M-96 ammunition production rate

Henry Brown wrote:This is going to be an awkward memo.

To Duke Eastshare:

New recruits needed to conduct target practice as part of their training. Due to this, we were forced to divert your army's monthly ration of cartridges. As a result, we ask that you refrain from combat operations till next month.

Sincerely,

Cayleb Ahrmahk

Or the guys on the line saying to the other side - we're going to have to stop now - we won't have any more ammo until next month.

I spent some time visualizing the job of the ammo supplier a while back and concluded that the situation wasn't quite as bad as it appears on first glance.

First, don't visualize 160,000 rifles in theatre right away. Visualize under 20,000. Then consider the time it takes to get the guns into place. After which consider that manufacture of ammo will have several months head start before the guns are in the hands of the troops. Now imagine that as the numbers of M96s begin to increase, production of ammo increases accordingly. Howsmyn mentioned a glitch in his conversation with Father Paityr, but didn't seem overly concerned about solving it.

Now about the number of days in combat. Four days per month per soldier is probably too many. Even armies seeking out the enemy are not averaging that. Most of a soldier's time is spent either in camp or enroute to the next encampment and planned battle. Eastshare's force spent several 5 days getting to his blocking position on the Daivyn several 5 day waiting on Kaitwryth's attack and a battle, IIRC, which lasted about a 5 day as he pushed Kaitswryth back. After Kaitswryth forted up in Cliff Peak, no combat expenditure of ammo at all.

The same is true as DE receives his reinforcements and goes off to Ft. Tairys. You have the push to get there, the seige and final assault. Then you have the wait to get HM into position in the Kyplyngyr. The only times you have heavy use of rifle ammo is during short periods of intense fighting. The rest of the time you have either no useage at all or light useage by small groups who are skirmishing.

Now on to BGV, he has an extended battle to push the AOG up the gap to Lake Wyvern and then minor, if nasty skirmishing by the scout snipers in the mountains on either side of the gap. BGV then begins his trip around toward Northland Gap to flank Wryshym. BGV was involved in no major battles in LAMA; only minor skimishing. That has been true for the better part of a year.

Remember the reserve kept in Old Province. No combat use of ammo at all there.

Finally, I don't know how much the armorer should allow for training purposes. 10% of total allotment??? Not sure...

What the ammo manufacturer needs to know is the total amount needed per month in theatre. My own belief is that it is more like 2 or 3 days per month statisticly for every man under arms. 4 days with about 180 rounds per day loadout should cover it very comfortably.

Don

n7axw wrote:I spent some time visualizing the job of the ammo supplier a while back and concluded that the situation wasn't quite as bad as it appears on first glance.

First, don't visualize 160,000 rifles in theatre right away. Visualize under 20,000. Then consider the time it takes to get the guns into place. After which consider that manufacture of ammo will have several months head start before the guns are in the hands of the troops. Now imagine that as the numbers of M96s begin to increase, production of ammo increases accordingly. Howsmyn mentioned a glitch in his conversation with Father Paityr, but didn't seem overly concerned about solving it.

Now about the number of days in combat. Four days per month per soldier is probably too many. Even armies seeking out the enemy are not averaging that. Most of a soldier's time is spent either in camp or enroute to the next encampment and planned battle. Eastshare's force spent several 5 days getting to his blocking position on the Daivyn several 5 day waiting on Kaitwryth's attack and a battle, IIRC, which lasted about a 5 day as he pushed Kaitswryth back. After Kaitswryth forted up in Cliff Peak, no combat expenditure of ammo at all.

The same is true as DE receives his reinforcements and goes off to Ft. Tairys. You have the push to get there, the seige and final assault. Then you have the wait to get HM into position in the Kyplyngyr. The only times you have heavy use of rifle ammo is during short periods of intense fighting. The rest of the time you have either no useage at all or light useage by small groups who are skirmishing.

Now on to BGV, he has an extended battle to push the AOG up the gap to Lake Wyvern and then minor, if nasty skirmishing by the scout snipers in the mountains on either side of the gap. BGV then begins his trip around toward Northland Gap to flank Wryshym. BGV was involved in no major battles in LAMA; only minor skimishing. That has been true for the better part of a year.

Remember the reserve kept in Old Province. No combat use of ammo at all there.

Finally, I don't know how much the armorer should allow for training purposes. 10% of total allotment??? Not sure...

What the ammo manufacturer needs to know is the total amount needed per month in theatre. My own belief is that it is more like 2 or 3 days per month statisticly for every man under arms. 4 days with about 180 rounds per day loadout should cover it very comfortably.

