.

I appear to have forgotten one. Bugger. That won’t do at all.
It appears our conclusion was a trifle premature. Join us next time when the Rafale has a fly-off against the F-35A Lightning II.

Comment on our procurement posts in the Procurement Games comment thread.

Procurement Games 2014: How to Win, FREMMs, and Influence People

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In fighter procurement, there’s a concept known as the high-low mix: buy a small number of expensive fighters and a large number of less expensive fighter. The theory goes that it’s bad to be outnumbered and bad to be out-gadgeted, so mix the two together and mitigate the disadvantages of both1.

There’s a similar paradigm in naval procurement, although the reasoning is different. Big, expensive surface combatants—your carriers, your Kirovs, your Burkes—are well and dandy, and indeed, are usually more capable than the equivalent tonnage of smaller things. They have an enormous and obvious drawback, though: physically, they can only be in one place at a time. Luchtburg has its ‘high’ platforms in its aircraft carriers2, and it also has its ‘super-low’ local naval force3. What has been missing, up to this article, is a solid, dependable, light- to middleweight warship: an Oliver Hazard Perry for the modern age.

I’ve rather given up the game in the title, because, for a nation in the Americas, there is only one choice that makes any sense for worldwide sea lane influence: the FREMM, a French-Italian collaboration. Specifically, I’m talking about the Italian anti-submarine version. Over the French version, it has 900 tons, extra range and speed, room for a second helicopter, extra VLS tubes4, anti-submarine cruise missiles, a towed array, and a better radar. As I see it, a frigate5 has three major roles.

First, and most traditional, is the anti-submarine role. The Italian ASW FREMM is an extremely capable ship in this regard. Perhaps its most critical edge over other, similar options is the ability to carry two medium-lift helicopters. With their mobility, sensors, and immunity to counterattack, helicopters are extraordinarily important ASW assets, to the point where I dismiss out of hand any ASW ship without room for a brace of helos. Also important is a good towed sonar, and FREMM doesn’t disappoint. It has an advanced towed array from Thales, which has such exciting features as a separated transmitter and receiver array for working around layers, and low-frequency operational modes for longer active detection ranges.

Second, a ship operating by itself must be able to defend itself against air and cruise missile threats. The Italian version uses the Selex EMPAR radar, one of the class-toppers in the realm of passive electronically-scanned arrays for naval vessels, and the Luchtbourgish version carries thirty-two tubes6. As with all FREMMs, it supports Aster 15 and Aster 30 missiles. As an added bonus, the latter has a dedicated anti-ballistic variant in testing, and already has minor anti-ballistic capability. Luchtburg’s FREMMs will come with standalone SEARAM launchers mounted on the foredeck and the hangar roof.

Third, a frigate must be able to attack other things on the surface, be they other seagoing vessels or land targets. The VLS, with its sixteen SYLVER A70 cells, can support cruise missiles, and the FREMM has eight cruise missile launchers amidships (the Italian version can launch anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine missiles, and land-attack missiles from the midships launchers). Further, for smaller targets, our FREMM variant mounts a pair of OTO-Melara rapid-firing 76mm guns. OTO-Melara produces a bunch of interesting ammunition for its rapid-firing guns, including an anti-ship round with IR terminal guidance, and a GPS/INS-guided land-attack munition.

1. I think. I’m not actually an expert.
2. And probably Arleigh Burkes or indigenous large missile destroyers, but I haven’t decided yet.
3. I’ll tell you later.
4. As equipped, it only has sixteen, but the Italians reserved room for another sixteen.
5. I’ll be using the European term for the FREMM, although calling a 6900-ton ship a frigate is patently absurd.
6. I would like more, but I don’t think it’s plausible to pack them in.

Comment on our procurement posts in the Procurement Games comment thread.

2014A: Project Carius (The Thunderbolt MBT)

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To beat the Red Army, you need numbers. Thus holds conventional wisdom as well as the experiences of Napoleon’s Grande Armee and Hitler’s Wehrmacht. You. Need. Numbers. Borgundy doesn’t have those. Can’t really get them either, because conscription is gone, and there’s no use trying to go down that road again. Can’t borrow numbers, because the NATO big cheese, America, has a bunch of other commitments in other parts of Europe, not to mention Asia and the Middle East. So, like all powers stuck at a quantitative disadvantage, we’re going to go for a qualitative edge. Hence, Project Carius, which has yielded Thunderbolt, the most powerful tank…in the world. Let’s take a tour.

Sorry, no flash photography.

