Fleet Organizations and other Military numbers

[KawangaKid]

I'm planning my Terran Empire campaign set in the Frontier area, using a Dreadnaught as the "main base" that the characters are sent out from. Trying to figure out how many people would go on a big dreadnaught-type ship, and a basis of company and squad organizations for the Navy folks and Marines.

 

Good resource page?

[Victor]

TO&E's (Tables of Organization and Equipment) are pretty easy to find on the net for Army/Marine forces, but the Navy tends to focus on groups of ships rather than personell, making such info scarce.

 

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/unit/index.html

doesn't give many numbers, but might give you a better feel for how the crews might be organized.

[Chuckg]

According to the "Spacer's Toolkit", a Terran Empire _Apocalypse_-class super-dreadnaught has a crew of approximately 800.

 

From my own Navy experience, ships are broken up into "departments", which are then further sub-divided into "divisions".

 

Example -- On board my old ship (which had a crew of about 200), Engineering Department consistent of 'M Division' (the machinist's mates, who operated and maintained all parts of the engine except the boiler', 'B Division' (the boiler techs), 'A Division' (who did maintenance for all auxiliary equipment on the ship, such as air conditioning, fire pumps, water mains, etc.), and 'H division' (the hull techs, welders, and damage control guys).

 

On board a starship, of course, the divisions would be different to reflect the different technology -- Engineering Department would probably be subdivided into divisions like Main Drive, Damage Control, Life Support/Environmental, Auxiliary, etc.

 

Likwise, there would be an Operations Department, subdivided into Sensors (including both the techs who maintain and repair the systems and the guys in CIC who watch the scopes), Communications, Weapons, etc.

 

Different space navies would do it different ways. For example, David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series uses ships that divide up into Engineering, Tactical, Astrogation, Deck, and Flight Operations (small craft / fighters) departments.

 

But the general organization of departments (run by senior officers) and divisions (run by junior officers or very senior enlisted) remains.

 

It also customary to have one big, old, crusty, 30-year-lifer seniormost enlisted man walking around whom all non-commissioned personal regard with fear and awe, and to whose advice officers listen with respect even though they outrank him, and to whom even the captain turns towards for advice and information as to what's going on 'below decks', so to speak -- the Command Master Chief. *g* (You ever seen "We Were Soldiers"? You remember Sergeant-Major Plumley? Well, the Navy's got him too.)

[CorpCommander]

Why have much crew at all?

 

One could point to the rapidly decreasing number of crew needed for military vehicles and postulate that big dreadnoughts only have a small crew of humans.

 

Look at the B17 vs the F15. F15 is faster, carries 4 times the payload and has 1/11th the crew!

 

Just an idea.

 

Pete

[Chuckg]

True, he can assume that the Terran Empire has made new strides in automation...

 

... however, the crew figure of 800 that I listed is what's given as the canon figure ("Spacer's Toolkit") for a Terran Empire superdreadnought. So if he wants to know what the crew size for one of those is, it's 800.

 

As a comparision, a _Nimitz_-class aircraft carrier today -- which is much smaller than an _Apocalypse_-class Terran Empire SD -- has a complement of approximately 3000 crew for the ship's company and 1800-2400 more in the air wing, so we can see that the automation improvements you refer to are already in extensive use.

[CorpCommander]

Good points

 

Originally posted by Chuckg

As a comparision, a _Nimitz_-class aircraft carrier today -- which is much smaller than an _Apocalypse_-class Terran Empire SD -- has a complement of approximately 3000 crew for the ship's company and 1800-2400 more in the air wing, so we can see that the automation improvements you refer to are already in extensive use.

 

Good points both! There are just some thing a large crew can do that automation can't. Like the Russians say: Quantity has a Quality all its own.

 

Pete

[Starwolf]

Corp Commander said:

Look at the B17 vs the F15. F15 is faster, carries 4 times the payload and has 1/11th the crew!

 

Uh...this is like comparing apples to oranges. The B17 is a bomber hence the B designator, while the F15 is a fighter (there are both single seat and twin seat versions). A more apt comparison would be the B17 and the B1. Or you could compare the F15 to the F14 or YF22.

 

As for ship organization if you go to http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/ you can get the official release information on all of the Navys ships. inculding links to pictures, ship specs, crews, weapons, costs, etc.

 

As mentioned before each ship is broken down into departments and divisions.

