Imperial Logistics, Imperial Guard

[Mr Mystery]

Hiya! So something of a sister thread to the Chaos v Loyalist Supply v Demand thread, this time focussing on The Imperial Guard and it's labyrinthine structure.

And as with it's Chaotic counterpart, a quick caveat that what follows is opinion, not fact and as such is likely to be skewed to the sources I have read. It's intended to kick off the discussion, rather than some kind of central reference point :)

Kicking off? Following the Heresy, the entire Imperium was somewhat compartmentalise to prevent rebellion on the scale it just narrowly survived. Whilst the most commonly known aspect of this was the dissolution of the Legions, and the creation of smaller, self sufficient Chapters, it seems a lot less well known that such strokes were applied elsewhere.

The Imperial Army existed no more as a unified force. The Navy was split off from the Infantry, as were the Titan Legions.

This left the Imperial Guard with no independent method of shipping itself from Warzone to Warzone. It relied upon the cooperation of the Imperial Navy for warp capable travel, and seemingly in many, if not most instances, mass interplanetary transportation.

However, something did continue unchanged from the Golden Era of The Imperium, in that there was no standardisation of the newly named Imperial Guard and it's regiments. Some are able to fight as combined arms, with possibly the best known example being the Cadian regiments. They include Armoured Fist companies, Infantry Companies, Tank Companies and no small amount of auxilia troops. But this would seem to be very much the exception rather than the rule.

For instance, arguably the best known 'recent' regiment, Gaunts Ghosts. Light Infantry and Scouting were there fortes, with no serious armoured capability to speak of. Granted this may be due to their rather disastrous founding, but as a single regiment, they were footsloggers and sneaks. At the other end of the spectrum, and another well known regiment, Armageddon Steel Legions are predominantly, and by necessity of their homeworld, Armoured Infantry.

And due to the sheer scale of the Imperium and it's constituent worlds, every conceivable variation in between will exist somewhere. Even completely horse mounted cavalry regiments appear to exist, with a particularly famous Regiment hailing from Atilla.

So how is this organised? How exactly does the Imperium ensure the right regiment is assigned to the right theatre of war?

Well, in short....it isn't. At all. Not even remotely. The Administratum, in theory, holds records of each Regiment and it's organisation. But it's no more than a theory. The background is replete with tales of regiments being assigned the same name and heraldry due to an administrative error. Entire task forces have been lost in the warp, only to turn up centuries later. And that's just the fighting forces.

What of the theatres they are deployed to? Records there are sketchy at best too. So where a world may be down as a lush paradise planet, it may well have suffered some horrendous attack or natural disaster, and have been reduced to a deadworld, or worse, a Deathworld. As such, regiments utterly unsuited to it's topography might find themselves deployed there, and no doubt promptly wiped out by both enemy and environment.

Then we have good old human fallability. Even when by some miracle you get the right men in the right place with the right weapons at the right time, you may end up with some hereditary-entitled buffoon of an overseer in charge of the whole operation. If his home regiment has a particular set of skills, that's all he will see, and he will use all his resources in exactly the same way. Example? Lord-General Throatwarbler-Mangrove-Smith-Smythe-Smith (pronounced Luxury-Yacht), noted general of the XXI Chinless Idiot Heavy Infantry winds up in charge of the retaking of the Jungle planet 'We're all going to die in a variety of interesting but incredibly painful ways'. And the administratum sends him experienced jungle fighting Regiments, including the famed Catachan Devils.

Now, Lord-General Throatwarbler-Mangrove-Smith-Smythe-Smith (pronounced Luxury-Yacht) has a list of honours longer than en Elephants trunk, and knows how to fight a war. You put boots on the ground, dig a hole, shoot at the enemy for a bit, and then climb out of your hole, walk very slowly at the enemy, hope your blind-firing artillery (spotters are for sissies) hit the enemy and not your own troops most of the time, and give them a bit of the old bayonet, because as his family motto states 'They don't like it up 'em, and the best way to get it up 'em is You put boots on the ground, dig a hole, shoot at the enemy for a bit, and then climb out of your hole, walk very slowly at the enemy, hope your blind-firing artillery (spotters are for sissies) hit the enemy and not your own troops most of the time, and give them a bit of the old bayonet'

So he does just that.....and gets all his men wiped out in short order. Rather than you know, realise 'I have the best of the best, and they know what they're doing, so I shall delegate command'

What have we learned from this? For me, the Imperial Guard's one strength is that it can still function despite the shocking levels of incompetence and buearaucracy it encounters at every turn!

