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by Das volksreich. . 939 reads.

Dae's Guide to Military Realism

I have been asked to write this guide on behalf of World Conference but I hope that the contents of this guide might be relevant to others as well.

The aim of this guide is to provide a list of things to consider when designing a semi-effective and realistic military for nations in an MT setting. Therefore, much nuance will be lost in my attempt to be parsimonious. This will only give you the tools to think about to spend your nation's limited military resources in an effective and realistic manner.

So without further ado, let us be underway.


I. Theoretical Foundations of War and the Role of your Military
I'm going to begin this guide by citing a cliché. Carl von Clausewitz once stated that "war is the continuation of politics by other means." If you're upset that I felt to need to resort to tropes, then pretend I instead quoted Mao Tse-tsung in saying that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." In both cases the basic idea is the same; there is a fundamental relationship between the existence of a standing military and the state.

The state, defined for the purposes of this guide as the institutions and government that enforce control over a certain territory, fields a military to achieve goals that are usually political in nature. Conquering territory, defending one's borders, suppressing an insurgency...these are all political goals. At the end of the day, a military is an organization (much like the tax bureaucracy or police) funded for specific goals.

In the modern context, most military forces are simply designed to defend and control a nation's sovereign territory and enforce its territorial interests. But several military forces have legal or institutional obligations elsewhere. The German Bundeswehr has a legal dedication to international law and human rights. The Royal Thai Army's chief aim is to preserve the Thai Monarchy at any costs (even at the cost of Thailand's security!), the South Korean army was officially to protect the interests of the Korean race, not necessarily the South Korean state or government and the PLA swears loyalty to the Communist Party. Before proceeding, determine what your nation's military goals are and who they legally swear loyalty to, whether it's the state, the monarchy, the party etc. Understanding for what purpose your nation fights allows you to consider how goals will come into play; should I defend the Party Headquarters in City A, or City B where more people live? This is a very simplistic example of the issue at hand but I hope you'll learn to view it with nuance.

tl;dr your army should be focused around the goal it seeks to achieve. If it wants to conquer territory, build a large offensive army for example. If its goal is to protect the king, it still might have a large offensive army, but it might also have considerably more military presence in your capital. etc.


II. Threat Assessment and International Relations
Look at your neighbors. Who are they? Who is the major superpower in your region/world? What kinds of capabilities do they have? Finally, who are your friends? These considerations all influence what kind of army you will build. Your army should be designed with your potential enemies and allies in mind. Your nation does not exist in empty space - it is surrounded by other nations which have differing goals and intentions.

For example: consider Israel and Germany. Israel has a massive conscript army with large military expenditures while Germany - a larger and wealthier nation - has a smaller volunteer army. Why might this be? Well, consider Israel and Germany's enemies. Israel's neighbors are all incredibly hostile and larger than it. Meanwhile, Germany is surrounded by European nations with few military ambitions with a peace enforced by American military power.Therefore, the size and resources of your army should be dependent upon your threats and allies. For example, if you have few threats, conscription is illogical.

More specifically, if you know what kinds of weapons they'll be fielding, you can think of weapons to counter these. For example, LinkChina and [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_(missile)]Iran[/url] have developed anti-carrier quasi-ballistic missiles to destroy American carriers specifically because they know that destroying these carriers will blunt America's offensive capabilities.

tl;dr make your army's size and budget proportional to the threats you realistically field to fight. also use your knowledge of these threats to develop or purchase appropriate countermeasures.


III. Manpower and Resources
So now you have two things established: why your army fights (Section.I) and who it fights (Section.II). Taking these, it is now time to determine what kind of resources it can leverage to achieve these established goals. You should know (a) how large your population is (b) the size of your GDP (essentially size of your economy), (c) the technological advancement of your nation and/or its private industries and (d) your human capital. I will go into each of these in turn.

