IMHO

Indeed, only the Ukrainians can have them on map. But, for a Russian Anti-tank Battalion, the MT-12 are only off map.
Any particular reason? A Russian doctrine behind?

With the current copy-protection system: No. There's no resource available to the end user that shows what license key has been used, after-the-fact. To my knowledge the Helpdesk also does NOT have an utility that can tell what license key has been used. I don't know if they have database/utility that can tell the number of activations used or remaining on a license key (I suspect not, but I'm not sure).

If you play RT PvE:
Spot Abrams with an infantry team. Since it has very good thermals try to avoid putting your spotting team facing Abrams' front. Put two tanks flanking the Abrams yet so far covered from it. Roll out one of your tanks to try to spot Abrams. Abrams will see your tank first most of the time yet since you have infantry's eyes on Abrams you'll see it turn the turret. So when you see it - just roll back your tank into cover and roll out the other. Repeat till one of your tanks spots Abrams first  You can also use area fire on Abrams to try to degrade its sensors. Though only direct hits count and not all of them deal damage. Putting your tanks above or below Abrams helps as it somewhat increases the time Abrams needs to target your tank. You can use this tactics in PvP or turn-based PvE as well by rolling out and rolling back with a short pause command in between. Though whereas you can do it with zero damage in RT PvE all the time you'd need to accept certain casualties in turn-based. Too short a pause - and your tank never ever spots Abrams, too long - you loose a tank. Infantry team overwatching Abrams is still of use as you'll know if Abrams moves and what direction Abrams' turret facing at the moment. So that you can somewhat reduce your risk by using the "right" tank at least at the beginning of the turn.

Artillery smoke does not block IR in the game.  In CMBS all US vehicle smoke is IR-blocking.  Black RUS / UKR vehicle smoke is not IR blocking.  White RUS / UKR vehicle smoke (e.g. Shtora) is IR-blocking.
The radar system on the Khrizantema-S is able to see through IR blocking smoke.  The Russian millimeter wave ground search radar on the Khrizantema-S can "see" through even multispectral smoke. Russian vehicles can only shoot smoke twice.  BRM-1Ks also has radar to see and shoot through IR blocking smoke.    
I think image intensification (night vision) sights and thermals sights are listed as "IR optics."  Units with thermals can see through regular smoke.  They are treated differently, but both displayed under the damage panel as "IR optics."  Easiest way to determine if the IR optics is night vision or thermal is to check LOS through artillery smoke (units with thermals will not have blocked LOS).  

I suspect I am not fully understanding the question.  The base TOE in the game attempts to be as accurate as possible within game design/choice limitations.  The BMP-3K and BMP-2K are probably interchangeable in RL in this type of Russian formation.  As a result they are setup to be interchangeable in the game TOE (I'm not a Russian TOE expert).    
True.  The base TOE does not show the mixing of differently equipped companies within the battalion presumably because in RL most battalions, of this type, had the same BMPs in their companies.  For logistical, maintenance, training etc. this makes sense.  However, as a scenario designer or player you may want to have a mix of vehicles anyways.  This mixing is mostly possible, if that's what you want, by using the single vehicle purchase option and adding them where desired.  However the company & platoon HQ vehicles will stay true to the accurate TOE.  In some other TOEs the Bn. HQ vehicles will also not be changeable. 
If you're trying to make purchases for a head to head quick battle this may be a little frustrating since buying single vehicles and plugging them into a formation is generally more expensive than using the organic vehicles.  IIRC this is because each "Single Vehicle" you buy comes with a surcharge (maybe 15 points?).
Hope that answered the question.      

I think you usually have to go up to the battalion level to make the change.  Then of course they all will change.  If you want to mix and match different vehicles into the same TOE you can delete some of the vehicles and add back in single purchase vehicles.  However the HQ  vehicle will be whatever was set in the option for the formation.   

I normally do not use smoke for placing spotters. 2-3 man spotter team is not exactly unobservable when not in hidden mode (and it's terrible at spotting when it is). With smoke it's so easy to get too close to the enemy so when smoke disappears your position is revealed and your team is killed instantly. I prefer to stay back yet use as many spotters as possible. When playing Russians I normally take one scouting team out of every infantry squad. If I remember correctly there's one unfortunate place in the center in this mission. Those buildings where one has its top floor demolished. I don't remember what exactly yet I had troubles with my team being fired upon by something heavy. Other than that I don't recall any issues. When deploying spotters start deploying smaller teams first: one-man teams if you have any as they are practically invisible (though not too good at spotting itself). First put your spotters further away from the enemy then come closer. Let spotting team stay on a position for a while to reconnoitre. I normally deploy all my spotters further away from the enemy then start moving them closer one by one so that the rest are observing. In CMBS never put spotters directly in front of enemy armour irrespective of distance - thermals are deadly.

