Quote Originally Posted by Peter Dow View Post
Machine-gun emplacements - the red and pink dots which encircle the base at a distance of about 6 miles or 10 kilometres from the edge of the central Base, represent static, armoured fortifications or "pillboxes" for one machine gun and its 3-man team of gunners. The spacing between adjacent pillboxes is about 333 metres or 333 yards.

The plan calls for one team of gunners per pillbox serving on base. The gunners are organised into 3 duty shifts of at least 8 hours and so normally only 1 in 3 of the pillboxes will be manned at any one time. The gunners spend their off-duty time in the central Base where their quarters are situated.

If, when and where the perimeter defences are attacked by the enemy, the off-duty gunners can be called back on emergency duty as required by their officers.
More on what I have in mind for the machine gun emplacements.

The plan calls for something much better than WW2 style pillboxes. We can do much better in this day and age.

There would be a minimum of 180 machine gun emplacements required by my plan.

I would hope that the budget for such an important high-value facility would stretch to maybe, for each,

  • a 25mm canon, which typically have a range out to 2.5 km / 1.5 miles with
  • a 12.7mm (0.5") or 7.62mm machine gun back-up.


Also I'd want the guns mounted into some kind of swivelling gun turret, with working parts like the gun turret on top of an infantry fighting vehicle maybe. In fact the cheapest option might be to buy off-the-shelf turrets which are already in mass production for vehicles like the Bradley IFV with some additional armour capped on top of it because it doesn't need to be light, just very strong against incoming mortar or artillery fire.





The one issue there might be with IVF turrets is that it really needs lower gun elevation than is standard for an IFV turret. IFV guns often don't dip below -10 degrees below the horizontal. That's not ideal because the gun turrets are going to be much higher off the ground than they would be in an IVF and ideally the gunners ought to be able to target the ground beneath them as well as the ground hundreds of metres away.

Naval ship mounted cannons tend to dip lower, down to -20 degrees and that would be better, but naval cannons are not usually well armoured for the gunner's protection.



They do come in remotely operated versions which is an interesting option to consider.