 

Operations Dept: Mans and operates the bridge, navigation, CIC, Intel, etc.

 

Deck Dept: Manages ships boats, provides general maintenance, fire fighting, damage control, etc.

 

Engineering Dept: Manages ships engines and power systems.

 

Weapons Dept: Manages ships weapons magazines, maintains & operates ships weapons, oversees ships weapons lockers, conduct weapons training for other dept personnel.

 

Supply Dept: operates galleys, ships laundry, ships stores, barber shops, orders and stores ships supplies and parts, manages payroll and ship finances.

 

Admin Dept: Manages ships personnel files, including transfers, re-enlistments, and discharges. Also includes the ships legal division (including the ships master at arms or security division)

 

Medical Dept: Maintains medical and dental divisions.

 

Ships may also include

a Marine Detachment (Mardet): Responsible for ships security versus outside forces (repel boarding parties, guard critical areas of the ship like magazines, CIC, the bridge, etc), Provide guard duties for the CO, and the Brig.

 

a Seal Team: Performs SPECOPS for the ship as required by mission profile (these teams are usually only assigned to amphib ships, carriers, or submarines, though on rare occasions they have deployed from destroyers or cruisers).

 

an Air Wing: Includes Fighters, Bombers, Recon, C&C, Fuelers, Patrol, Rescue, and Logistic aircraft.

 

I hope this helps.....It gets a lot more technical, but this is a genral overview. I learned all of this while becoming a qualifed Enlisted AirWarfare Specialist during my 20 years of active duty in the Navy.

[Starwolf]

A typical carrier strike group makeup is listed at:

 

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/carriers/powerhouse/cvbg.html

 

The Navy Currently has 6 Fleets, each fleet has 3 such strike groups, plus numerous ships on independent duty, and organized into other types of task groups. The total number of US Navy combat ships is about 500. The fleets are divided between coasts (3 on each coast), and usually have 1 fleet deployed, 1 in workup getting ready to deploy, and 1 in repair cycle. Of course during times of crisis this ration can change very rapidly. In addition there are close to a thousand ships in mothball including Battleships, old carriers, destroyers, cruiser, frigates, supply ships, etc.

[CorpCommander]

Originally posted by Starwolf

Uh...this is like comparing apples to oranges. The B17 is a bomber hence the B designator, while the F15 is a fighter (there are both single seat and twin seat versions). A more apt comparison would be the B17 and the B1. Or you could compare the F15 to the F14 or YF22.

 

Have you ever seen an F15? The thing has ordenance points all over it! It is a multi-role fighter. It is more apt to compare the F-15 to the B17 than the F-15 to the P-51.

 

I am not the first to make this comparison. Check out James Dunnigan's book "Digital Soldiers: The Evolution of High-Tech Weaponry and Tomorrow's Brave New Battlefield." Its not unusual for roles to evolve over time for equipment so don't get hung up on the "F". The B1 is more akin to the B-29 or B-37 than the B17 as far as strategic boming goes.

[KawangaKid]

big Heap of Thanks

 

The first link was useful, but the table that they chose to represent the 'organizational structure' was a wee bit confusing.

 

However, I am likening the ship my characters are based on to an aircraft carrier, so these pages do help.

 

I was just reminded of Final Countdown by this analogy, and wondered what it'd be like to bring one of these babies in to turn the tide during the Alien Wars.

[Toadmaster]

Automation could radically alter crew size. Depending on the quality, robots could do many of the traditional human crews task further reducing the crew size. On the otherhand crews often have built in redundancy, 1 guy could probably operate a futuristic dreadnaught but when things start failing he is going to be really overworked. The ship from Aliens is another example of why its good to have a crew instead of automation, when the Aliens started tearing up the marines there was no one on board to say, "hey, we haven't heard from those guys for awhile".

 

Personnally I'd just wing it, put a couple hundred crew on board, this makes the crew large enough that the PC's will not know everybody, provides plenty of red shirts and a pool to add new or replacement PCs from, it is also small enough that the PC's probably are important (middle management), if the crew is huge the command will probably have a high rank and be far removed from the PC's (if the PC's were the command they would never get to adventure Startrek excepted), with a smaller crew the PC's can fit in to the command structure (be included in decisions) and adventure without being to unrealistic) probably being lower ranking officers and senior enlisted ranks.