Jow Forums I seek your wisdom. Imagine you are in charge of outfitting a permanent fighting force in Antarctica of 100,000 men.
What are they equipped with?
What are the rations?
What armor/mechanize troops would be best utilized for the harsh conditions?
What would the FOB's look like?
What tactics would be best implemented for the terrain/weather?
How would you organize the men?
Thanks guys
I wouldn't bother, there is nothing (That we know of) worth that kind of hell in Antarctica.
FOBs- Literally just trenches/tunnels dug 4-5 feet into the snow
Rations- soupy beef broth and lentils
Weapons- high explosive mortars for shelling the enemy's snow holes. Small arms probably don't matter. I can imagine sniper/dmr roles being more viable considering how long sight lines would be. Just have a dude with a.50 Cal like half a mile away watching for the slightest movement.
Thermal optics. Thermal optics everywhere. Body heat, vehicle engine heat, weapon fire. All of it will be super visible, plus most of the continent is open wasteland with very little ground cover.
Rations are exclusively corned beef hash and hot buttered rum.
Mobility via snowmachines and cross country skis.
Weapons some variation of a large bore guide gun.
>permanent fighting force in antarctica
i assume we are laying siege to the mountains of madess to exterminate the filth within and destroy their monuments of heresy
I don't think you understand how much of a bitch the logistics of Antarctica is.
The only way to get significant amounts of supplies onto the continent is by using an icebreaker to bash a shipping lane through the glacier and moving cargo ships in through that. This is only possible during the summer months.
From where the supplies get dropped off, on the coast, the only way to get them into the interior is via cargo planes equipped with skis, or by using snowmobiles/bulldozers on specially constructed ice highways. These are also only possible during the summer months. Because the ice shifts so much, permanent roads are impossible.
It would be nearly impossible to project force through the continent, due to the impassible terrain and nonexistent infrastructure, and there is nothing on the continent worth fighting over in the first place. For at least half of the year, your forces could do literally nothing except hunker down and try not to die.
In summary, just use planes.
And to exterminate the ayyy's and reptilians that are based there.
>government planners get their advice from Jow Forums
>and there is nothing on the continent worth fighting over
That's right, a continent the size of North America has absolutely nothing on it, especially under it. Don't go there, it's illegal. Not that there's anything there. KEEP OUT
>permanent fighting force
>100,000 men
I don't think you understand how big of a number that is. Fort Bragg is the largest military base in the entire world and it has less than half that number.
Side note this is why WWII is so staggering to me.
>What are they equipped with?
skis and regular light infantry weapons like M4's and Dumb fire Launchers
>What are the rations?
Stuff that can be added to Boiling Water like vegetables and bouillon. Also Hot Cocoa
>What armor/mechanize troops would be best utilized for the harsh conditions?
SUSV's to get the troops around. It's not like the enemy is gonna be bringing in any heavy armor over the ice
>what would the FOB's look like?
Trenches dug in star patterns with a command post in the centre and mortars on the star points
>How would you organize the men?
50/50: 50% of the force defends posts, 50% is sent out to expand and make more posts
>government planners get their advice from Jow Forums
You are not cleared to know that.
Thermal seeking mine drones
Winds are to high for snipers user and it goes -60.
I was thinking that the best weapon would be a nice comfy underground heated base with jammers and waiting for the enemy force to freeze to death.
Now I'm wondering if it's as facetious as it seems.
So would it be more effective to use higher caliber firearms for closer engagements to offset the temp/high winds?
>Equipment
Warm clothes. Lots of it for winter. Weapons? Basic Infantry is going to get AK pattern rifles, probably AKMs. Machine guns will be air cooled .308 Brownings. Artillery will be the cheapest 155mm piece we can find. Bring some of those Norwegian surface launched AMRAAM things for AA. Helicopters are Kiowas and Hueys.
>Food
MREs and non-perishable canned goods.
>Armor
One of those Snow Cat things with a 25mm RWS or a turret on the ass end. The SUSV or whatever it is.
>FOB
Star Forts but with SAMs, Howitzers and MGs.
>Organization
Periodic Hookers and booze. Daily check ins. The force would be largely left to do whatever they are supposed to be doing. If something they can't handle something with what they have there, they're fucked anyway.
Tel'ke
>What are they equipped with?
Winter gorkas/heavy duty clothing, FAL's, glocks, MG3's, thermals, Carl Gustav's, and Javelins.
>What are the rations?
Freeze dried food & Winter MRE's
>What armor/mechanize troops would be best utilized for the harsh conditions?
Abrams, M109A2 self propelled howitzers, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, LAV's, snow mobiles, Osprey's, Super Hinds, and the flying BRRRRRRTTTTTTT.
>What would the FOB's look like?
Star forts
>What tactics would be best implemented for the terrain/weather?
Fast moving blitzkrieg tactics and attrition by letting certain enemy forces wither on the vine. Similar to US forces skipping specific islands in the pacific to let the Japanese troops use all their supplies before engaging them.
