UMATCO OOC Coordination Thread

This thread is for OOC discussion and coordination of UMATCO related affairs. I know Discord tends to be used for this sort of thing, but having a forum post so that we (or, at least, me) can find stuff again a day/week/month later would be really helpful!

There are a few opening matters that need attention, firstly the appointment of the first Secretary-General (senior civilian post) and Supreme Coalition Commander (senior military post). Ideally we should also all name our representative on the Coalition Council and possibly the Defence Committee too.

Next on the agenda, how to approach standardisation... So, firstly what I thought would be helpful is for everyone involved to provide an idea of what their current equipment, weapon calibres, etc are so that we have a baseline to work from. I think it would be easier to do that OOC (hence this thread) and then take it IC once we understand where we are and where we want to go. There is an important related question, how much of this we actually want to RP? Whilst a few of us are nerds for this sort of thing, I know not everyone is! If you don't have these sorts of details worked out, it isn't a problem - we can work from a basis of assumed alignment or non-alignment depending on how difficult you want to be Bare in mind that standardisation doesn't mean everyone using the same stuff (necessarily) - I'll elaborate a bit more when I post my detailed response to this.

Secondly, in excellent NATO tradition I'd like to suggest the creation of a number of sub-committees - I'm think to start with one on doctrine, one on ammunition, one on logistics and one on CIS. My intention will be to suggest these sub-committees IC and then once adopted just assume IC that they're working away in the background rather than going into any great depth. The idea behind them is to look at ways of aligning our military's - the first step towards standardisation.

Finally, if anyone with any actual graphic skills could make a better logo than my lame Word-created thing that would be very appreciated!

A lot to be getting on with...!

So, my thoughts on this. Haor Chall would probably like the Sec-Gen seat, however I think there's probably an argument that the political head should come from one of the smaller member states and the military head from one of the larger states? I also think it makes sense for the main UMATCO HQ to be located in the same place as META - whilst they're different organisations there is a lot of crossover of members and it kinda makes sense to have these institutions in a similar geographic area imo.

Basically I'm suggesting that UMATCO HQ should be in Demescia, and then that leads me to think that maybe the first Sec-Gen should be a Demescian? Thoughts?


Regarding standardisation, I've started setting out the Charrian military forces HERE. But to give you a quick and easy flavour of what it looks like, and because I like to mix it up, the Charrian army uses RL German equipment, the Navy uses British equipment and the Air Force US equipment. I've been lazy and kept the RL measures, so standard infantry calibres are 5.56mm and 7.62mm. MBT rounds are 105mm and 120mm, etc. So that's our baseline, although they are potentially looking at moving Naval guns to use Predicean calibres.

Depending on how that compares to the rest of y'all there a few different ways to look at standardisation/alignment. Nations can of course buy equipment already manufactured by another nation (or design and manufacture something jointly) and thereby achieve standardisation. In the MBT sphere, Haor Chall has surplus Conqueror tanks (RL Leopard 2) both of the current Mk7 (2A6) model and also older marks (equivalent to A5 and A4 IRL) which it would be willing to sell to UMATCO states. We'd also build new - either in Haor Chall or potentially in other states under licence if that was wanted too - with the possibility then of some amendments to suit national requirements (whilst the Charrian system of government escapes the "pork barrel" politics that can often drive procurement decisions in some places, the military-industrial complex is still in full swing here...).

But there are other avenues to achieve the same effect to consider. E.G. Where we use the same calibre we can look to ensure our ammunition specifications are aligned so that we can use each others ammunition - even though we have different equipment (e.g. like NATO 5.56mm and 7.62 even though everyone (mostly) uses their own small arms the ammunition is interchangeable). If we don't use the same calibre initially, then we could change that by using the same gun - e.g. like how the Abrams from the A1 onwards has the German Rheinmetall smoothbore 120mm gun (same as the Leopard 2). So, for example Haor Chall could licence the main gun we use in our tanks to be integrated into the MBT used by other nations in the coalition. So, lots of options, depending on what folks think would fit their own national interests too.

Thoughts?

First sec-gen being Demescian is good by me.

I like the idea of standardisation in certain areas for sure. I think the best way to do this to allow for creative freedom that some people are interested in doing here is coordination on ammunition specifications and calibers. That way ammunition is standardised and nations as they come and go can still have their design freedom to use mostly unique military equipment and have it still fit within standardisation goals as long as it uses UMATCO ammo standards. Those countries that want to choose physically the same equipment as other nations would still be free to do so (and is what Lanceria is likely to be doing with the tank and service rifle). I'd like to pick a design that is either manufactured and used by a UMATCO nation or at least if elsewhere manufactured then used by a UMATCO nation or two.

