Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm looking through the Deathwatch rulebooks, and there is a page where it talks about how the tooth to tail ratio is less than 1 combat personnel to every 5 non-frontline soldier. Taking into account that this is talking about the Jericho Reach, is the 1-5 ratio likely to hold up for non-Jericho Reach military operations?



"At the outset of the Crusade, approximately one billion Guardsmen were assigned to front line combat duties [---] and by the time the true extent of the enemy presence around the Hadex Anomaly was discovered, an estimated four billion Imperial Guardsmen were deployed in operational front line service—and remember, these represented but one fifth of total manpower deployed to the Reach."

"The Officio Munitorum’s best estimates suggest that with the committing of the theatre reserves formally held back by Lord Militant Achilus as many as six billion troops may be operational."

"By way of an example, consider the numbers of Imperial Guardsmen serving in regiments assigned to the Crusade’s combat arms, bearing in mind that these represent less than twenty percent of the total commitment, the remainder serving in combat support, internal security, occupation, reserve, lines of communication and rear echelon roles."


"Other materiel, from lasgun power packs to orbital defence batteries, is produced across dozens of sectors according to an impossibly complex requisitioning system involving an army of scribes almost as large as the crusade itself."

This isn't a straightforward question, because the Imperial Guard is deliberately restricted in logistical capacity to minimise rebellions. Most of their logistics are carried out by other organisations. The main responsible body is the Departmento Munitorum, but they are more of a bureaucratic institution that directs others to actually lug the material around. This is where most of the army of scribes are found.

Most regiments include some organic logistics capacity, and apparently typically have twice the required officer complement with the excess being seconded to the Departmento Munitorum for logistics.

The Departmento Munitorum also has its own labour corps, typically drawn from penal worlds- these are noted as engineer, pioneer, or labour corps, and do stuff like dig fortifications and lay logistic lines of communication like railways. They seem to be primarily intended to construct and maintain military infrastructure but I'm sure some are involved in loading and unloading and driving vehicles. I think these units are particularly important for offensive operations on hostile worlds like during the Siege of Vraks, for reasons that will become clearer. Vraks itself was an entire arsenal world manned by such units for the purposes of storing and supplying war materiel.

Beyond that, the majority of Imperial Guard supply appears to be carried out by two groups. Firstly is the Merchant Marine of the Imperial Navy and other starfaring vessels chartered for the task- they will necessarily do the loading of gear from the source planet or stockpile to the spaceship, transport it to the destination world, and unload it at some kind of beachhead or starport. This will likely play a particularly large role for campaigns on hostile or poorly-developed worlds where local resupply is limited.

Secondly, the logistics systems of Imperial planets are co-opted fully into the Imperial war effort when appropriate. If defending a friendly world, logistics will be mainly provided by planetary defense force and "civilian"* logistics units as part of their obligations to the Imperium, unless the world is too poorly developed to do this. Even for distant campaigns, if they are a world supplying the campaign then local units will handle logistics on-world before it is loaded at the starport.

Further complicating this is the varying levels of "automation" found on Imperial worlds and in Imperial units. Servitors can do an awful lot of menial labour like logistic work, but I don't think the Imperium treats them as people but as machines instead. They will play a substantial role in the tail but won't be formally counted as personnel.

So all of these different institutions, different types of personnel, a mix of civilian and military sources of labour, and the interstellar supply chains make calculating a tooth-to-tail ratio extremely difficult. Even in the Jericho Reach example, that ~5:1 ratio ignores the logistics occurring back in the Imperium proper supplying the crusade, so the ratio is likely much higher. It also seems to mainly refer to secondline combat units rather than logistical supply.


*The Imperium being a militarised autocratic state, the line between civilian and military is blurry, and examples like the Siege of Broucheroc show that even children will be put to work for the war effort if needed. In a sense, the entire population of the Imperium is tail, with the whole empire primarily focused on waging war.

Most industrialised worlds will also have stockpiles of at least basic equipment. Some for their PDF, some as Tithe shortfall back up.

So for the most common stuff (Lasgun power packs and charging stations, Leman Russ and Basilisk shells), there are likely to be supplies planetside. Of course, whether they remain in Imperial hands for long will depend. But whether instantly accessible or a high priority target, Guard Regiments (or at least their Commissars) can and will requisition those goods.

Whether they then get a discount on their next peace time Tithe (having arguably paid part of it forward) will also depend.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Most industrialised worlds will also have stockpiles of at least basic equipment. Some for their PDF, some as Tithe shortfall back up.

So for the most common stuff (Lasgun power packs and charging stations, Leman Russ and Basilisk shells), there are likely to be supplies planetside. Of course, whether they remain in Imperial hands for long will depend. But whether instantly accessible or a high priority target, Guard Regiments (or at least their Commissars) can and will requisition those goods.

Whether they then get a discount on their next peace time Tithe (having arguably paid part of it forward) will also depend.

According to the Munitorum Field Manual, Imperial worlds are obligated to prioritise supply to any Guard units fighting on their world. This is a duty, and is not discounted from the tithe.

Indeed, if the world doesn't do this upfront and instead charges fees for resupply, the costs are recouped by being added to the next tithe payment. I presume this is considered a form of emergency tithe to cover the fighting.

The Gaunt's Ghosts series explores this a little bit. They describe a whole regiment being dedicated to logistics such as feeding troops and mending kit as well as maintaining a supply line. And they have a marching band! They also get a little more medieval with a camp of hanger-ons that make up their own little civilian black markets on the ships. No idea how much they would change these ratios.