III.a. Population Concerns
Your population size should be apparent. This is the pool of people in your nation. Depending on the size of your population, this will influence what kinds of people you recruit to be soldiers, how they are recruited, and how they are trained. If you are small and surrounded by hostile threats, you may wish to have a conscript army. The natural downside to a conscript army is that it is mostly comprised of people who do not want to be on the battlefield. Almost certainly, your conscript troops will break and run far more regularly than professional volunteer soldiers when fighting breaks out. Furthermore, every conscript is a person who could be back at home, contributing to the economy, raising his children, or doing something that will build a healthier and stronger society. You should not use conscription simply as a means to more manpower - ideally you want to maximize your fighting ability with the least manpower possible.

Why is conscription/mass recruitment enforced, then? Well if your population is small and your enemies are numerous, it is better to have an unwilling soldier with a cheap rifle fighting in a field - as unmotivated as he may be - than to have nobody contesting the field and allowing the enemy's tanks to break through and collapse your entire front. And it's better to have each of your foreign bases staffed by 300 soldiers than just 3 men. There are certain functions and commitments, combat and logistical, that simply require boots on the ground or personnel at desks. But just note that conscripts should not be expected to perform at the level of volunteers and their absence from the economy will hurt.

Population also includes those you consider eligible to volunteer/participate in national service. China has attempted to recruit fewer of its troublesome minorities to crucial military roles. Regiments of the British Indian army, however, specifically only drew soldiers from certain areas due to racial beliefs about innate superiority of characteristics and physical strength. You might have women and children you consider unfit. Overweight people you're unwilling to whip into shape? Not everybody can be a soldier, so you'd be consider how such considerations come into play when recruiting soldiers.

III.b. GDP and Budgeting Concerns
The size of your GDP reflects your aggregate economic output, more or less. It's more complicated than that, but that's all you need for purposes of this guide. Essentially,t he GDP is going to be the foundation of your military budget. Now, the GDP is a major factor in your budgeting, but it's only a part. Other factors, such as the Threat Assessment (Section.II), your populaces' attitude towards war, and the money you wish to invest elsewhere should be a major factor. There are trade-offs. You cannot spend 10% of your GDP on your armed forces and be a liberal Nordic paradise with no issues at the same time. You cannot.

The GDP gives a base off which you assign spending. A larger nation might need to dedicate a smaller portion of its GDP to be as powerful or relevant. To take your military budget, I have a rough rule of thumb. 1-2% of your GDP if you are a first world nation with few domestic threats and/or wish to mostly do peace-keeping. 2-4% for nations with threats that are moderate and in-between. 5% for hyper aggressive nations with dreams of conquest or massive international obligations. 5-10% exists but the nations that spend this much usually have a slew of factors that allow/require them to spend this much.

III.c. Technology
The Singapore Armed Forces has considered technology as a "force multiplier" i.e. technological superiority will multiply the fighting strength of each Singaporean soldier in the field in the even of potential conflict with Indonesia or Malaysia. Your ability to develop and field advanced weaponry will influence the amount of manpower you'll need relative to your spending. Note, this does not mean that technology IS a force multiplier necessarily. Superior technology routinely helps but tactical expertise and training generally prove more decisive. (credit to The wyoming peoples front for pointing this out

For example, take India. India has a massive economy, and massive population. It, however, does not have the best defense industry or technology, and DRDO, India's primary defense R&D organization, has consistently produced flawed designs. India still has to field vintage Soviet-era military equipment and cheap rifles. Not every nation can or will be a 1st world tech giant. Therefore, your ability to field and develop super advanced weaponry may be limited. A way around this may be purchasing weapons from a foreign power (most nations do this actually, as few nations have the resources to design their entire arsenal), allowing them to field weapons superior to that which they could if they designed on their own.

III.d. Human Capital
This is essentially the skill and capability of your people. This refers to their average level of education, familiarity with technology, and maybe even lack therefore. For example, a recruit hailing from a jungle island with thatched huts will probably be unsuitable to drive a tank or fly an aircraft. However, also consider the inverse. The Gurkhas are able to run longer, faster, and endure more pain than the average Briton from a life tested in the hills and mountains of Nepal. An ideal rural/educated populace likely does not exist (perhaps maybe in India). Point is, consider how the lifestyles your people lead might translate to potential skills as soldiers.

tl;dr consider what resources you have to achieve your military goals. Your population (quantity and qualities thereof), economy, and etc. can all be leveraged for military use in specific ways. Play on the strengths inherent in your populace where possible.