Good advice, something I don't forget but which I never seem to get quite right 🙄.

Thanks for your advice.
 
I managed to get a total victory by selectively loading up the buildings nearest to the bridge with RPG troops who were able to take out the Tunguska and T90. I could then engage the grenade launchers and once they were out of the way it was plain sailing. Very frustrating mission when it goes wrong.
 
Thanks again for your help.

You have a lot of buildings facing the enemy - so put a lot of teams watching the enemy side. The distance between buildings on your side and enemy side is actually not that large. So to reduce the risk of your teams being spotted by the enemy rather than the other way around use two-men teams and crawl command when entering building squares facing the enemy. Choose whatever flank to cross the deep dividing road. Since you have many BTR-80As and enough RPG and PKM rounds preemptively suppress enemy buildings facing your side whether you spotted any enemy infantry there or not. Quickly cross the road - I used mounted infantry to shorten the exposure time. Coordinate the suppression with the crossing so that all potential enemy teams stay suppressed and not shoot at your advancing teams/armour. I did it on both flanks yet I like the right flank better since:
a) there's no long keyhole fire lane where an enemy armour can hide and be spotted too late; though it can be mitigated is you cross somewhat closer to the center and avoid exposure to this this fire lane
b) there're buildings on your side closer to the enemy buildings so you can put your spotters closer
c) there's a depression on the road leading to the enemy side so you can bring BTRs closer to the enemy side to shorten exposure
d) the road is paved and runs straight to the enemy side - saves exposure time as well; with the left flank you need a fine micromanagement to avoid the firelane yet cross with your armour (if you use the armour) AFAIR I killed almost all - if not all - enemy armour with RPGs except for the tank or BMP - don't remember - that suddenly crosses to your side. Yet as I expected something like this I kept RPG teams and BTR-80s flanking the probable routes of approach so it was easy. Your armour is stone blind and can't spot enemy armour quickly enough so keep infantry nearby and order area fire to the enemy armour spotted by infantry even if your armour can't see it yet. The rest is standard building clearing. Put as many two-man teams as spotters on the enemy buildings. If fire lanes allows preemptive suppression by your armour then do that and move quickly. If there are no fire lanes - then suppress with the infantry teams and risk some low casualties. If you play PvE rather than PvP then you can abuse the engine into opening fire and revealing its positions. Take a 2-3 man team and make it run a short distance from cover to cover in the wide open far enough from the enemy positions. If you do it correctly you won't have any casualties almost 100% of the time. If you use two man teams and the run is too far away from the suspected enemy position then do it 2-3 times - two man teams are hard to spot. The key is to have as many spotting teams in overwatch as possible and avoid revealing them. If you have enough then Russians are playable even against Americans. Though be wary of American thermals that can laser see your spotting teams across the whole map. So put them to the flanks and not so obvious places. Ukrainians don't have thermals so it's a piece of cake.

Never use more than three-man teams and two men are way way better than three. Four-man one is almost as easy to spot as a whole squad. Always use crawl when crossing the crest or entering the building squares facing the enemy. Even inside the buildings crawl greatly reduces the risk of being spotted. Crawl exhaust the infantry pretty quickly and tired infantry is easier to spot. So don't crawl too far a distance - break it down to several hops with a rest between them. Keep a spotting team in hide position till it recovers before unhiding. As per tired teams being easier to spot - that's my impression. I haven't done proper testing.

Photo of one of the first Soviet thermals in 80s.

As Codreanu said, no thermal imagers on Soviet production tanks during the Cold War. The fist tanks to ne so equipped were (or were intended to be) the command versions of the T-80U, that is the T-80UK but, even if some of them reached first line units just before the fall of the Soviet Union, it was at a time when the Cold War was over. So, even if the CMCW timeframe would be expanded to, say, 1989, by future modules, there's no chance to (realistically) see Soviet tanks with thermals in the game.
On the other hand, the USSR did trial some prototype thermal imagers during the late Cold War, here's the photo of a T-80B equipped with such a prototype:

Many years ago, a funny anecdote by colonel Murakhovskiy about these trials was reported on the TankNet forums. A Soviet tanker, showing his enthusiam after having used the new sight, basically said that thermal imagers were the best thing since sliced bread and asked his commander whether the Americans were working on something comparable. But, after the officer replied that thermal imagers were already standard issue on all new US tanks and IFVs, the tanker paled and became gloomy never to speak again.
Poor chap! 😄

AFAIK Soviets did not have thermal imagers on any of their production tanks until right after the end of the Cold War. Agava-2 was added to some T-80UMs in the early '90s. This site mentions 1993 for the T-80UM but doesn't give a source: https://en.topwar.ru/139819-teplovizionnye-hroniki-chast-3.html
I see 1992 mentioned also.