Don

Okay. 20,000 rifles and 1.6million rounds/month gives you about 80 rounds/rifle/month, with a rifle that fires about 10 rounds/minute in heavy combat or about 8 minutes/month. And the 20,000 in combat is low. Virtually all of the M96 rifles will be in heavy combat areas, because they provide such an advantage. The older breech loaders will be reserved for the rear areas, and secondary fronts. You are going to need much larger quantities of cartridges than they have talked about to date.

hmmm... Don's own numbers would make the requirement 14 million/month

however... both of you are quite likely overstating the requirement, even if we assume that no one in Charis knows how to run the numbers. nobody in his right mind fights an entire battle at maximum sustained rate of fire, so those 80 rounds are going to go a lot further than you think. at the same time, if you look at what seems to me to be the nearest comparable war, in operational terms, consider that in the final 2 years of the Peninsular War, from Ciudad Rodrigo to the fall of Napoleon, Wellington fought 9, maybe 10, set-piece battles, of which 4 were sieges and only 3 or 4 of the others were general actions with his entire army engaged. mostly it was 1 or 2 divisions against a French corps. meaning that on average a soldier fired more than a half dozen rounds perhaps one day every 4 months [sieges ended in surrender or cold steel, and didn't use a lot of musket balls]. and the Peninsula was probably the hardest-fought of all the campaigns; looking at the Napoleonic Wars in general it was rather closer to once a year.

that said, the scale of operations is going to be a _lot_ larger, meaning that there will be opportunities to burn through a couple of million rounds at a crack. still, i somehow doubt that the planners have overlooked that all this time.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

n7axw wrote:I spent some time visualizing the job of the ammo supplier a while back and concluded that the situation wasn't quite as bad as it appears on first glance.

First, don't visualize 160,000 rifles in theatre right away. Visualize under 20,000. Then consider the time it takes to get the guns into place. After which consider that manufacture of ammo will have several months head start before the guns are in the hands of the troops. Now imagine that as the numbers of M96s begin to increase, production of ammo increases accordingly. Howsmyn mentioned a glitch in his conversation with Father Paityr, but didn't seem overly concerned about solving it.

Now about the number of days in combat. Four days per month per soldier is probably too many. Even armies seeking out the enemy are not averaging that. Most of a soldier's time is spent either in camp or enroute to the next encampment and planned battle. Eastshare's force spent several 5 days getting to his blocking position on the Daivyn several 5 day waiting on Kaitwryth's attack and a battle, IIRC, which lasted about a 5 day as he pushed Kaitswryth back. After Kaitswryth forted up in Cliff Peak, no combat expenditure of ammo at all.

The same is true as DE receives his reinforcements and goes off to Ft. Tairys. You have the push to get there, the seige and final assault. Then you have the wait to get HM into position in the Kyplyngyr. The only times you have heavy use of rifle ammo is during short periods of intense fighting. The rest of the time you have either no useage at all or light useage by small groups who are skirmishing.

Now on to BGV, he has an extended battle to push the AOG up the gap to Lake Wyvern and then minor, if nasty skirmishing by the scout snipers in the mountains on either side of the gap. BGV then begins his trip around toward Northland Gap to flank Wryshym. BGV was involved in no major battles in LAMA; only minor skimishing. That has been true for the better part of a year.

Remember the reserve kept in Old Province. No combat use of ammo at all there.

Finally, I don't know how much the armorer should allow for training purposes. 10% of total allotment??? Not sure...

What the ammo manufacturer needs to know is the total amount needed per month in theatre. My own belief is that it is more like 2 or 3 days per month statisticly for every man under arms. 4 days with about 180 rounds per day loadout should cover it very comfortably.

Don

Okay. 20,000 rifles and 1.6million rounds/month gives you about 80 rounds/rifle/month, with a rifle that fires about 10 rounds/minute in heavy combat or about 8 minutes/month. And the 20,000 in combat is low. Virtually all of the M96 rifles will be in heavy combat areas, because they provide such an advantage. The older breech loaders will be reserved for the rear areas, and secondary fronts. You are going to need much larger quantities of cartridges than they have talked about to date.

Louis R wrote:hmmm... Don's own numbers would make the requirement 14 million/month

however... both of you are quite likely overstating the requirement, even if we assume that no one in Charis knows how to run the numbers. nobody in his right mind fights an entire battle at maximum sustained rate of fire, so those 80 rounds are going to go a lot further than you think. at the same time, if you look at what seems to me to be the nearest comparable war, in operational terms, consider that in the final 2 years of the Peninsular War, from Ciudad Rodrigo to the fall of Napoleon, Wellington fought 9, maybe 10, set-piece battles, of which 4 were sieges and only 3 or 4 of the others were general actions with his entire army engaged. mostly it was 1 or 2 divisions against a French corps. meaning that on average a soldier fired more than a half dozen rounds perhaps one day every 4 months [sieges ended in surrender or cold steel, and didn't use a lot of musket balls]. and the Peninsula was probably the hardest-fought of all the campaigns; looking at the Napoleonic Wars in general it was rather closer to once a year.

that said, the scale of operations is going to be a _lot_ larger, meaning that there will be opportunities to burn through a couple of million rounds at a crack. still, i somehow doubt that the planners have overlooked that all this time.