IV. Geography, Terrain, and Infrastructure
Thus far we have established why your army fights (Section.I) who it fights (Section.II) and with what resources and abilities it fights (Section.III). Now it's time to consider where it fights. This will influence the type of equipment you buy, how much of it you buy, and what tactics you'll use.

Geography - for the purposes of this guide - refers to the major geographic features of your nation. For example, are you an island? Then you'll need a small army, naturally. Do you have a huge mountain range to your north? You'll likely want paratroops, mountain infantry, and light tanks that can fight at high altitudes. Are you highly urbanized like Korea or Japan (or maybe Singapore?) Japanese Type-10 tanks are specifically designed to fight in suburbs. In another case; Malaysia specifically chose the Ukranian Oplot tank because a heavier Western tank would be less capable of operating in Malaysia's thick jungle.

Infrastructure refers to your roads, rails, and bridges. In short - if you have good infrastructure you can field heavier, more armored, more resource intensive military units. This is because of issues with supply, transport, and weight capacity. For example, Pakistan rejected the M1 Abrams primarily because the Abrams would be too heavy for frontier bridges - which are mostly too small to accommodate larger tanks. The tank Pakistan ultimately chose, the Al Khalid, would probably be at a disadvantage in an open field or desert against the Abrams, but the Khalid can actually move around in Pakistan while the Abrams cannot, and that is a dead-breaker.

A few miscellaneous observations: larger tanks usually require rail to transport - with fear of tearing up asphalt. Wheeled APCs (which are cheaper than tracked APCs) can be preferable to tracked APCs in countries like Germany or South Korea with developed road networks.

tl;dr make your army appropriate to your geography and infrastructure. notably, there is no point in a massive 60 tonne tank if your nation is situated in the mountains, has smaller bridges, limited rail access, and one-way dirt path roads.


V. Ideology and History
The way your people think and what they believe in influences the way they mobilize and/or fight. A volunteer army might be less practical in a nation with a weak national ethos. Not every society can/should be a highly disciplined Spartan society with a super committed populace. These can exist, but there are normative judgements about quality of life and supposed innovation that arise. Regardless, I will say that I personally find such societies to be Mary-Sueish in nature and will more or less look down on them in principle. This might make me arrogant but I'm just laying that out on the table.

If you are a revolutionary/population nation fresh off the cusp of a recent uprising against a colonial oppressor or autocrat, you might have the capacity to recruit a large volunteer army for relatively low pay. If you're an established imperial power looking to subjugate the colonies or wage offensive war - a small advanced, skilled professional army might be best. This also might influence the choice to conscript; does your nation's ideology require more manpower/value human life/choice less? If so it might be more willing to enact conscription.

There's not much more to add here other than the general advice to try to think as your people would. Would they approve of a military your size? Would they likely be willing to enlist in it? Does your nation have a rich military tradition young men would be willing to uphold? Perhaps an aristocracy? (could make for the breeding of young, skilled gentlemanly officers but if they are killed they could also be irreplaceable.)

History - in addition to building the narrative of your people and therefore influencing how willing they are to fight - also influences your military doctrine. The USSR built its army around lessons learned in each of its wars and maintained a vastly different array of equipment than its Western counterparts. It, for example, had much smaller regiments and greater emphasis on air-defense and artillery than the USA ever did. These were informed by experiences of the Russian army in ww2, then in Afghanistan and even by watching its weapons and tactics at work in Israel-Arab wars.

tl;dr your people are not mindless fanatics or robots.