I made this document a few years ago about the Lancerian military (that likely requires a little bit of updating) for reference. I've hastily updated the navy to reflect the acquisition of a small portion of former Archegnum's Navy but the army sheet tab at the bottom is probably the one you might be interested in.

Yrkidding:

First sec-gen being Demescian is good by me.

I like the idea of standardisation in certain areas for sure. I think the best way to do this to allow for creative freedom that some people are interested in doing here is coordination on ammunition specifications and calibers. That way ammunition is standardised and nations as they come and go can still have their design freedom to use mostly unique military equipment and have it still fit within standardisation goals as long as it uses UMATCO ammo standards. Those countries that want to choose physically the same equipment as other nations would still be free to do so (and is what Lanceria is likely to be doing with the tank and service rifle). I'd like to pick a design that is either manufactured and used by a UMATCO nation or at least if elsewhere manufactured then used by a UMATCO nation or two.

I made this document a few years ago about the Lancerian military (that likely requires a little bit of updating) for reference. I've hastily updated the navy to reflect the acquisition of a small portion of former Archegnum's Navy but the army sheet tab at the bottom is probably the one you might be interested in.

Click to expand...

Firstly, that spreadsheet is a real neat idea - do you mind if I steal it? There's a lot of detail in that I haven't worked out for Haor Chall yet and it'd be a handy framework to use.

Agreed on standardisation. Common ammunition specifications seems like something which there'd be interest in doing, plus it makes sense to do. I think the point I tried to make above is that standardisation/interoperability covers a lot more than equipment but runs to things like doctrine, fuel standards, communications, etc - but I don't expect that we're going to actually write UMATCO doctrine (and I can't imagine anyone is going to write their own domestic doctrine either!) but from a world building perspective those are things we can talk about doing at quite a high level and then assume the detail is worked out in the background (e.g. so that if/when UMATCO nations actually deploy together, we can assume they have the commonality to operate together, as well as the standardisation on equipment, etc). Am I making sense?

Any thoughts on the senior military post?

Feel free to go ahead and copy it!

I forgot to mention interoperability but I agree with you there as well. We can RP that we created several sub-committees that would be coordinating these sorts of things and leave it at that and just assume that the committees are doing the work required to allow for coordinated UMATCO deployments.

I don't know that it matters exactly where the military head comes from, so long as we're not putting a known incompetent character in charge there. I think the military head could be from any nation, but I suppose odds are it would just be more likely to come from nations with larger militaries and therefore potentially broader command experience.

Apologies for my tardiness in replying.

Just going through the suggestions thus far - Coalition Council member for Naizerre will be Bompaku Bote, Defence Committee member is Luwi Baku. I'm fine with HQ in Demescia and first Sec-Gen a Demescian. The sub-committees just working in the background is how the META standardisation committee works so I'm not seeing an issue.

One thing to bring up in terms of equipment is METAnk and how this fits in with UMATCO - we can drop the silly AI from METAnk due to Trinster no longer existing at least - and maybe make a series of variants with the Haor Chall gun or even make that the main gun for the tank in a series of upgrades. As for equipment, I've never actually written out what Naizerre has and doctrine has never been more defined than "we issue infantry mortars on the squad level to make things go boom" so I can be pretty flexible in working things out.

Secretary of Defense Đuro Petar Radulović would be the representative from Mouxordia.

I agree with everything that you have laid out thus far. The RoMAF Thread is where you can find all of Mouxordia's shitass. I don't have a lot of the Naval gun specs worked out too much, so it's very flexible on what everyone else decides. For actual firearms, though, we use the NATO standardization of 7.62mm variants, pretty much all the way down to the national police level. The thread needs some updating since a lot of the accented letters and the table-formatting didn't survive the transition from the old forums, but the information is still there.

Thanks all for the replies, sorry haven't had much time lately but will get on it soon.

S'all good!

Coalition Council member for Lanceria will be Marie Lesterlin, Defence Committee member is Yves Fromion.

New post up y'all. Also, could you ideally let me know the ranks of the Defence Ctte member as well please, I'd like to put that into the thread

We also still need to decide on the senior military post (coalition commander). Thoughts?

Just FYI I've slightly preempted the discussion in the UMATCO thread with a post in "He's a pirate" - just so that we can keep up with the pace of events, hopefully no-one has an issue with that. I've also appointed a Charrian as the military head, mostly just so that I had a name to stick at the end of the statement (sorry)!