[Psychosplodge]

Example of administratum in action. The opening of fifteen hours.

[Denzark]

Once the Administratum cedes command of a situation (be it rebel continent, entire planet turned from the Emperor, whole system overrun by Daemons/Hrud whatever) it is down to the Commander of the highest echelon of the imperial forces allocated, to decide the breakdown of how the response works. This is quite well illustrated in GG - the forces are assigned on a basis such as sector, availability and then Macaroth/Slaydo sent what he had at his disposal that he felt would get the job done.

The initial start point from the formation as you see from GG, is not from the planet of founding more than once (usually). Ie they stand up a new regiment at home, they go to their first campaign, they are blooded and then move from the scene of their first fight, to the scene of the next. Which explains why in GG they reference occasionally, 'famous' ie codex guard units being in the AO.

This convoluted by the Warp as to who and where gets the astropathic call for help and/or resulting orders to respond.


Incidentally, logistics (lets say J4) is a matter for the departmento munitorum attached to that warzone on a pro rata basis as to whether it is an army or regiment or whatever, fighting. The plans process (lets say J5) is done by the HQ logicians and planners/advisers who draft the plans for the General who then authorises them (or otherwise).

[Mr Mystery]

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4541323575363287&w=242&h=111&c=7&rs=1&pid=1.7

[ToHitMod]

I'd always thought that the Munitorium was responsible for all resources of war, including human resources, so, although its up to the commanding of the Imperial Guard to determine the forces needed, he has to requisition the forces and supplies from the Munitorium, so, if the Warmaster or Solar or whatever thinks he'll need 15 infantry regiments, 2 Armoured Regiments and 2 Light Infantry Regiments, he has to get them through the Munitoruium and they'll supply what they can, which is how errors like labelling a light infantry scouting regiment as a Heavy Artillery Auxiliary unit happen

[Psychosplodge]

I'm amazed they don't occasionally modify the unit designation to Orks or Eldar or something...

[Katharon]

Incidentally, logistics (lets say J4) is a matter for the departmento munitorum attached to that warzone on a pro rata basis as to whether it is an army or regiment or whatever, fighting. The plans process (lets say J5) is done by the HQ logicians and planners/advisers who draft the plans for the General who then authorises them (or otherwise).

I agree. I'd even say that there is a higher level to the J4 that stands at segmentum level command. FLOWCHART TIME! (http://i.imgur.com/ehE9emt.jpg?1)

That's generally how it appears to operate. Note that that is only for the Imperial Guard -- not the Imperial Navy, Departo Munitorium or any other organization.

[Katharon]

I'd always thought that the Munitorium was responsible for all resources of war, including human resources, so, although its up to the commanding of the Imperial Guard to determine the forces needed, he has to requisition the forces and supplies from the Munitorium, so, if the Warmaster or Solar or whatever thinks he'll need 15 infantry regiments, 2 Armoured Regiments and 2 Light Infantry Regiments, he has to get them through the Munitoruium and they'll supply what they can, which is how errors like labelling a light infantry scouting regiment as a Heavy Artillery Auxiliary unit happen

Pretty close. They are indeed responsible for the supply and transport of war material (and recruitment if I'm not mistaken); but once a regiment is formed and operational, it'll slide into the Guard's command structure.