>How would you organize the men?
Roman legions after the Marian reforms. So there would roughly be 22 legions.
.50bmg is useless as a sniper/dmr round tho and you should feel bad for posting such a meme answer
no
Dubs checked.
Why 100K people in Antarctica? Who is the enemy? What is the mission?
That information user is strictly on a need to know basis.
Why?
Russia has Tor tanks in Arctic with land attack mode missiles. It can work in Antarctic too.
Guess russia will be the winning side then.
Thats unarmed. Why not the new icebreaker that carries Kaliber lan attack cruise missiles and Ka-52K attack helicopter with Kh-35 anti ship missiles?
Minerals and oil bruv
Don’t forget about the ancient ruins and ayyy’s
Why would you put your mortar at the most exposed positions?
>100,000 men
Are you fucking retarded
Antarctica is more than three times the size of the United States and it's just fucking ice. Even in WW3 they won't waste nuclear missiles on it. Even small teams of special forces deployed there wouldn't bother firing at each other if they were in range in the event of SHTF.
You will be quickly developing a hand held ice penetrating radar to spot crevices under the snow blanket.
You also need fuel. A Lot Of Fuel. To keep yourself warm and to move from one location to another really really quickly. Chances are a prop driven armoured sled on skis or an armoured hovercraft will be the best ground vehicle out there.
AA radars and missiles everywhere. Hydrophones and torpedoes everywhere. Imagine an essentially ground vehicle really equipped with a torpedo missile launcher.
Mulder and Scullypilled
>What are they equipped with?
Cold weather gear
>What are the rations?
Meal, Cold Weather
>What armor/mechanized would be best utilized by harsh conditions?
Snowmobiles and weaponized ski resort groomers.
>What would the FOB's look like?
A miserable huddle of tents and shitty prefabs surrounded by shipping containers.
>What tactics would be best implemented for the terrain/weather?
Attrition of resources
>How would you organize the men?
Ski/snow shoe patrols, lots of guys terraforming the frozen wastes (trenches, roads, etc) and the rest keeping a watchful eye for Simo or the Penguins.
what about the stargate tho?
Thermal image quality gets worse the colder it gets.
I am not an engineer, but it has something to do with the receiver having to be colder than the environment to work right. And refrigerating a hand-held optic to below -40 off of a couple AA batteries is going to suck. You're going to need a fuckton of batteries.
Incidentally, the base is already there. USA has two to four bases on Antarctica; the big one near the coast is Munroe, which is essentially a small town. Then there is an underground research facility smack on the south Pole, with a convenient air strip beside it. The other two(?) are minor bases with just a handful of guys in each.
This in addition to the other, non-US research units in the Antarctica - maybe half a dozen, none of which have more than a token permanent crew.
Here's a cool fact.
Russia can't move their nuclear powered icebreakers to Antarctica, because they rely on cool ocean water to cool down the reactor. If they try to sail through the equator, they'll melt down.
It's not just fucking ice. Under the ice there's a huge plateau of sand and stone. Once there's substantial finds of valuable minerals all hell is going to break loose. Which is the reason for all those 'research centers'.
Depends on how deep we'll have to go inland, what we're defending, who we're defending from. Logistics and the long winter will be the hardest part of the operation.
I would use satellites, drones and planes to defend the area instead of 100,000 men since there's very little infrastructure and any large movement would be very visible from above.
It just needs to be cold relative to whatever it's imaging. So you would have difficulty distinguishing environmental features from each other, but imaging hot things relative to a cold environment would be much easier due to increased signal to noise ratio. Maybe you'd want a thresholded thermal imaging feed overlaid on a traditional camera feed.
Just occured to me that in addition to the effect of increased SNR, the environment will help you cool the camera to a good temp for detecting body temp objects. Also, cooling a camera X degrees below ambient temperature wouldn't take that much more energy at -40 than it would at 70 anyway, probably less than a factor of two.
Lmao did they realize that when they designed them? Or did Ivan facepalm a few years later?
>the big one near the coast is Munroe
That’s McMurdo, you fucking twat. Amundsen-Scott is the one at the South Pole, it’s not underground. Palmer Station is on Anvers Island, a part of the Palmer peninsula. McMurdo is the only one that could support a build up and expansion effort. Palmer might be able to support a small naval base of some sort.
Probably as a result of decades of maltreatment in the hands of Soviet/Russian conscripts
They figured they'd never need to do stuff in the South Pole, and it'd be way more expensive to build ships with a cooling system that enables them to travel between poles.
Well, I guess I needed an update. The previous Pole station building was partly underground. New one superseded it in 2009.
>Maybe you'd want a thresholded thermal imaging feed overlaid on a traditional camera feed.
That'd be valid, they have the psq21 nowadays which fits that bill. I was just imagining trying to use a pas-13 onna ice and remembering how shitty it was in Fairbanks. Like cant see shit shitty.