MAIN GUN
We’ll start with the main gun, both because it’s a striking aspect of the tank, and because it’s where I started in the design. Most modern tanks use a 120mm gun if they’re good friends with America, or a 125mm gun if they’re good friends with the Soviet Union. Thunderbolt’s main gun is a 140mm L/47 smoothbore. L/47 means its barrel is 47 times longer than it is wide. It’s built for high-pressure rounds, and APFSDS-T rounds from it will go clean through the turret face (i.e. the thickest armor) of any current tank. It’ll laugh in the face of 1,200 mm of RHA steel. If we can hit it, we can kill it. Other less interesting but nonetheless important features of the gun include a protected bore evacuator and a thermal sleeve.

The aforementioned APFSDS-T rounds are somewhat problematic. To get the desired performance, each round is a one-piece unit (no separate propellant charge) that is 1.5 meters long and weighs 40 kg. This mandates the use of an autoloader, rendering crew size debates academic. The large round size also makes internal ammunition arrangements difficult. We’re also very concerned with survivability–we’re building a main battle tank, not a tank destroyer. To maximize crew safety, we’re going to take a page out of the Abrams design and store our main gun ammo in the bustle, beneath blow-out panels. The idea is that we won’t be able to perfectly protect the ammo from enemy fire, so accept the vulnerability and direct the blast outward, away from the crew. Then, we’re left merely with questions of mechanical layout and capacity. Our autoloader system will use a pair of side-by-side, electrically-driven horizontal carousels, each containing 18 rounds. The carousels are isolated from the crew compartment and each other by bulkheads, with small doors that open automatically for rounds to pass through. Rounds are indexed electronically by barcodes, allowing the computer to know how many rounds of each type are remaining. Blow out panels are above each carousel compartment. The twin carousels provide some measure of redundancy, allowing the tank a chance to continue fighting if one carousel is compromised. Other available round types include HEAT and a gun-launched ATGM. This missile insures that the Thunderbolt gives up no range to the Soviet AT-11 Sniper GL-ATGM.

OTHER GUNS
The Thunderbolt has formidable secondary armament as well. Instead of the usual coaxial general-purpose machine gun, the Thunderbolt mounts a 30mm Bushmaster II Chain Gun. This was chosen to maximize stowed kills and increase the number of targets that could be engaged without the use of the main gun. The Bushmaster II is electrically driven, making it phenominally reliable. It’s dual feed capabile, and is compatible with all standard NATO 30x173mm rounds.

The commander’s roof machine gun is a pretty conventional affair. We have an M2-HB mounted in a remote weapons mount, slaved to the commander’s independent sighting unit. This is pretty typical for modern tanks.

SENSORS AND FIRE CONTROL
The Commander normally observes the battlefield through his independent viewing unit. He has the option of using either day or thermal imaging modes, with 3x, 6x, 13x, 25x, or 50x magnification. He has his own laser rangefinder, as well as optional stadia rangefinding reticles for HEAT or APFSDS rounds on higher magnification settings. The commander can pass targets to the gunner and have the turret automatically turn onto target, or receive targets from the gunner and have his viewing unit turn to the target for additional observation. The commander can also override the gunner and slave the turret to his sighting unit for aiming purposes. He can fire the gun if desired. Additionally, the commander can see the view through the gunner’s sight on his monitor. The commander’s sighting unit has an auto-scan mode if the commander wishes to keep an eye on the monitor while doing other tasks. As a backup observation system, he has eight periscopes arrayed around his hatch to observe the battlefield.

The gunner observes the battlefield and targets on it through his roof-mounted panoramic sight. He also has day or thermal imaging modes, with 3x, 6x, 10x, or 20x magnification. The gunner’s sight also has a laser rangefinder, as well as optional stadia rangefinding reticules for both ammo types. The gunner’s backup sight is an 8x telescopic sight that has been boresighted to the main gun. It can also be used to verify that the gun is clear of an obstruction. Thermal imagers for both the commander and the gunner are dual band units (MWIR and LWIR).

The driver has the usual trio of periscopes providing a reasonable field of view while buttoned up. The center periscope is a combination thermal viewer unit that gives him the ability to operate at night without lights. Additionally, a thermal backup camera is fitted to aid in backwards maneuvering.