[This Dave]

There are two good examples of this in the Imperial Armour books. In the Taris Campaign they go through the whole organizing the invasion and all the various units they're able to pull for it. And the fact that some of the units only exist on paper or won't actually be available for the invasion but it looks good to have them. Then they proceed with the invasion and the commanders pretty much ignore the strengths of their troops and follow their own ideas. Like having a massive rolling artillery barrage in open desert. Landing walking Tallarn troops farther from their objectives than their water supplies would allow them to go. Air dropping an Elysian unit way behind Tau lines to take an absolutely vital objective and for some reason have Marines in tanks try to break through to them rather than also dropping the Marines in and slamming the tanks through. One fun insight into the Imperial mindset was when they were evacuating they loaded the vehicles and equipment first as that's harder to replace than the men.

The other good one is the first book of the Siege of Vraks trilogy which is a chilling insight into the Imperial way of war. When deciding if retaking the planet was doable the high command determined that it would take 10 years and cost (I believe) 5 million lives. This was deemed acceptable so they went through with the plans. I think it was finally deemed a success after 18 years and about three times the casualties, as well as the planet becoming an uninhabitable toxic hell.

[bfmusashi]

I don't know if the GG series can be used as an example of how the Imperial military works. Doesn't that crusade fall under the command of a Warmaster? It's a pretty big deal to name one as it grants control of all military assets in the crusade.

[Nabterayl]

Pretty close. They are indeed responsible for the supply and transport of war material (and recruitment if I'm not mistaken); but once a regiment is formed and operational, it'll slide into the Guard's command structure.
I'm still pretty sure that the "federal" army of the Imperium of Man (not to be confused with the Crusade-era Imperial Army) is the Departmento Munitorum, and the Imperial Guard is simply the name that people give to the combat troops. I imagine that Guardsmen tend to look down on the non-Guard soldiers, just like American combat troops look down on the non-combat troops (I like to imagine that in the 41st millennium, POG stands for "Personnel Other than Guard"). But non-Guard DM personnel are still soldiers as far as I can tell, even though they are not directly tasked with finding and engaging the enemy, just like most of our soldiers are not actually combat troops. This would explain why Only War speaks of things like support regiments, and why even the detailed regimental TO&Es we have from various sources include very, very little in the way of organic support elements. It would also account for the front-line integration of Departmento Munitorum personnel we see in some of the Ghosts novels.

[DWest]

Air dropping an Elysian unit way behind Tau lines to take an absolutely vital objective and for some reason have Marines in tanks try to break through to them rather than also dropping the Marines in and slamming the tanks through.
That's a direct take on Operation Market-Garden, a.k.a. "A Bridge Too Far" a WWII action in 1944 where the Allied forces tried the "airdrop first, then drive up to support them" move. Spoiler Alert: it did not go well.

[daboarder]

to be fair it wasn't a cluster because of the concept, it was because they lost trak of a fair bit o german armour

[This Dave]

That's a direct take on Operation Market-Garden, a.k.a. "A Bridge Too Far" a WWII action in 1944 where the Allied forces tried the "airdrop first, then drive up to support them" move. Spoiler Alert: it did not go well.

Well yes, but it still makes NO sense to drop lightly equipped troops by themselves with no support when you also have heavily equipped Marines that do that sort of thing for fun. And instead send said Marines in an armored thrust when their tanks are lighter armored and have shorter ranged weapons than the Guard armored regiments. Especially when the reasoning is that the Guard tanks are being out ranged in the first place.

The difference between this and Market Garden is that the Allies only had one kind of mobile troops and were all equipped basically the same so they didn't have any choice in what to send. The armored thrust got stalled because they only had one real avenue of advance so were stopped completely every time they were engaged. And the Germans had a Panzer unit the Allies didn't have any clue about. It wasn't an awful plan, it just went wrong. The Operation Comet from Taros was both badly planned and badly executed.

I'd like to think is the operation was done right it would have been more like the Operation Pegasus relief of Kae Sahn during Vietnam. Heavily equipped troops holding a position against overwhelming numbers with incredible support and an armored punch cutting through them to lift the siege and reinforce the position.

[daboarder]

sure it does, its a question of expendabillity.

the imperium can afford to drop a couple of thousand IG into an area to secure it early, if they get cut off and eliminated then the operation fails with few major losses.

They drop a 100 space marines in there and suddenly they have to ensure that teh marines aren not cut off surrounded and exterminated.

