Thinking a bit about the USN...

[Targan]

I welcome discussions on this topic, though I fear it can be a major point of contention in our little online community. Wherever possible I like to find ways to make things described in the published books make sense, rather than just throw out large parts of the designers' alternate history.

I'm among those who feel that most of the USN's fleets are gone not because of total destruction of ships but because most of the remaining ships are inoperable for a variety of reasons.

I'll be reading further responses to this thread with great interest as this topic aligns nicely with the way I like to explain things in my campaigns.

[ArmySGT.]

The casualties have go to be high if ships meet in engagements in the North Sea, The Baltic, The Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, the North Pacific, and the Bering Strait.

• Confined maneuver room
• An operational area compact enough for shore based anti ship air patrols
• Operationally in effective range of shore based intermediate range nuclear missiles
• Supply only by Munitions and tankers. Shore based depots will be denied.

Additionally only the port facilities of neutral or strategically unimportant (in the first years) port and ship building facilities are going to be spared several nuclear strikes.

No drydocks, no mooring berths, no repair facilities, based on land are going to survive for the NATO or Pact fleets. No spare parts or the technicians to make them. To return to.

Maybe there is a Fleet Tender out there somewhere but, without GLONASS, LORAN, the GPS constellation, or communications satellites of any kind surviving Admiralty of either side can't make use of one.

[Olefin]

First off the canon isnt exactly the most reliable thing as to USN strength

1) The USN has one nuclear submarine left - and its implied very very much that they were lost to enemy action, not to maintenance issues.

Sorry but that means that all the Permits, Sturgeons, Los Angeles (except Corpus Christi), Tridents, etc.. are gone - basically no chance of that at all - it would take the Russians, British, French, Chinese and every one else in the world to hit the USN that bad - and remember a bunch of USN bases didnt get hit in the nuclear exchange so those bases would have spare parts, etc.. available to repair ships

2) The whole "last battle of the Virginia" is completely unrealistic - read it and then try to have it make sense with any weapon the Russians ever mounted on a ship

3) The fleet in the Persian Gulf that supposedly has been supporting Marine landings is way too small to land any kind of Marine force - you are talking two full divisions and all their support ships and all thats left is two ships? And we know that Frank Frey missed ships when he did his module because he forgot the whole French task force in the area.

4) No USN ships on the Pacific Coast at all - sorry but no way -

And we do know that there are USN ships left active in the US on the East Coast which is where most of the naval fighting that is mentioned in the canon happened - there are three destroyers plus the John Hancock at Norfolk and NJ according to Challenge Magazine - they dont have much in the way of fuel but they are still active duty ships - along with a sailing ships, several smaller ships and even a few aircraft

so if there are survivors there, there are survivors on the Pacific Coast

5) Maintenance - ships do take a lot of maintenance that is true - but it takes a lot to make a ship so out of whack its useless - your radar might not be working and your engines may only be able to put out half power but you still have a ship that can kick butt

6) Fuel - you can run a ship on oil that is about as bottom barrel as it gets - gunk that would ruin the engines on a tank or jet works just fine in a ship. Heck in a pinch you can run on unrefined oil if you have to on most ships - you wont get max efficiency or range but it will work

A lot of USN ships may be out of fuel in places like Hawaii, Korea, etc.. - but all they need is oil and they would be operational again - and as long as the US has ships in the Persian Gulf and access to oil there they can bring those ships back into operation

7) Armaments

Lack of armaments could make many naval ships not as effective as they used to be. I.e. if you are out of torpedoes then your sub isnt going to do much but recon or maybe be able to lay mines. However there is a lot of ammo out there for the guns the USN has. And even if all they have left is their guns that makes them a lot more effective than a jury rigged gun on a sailing boat or cabin cruiser.

My GM showed this with the Corpus Christi. He took the writeup in the Gateway to the Spanish Main that the Christi sunk that Bulgarian freighter in 2000 with dud torpedoes to mean that her fire control system was screwed and she was out of torps. Thus if the Christi was under US control in late 2000 she couldnt be under civilian control a couple of months later.

So he changed the Last Submarine from a search for a submarine to a search for fire control parts and torpedoes and Harpoon missiles that were needed to restore the Christi and several of her sister ships back into fighting trim.


Its very obvious that the original authors either didnt have any naval expertise or wanted to simplify the game as much as possible so they just killed off the USN to make it easier to write for it. Similar to what they did with air power in the Gulf - they mentioned air strikes and the like in the RDF sourcebook but only in Challenge Magazine did they put the rules in so you could actually do them.

[Olefin]

There are maintenance facilities left - they cant take aircraft carriers or battleships but there are lots of places you can repair destroyers, cruisers and destroyers.

