It was the summer of 2000. I was about to start 2nd grade, and I was already fascinated by the military. I'd already exhausted the military books available in children's section of the Rock Hill Public Library, so I ventured into the adult section. There, I found one of the most important books I would ever read.

I wanted to fly F-16s for the Air Force (who among us wasn't an idiot at some point in our youth?) and discovered a copy of Tom Clancy's Fighter Wing. Here was a book with a long chapter on the F-16, as well as all sorts of stuff on other aircraft and air warfare in general. Both my mom and the librarian were somewhat skeptical that I'd be able to read it, but they let me check it out, and I devoured it. Here was a book written by someone who knew the subject really well, knew how to write, and perhaps most importantly, knew how to talk about the subject to an outside audience. Who else would start a book on the subject by talking about the fundamental forces of flight and how jet turbine blades were built, and then spend the majority of his time on Desert Storm discussing the planning process, not hazardous missions over Baghdad? Read more...

Today is a sad day. This blog started in the comments of Slate Star Codex. Its author, a psychiatrist named Scott Alexander, has just shut it down because the NYT was threatening to dox him. Most of you probably already know this, but some of you came from elsewhere on the internet, and I also wanted to show support to Scott in this. I've contacted the NYT and expressed my displeasure, and I'd encourage you to do the same.

I was actually one of the people who the reporter contacted, and I agreed to speak to him. But I asked that he not use my real name, because it makes it easier to speak on certain topics here. He readily agreed, but wasn't willing to extend the same courtesy to Scott, who has far better reason to keep his real and internet lives separate. Shame on them.

There's also a petition/open letter on the subject, for those who want to sign.

Said Achmiz, who handles the technical side of Naval Gazing, has set up a forum for the SSC diaspora, Data Secrets Lox. I'd recommend anyone who misses the community to go and check it out.

Most solid cargoes carried across the oceans are handled by either containers or bulk carriers, but some cargoes have requirements that can't be satisfied by either kind of ship. Much like unusual liquid cargoes, these are transported by specialized ships, designed for the purpose.

Loading frozen meat aboard reefer Clan McDougall

In the second half of the 19th century, the British faced a problem. The rapidly-growing population had made it increasingly difficult to produce enough food in the British isles. Grain imports could make up for some of this, but other products, most notably meat, required a great deal of land and couldn't be practically shipped in from overseas, where Argentina and Australia produced great surpluses. Mechanical refrigeration could change that, but while work on freezing carcasses began as early as 1861, it would be twenty years before a refrigeration plant was created that could be fitted to a ship and used to reliably and economically carry meat halfway around the world. Read more...

In our journey through Aurora so far, we've covered everything from the basics of the economy to the details of the ship logistics systems. But while I've spent about half of the series talking about how to build warships, I haven't really discussed tactics that much, and with good reason. Basically, your meaningful tactical options are fairly limited, because the AI isn't smart enough to appreciate it, and the game itself isn't really set up to support it.

Let me start by saying that any tactic which requires so much micromanagement you don't use it is a bad tactic. To give an example, I once came up with the idea of thickening my AMM defenses by fitting 3 AMMs as a second stage on a size-1 booster and firing that out of my size-4 missile launchers that I used for anti-ship missiles. It seemed like a good idea in theory, but then I realized that it wasn't going to work for several reasons. First, the game isn't set up to fire less than 1 AMM at each incoming missile, and it would count each pod as a single AMM. So I would be effectively shooting 3:1, gross overkill with the AMMs I had, and if I wanted to use it, I'd have to fire them manually. This would be a ton of work. Second, the pod would also count as an AMM for the game's automatic targeting, even though it had the anti-missile properties of a ball of paper. The second problem could be dealt with to some extent (raise the speed of the pod to get it to "intercept" earlier and have an inner ring of 2v1 AMMs), but the first one would have required so much micromanagement that I threw the idea away and moved on. Before you get fancy, it's a good idea to know how much micromanagement you're willing to tolerate and make sure this won't breach the limit. Read more...

I've recently¹ taken a look at Iowa's enlisted mess, but the broader subject of food at sea deserves a look. The challenges of providing and preparing food at sea are quite different from those of doing so on land, particularly before modern developments like canning and refrigeration.

A mess table aboard HMS Victory

During the age of sail, naval rations are generally reputed to be quite bad, but running a sailing vessel is hard work, and malnourished men could not do it effectively. The Royal Navy of the era actually recognized this, and put a great deal of work into providing ample, healthy food for its sailors. The French were less careful about doing so, and their effectiveness at sea probably suffered as a result. British feeding of their sailors was coordinated by the Victualling Board, who operated major industrial enterprises including bakeries, breweries, and slaughterhouses. They were generally honest, setting strict standards for the quality of provisions and carefully auditing the accounts of ship's pursers, who would have their salaries docked if their books were wrong. Read more...