Its a high risk, moderate reward mission so you send troops that are capable of pulling it off, but you don't waste your best men.

And thats before we get into the issue of field command and the way space marine and IG forces integrate.

edit: on another note its khe sanh....love that song

[Baneblade]

Example of administratum in action. The opening of fifteen hours.

Fifteen Hours is a great novel. It is basically All Quite on the Western Front in 40k. Far more bleak than the current batch of novels being released, and tragic in the end.

[Katharon]

The other good one is the first book of the Siege of Vraks trilogy which is a chilling insight into the Imperial way of war. When deciding if retaking the planet was doable the high command determined that it would take 10 years and cost (I believe) 5 million lives. This was deemed acceptable so they went through with the plans. I think it was finally deemed a success after 18 years and about three times the casualties, as well as the planet becoming an uninhabitable toxic hell.

That would be the Death Korps way of war, not the Imperium as a whole.

[Katharon]

to be fair it wasn't a cluster because of the concept, it was because they lost trak of a fair bit o german armour

It was oh-so-much-more than that, by Emperor! I can post my junior-year essay for ROTC Operational Studies that I did focusing on that particular operation if you want.

[Katharon]

Fifteen Hours is a great novel. It is basically All Quite on the Western Front in 40k. Far more bleak than the current batch of novels being released, and tragic in the end.

You want bleak and tragic, try reading "Imperial Glory" by Richard Williams. That one just hits you hard...

[daboarder]

It was oh-so-much-more than that, by Emperor! I can post my junior-year essay for ROTC Operational Studies that I did focusing on that particular operation if you want.

why not, send em via PM

[Katharon]

why not, send em via PM

I might just place it down in the Historical/Random section of the forums. Wouldn't mind getting more than a single opinion of my conjecture and conclusion. I'll PM you a link once I get off work and manage to post it.

PS - always save your college essays and papers. You never know when you might need them, especially if they are interesting.

[Denzark]

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4541323575363287&w=242&h=111&c=7&rs=1&pid=1.7

Yeah sorry, a bit of military pedantry here. The (NATO don't know what everyone else does) military splits command functions down into various functional groups numbered 1-9.

The number for logistics/supply is J4. The number for planning is J5.

So what I was digging in a long winded way, is that if your question is about physically how the troops get somewhere either from founding planet or site of last conflict, to the new conflict - then that is a matter of logistics. If your question relates to the process by which they throw a light recce regiment such as the ghosts, into a defensive meat grinder, that is a matter of plans not logistics.

Logistics is departmento munitorum business. The planning is local commander business once his force is assembled from all the disparate elements that may be allocated.

If one was to ask 'why does the imperium send an unsuited regiment into a warzone' then I expect the answer would lie in the fact that there is a basic standard of guardsman which is universal - ie he comes with a lasgun, boots, flak armour and helmet. As such they just send a regiment expecting that - the fact it is from a desert planet or are scouting experts - is just happenstance. As long as they can hold the line and shoot straight, that is all that is required.

[This Dave]

sure it does, its a question of expendabillity.

the imperium can afford to drop a couple of thousand IG into an area to secure it early, if they get cut off and eliminated then the operation fails with few major losses.

They drop a 100 space marines in there and suddenly they have to ensure that teh marines aren not cut off surrounded and exterminated.

Its a high risk, moderate reward mission so you send troops that are capable of pulling it off, but you don't waste your best men.

And thats before we get into the issue of field command and the way space marine and IG forces integrate.

edit: on another note its khe sanh....love that song

If it was just an objective it would make sense. But in the book this is THE objective. Due to the other bits of incompetence by the REMFs (Rear Echelon Mother Fers) the entire invasion force was running out of water. They did not have enough water for the men to survive crossing the desert to reach the capital and this station was the only source of it. Even the book says it must be taken and held.

So, considering if this objective is not taken you lose the entire campaign do you throw a unit of lightly equipped Guardsmen into it and tell them to hold while they send weak relief forces in? Or do you throw said Guardsmen reinforced by heavily equipped Marines into it, support them not only with your dwindling air assets but with orbital strikes by your fleet and slam an entire armored regiment into relieving the siege on it?