VI. Raw Numbers (You were Waiting for this)
I'm going to assume you skipped the rest of my guide. I really do think you should give it a read, but that is your choice. Anyhow, here I will go into the rough considerations that go into building a realistically sized-ish military force, step-by-step, as I usually instruct newer players to do it. Some will take issue with this part, and that is fine, but I'm trying to be as simplistic and straightforward as possible.

VI.a. Determine your budget.
This is the easiest and simplest step. Usually, I just recommend that people just take their spending as a proportion of their GDP. LinkHere is a list of IRL nations' expenditures and their expenditures as % of their GDP. Find a nation that is similar to yours in terms of threats, resources, and domestic political support for spending, and allocate accordingly.

A note: do NOT try to pigeonhole yourself into having higher spending by trying to make the case you are actually very similar to Oman (16.7% spending). You are probably not. Oman is a tiny country is an extremely unstable region of the world with both internal and domestic military threats (terrorism and all of the insane mofos charging out the Middle East, like idk ISIS??) and 61% of its GDP is petroleum. Petroleum is manpower cheap and is - in some sense - essentially kind of like free money. There is little opportunity cost (i.e. Oman loses comparatively little) by spending its oil money on weapons because this money doesn't necessarily need be spent on a proportionally sized population. You are not Oman.

Remember, it's all a trade-off. No nation exists solely to wage war. Nations that came close, like the USSR and Nazi Germany, had horrendous living standards (regardless of whatever edgy online internet sources may say, Germans worked extremely long hours for incredibly low pay to achieve the German economic reconstruction and re-armament). You don't need a 100 billion dollar army to still fight effectively.

tl;dr put your budget as somewhere between 1-5% of your GDP depending on how big your threats/commitments are.

VI.b. Determine your personnel count, active and reserve, and how this influences the above
I will post for this as well. Linka wikipedia source. Same principle here as in VI.a; find a nation with similar threats and issues and use that proportion to calculate your own military size. Same caveat; do not aspire to meet the military participation rate of the highest proportion on this list. North Korea is a sh*thole country, South Korea and Finland both are dwarfed by huge threats on their borders (and their armies are entirely defensive in nature) and these are largely reservist armies anyhow. Instead, if you want to be a modern expeditionary power, it's better to aspire for a military participation rate like Canada, France, or the UK, all nations with considerable power projection capabilities.

In some sense having fewer soldiers as a proportion of your population will allow you to have a superior armed forces. This is because training/recruitment standards can be more stringent, training expenditures per soldier will be much higher, and they will generally be able to aspire to a much greater level of professionalism. My father served in the ROK army, and I have many cousins serving in its ranks. The ROK army may be advanced, but there is little in the way of a culture of professionalism or pride in soldiering. They attempt to do the least work possible. This is because rather than being vetted, soldiers in the ROK are forced to serve. The principle applies to volunteer armies as well - the larger your manpower target, the lower the standards upon which you must ultimately settle.

Another issue; if you are a mega nation like China or India, these numbers will change entirely. A nation like China or India simply does not need the same proportion of troops in its armed forces as France or North Korea. Not in the slightest. It can achieve more with less effort. Therefore, if your population is in the hundreds of millions, or even in the billions, do not use the participation rates of smaller countries. Try to stick to 1-2 million at most.

tl;dr keep the population of your people in the armed forces under 1% unless you are North Korea or Israel.

VI.c. Determine the nature of your ground army, and how this influences the number of tanks/APCs/artillery you have.
Remember how I told you to think about your geography, infrastructure, and goals in previous sections? Good, this information will come in handy now. A nation with superior infrastructure, flatter land, and more open spaces will, as rule of thumb, want a larger tank/mechanized force. You will want tracked APC (not wheeled) and you will want a large fleet of tanks, tracked APCs, and self propelled artillery.

Conversely, if your nation is largely forested and/or has lots of mountains, you might wish to consider light/motorized infantry, lighter armor (i.e. light tanks and tank guns) and/or things like the French Sagale. You want what tanks or armor you have to be able to move through rough terrain. Another limiting factor for weight/size of your tanks is going to be infrastructure. You need/want rail for larger tanks to save fuel and cause less road damage for example. If you don't, and expect to drive your tanks where they need to go, light and smaller tanks might be a wiser choice.

