Military Generation / Path of Tears

Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 18:32:46 -1600
From: pd82495@wapol.gov.au (Michael Bailey)
Subject: Military Generation / Path of Tears

On the whole, I quite like the system presented in 'Path of Tears' to
determine the size of military forces for a world/nation.  However, I have
one modification that I'd like to seek comment on:

As technological sophistication increases, armed forces tend to become more
and more expensive to equip, train, maintain and wage war with.  Given the
complexity of the equipment that he operates, the average soldier today
would, to paraphrase Heinlein, rate a master in most other trades...well
maybe not quite, but it's getting there.

So, as an army/navy/air force becomes more advanced, it tends to get smaller
(after all, there's only so many defense credits to go around).  

As an example, in the First World War, the Australian Infanty Force was able
to send (very rough half-remembered guess) 12-14 divisions to the
battlefields of the Dardanelles and France.  The AIF was (near the end of
the war), organised as a seperate field army under the Imperial Supreme
Command.  In the Second World War, we fielded a smaller number (I think it
was 11 divisions - including the home defense units), of which only four or
five divisions were trained and equipped for combat (they fought well...but
that's another story).  Today, the Australian Army could barely scrape
together a division...including Army Reserve and Ready Reserve troops.

Similarly, I read somewhere that the US Army fielded 89 divisions in
WWII...I don't know how many it fields now, but I'd be surprised if it were
more than a dozen.  Then there were the massive combats on the Eastern Front
- Germany invaded the USSR with 150 divisions....who could afford to equip
that many soldiers with todays weaponry?

Anyway, my idea is to take the final manpower figures produced by the Path
of Tears system, and multiply them by a Tech Level modifier as follows:

TL      Mod.
--      ----

0-2     x2.0
3       x1.0
4       x0.8
5       x0.6
6       x0.5
7       x0.4
8       x0.3
9-10    x0.25
11+     x0.2

These are 'top of the head' figures....and don't take into account
governments that may choose to equip reserve or militia units below their
current tech level.  At TL 11 and beyond, the rapidly falling cost of power
generation offsets the increased cost of the equipment itself, leading to a
'levelling out'.  Any comments/suggestions welcome.
Michael Bailey (pd82495@wapol.gov.au)