If nothing else once they had the water supply they could consolidate and recover and maybe get more reinforcements and supplies in. By failing to accomplish this they lost the entire campaign.

[This Dave]

That would be the Death Korps way of war, not the Imperium as a whole.

The Death Korps were the ones best suited for that particular campaign as they have no problem absorbing losses and maintaining a siege, both of which was required for that campaign. I have no doubt the Imperial way of planning war is similar. Step 1: do we want to take this or need to defend it? Step 2: do we have the resources available? Step 3: if both are yes then send it all. And send more if/when the first batch is destroyed.

Remember the line "the moment you have lost is the moment you start to count the cost."

[Nabterayl]

Well yes, but it still makes NO sense to drop lightly equipped troops by themselves with no support when you also have heavily equipped Marines that do that sort of thing for fun. And instead send said Marines in an armored thrust when their tanks are lighter armored and have shorter ranged weapons than the Guard armored regiments. Especially when the reasoning is that the Guard tanks are being out ranged in the first place.

The difference between this and Market Garden is that the Allies only had one kind of mobile troops and were all equipped basically the same so they didn't have any choice in what to send. The armored thrust got stalled because they only had one real avenue of advance so were stopped completely every time they were engaged. And the Germans had a Panzer unit the Allies didn't have any clue about. It wasn't an awful plan, it just went wrong. The Operation Comet from Taros was both badly planned and badly executed.

I'd like to think is the operation was done right it would have been more like the Operation Pegasus relief of Kae Sahn during Vietnam. Heavily equipped troops holding a position against overwhelming numbers with incredible support and an armored punch cutting through them to lift the siege and reinforce the position.
I don't know that I agree with this. Space marine armor and Warhounds are significantly more mobile than the Guard armored forces available at the time, so I don't think it's fair to say that they could have rustled up a bunch of Leman Russes to do the same job. And a company of space marines has significantly less combat power for sustained operations than a regiment of drop troops, as the Imperial Armour series in general has been at pains to point out (whether one agrees with that depiction of space marine power or not - though personally, I do).

What they might have done is drop the space marines with the Elysians. But that would have left no relief force except for a couple of Warhounds. The whole point of using the Elysians, after all, was that the other Guard units weren't going to be able to reach the pumping station before the water supplies ran out, so they were too far away (given their mobility) to reinforce the force that took the pumping station. Space marines wouldn't be able to take and hold it by themselves, so you had to send the Elysians either way. Then the question is simply whether it's best to

Drop the Elysians, wait for them to be surrounded, and hit the encircling forces from behind using everything you've got that's fast enough to make the trip (i.e., a couple of Warhounds and the space marines), or
Drop the Elysians and the space marines, wait for them to be surrounded, and hit the encircling forces from behind using a couple of Warhounds only.
It's not clear to me that #2 is the better option. After all, space marines operate best when on the offensive. Getting pinned to an objective by superior enemy force is exactly what their entire doctrine is set up to avoid. And even if #2 was the best idea for the operation as a whole, why would the Raptor commander agree to it at the expense of getting his force eviscerated? As IA3 is also at pains to point out, every time the Guard wants to use "its" space marine assets, it has to convince the local force commander that their plan is a good one - from his perspective.

[Nabterayl]

If one was to ask 'why does the imperium send an unsuited regiment into a warzone' then I expect the answer would lie in the fact that there is a basic standard of guardsman which is universal - ie he comes with a lasgun, boots, flak armour and helmet. As such they just send a regiment expecting that - the fact it is from a desert planet or are scouting experts - is just happenstance. As long as they can hold the line and shoot straight, that is all that is required.
I think, along with that, the lore seems pretty consistent that there are never enough Guardsmen to go around. Whether the problem is because of bad paperwork filing, an uncooperative Navy starving the Guard of transport capacity, a strategic deployment that can't respond fast enough to the crisis at hand, the vagaries of warp travel, or whatever, the DM doesn't actually have an unlimited supply of Guard regiments of every type in every timeframe. So it could be that you get a desert regiment instead of an urban one because there weren't enough urban regiments to go around in the relevant timeframe, and somebody had to be left with unsuitable troops.