So basically, this should help you think about how many tanks/APCs/artillery pieces you'll want relative to your ground manpower. I would suggest building a Table of Organization and Equipment, much like my own, but this is not something that you can learn to do from a guide and I'm not fully convinced that my own is even that excellent. Therefore, when it comes to determining the # of tanks and vehicles you have, try to break your army into regiment sized pieces (~3,000 men). A mechanized/armored regiment will have something like 60-100 tanks and roughly as many APCs/IFVs. Maybe 30 Self-Propelled Howitzers and something approaching 10-30 SPAAGs (self propelled anti-aircraft guns) or short-ranged anti-air missiles like the Crotale (usually mounted on an APC). Light infantry will have none of these but carry substantially more equipment with them and/or require trucks or other vehicles. Motorized units will usually have a few light tanks or armored vehicles but mostly trucks. Almost all regiments will have substantial number of miscellaneous trucks and jeeps for general purpose. And your regiment may have an air attachment, which may come between 8-40? (I think US has something like this) helicopters of all varieties (utility, attack, recce, etc.)

Again these numbers are all going to be very rough and will vary tremendously from nation to nation. Do not take this as a law but as a guideline. There are advantages to using different arrangements of equipment.

tl;dr I gave a few numbers above but it really depends on your doctrine and resources.

VI.d. Determine the nature of your navy and how this influences the number of and types of ships you have.
What do you want your navy to achieve? If you are aiming to be a land power, you might just want a brown water coastal defense force or an intermediate green-water force (former being almost essentially coastal locked and the latter having some projection capacity.) Blue Water navies - which are extraordinarily expensive - are those seeking to rule the waves. Or at least have a presence in the waves of some sort. As mentioned before, there will be a trade-off: most nations cannot afford a big blue water navy and a strong army at the same time.

Below I will go into the types of ships a navy might operate and their roles/purposes:

Let's start with ship classes. Now keep in mind that ship classes WILL vary by nation to nation in terms of tonnage (roughly means size), armament, and other factors. This is because the names we offer classifications were first put into use most part in the 19th and 20th century, and every nation has changed a bit. However, though there are differences mostly things should be the same.

    Aircraft Carrier - carries fixed-wing aircraft. These are massive ships, by necessity. These are the MOST important ships in any fleet, and every combat fleet should have one. They usually carry lighter carrier-based fighters, AWACs (see below in the aircraft section) and use special equipment to allow aircraft to lift off and land safely. If you plan to use aircraft carriers, use IRL ones if possible and use the same aircraft they use on said carriers. Not all aircraft are suitable to carrier operations and you cannot fit any aircraft you like on a carrier. I have seen people, for example, trying to launch B-2 bombers, A-10 gunships, etc. These are too heavy.

    Battleship - outdated. These are useless. Even with railguns, yes. This is because big guns do not have the range of missiles or aircraft (aircraft can fly hundreds of kilometres and missiles usually can reach the thousands. Aircraft also launch missiles, which makes their engagement range even longer. By contrast, battleship guns can only fire a few dozen? kilometres and also do not even do as much damage.)

    Corvette - small ships, but not to be underestimated. If you find the enemy fleet, a Corvette can easily wipe out an entire naval base (the Indian navy wiped out Pakistan's fleet at Karachi with just one missile corvette. In fact, every ship theoretically can. I'll go more into this. Usually, corvettes stay close to shores or in rivers because they are small (and this prevents the size of radar they can carry)

    Cruisers - largest combat ships you'll probably field, and some theorists (myself included) actually think they're stupid and useless. Why? Well, cruisers tend to have 10,000-20,000 + tonnes of displacement. This means they can carry LOTS of missiles and weapons systems and large radars. However, their radars are frankly not considerably much better than what you can put in a frigate, and if you have a carrier, the carrier can launch AWACs (large recce aircraft) which can see further anyhow. Also, Cruisers do not have superior protection to a smaller ship. This means you're putting all your eggs in one basket, and if it gets hit by a missile, you lose more money essentially.