For instance they never hit the sub base in Connecticut that is part and parcel of Last Submarine. If they hit every USN maintenance facility that base would have been nothing but a crater filled with water.

But they didnt - so that means that not every base got hit. They hit Norfolk and they hit the sub bases in South Carolina - but that doesnt mean they hit everywhere. And even Norfolk got hit with one nuke only - and one that wasnt big enough to take out the whole base - there have to be docks left for instance. There are ships based there that operate out of Norfolk - and you dont operate out of a ruined base with no fueling or dock capability - so that means even a nuked base is still operational.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Olefin

There are maintenance facilities left - they cant take aircraft carriers or battleships but there are lots of places you can repair destroyers, cruisers and destroyers.

For instance they never hit the sub base in Connecticut that is part and parcel of Last Submarine. If they hit every USN maintenance facility that base would have been nothing but a crater filled with water.

But they didnt - so that means that not every base got hit. They hit Norfolk and they hit the sub bases in South Carolina - but that doesnt mean they hit everywhere. And even Norfolk got hit with one nuke only - and one that wasnt big enough to take out the whole base - there have to be docks left for instance. There are ships based there that operate out of Norfolk - and you dont operate out of a ruined base with no fueling or dock capability - so that means even a nuked base is still operational.

They needed a Sub base for “Last Submarine” so plot point. As for civilian ports, they could repair a lot, except for spares that would be specific to a warship.
As for operational bases, no fuel, no parts, no support personnel, no food for the people, make one just a place to park.

[HorseSoldier]

1) The USN has one nuclear submarine left - and its implied very very much that they were lost to enemy action, not to maintenance issues.

Sorry but that means that all the Permits, Sturgeons, Los Angeles (except Corpus Christi), Tridents, etc.. are gone - basically no chance of that at all - it would take the Russians, British, French, Chinese and every one else in the world to hit the USN that bad - and remember a bunch of USN bases didnt get hit in the nuclear exchange so those bases would have spare parts, etc.. available to repair ships

That is what it means. Put another way, in the T2K universe, the Soviet naval threat + attrition + anything else (bad luck, whatever) is such that the Soviets inflicted pretty brutal losses on the USN (while being largely exterminated themselves).

That's the plot and backstory in the game. It's also pretty unrealistic, knowing what we know now, to think that the Soviets could have sustained massive conventional warfare on two fronts for a couple years without economic collapse. And we now know they didn't have any plans for war in Europe that didn't involve plastering NATO forces from the get go with nuclear weapons.

In short, it's an alternate universe, where things didn't work out the way they did in real life.

2) The whole "last battle of the Virginia" is completely unrealistic - read it and then try to have it make sense with any weapon the Russians ever mounted on a ship

Agreed. Quality of later T2K supplements was not nearly as good as the early ones in a lot of ways.

3) The fleet in the Persian Gulf that supposedly has been supporting Marine landings is way too small to land any kind of Marine force - you are talking two full divisions and all their support ships and all thats left is two ships? And we know that Frank Frey missed ships when he did his module because he forgot the whole French task force in the area.

The ships that are there are what's left -- and it's just as bare bones as heavy divisions with a couple dozen tanks and all the other familiar trappings of T2K orders of battle for land forces.

so if there are survivors there, there are survivors on the Pacific Coast

The combined naval forces available to the US and Canada in the T2K universe are inadequate to prevent the Soviets having an amphibious romp through southern/south eastern Alaska and down Canada's Pacific coast. That implies some serious casualties -- doesn't mean every last ship in the Pacific is gone but it implies very serious losses.

5) Maintenance - ships do take a lot of maintenance that is true - but it takes a lot to make a ship so out of whack its useless - your radar might not be working and your engines may only be able to put out half power but you still have a ship that can kick butt

Who does the work? Besides expenditures of spares and degradation or destruction of facilities, you also have to factor in the death or displacement of skilled labor.

So you've got an intact maintenance facility -- so what? How are you going to power it? Are you just going to ring up the work force who've fled the area looking for food and tell them their jobs are back on? How do you feed them once you consolidate them, assuming that works out.

The reality is that modern naval ships and their support infrastructure are very complex systems with numerous failure points in the mix. T2K assumes pretty much a worst case scenario where complex, modern systems of various sorts have failed.

6) Fuel - you can run a ship on oil that is about as bottom barrel as it gets - gunk that would ruin the engines on a tank or jet works just fine in a ship. Heck in a pinch you can run on unrefined oil if you have to on most ships - you wont get max efficiency or range but it will work

Where does it come from and how do you get it to where the vessels are located?