[This Dave]

I don't know that I agree with this. Space marine armor and Warhounds are significantly more mobile than the Guard armored forces available at the time, so I don't think it's fair to say that they could have rustled up a bunch of Leman Russes to do the same job. And a company of space marines has significantly less combat power for sustained operations than a regiment of drop troops, as the Imperial Armour series in general has been at pains to point out (whether one agrees with that depiction of space marine power or not - though personally, I do).

What they might have done is drop the space marines with the Elysians. But that would have left no relief force except for a couple of Warhounds. The whole point of using the Elysians, after all, was that the other Guard units weren't going to be able to reach the pumping station before the water supplies ran out, so they were too far away (given their mobility) to reinforce the force that took the pumping station. Space marines wouldn't be able to take and hold it by themselves, so you had to send the Elysians either way. Then the question is simply whether it's best to

Drop the Elysians, wait for them to be surrounded, and hit the encircling forces from behind using everything you've got that's fast enough to make the trip (i.e., a couple of Warhounds and the space marines), or
Drop the Elysians and the space marines, wait for them to be surrounded, and hit the encircling forces from behind using a couple of Warhounds only.
It's not clear to me that #2 is the better option. After all, space marines operate best when on the offensive. Getting pinned to an objective by superior enemy force is exactly what their entire doctrine is set up to avoid. And even if #2 was the best idea for the operation as a whole, why would the Raptor commander agree to it at the expense of getting his force eviscerated? As IA3 is also at pains to point out, every time the Guard wants to use "its" space marine assets, it has to convince the local force commander that their plan is a good one - from his perspective.

If I'm remembering right (I really shouldn't keep posting from work :) ) by this point in the battle the Warhounds had run away because the Tau shot one of them with their new AX-10 bombers so those weren't even available. The mobile relief force they send was a mechanized Cadian infantry regiment that kept getting bogged down every time something would get engaged. So they sent the Marine tanks in to do the breakthrough after a couple days and by the time they got there the Elysians had been wiped out.

The sticking point I have with this is that they sent the Space Marine tanks to force a breakthrough. Tanks which while faster than Leman Russes are totally unsuited to the open desert long range warfare they had to do. I mean, they even say several times the Tau were outranking the Guard armor (even though in game terms they have identical ranges) but somehow a bunch of tanks with weapons with 2/3 the range of the Guard tanks and with arguably less anti armor capability would do the trick?

And while the Marine tanks are going in what was the Marine infantry doing? They couldn't spare a squad or two to shore things up on the vital objective? Or is you're going to use only the Marine armor be more decisive. Send it in at the start to keep the relief force moving instead of having to bail them out halfway.

I know it's just fiction but that's been a gripe of mine since the first printing of that book. It's fine GW wanted the Imperium to lose but the commanders were written as such REMFs making such bad decisions it just took me out of it.

[SquigBrain]

If I'm remembering right (I really shouldn't keep posting from work :) ) by this point in the battle the Warhounds had run away because the Tau shot one of them with their new AX-10 bombers so those weren't even available. The mobile relief force they send was a mechanized Cadian infantry regiment that kept getting bogged down every time something would get engaged. So they sent the Marine tanks in to do the breakthrough after a couple days and by the time they got there the Elysians had been wiped out.

The sticking point I have with this is that they sent the Space Marine tanks to force a breakthrough. Tanks which while faster than Leman Russes are totally unsuited to the open desert long range warfare they had to do. I mean, they even say several times the Tau were outranking the Guard armor (even though in game terms they have identical ranges) but somehow a bunch of tanks with weapons with 2/3 the range of the Guard tanks and with arguably less anti armor capability would do the trick?

And while the Marine tanks are going in what was the Marine infantry doing? They couldn't spare a squad or two to shore things up on the vital objective? Or is you're going to use only the Marine armor be more decisive. Send it in at the start to keep the relief force moving instead of having to bail them out halfway.