It might be better to compare to the Franco Prussian War, as the EOC is rapidly building an army whose equipment falls between that available 1870 and 1914.

A couple of anecdotes I remember reading: The US Army had so much .30-06 sitting in warehouses After WWI that they had the M-1 Garand re-chambered in the testing stage to use that round instead of a smaller caliber. And that so much small arms Ammo was produced for WWII that the were still selling surplussed ammo into the civilian market into the 1960s

From LAMA p 447 US hardcover:
"There's no point producing them faster than that just yet because the cartridge filling machinery developed a glitch we hadn't expected an we're still putting the fix for it into place."

From LAMA p 447 US hardcover:
"We won't be able to increase much beyond that-assuming we have to- until we can produce the primer compounds in sufficient quantity."

Could it be they are talking about smokeless cartridges only ?. In that case they would still have M96 black powder cartridges available. The fact they mention "producing primer compounds in sufficient quantity" might support that. They have been manufacturing black powder for some time but are just starting smokeless production now.

Castenea wrote:

Louis R wrote:hmmm... Don's own numbers would make the requirement 14 million/month

however... both of you are quite likely overstating the requirement, even if we assume that no one in Charis knows how to run the numbers. nobody in his right mind fights an entire battle at maximum sustained rate of fire, so those 80 rounds are going to go a lot further than you think. at the same time, if you look at what seems to me to be the nearest comparable war, in operational terms, consider that in the final 2 years of the Peninsular War, from Ciudad Rodrigo to the fall of Napoleon, Wellington fought 9, maybe 10, set-piece battles, of which 4 were sieges and only 3 or 4 of the others were general actions with his entire army engaged. mostly it was 1 or 2 divisions against a French corps. meaning that on average a soldier fired more than a half dozen rounds perhaps one day every 4 months [sieges ended in surrender or cold steel, and didn't use a lot of musket balls]. and the Peninsula was probably the hardest-fought of all the campaigns; looking at the Napoleonic Wars in general it was rather closer to once a year.

that said, the scale of operations is going to be a _lot_ larger, meaning that there will be opportunities to burn through a couple of million rounds at a crack. still, i somehow doubt that the planners have overlooked that all this time.

It might be better to compare to the Franco Prussian War, as the EOC is rapidly building an army whose equipment falls between that available 1870 and 1914.

A couple of anecdotes I remember reading: The US Army had so much .30-06 sitting in warehouses After WWI that they had the M-1 Garand re-chambered in the testing stage to use that round instead of a smaller caliber. And that so much small arms Ammo was produced for WWII that the were still selling surplussed ammo into the civilian market into the 1960s

And I can guarantee you that the US was producing ammo at a lot more that 1.6million rounds/month. The reason that that many rounds were produced is that you don't want your troops to run out or to feel that they have to conserve ammunition. Granted we are dealing with bolt action rifles here, not semi or full automatic weapons, but even the bolt action is going to use a LOT of ammo in a short time during an assault, either defending or attacking. And when the MHoGatA starts using human wave tactics, it is a lead pipe cinch that the defenders are going to be laying down as much fire as then can, just as fast as they can work the bolt, and change magazines.

Castenea wrote:A couple of anecdotes I remember reading: The US Army had so much .30-06 sitting in warehouses After WWI that they had the M-1 Garand re-chambered in the testing stage to use that round instead of a smaller caliber. And that so much small arms Ammo was produced for WWII that the were still selling surplussed ammo into the civilian market into the 1960s

I fired some of Her Majesty's .303 ammunition in the early 80s; the boxes had typed notices under the lids that it was not to be used in synchronized guns after July, 1942.

It was really pretty stuff; so much copper in the cases they looked red and nickel jackets on the bullets. Kicked, though; AP ammo for aircraft machine guns.

Am I being silly or are we missing that we are talking about brass cartridges that can be reloaded? Even with a 90% reload rate when not in a battle conditions, the total in reserve would go up. You would still need a great deal more, but especially in a defensive situation, policing brass and reloading when possible would increase supplies.

In training, that could get as high as 95+% of the spent cartridges being reused.

Cant they reload and reuse most of the brass? Isn't he talking about brass production, not powder and primer?

The reuse of brass would increase stockpiles. and policing of brass can be done in many situations, tho certainly not all.