The Thunderbolt uses fiber optic cables and a data bus to coordinate information for the computer system. In addition to the aforementioned sensors, the Thunderbolt is equipped with the usual set of crosswind sensors, muzzle reference system, and cant sensors. The fire control computer will automatically compute lead for a firing solution on a target. It is also capable of automatically tracking a target. The computer system can interface with the datalink to share data including position information, maps, planning details, and targeting data with other nearby vehicles. Position data for the current tank is determined by the inertial navigation system, GPS receiver, and a north-finder unit. This data is shared so the crew can view locations of nearby friendly units. Relevant information about status of the tank is also displayed to the crew on the internal monitors.

ARMOR
Actual armor composition and configuration is classified, and details have been removed by the War Office’s Directorate of Secrets Protection. Here’s what they’re willing to let us share. The armor structure has been designed to be fully modular around the turret and hull front. These modules can be easily removed (with a convenient crane) for replacement of damaged modules in the field or simplified upgrades of armor in the most important areas. The turret face armor is a massive 1.3 meters thick, and side armor is approximately 50 centimeters thick. Armor modules on the turret face include depleted uranium. Other materials used include titanium diboride, titanium-aluminum alloys, triple-hardness steel, and nano-crystalline ceramics. In order to allow for a turret face built like the Rock of Gibraltar but not put the Thunderbolt into the realm of stupid-heavy tanks like the Maus, we’ll also need to make some effort to reduce weight. A critical part of this effort is the widescale replacement of RHA steel with titanium aluminum alloys in structural components of both the turret and the hull. This will provide very significant weight savings for no loss in structural strength or protection.

OTHER PROTECTION
A few other protective systems are of note. First, as is almost obligatory for a modern tank (or a modern refit of an older tank), the Thunderbolt has a spall liner to protect the crew from fragments of hull knocked loose by a hit. There’s the usual modern Halon-gas based fire suppression system for the engine compartment to put out flames as well. Finally, the GALIX system of smoke grenade/decoy launchers have been liberally placed about the turret. These can fire smoke to obscure the tank (and it’s IR signature) from an enemy or incoming missile. These can be fired manually by the crew, or automatically from the laser warning system or missile approach warning system. Finally, the Thunderbolt is also equipped with Rafael’s Trophy Active Protection system. This uses a series of small radars mounted around the turret (also used for missile approach warning notifications for the crew or GALIX cueing) to detect an incoming missile, which is then neutralized by a shotgun-like blast. This provides added defense against large ATGMs.

ENGINE
This took me quite a while to work out. Gas turbines have come a ways since the AGT-1500, and there’s also the French hyperbar V8X to consider. And then there’s everyone’s default choice, the relatively compact MTU MB 883 V-12 diesel. We’re going to go with that V8X. The V8X is basically a hybrid engine that starts life as a rather overbuilt V8 diesel engine, and then went in search of more power. An ordinary diesel engine designer would add one or more turbochargers at this point, but not SACM. Instead, they hooked a mini gas turbine up to the blowers rather than using a tap on the exhaust. Et voila! Massive amounts of extra pressure in the cylinders (a whopping 32.1 bar mean effective pressure). All the power one needs to drive his tank of choice (1,500 hp), along with great torque. Plus, unlike a conventional turbocharger, there is no turbo lag. The massive boost pressure is available immediately, even at idle. The little gas turbine engine can also function as an integrated APU, saving most of the space and weight of a separate installation. Additionally, the V8X has no trouble starting in the cold, unlike conventional diesels. The V8X has somewhat increased fuel consumption, especially at idle, due to the little gas turbine, but it is not as bad as a regular gas turbine. Also, since it does not require the big recuperator or the additional reduction gearing, the V8X powerpack is smaller than the gas turbine powerpack.

SUSPENSION
The Thunderbolt is designed with an advanced hydropneumatic suspension system. This was chosen because of reduced weight compared to a conventional torsion bar suspension, plus the ability to reduce hull height over a torsion-bar-equipped hull. Hydropneumatic in-arm units are also somewhat easier to replace than torsion bars. Furthermore, the suspension is centrally controlled, allowing the tank’s crew to adjust ride height, or provide additional incline/decline to the main gun. This will allow them to use the terrain more effectively.

VITAL FIGURES
Crew: 3 (Driver, Commander, Gunner)
Weight: 65 Tonnes
Cost: $14.2M

Fishbreath Plays: Starsector, Part II

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I talked some about logistics in my last post about Starsector. Now, I’d like to touch on what I think is its best feature: its combat engine.

This video depicts a quick 1v2 battle I set up in the game’s combat simulator. HSS Daring, my cruiser from my previous Starsector post, faces off against a Venture-type cruiser and a Buffalo destroyer.