I know it's just fiction but that's been a gripe of mine since the first printing of that book. It's fine GW wanted the Imperium to lose but the commanders were written as such REMFs making such bad decisions it just took me out of it.

For every Macharius, there are a thousand General Melchetts.

[This Dave]

For every Macharius, there are a thousand General Melchetts.

I can't argue with that. :)

[daboarder]

Even worse. ...there are the haigs

[Denzark]

Yeah funny thing is everyone forgets Haig's excellent piece of manoeuvre warfare defeating the German 1918 campaign, his unleashing of tanks at Cambrai. The fact the French wanted him to stay on after the Somme.

[This Dave]

Yeah funny thing is everyone forgets Haig's excellent piece of manoeuvre warfare defeating the German 1918 campaign, his unleashing of tanks at Cambrai. The fact the French wanted him to stay on after the Somme.

Yeah Haig would have been a good 19th century general. Unfortunately he was fighting a 20th century industrialized war. His strategy and tactics weren't so much bad as they were outdated and unimaginative. Kind of like the American Civil War generals that were using perfectly good Napoleonic tactics, unfortunately they were dealing with a totally different kind of war.

To get back to the subject maybe that's why the Imperium's war leaders seem to succeed despite themselves. Since war in the 40k universe seems to not to have changed much in 10,000 years the same old strategies and tactics still work.

[SuperDann]

To get back to the subject maybe that's why the Imperium's war leaders seem to succeed despite themselves. Since war in the 40k universe seems to not to have changed much in 10,000 years the same old strategies and tactics still work.

Or at least they work if you throw enough men into it.

I like how in the grim, dark future success is measured in enemy fatalities, not friendly casualties. It's quite easy to relate to when compared to playing a RTS game - I have no particular concern for each individually rendered soldier I command, only for the battle over all. I've had an idea for a while of a story contrasting the experience of war of a Lord Militant General and lowly Sergeant, and this thread is fuelling those ideas for me. Thanks, guys.

[Nabterayl]

Along the lines of different tactics and being the right general for a different war, I think sometimes the sheer number of opponents the Guard faces doesn't get enough attention. The tactics that work against Chaos marines wouldn't work against tyranids wouldn't work against Tau, etc.. Best practices against one foe might be suicidal against another.

I know it's easy to think that generals and men would adapt, but I don't think it would be that easy in real life. If you've spent the last ten years massing lasguns and ammunition to mow down tyranids like grass, that's probably going to influence your fighting in bad ways when you get pulled out of theater and told to go fight a modern army of heretics, even if you appreciate that soldiers and tyranids fight in totally different ways.

[Eldar_Atog]

I know it's easy to think that generals and men would adapt, but I don't think it would be that easy in real life. If you've spent the last ten years massing lasguns and ammunition to mow down tyranids like grass, that's probably going to influence your fighting in bad ways when you get pulled out of theater and told to go fight a modern army of heretics, even if you appreciate that soldiers and tyranids fight in totally different ways.

It's not easy at all. You can take the American civil war as an example. Almost all the generals and officers had spent years learning and applying Napoleonic (Jomini) tactics and then the technology leap frogged the tactics right before the war started. That's why you see so many battles with such high casualty rates. The soliders would be massed and then forced marched in hopes of breaking the enemy's line. Instead, the range/accuracy of the guns made these type of tactics almost impossible.

[Nabterayl]

The very example I was thinking of. And it would be even harder if you sometimes had to fight enemies against whom those tactics actually did work, then fight enemies against whom they did not, then fight enemies against whom they worked but only sort of ...

[Gideus]

Just my two cents, but I think the best example of the way record keeping works in the IG is in the 5th ed IG codex where it states "in 927.41 the armored siege units of the Hammeront IV are wiped out...but the Munitorum doesn't get the message and in 929.41 the Hammeront IV are assigned to liberate the Abraxis Citadel...then in 931.41 they charge the Hammeront IV with desertion and posthumously sentence them to death"

[Chris22]

I always thought the fluff made the IG and the Munitorium too incompetent and the warp too powerful and unpredictable. If the Munitorium assigned the wrong regiment to the wrong warzone that many times and the warp swallowed all those war vessels and troops the IG would be destroyed.