So far in our discussion of Aurora, we've covered everything from the basics of combat up through command structures, but there's one thing that has been overlooked: logistics and the fleet train. Aurora, much like real life, has auxiliaries, and it's time to take a look at how those ships work.

But first, we need to take a look at the logistical needs of the ships. Essentially, a warship has four different things it can run out of: fuel, maintenance supplies (MSP), ammunition, and deployment time. Fuel is self-explanatory. Without it, ships don't move. Maintenance supplies are used to repair stuff that breaks. This normally happens during the build cycle, with the chance depending on the complexity of the ship and the number of engineering spaces, but weapons have a 1% chance of failing every time they fire,² and a ship with battle damage can patch itself up with enough MSP. Ammunition, in the form of missiles, obviously gets used up, and it's a good idea to have colliers to support the fleet. And any ship with stays out longer than its rated deployment time suffers from reduced morale, which lowers the accuracy of weapons and increases the time taken to follow orders. Read more...

When one thinks of oceangoing tankers, the obvious cargo is oil, and oil tankers do indeed make up the bulk of liquid-cargo tonnage. But crude oil is far from the only liquid cargo that is transported across the world's oceans, and a surprisingly diverse and interesting fleet of specialized tankers is used to do so.

LPG carrier Victoria Kosan

The most common of these are carriers for various petroleum gases, which are transported in liquid form because this reduces the volume required by factors ranging from 230 to over 600. These products are usually divided into Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), mostly butane and propane, and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). LPG can generally be kept liquid at ambient temperature by reasonable pressures, or at ambient pressure at fairly reasonable temperatures. The first LPG carrier, launched in 1931, used pressure, as did most LPG vessels until around 1960, when refrigeration plants began to be more widely used. Today, the system depends on the exact operating economics, with smaller vessels favoring pressure. Read more...

So far in my discussion of combat in Aurora, there's one major aspect I've overlooked: the command system. The game generates officers, and you can make use of them to greatly enhance the efficiency of your fleet.³ Each officer has a set of characteristics, bonuses they can give to whatever is under their command. These range from almost universally useful things like crew training (makes the crew better in the long term) and reaction (makes the ship respond faster if surprised) to very niche skills like diplomacy. In practice, you don't have to worry too much about these. If you check automated assignments in the upper right of the commanders window, it will staff your fleet with what it believes is the optimal distribution for your ships. It does a good enough job to not be worth any headaches around micromanagement.

Obviously, your navy will have ranks. All officers entering from the military academy will start at the lowest rank,⁴ and will be promoted based on a combination of their skills and time in grade. Officers with good bonuses rise quickly, while those who are only good at one obscure thing generally don't. Before version 2.0, the game was set up to make the population of each rank one-third of the population of the one below it, but the current model only promotes when there is a specific vacancy that needs to be filled. When a vacancy opens up, due to retirement⁵ or a promotion in the rank above, the highest-point officer available with a relevant bonus is promoted. Each position has a specific rank, and at least for shipboard commands, only officers of the specified rank are eligible. If someone is promoted while in one of these positions, they are immediately relieved. Read more...

It's time once again for our biweekly Open Thread. Talk about anything you want, so long as it's not culture war.

I recently finished C.S. Forester's The Good Shepard, the novel on which the upcoming movie Greyhound is to be based. (And can I say how annoyed I am that it's going to Apple TV?) Overall, I though it was OK. I didn't like Krause, and suspect that the sort of characters Forester writes will rub me the wrong way in general. But it was a very good portrayal of the problems of command in protecting a convoy early in the war, even if I do think that The Cruel Sea is a better book.

2018 overhauls are Jutland parts four, five, six and seven, So You Want to Build a Modern Navy - Coast Guard Part 1, my history of New Jersey, the review of Alabama, and Falklands Part 3. For 2019, I overhauled the one-part Jutland summary, Battleship Aviation Part 3, A Brief History of the Submarine, Inky's review of the Haifa Naval Museum, Falklands Part 15 and Soviet Battleships Part 1.

It's been quite a while since I looked at the battleships of Russia and the Soviet Union, but it's time I returned to this fascinating and largely-overlooked field. This time, we'll look at the closest the Soviets ever came to actually getting ships into service, the Sovetskii Soiuz class⁶.

The incomplete hull of Sovetskii Soiuz in 1944⁷

Development of what became the Sovetskii Soiuz began in 1935, as Design A, in parallel with the smaller Design B. The initial designs were absolutely ridiculous, with the largest eclipsing even Yamato in tonnage and armed with 16 450mm (17.7") guns. The design actually selected was very slightly more sensible, with 9 460mm (18.1") guns, 32 130mm secondaries, a 450mm belt and a speed of 36 kts, all on 55,000 tons. Actually, it was no more sensible, with more armor and higher speed than Yamato on a smaller hull. This was soon noticed by the people actually responsible for building the ship, who managed to cut speed to 30 kts and the belt to 420mm, still probably too much for the size of the hull. Read more...