Have a watch, preferably on Youtube proper in high definition, and feast your eyes and ears upon the visuals and sounds. It’s in the running for the best-looking two-dimensional game of all time, I would say.

Okay. There is one major, overriding concern in Starsector combat, and that is ‘flux’. Flux is the generic resource which runs just about everything. Firing weapons takes it, and crucially, having your shields up and taking damage to your shields increases flux. You can choose to vent flux, which shuts down your shields and weapon systems, but quickly drains your flux. If you wait too long and your flux bar overflows, your ship overloads. (It happens to the enemy cruiser toward the end of the video above.) When overloading, it drains flux more slowly than normal, and much more slowly than venting, while sitll rendering you vulnerable and helpless to respond. Once you get through the shields, there’s armor (represented by yellow damage numbers in the video) and hull (orange ones).

Besides some caveats about beam weapons impacts and weapons fire generating ‘soft flux’, which goes away when the shields are up, and other weapons impacts generating ‘hard flux’, which only drops when the shields are down, that’s all there is to it, and it’s a brilliant piece of game design. It solves a few problems all at once. First, it allows for very easy tuning of relative ship performance. High-tech destroyer underperforming? Give it a better shield damage-to-flux ratio. Old-fashioned heavy cruiser too easy to pack with high-cost modern weapons? Give it a lower flux dissipation rate, and it’ll be able to unload a few powerful volleys to start a fight, but will have to fall back to recover afterward. Battleship failing to absorb damage like it should? Give it more flux capacity.

Beyond that, it also forces the player to think about a ship’s weaknesses in fitting, and to think on his feet when the fight is on. Absorbing damage from a lot of enemies requires most of an ordinary ship’s flux capacity, and captains have to be able to choose their moments well to put an enemy ship out of commission in such circumstances as that.

Anyway, I have one more video for you, which shows the command system and a much larger battle. In the main, ships are autonomous vessels controlled by NPC captains. (Eventually, this will be even more true: NPC captains will be characters, requiring pay, who have personality traits. Worried about your fancy carrier getting too close to the fighting? Put a captain with a lot of caution in command. Want your attack cruiser to get stuck in more? Look for an aggressive guy.) You put orders markers down on the map, and the number of orders you can give per battle is limited. (Spend a command point, and you can give orders for free as long as the command interface is open.) You have to decide which tasks are important enough to request your subordinates carry out specifically, and rely on them not to get in too deep on their own. So far, I’ve found this system to be more than sufficient. Again, it pushes the player into tradeoffs—is it more important to me to have a frigate protect my flagship against incoming fighters, or to have a frigate run down an enemy freighter at the far end of the field of battle? It also frees the player to get on with the business of actually fighting. There’s no benefit, and indeed there is active harm in, attempting to micromanage, so you’re best off setting up your orders, charging into the fray yourself, and checking on the state of things every now and then.

A Question of Procurement 4B: They Bought the Farm

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Let’s start to whittle this field down some. First to go is the MiG. The MiG-35 is a much improved version of that old terror of the late-80s, the MiG-29. It has much improved avionics, and maintains the type’s famed agility. However, no one has actually bought the MiG-35, so parts availability may be a concern. While the avionics are better, they’re still not as good as what comes standard in Western types. Plus, even with the new electrics and polish, it’s fundamentally a short range fighter, with relatively few hardpoints and small gas tanks. Also, being Russian, it’s harder and more expensive to maintain. So it’s really unsuited to our needs.

Next down is the Su-35S. On paper, it looks like a phenomenal fighter, with a big, powerful radar, great agility, tons of hardpoints, and long range. However, it’s doesn’t really have much in the way of ground attack capability with guided weapons when compared to western types. It can’t actually haul that much weight, especially for it’s size–it only carries about as much as the significantly smaller Super Hornet. Plus, being a really big Russian fighter, it promises to be an expensive maintenance nightmare, with high life cycle costs. As Fishbreath pointed out, it’s limited to Russian missiles currently. While western weapons could be integrated, we’d have to foot the bill, which probably will murder the highly competitive unit cost. And did I mention political pressure from other NATO members? So this one is out.

We can also eliminate the F-15E Strike Eagle without too much trouble. It’s a big fighter with plenty of range and an impressive hauling capacity to be sure. Also, it’s got a two-man cockpit, giving the advantage of a second pair of eyes and someone to mind the guided weapons. But it’s also very, very expensive to procure and operate, and really doesn’t have the fancy built-in sensors and avionics that we’d expect in our modern fighter. Some countries have procured versions with electronics that are better than the USAF-standards, but those are a mixed bag, and bring up questions of spares availability. Plus you’re stuck paying for all of the integration and testing yourself, which really isn’t ideal, and further drives up the cost. It also invites delays. We can do better for our money, so the Strike Eagle strikes out.