I have not tested this in a long while.  However the below use to be true.  If anybody has updated info please let us know. 
Some vehicles do not get benefit from their primary thermal sensor if buttoned:
M1151 Recon Humvee
M1167 ATGM Humvee
M1127 Stryker RV
M1131 Stryker FSV
M1200 Armored Knight

Isn't it Ukraine itself that demands from the outside world to make sure it is able to go on corrupting itself with Gazprom transit money? 😉

Yeah, it's better to repeat for thousand times more how evil Putin is invading peaceful kingdom of Ukraine in your imagination, that won't contradict mass media BS that they feed you daily. 

I'm not going to attempt to read this wall text mess, but I see that you like Twitter. 

Those sneaky Russians want to divert our attention from innocent Ukraine SS divisions and righteousness ethnic cleansing plans! Isn't it a despicable whataboutism?

That's quite a layered question, with some curveballs thrown in, so bear with me:

Firstly, sourcing:
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/Hot Spots/Documents/Russia/2017-07-The-Russian-Way-of-War-Grau-Bartles.pdf
In some respects this is apparently (and unsurprisingly, since it's five years later) out of date by now, but it's absolutely relevant for CMBS.

In there, you can see that the majority of the fundamentals of Soviet doctrine have survived intact into the modern day - attacking on-line for maximum mass, the focus on meeting engagements, on counter-attack in the defence, etc. In this sense, CMCW lets you see those fundamentals very clearly, in their intended context, before you translate them to a new one.

First curveball - there's a large difference between Russia vs Ukraine and Russia vs the US here. The latter is significantly more asymmetric, so ends up breaking a lot of the rules or otherwise forcing you out of where you want to be. That's essentially why things like Javelin exist, of course - they're supposed to be disruptive technology, aimed at plausible opposition. Will focus on Russia vs Ukraine then, with some notes on the US at the end.

Second curveball - I'm not convinced that all Black Sea scenarios capture or represent the main tropes of hyper-modern warfare as well as they could. Arguably that's true for all CM titles, but I suspect it's inevitably a little worse for Black Sea, due to the speculative nature of everything. As an example of that, Between Two Fahrbahns in Cold War. That's scenario that's great fun to play from either side, plays well H2H, and it's perfectly competent... but isn't terribly representative of "Cold War", and doesn't really make an argument, express a concept or investigate a tactical problem of the period. The same scenario might as well have Shermans vs Panzer IVs and it would work equally well.

So, what defines Black Sea? Philip Karber has a definition of the real combat in the region as "high intensity combat on a low density battlefield", and I think that core idea should also define CMBS. As a basic rule of thumb then - it's pretty common to use a Quick Battle map that's one size larger than your force. In Black Sea I think that should really be two sizes larger by default. That same thinking can/should apply to scenarios, but it's intended as a quick representation of the idea.

The other difference in theme is that in Cold War the operational tempo is paramount. Typically the tactical battlefield is not something that needs to be taken, it's something that needs to be move through, as fast as possible. This is part of the reason why the Soviets could be (had to be) comparatively free with casualties - gaining operational freedom is the goal here, and the tactical-level losses are acceptable.

This is not true for Black Sea. The Russian army is smaller, more casualty-adverse, and isn't screaming towards the Rhine at maximum velocity. This means you'll be more interested in capturing objectives, and can't afford to take the losses. In addition, the Russian army has significantly improved equipment. Much better spotting and C2, faster call-in times for artillery, ERA and APS, drones to call in massed fires, etc. They also have pushed assets down to lower levels - not as much as the US do, but significantly more than the Soviets, meaning that small units are significantly more capable and independent. The Russian air defence is significantly better than the US, so they should have drone superiority (and the US have nothing that can shoot down Zala at all). 