And, maybe a bigger question, why do you bother? It's not just the USN that is nearly extinct, but everybody else's navies as well. In a world of extremely limited resources, would you bother wasting fuel on a destroyer or save it for an alternative like barges or freighters to move around personnel and supplies -- or just to provide heat to make it through the winter?

7) Armaments

Lack of armaments could make many naval ships not as effective as they used to be. I.e. if you are out of torpedoes then your sub isnt going to do much but recon or maybe be able to lay mines. However there is a lot of ammo out there for the guns the USN has. And even if all they have left is their guns that makes them a lot more effective than a jury rigged gun on a sailing boat or cabin cruiser.

On the other hand, a cargo ship with a couple jury rigged autocannons and heavy machineguns is going to be a better asset for what you need a ship for in T2K than an ASW frigate or Aegis cruiser. If you only have the resources to keep either a warship or a cargo ship working, the best use of resources is going to be for the cargo ship given the minimal naval threat above the level of what real life Somali pirates can manage and the destruction of infrastructure and need to be able to move cargo and people around.

[Raellus]

From a gaming POV, most T2K GMs really don't need/want complicated, "realistic" naval orbats because most campaigns (based on the modules) don't involve naval warfare.

From a world-building POV, a relatively large, highly functioning naval force doesn't really "fit" the T2K setting.

It all comes down to whether one can suspend disbelief or not. I think that there are enough strong and compelling arguments (outlined in several of the preceding posts) supporting the canonical view that I am comfortable working with it more or less as-is.

GMs can tailor their T2KU for their own preferences and sensibilities (and/or for their players).

Not everyone is going to be convinced either way and that's fine. Good honest, intellectual debate is healthy, but let's all make sure that we keep it civil.

[ArmySGT.]

Originally Posted by Olefin

First off the canon isnt exactly the most reliable thing as to USN strength

Meh, I am not going to worry about Canon so much. The game was written with the Cold War as very much a reality. 20+ years later we can take it for granted pulled from all manner of open source material. Fact is it was classified then, and much of what is current is classified now.
In all fairness to the authors we can’t be smug about what we know now about the US Navy of the 80s and 90s, while pretending we are privy to the numbers and capabilities of what is afloat today.

Originally Posted by Olefin

1) The USN has one nuclear submarine left - and its implied very very much that they were lost to enemy action, not to maintenance issues.

Convenient. I think that would be called plot. If we are going to assume anything, it would be this is the sole KNOWN and OPERATIONAL nuclear submarine.

Originally Posted by Olefin

Sorry but that means that all the Permits, Sturgeons, Los Angeles (except Corpus Christi), Tridents, etc.. are gone - basically no chance of that at all - it would take the Russians, British, French, Chinese and every one else in the world to hit the USN that bad - and remember a bunch of USN bases didnt get hit in the nuclear exchange so those bases would have spare parts, etc.. available to repair ships

I don’t think I would waste a nuclear weapon on the dockyard in the hope that valuable ships are there. The warehouses and the ammunition magazines necessary for those ships to operate isn’t going to evade a strike. A nuclear weapon could strike the dockyards but, both sides realize that is a temporary measure. Drydocks will be repaired and gantry or cranes erected again. Deny the enemy the spare parts and it is as good as taking the ships out of the fight.

Originally Posted by Olefin

2) The whole "last battle of the Virginia" is completely unrealistic - read it and then try to have it make sense with any weapon the Russians ever mounted on a ship

I was Army. I don’t have the experience to regard it either way. Probably just a plot point and an explanation to placate those that want an explanation.

Originally Posted by Olefin

3) The fleet in the Persian Gulf that supposedly has been supporting Marine landings is way too small to land any kind of Marine force - you are talking two full divisions and all their support ships and all thats left is two ships? And we know that Frank Frey missed ships when he did his module because he forgot the whole French task force in the area.

Can also be taken to mean those are the ships that remain. The others sailed on to Bremerhaven or were lost in action around the Straits of Hormuz. Is there a mention of civilian sealift or merchant marine?

Originally Posted by Olefin

4) No USN ships on the Pacific Coast at all - sorry but no way -

Really? In the vastly larger Pacific ocean, the North Pacific closer to the Kamchatka peninsula puts vessels in range of Soviet radar and shore based anti ship patrols. However the US Navy has Bremerton, San Francisco, and San Diego, as well as Pearl Harbor, Guam, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. This is versus the Soviets in Korea and ported in Vladivostok and Petropavlosk.
If I was a betting man I would say that the remnants of the US Navy are in the southern or equatorial waters of the Pacific. Away from everything Soviet but a surviving reconnaissance satellite, as it would simply be out of operational range without a WW2 scale island campaign. The North Atlantic and the Med, as well as the Persian Gulf are all in the operational range of Soviet Bombers, especially Backfires.