    Destroyers - usually around 10,000 tonnes, and medium sized. This is the basic and most commonly fielded ship. It has missiles, radar, usually a few helicopters for recce. They carry and fire missiles and are the workhorse of your fleet. They basically do all the basic fighting roles.

    Frigates - smaller ships. Often split up between air-defense (specialising in SAMs, or anti-air missiles) or Anti-Submarine Warfare (specializing in sonar and destroying submarines) depending on navy. These are small, usually 5-7,000 tonnes on top of my head. These are the smallest ships I would recommend sending out to open sea. They will almost ALWAYS work in groups, never alone.

    Submarines - I imagine you already know how these work. Come in two varieties. Nuclear and Air Independent Propulsion. These are engine systems basically. Nuclear submarines can travel farther and faster, but AIP submarines are almost impossible to find and destroy. Thus, nations that want to fight in coastal waters usually buy AIP subs. There are also ballistic submarines that carry and fire nuclear weapons, and these usually use nuclear engines as you need them to travel along the enemy's coast. You'll have them if you have nuclear weapons.

There are also all sorts of support ships like fueling ships, amphibious landing ships (mini carriers that use helicopters and carry soldiers for amphibious landings, you'll need some I imagine) etc. but these are usually simpler to figure out.

How do the combat ships above work together? Usually, you want a carrier group, with 1 aircraft carrier, 2-3 destroyers, 2-4 frigates. Submarines should usually operate alone (don't do packs, that's a ww2 tactic and resulted in lots of accidental friendly fire.) Sometimes you can attach 1 submarine to a carrier fleet (nuclear engines though, not AIP). This will be your offensive fleet, and you can make several. Russians often use cruisers instead of carriers because their fleets are more defensive.

Then you want some corvettes at home, near the coast or in rivers. You can send them to attack a close by enemy if you need to.

A brown water navy mostly wants corvettes and frigates. A green water might have all the above other than carriers. Carriers truly permit a navy to go international. This is because carriers allow for so much more utility, reconnaissance, and firepower - especially in the high seas. As far as how many ships you can realistically field; this is more variable and I can't provide as much a rule of thumb. I will say that I typically discourage people from fielding more than 2-3 carriers. United States styles navies can exist but personally 2-3 is perfectly enough to field a decent navy with global reach. Aim to have somewhere between 50-300 ships.

VI.e. Determine the size and role of your air force.
Air forces are also a big part of your armed forces. Some nations choose to spend a little less effort on air forces, instead focusing more on air defense and countering enemy air-power. Others build their doctrines around air superiority. Air forces are powerful support units, but the important lesson is that air forces alone will never win a war. Americans attempted to use air forces in a decisive role in multiple conflicts including Vietnam, Korea, and Serbia, all to less than intended effect. Air forces cannot hold ground or advance, and require ground forces to be effective. Trying to just bomb an enemy will help if you have friends on the ground, but air forces alone have historically achieved little.

That said, air forces are not unimportant. For one thing, air transport offers tremendous mobility. Depending on who you ask, air transport is one of the most effective forms of mobility in a war. Air Cavalry in the form of infantry in helicopters can fly around jungles. Paratroopers can seize critical bridges and airports the night before a major invasion. And if you are a proponent of Tukhachevsky, being able to land an armored/mechanized force behind enemy lines can create tremendous opportunities for maneuver warfare. Air forces can also provide CAS (Close Air Support, think A-10s or Su-25s) and attack enemy industry from the sky. There is no doubt air forces can be decisive. They just cannot be decisive alone.

A note on air-to-air combat: there are two types of air to air engagements. These are WVR (Within Visual Range) and BVR (Beyond Visual Range). The difference should be self explanatory; the former occurs when the pilots can see each other or theoretically can and the latter occurs at much greater distances. BVR usually occurs at 40 km away, WVR is anything less. Most missiles do not actually hit their target but instead explode in its proximity, hurling lethal fragments everywhere.