Much as it pains me, we find the F-16E Viper (Block 60) to be the last eliminated in the preliminaries. The Viper is basically the benchline combat fighter of it’s generation, doing just about anything you could ask of it reasonably well. And the -E model adds a fancy AESA radar, some integrated jamming equipment, a revamped cockpit, and conformal tanks (with the added side effect of completely ruining the lines). One might think this would be a shoe-in, because it’s reasonably priced to purchase and operate? So why did it fail to make it to the final round? Simple: it’s just not a big enough improvement on the -C Viper. When you’re confronted by the prospect of S-300PMU2 and S-400 SAMs and big, new Flankers, you want something more than last year’s fighter with a few more optional extras added. Plus, while the F-16E is reasonably priced for a modern combat fighter, the bill won’t sit well when it comes time to put the budget up for a vote. Borgundy is currently an operator of F-16Cs, and while it would make sense from a spares perspective, the bill for what will be seen as a ‘glorified upgrade’ won’t sit well. They’ll want a capability gain, as will the Aviation General Staff. When it comes down to it, in the fourth dimension of fighters, politics, the F-16E is all wrong. So, unfortunately, we must eliminate one of my favorites from this competition.

On to the Final Showdown!

Comment on our procurement posts in the Procurement Games comment thread.

2014A – Alternate History Formation

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This is a setup that I’m going to use for my December 16th Special, and possibly other things if the mood strikes me. Fishbreath is welcome to it as well, if he so chooses. Anyway, we’re going to setup a bit of alternate history, because it’s fun and because I need a justification for a Secret Project. All alternate histories need a Point of Divergence, plus a bunch of consequences. Our point of divergence is August 21, 1991, when the August Putsch succeeds in toppling Gorbachev, and putting Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev in power as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union does not fall, and manages to retain most of its holdings, with the exceptions of East Germany and Poland, thanks to some rapid moves by NATO. East and West Germany are more-or-less happily reunited, and Poland is a part of the new frontline. Greatest salient ever. The Baltic states and the Ukraine are very unhappy, but not strong enough to do anything about it (yet).

But wait, there’s more chaos afoot. Efforts to (finally) protect Poland and East Germany from a returning Red Menace left NATO unprepared to intervene in the Persian Gulf, when one Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Flush with success, he gambled further, striking south again in an effort to grab some oil from those perfidious Saudis. The resulting fights for the oil fields of northern Saudi Arabia left them aflame for weeks, driving up the price of oil, and providing a handy influx of capital to the troubled Soviet Union, as well as some handy extra leverage against the Ukraine. The Iraqis have been mostly pushed out of Saudi Arabia, and by now (2014), the price of oil has stabilized at something reasonable given American shale oil and Soviet reserves. Reunification of Germany has helped with manpower reserves, but overall hurt their defense budget. Advance NATO contingents are now forward-deployed in Poland, squaring off against the Red Army.

Other fun facts: Luchtburg is a nonaligned state that has bought too much Soviet equipment for the Americans to be happy with them, and too much Swedish equipment for the Soviets to like them much more. Brazil and Argentina have formed an alliance to promote economic development and support indigenous military development1. They’re both promoting big growth through spending, and military expansion including some significant naval buildup. The Middle East is as unstable as ever, with the Saudis angry about Kuwait, the Iranians and Iraqis at each other’s throats, Syria attempting to crush a revolt, and Egypt as stable as ever (which is to say, not at all). Borgundy is a NATO member, and proud to make good old security guarantees to the Poles, even if they’re fifty-odd years late.

And now, our crisis. The current General Secretary is one Vladimir V. Putin, who is attempting to suppress an uprising in Western and Central Ukraine. NATO’s forces in Poland are on alert, and generally predisposed to the south. Meanwhile, in the Baltic states, additional forces have been deployed to pre-empt any sympathetic rebellions. To the eyes of NATO, this resembles the sort of aggressive prepositioning that the Soviets are fond of. A countermove must be made, and Borgundy’s special contribution will be in position shortly.

Join us for a special feature on December 16th, commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, as we take a closer look at this special contribution.

1. Fishbreath comments: fortunately, neither Sweden nor the Soviets are likely to stop taking my money.

Discuss at the 2014A discussion thread.