So how do you marry these two ideas? Soviet fundamentals, whilst being casualty-adverse? This is perhaps the major problem to solve as the Russians, but a lot of it comes down to controlling your engagements. You still want to be attacking on-line, with maximum firepower against a subset of the enemy, but you want to be careful as and when you engage, and to control that engagement with overwhelming firepower. An actual engagement might only last a minute or two, and a battle might be a lot of sneaking and manoeuvre, followed by a brief period of devastating fires. High intensity, Low density.

The first mission of the Russian campaign in the core game is indicative, I think. This is fundamentally a Soviet doctrinal meeting engagement. This is identical in concept to Miller's training scenario from CMCW, or the first mission of the Soviet campaign in Cold War, but the differences start to become apparent.

In the Russian campaign scenario, you have all the elements of that meeting engagement - you have a recon platoon, followed by a Forward Security Element of a BMP-3 company and a tank platoon, and they should be doing the same fundamental job.

The differences really start when the follow-up to that FSE is a single tank company, and not an entire battalion. That means that you're inherently more limited in how you can approach this.

The approach I took with this was to advance with the recon platoon and get spots along the route of contact, then advance at the speed of the fireplan. The FSE wants to march into a valley, so, suppressing the high town objective on the valley's far side is what allowed the follow-on tank company to take up a base of fire on the right side hill, on-line, and dominate the valley with fires.

The FSE can then approach into the valley floor, preceded with drone-summoned fires on the central objective, and with covering fires on likely enemy positions to the flanks. This FSE can then bypass, surround and reduce the central objective, before moving on to take on the others to the conclusion.

At each stage the fundamentals are the same - your fire plan is paramount, and in each bound you're attempting to go fires-first, maximising firepower at every engagement. 

So, how about the US? Well, Abrams, Bradley and Javelin represent disruptive technology, that will do terrible things to you. The fundamentals remain identical, but you can do everything right and still lose sometimes, and anything you do wrong will be punished severely. Fighting javelins is about firepower and the terrain read - they're systems used on foot, and the modern US infantryman doesn't like mortars anymore than anyone else does, so denying potential javelin positions is as important as anything. Abrams need to be engaged from the flank where possible (ideally from two angles at once), and Bradleys are near-psychic in their spotting, so you need to engage them quickly and decisively with excellent recon - you never want to get into an engagement where you don't already have spotting contacts.

The really sorry thing is these are the people who really believe in it. They do believe they are serving a noble cause by cleansing Eastern Ukraine of people who are not "sufficiently Ukrainian". They would prefer an open war over giving up an inch of their beliefs. There's something profoundly wrong about people who think that every inch of an ideology of a kind is more important than people's lives.
No, there will be a sigh of relief in every corner of Russia if a war can be avoided this way or another. Ukraine will probably cease to exist in the current form yet it will be a catastrophe for Russia as well.
He believes if Ukraine will continue to grow stronger militarily (through NATO membership or through massive arms transfer) then a war is unavoidable sooner or later. And reading Haiduk I think he has a reason to think so. So all he wants is that Ukraine is not put over the threshold when it can venture to do what Saakashvili did in 2008. I'm far from being a Putin's fan yet to me personally it does not seem a price too high for avoiding tens of thousands deaths from both sides.
Ukraine recently closed several TV channels and banned a political party that started to acquire significant popularity. The party never cried for Putin to come their only fault was they were considered more predisposed to find SOME accommodation if it ever comes to power. Ukrainian Far Right have a clear idea of what kind of Ukraine they want and they are ready to go any length to make sure it's the only way Ukraine can ever live. They take no prisoner neither with foreign policies nor with their own populace who dare to be less ideologically pure. If need be they are ready to stage a coup and overthrow a democratically elected government.

Sometimes I think that Haiduk is Kremlin's troll, who infiltrated to this forum for anti Ukrainian propaganda.  He must add "but we will correct them in labour camps", but it would be too fat.

What for? We've seen US failing in Afghanistan and Iraq and US has immensely more resources than Russia.
He said it himself. He does not want Ukraine joining NATO. Ukrainian military and political leadership constantly talks about crushing Crimea and L/DNR the way Croats did with Serb Krajina (Operation Storm). Right now Russian forces outmatch Ukrainian so it would be suicidal for the Ukraine to do so. Yet Putin obviously believes that if Ukraine joins NATO then having full support of NATO behind them they will start a war.

Isn't it Ukraine itself that demands from the outside world to make sure it is able to go on corrupting itself with Gazprom transit money? 😉