There are various types of aircraft. I will go over these as well.

    Multirole/Fighter - Fighters are primarily intended for air-to-air combat against other fighters. Most fighters can also engage in ground-attack missions, but not as effectively as other aircraft designed specifically for such roles. Modern fighters usually engage each other with missiles. They do not use machine-guns very often (sorry if you were hankering for ww2 style Spitfire vs. Messerschmidt duels!). Note: not all fighters are created equal. This will be the foundation of your air force. These are fixed wing.

    Bomber - this is an aircraft primarily designed for long-ranged ground attacks. Bombers usually target fixed positions (bases), infrastructure (bridges) or anything of that nature, and usually carry a payload of bombs. Because of their limited utility and the increasing technical capabilities of fighters, bombers are not fielded very often. They often have stealth capabilities so they can penetrate deep into enemy airspace and bomb important installations behind the lines. These are almost always very large fixed wing air-craft.

    Attack/Strike - this is an aircraft designed for use in close air support and/or generally against enemy units (like tank columns for example). It is meant to use short ranged missiles, rockets, and machine-guns to destroy targets up close. These usually have the ability to move more slowly in combat range so as to give them time to properly identify and destroy land targets. There should be a lot of these in any respectable air force. This can be helicopters (better for killing tanks), turboprop (better against infantry, so I've heard), or fixed wing.

    Electronic Warfare - usually just fighters or transport aircraft with special equipment specially designed to disrupt enemy air wave communications (i.e. radio or radar). I don't really have much to say for this other than they are useful. There are different types of EW but I'm frankly no expert and I usually have to refer to those even more knowledgeable when carrying out EW operations ICly. You should have a few of these, but not too many as they aren't of very wide utility.

    Transports - there are two major types of air transports - strategic and tactical. Strategic transports are meant to ferry troops and supplies long distances (perhaps from your country to a far off war-zone) while a Tactical transport is meant to carry troops and supplies within that war-zone. Strategic transport are usually larger, fixed wing, and faster, but therefore require a runway to land and are relatively easy to shoot down. Tactical transports are often helicopters or Turboprop aircraft, and are much smaller and have shorter range. They, however, can land in more poorly designed runways or even in the middle of an unprepared field (for helicopters). The latter (tactical transports) can bring troops/ammo to a crisis zone quickly and/or take wounded soldiers out while the former (strategic) is more meant for carrying supplies from your home country to the battlefield. These should be among the most numerous aircraft in your air force.

    AWACS - literally imagine taking a giant radar dish and gluing it onto a big aircraft. This is the basic idea of an AWACS aircraft. Essentially it is a flying, mobile radar. This makes it useful for collecting information far away, especially for open-ocean operations where there are not ground-radar nearby. These can be re-purposed giant fixed-wing cargo aircraft or helicopters (the latter for nations with smaller aircraft carriers). These are expensive and should be very rare - if they exist at all.

    Recce - generally we're talking UAVs or spy-planes with high resolution cameras. These can usually fly at very high altitude to escape detection. Satellites also help fill the role filled out by recce aircraft. These are used to collect specific information on an enemy's defenses or troop movements. This isn't to say that these are the only aircraft capable of gathering intelligence; helicopters and fighters are often sent out to get a general image on troop movements. Dedicated recce aircraft should also be somewhat rareish.

So how many aircraft should you field? I have heard the figure 1 for every 240,000 citizens in your country, based on an analysis of aircraft/population ratio IRL. I'd say this is a fundamentally good number. Adjusting anywhere between 1 for every 100,000 to 1 for every 500,000 depending on your doctrine's reliance on aircraft, your ability to buy and maintain aircraft, and the general expense and quality of your aircraft is smart. As the above source I cited says, only 1/3 of your aircraft should be combat aircraft.

tl;dr Have something like 1 plane for every quarter a million people in your nation or so. This is very crude. It also depends.

Das volksreich

Edited:

RawReport