OOC: As someone that has been in Beluzia for so long now, I can tell you that these numbers are ridiculous.
First the raw numbers; in foot soldiers alone, 7,000,000 is slightly over 7% of the total population, combined with, assuming 3 men a tank for 250k tanks is another 750k manpower in tank crews alone. Then there's 25k aircraft, 25k manpower if we are assuming all of them are single piloted and the 70k manpower from 35k helicopters if you put only a pilot and co-pilot in each. Then there's the 50k arty, which, basing it off of the U.S. M119 howitzer from the 90s (where I'd place our military tech from our funding history) has a minimum 5 person crew, adding 250k more soldiers. Finally, there's 90,500 transport vehicles, which if we put 3 crew members in each is 285,000 more troops. In total, the ground and air support part of the Beluzian military would make 8,380,000 personnel. That's not including any additional crew in the vehicles and the maintenance personnel for the massive number of equipment, plus medical staff and other non-combatants employed only in the GROUND OPERATION. The lowest estimate I can give is around 8.5 million people employed only in the Beluzian Ground and Air forces, as outlined. Even as a total military force, that's approximately 8.7% of the nation's population, and I'm assuming we haven't called in reserves. As a contrast, the most expensive IRL military in the world, the U.S, has only .44% of it's population in the armed forces according to a google search.
Not only is the number ridiculous, but so is the cost of the ground operation. The total cost of the operation was put at 35,000,000 BEL. Once again, using the U.S. 1.4 million man military as a comparison, according to the Department of Defense's requested numbers, they will use $582.7 billion(
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Relea ... t-proposal). Now, since this is what President Obama requested in Feb. 2016, the numbers could be different, but this is a good baseline. Now, subtracting the navy's budget, we are left with $417.8 billion for the land, air, and home defense forces.Then, let's multiply that by a simple number, 5, to account for the added troops, and we come out to a grand total of
at least $2.089 trillion a year for operating costs. Now, unless the BEL is the world's strongest currency by miles or the Beluzian army is armed with sticks, cloth, and wooden planes dropping rocks like a bunch of Ewoks, I don't think we have the money to support just the ground and air operations. Don't even get me started on how over 200k ships, including 45k aircraft carriers, would drain the manpower reserves and cost way more than 10,000,000,000 BEL. I don't think we could operate a single carrier with a total defense budget of only 12.9 billion BEL, let alone 45 thousand. How in anyone's right mind is it possible to operate armed forces that even Dick Cheney would call a little excessive, with a budget so small that 9 other programs exceed it in funding? How do we have an army this large with a government that is historically dominated by pacifists and has not raised the budget for the military at least since I came back to Beluzia in the early 4130s?
I'm sorry if I sound so hostile but the proposed numbers are so ludicrous that it's practically an embarrassment that they were even proposed. Not to mention that we are blatantly disregarding several treaties by supporting Ardinia, including a de-facto non-aggression pact and alliance in the form of the League of Nations with Rutania. Overall, it looks like some players in my nation have no clue what reasonable RP is and appear to not want to bother to fix it. I get that we all want to enjoy ourselves here, but being this ridiculous ruins the spirit and fun of it for everyone else. I apologize on behalf of the players of Beluzia for the blatant disregard of common sense that some have shown and I hope that we can create a sensible RP in the future. There is a great potential for fun, among it being a League of Nations signatory(
http://classic.particracy.net/viewtreat ... atyid=3551) attacking another one; furthermore a conflict that appears to be developing similarly to Syria is interesting. It's just that it doesn't help us and everyone at large when people that seem to have no idea what they are doing start making idiots of themselves by proposing such insanity.
Finally, I'd like to affirm that we do not have a military that is larger than that of the, to use Axxell's comparison, Galactic Empire's military in the height of the Galactic Civil War. I think we should have some form of discussion, as players in Beluzia, on the size of our armed forces. I hope you enjoyed my mindless ranting, because I have a paper to write. I hope we can all come to our senses and enjoy ourselves.