It's kinda like how too many space marines die in the books. If it truly takes years to make a space marine and they only get a few dozen recruits per year and most of those die in training, and a company gets twenty or more marines killed every fight; the chapter would go extinct in less than a year. Really, marines die far too quickly and easily in the literature.

[Aaron LeClair]

There are two good examples of this in the Imperial Armour books. In the Taris Campaign they go through the whole organizing the invasion and all the various units they're able to pull for it. And the fact that some of the units only exist on paper or won't actually be available for the invasion but it looks good to have them. Then they proceed with the invasion and the commanders pretty much ignore the strengths of their troops and follow their own ideas. Like having a massive rolling artillery barrage in open desert. Landing walking Tallarn troops farther from their objectives than their water supplies would allow them to go. Air dropping an Elysian unit way behind Tau lines to take an absolutely vital objective and for some reason have Marines in tanks try to break through to them rather than also dropping the Marines in and slamming the tanks through. One fun insight into the Imperial mindset was when they were evacuating they loaded the vehicles and equipment first as that's harder to replace than the men.

The other good one is the first book of the Siege of Vraks trilogy which is a chilling insight into the Imperial way of war. When deciding if retaking the planet was doable the high command determined that it would take 10 years and cost (I believe) 5 million lives. This was deemed acceptable so they went through with the plans. I think it was finally deemed a success after 18 years and about three times the casualties, as well as the planet becoming an uninhabitable toxic hell.

Having Space Marines attack a main defeance line isn't a bad idea to pull enemy forces away from a object you are gonna send more squishy troops after.

[This Dave]

The very example I was thinking of. And it would be even harder if you sometimes had to fight enemies against whom those tactics actually did work, then fight enemies against whom they did not, then fight enemies against whom they worked but only sort of ...

I haven't seen it mentioned in the fluff lately but the Guard (or at least the Schola Progenium) has a huge, multi-volume tome called the Tactica Imperialis. It's kind of like the Codex Astartes in that it's supposed to contain strategy and tactics for any contingency. It's also supposed to have been annotated by successful Lords Militant and such over the millennia for new threats and such. So it probably has a volume or two on the Tau, Necrons, and Tyranid by now.

It comes down to how set in their ways the commanders are. In the ACW (and every war actually) the poor generals kept trying the same tactics over and over even though they weren't working simply because that's what they knew. The most successful generals were the ones that adapted to the new reality of the war.

An old adage is that generals are always prepared to fight the last war. In the Imperium's case they're still fighting the same war.

[Nabterayl]

I haven't seen it mentioned in the fluff lately but the Guard (or at least the Schola Progenium) has a huge, multi-volume tome called the Tactica Imperialis. It's kind of like the Codex Astartes in that it's supposed to contain strategy and tactics for any contingency. It's also supposed to have been annotated by successful Lords Militant and such over the millennia for new threats and such. So it probably has a volume or two on the Tau, Necrons, and Tyranid by now.

It comes down to how set in their ways the commanders are. In the ACW (and every war actually) the poor generals kept trying the same tactics over and over even though they weren't working simply because that's what they knew. The most successful generals were the ones that adapted to the new reality of the war.
I think this is all spot on. The Imperial Guard as a whole is quite sophisticated in terms of the sum total of its institutional knowledge, in my view - the problem lies in finding people who can apply it intelligently and with the proper flexibility.

[This Dave]

I think this is all spot on. The Imperial Guard as a whole is quite sophisticated in terms of the sum total of its institutional knowledge, in my view - the problem lies in finding people who can apply it intelligently and with the proper flexibility.

That's also another problem the Guard has in that each planet's regiment is a law unto itself regarding ranks and promotions and such. There don't seem to be a lot of standards in place. So while the Lord Militant of a particular army might be a Schola Progenium trained military expert the REMF in charge of the forces from a particular planet might only have his position because he's the forth son of the Planetary Governor. So his strategy and tactics to carry out the Lord Militant's orders might be a bit on the derpy side.