Originally Posted by Olefin

And we do know that there are USN ships left active in the US on the East Coast which is where most of the naval fighting that is mentioned in the canon happened - there are three destroyers plus the John Hancock at Norfolk and NJ according to Challenge Magazine - they dont have much in the way of fuel but they are still active duty ships - along with a sailing ships, several smaller ships and even a few aircraft

Surviving vessels but, operational? Are they worth diverting the resources? Do they have the parts, do they have the crew, can the ammunition and the rations be spared for them to venture out into blue water for even a coastal cruise?

Originally Posted by Olefin

so if there are survivors there, there are survivors on the Pacific Coast

I concur, far more likely. However, I am sure the operational ships on the east coast are there to support the “Going Home” module. It’s a plot point and necessary. No ships, No Omega. So it takes some writing and probably some fudging just to justify.

Originally Posted by Olefin

5) Maintenance - ships do take a lot of maintenance that is true - but it takes a lot to make a ship so out of whack its useless - your radar might not be working and your engines may only be able to put out half power but you still have a ship that can kick butt

Blind and limping on one leg? What would a Captain do? Take it to a Port before it was lost. Can’t see the enemy, and do not have the speed to catch them or run away from them. That’s a wounded beast waiting for the predator to kill it. That is not a ship that would go into a fight, unless there was no choice but to fight.
Maintenance is the Achilles heel and it takes a large industrial base to keep a Navy afloat and operational. One that does not exist after the nuclear exchange and a division of the United States into Milgov and Civgov.

Originally Posted by Olefin

6) Fuel - you can run a ship on oil that is about as bottom barrel as it gets - gunk that would ruin the engines on a tank or jet works just fine in a ship. Heck in a pinch you can run on unrefined oil if you have to on most ships - you wont get max efficiency or range but it will work

Most ships run on bunker fuel, oil that is one step above tar. Still consumes thousands of gallons. Quality is not the problem, it is supply. The same infrastructure required to keep the Navy operational is the industrial base needed to support an oil drilling, pumping, and refining industry. Are oil fields pumping, are the refineries running, are there shortages of the people needed to run them?

Originally Posted by Olefin

A lot of USN ships may be out of fuel in places like Hawaii, Korea, etc.. - but all they need is oil and they would be operational again - and as long as the US has ships in the Persian Gulf and access to oil there they can bring those ships back into operation

Probably are ships out there, but after a few years with no fuel, no food, and no parts. Probably with crew transferred out……. It is going to take a while to get them going again.
The oil in the gulf is probably of no use to anyone as it is still in the ground. Every bit of oil industry infrastructure is in the range of bombers and theater ballistic missiles. That being a strategic asset it is in the interest of both sides to deny it to the other.

Originally Posted by Olefin

7) Armaments

Lack of armaments could make many naval ships not as effective as they used to be. I.e. if you are out of torpedoes then your sub isnt going to do much but recon or maybe be able to lay mines. However there is a lot of ammo out there for the guns the USN has. And even if all they have left is their guns that makes them a lot more effective than a jury rigged gun on a sailing boat or cabin cruiser.

Probably not a lot, if nukes were going to be used the magazines would be certainly be a priority. Add in the factories that once made ammunition for WW2 canon have long since been dismantled. The US has been relying on surplus munitions well into today.

Originally Posted by Olefin

My GM showed this with the Corpus Christi. He took the writeup in the Gateway to the Spanish Main that the Christi sunk that Bulgarian freighter in 2000 with dud torpedoes to mean that her fire control system was screwed and she was out of torps. Thus if the Christi was under US control in late 2000 she couldnt be under civilian control a couple of months later.

So he changed the Last Submarine from a search for a submarine to a search for fire control parts and torpedoes and Harpoon missiles that were needed to restore the Christi and several of her sister ships back into fighting trim.

A departure from Canon but, not an illogical one, personally I think it more likely that a surviving submarine would be diesel electric than nuclear.

Originally Posted by Olefin

Its very obvious that the original authors either didnt have any naval expertise or wanted to simplify the game as much as possible so they just killed off the USN to make it easier to write for it. Similar to what they did with air power in the Gulf - they mentioned air strikes and the like in the RDF sourcebook but only in Challenge Magazine did they put the rules in so you could actually do them.

More likely they just wanted to simplify. As they were writing a game about ground combat in Europe, besides who would want to compete with the success of Harpoon.
So GM fiat, hand waving, the Navies of the World are dead, let’s get on with combat in Europe with the remnants of the NATO and Warsaw pact forces as that is more plausible for a role playing game with a small party of 1-8 players.