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Those who you wanting CMFG need to read this


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Every time I have come across that quote, it has been attributed to Stalin. Was Stalin quoting Lenin? Your guess is as good as mine.

Michael

Not sure friend. My 5 minutes of research seem to indicate that both of them (along with Mao and Trotsky) are credited with that quote by different sources. The first time that I had read it, was in one of the older Steven Zaloga books; that is kind of symbolic of this whole thread - I'll bet you most of the people that post here grew up on his writings in the 1980s....

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From my own crash research, I'd say the safe money is that, of the two, Lenin first said it, but Stalin liked it and used it himself. Regardless of source, it is one of the cornerstones of Russian military thinking. As a general rule, it's better to have two or three good platforms than one super platform. Not least because it provides for graceful effectiveness decay, as opposed to catastrophic loss of capability in the event of damage or loss. Likewise, we see Russian fighter planes carrying as many as ten air-to-air missiles, a scary sight to western military observers and analysts. But here again, we see the same approach at work. Having many missiles allows multiple firings to offset effects of jamming and evasive target maneuver, particularly when the missiles have two different guidance forms: radar and IR, maximizing the likelihood that one will, despite countermeasures, strike home and destroy the target. This is exactly what the Su-15 pilot who downed KAL 007 did. He doctrinally fired a pair of missiles as above. The radar-guided one missed outright; the IR guided one clobbered the plane. We don't ripple two missiles that way. Instead, we launch one AIM-120 and confidently expect it will hit the target. When they built diesel-electric subs, they built hundreds and hundreds. Individually, they may not have been all that good, but the resources required to deal with them were immense. They built lots of nuclear subs, too, though fortunately not in the same vast numbers, but more than enough to cause severe indigestion to people who worry about such things.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Regardless of source, it is one of the cornerstones of Russian military thinking.

If I may make just a small correction - you are talking about the Soviet military doctrine here, not Russian. Current Russian doctrine is still in a state of flux, but they are very aware of their limited human and financial resources that simply would not allow them to wage the kind of "Total War" that Soviet military was geared for... They are still far from mastering it, but their general trend is to put much higher emphasis on the quality of their new equipment and superior training of their personnel; as opposed to building a massive "just-good-enough" force for a global war against NATO and China...

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Cuirassier,

Methinks though hast both the wrong "kov" and the wrong quote. I believe you're thinking of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergey Gorshkov, who famously kept on his office wall this monitory line: "Better is the enemy of good enough."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Gorshkov

Regards,

John Kettler

He himself attributed the quote to Voltaire, though who originally said it is up for debate I'd imagine.

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Really, I think we're dating our theoretical Fulda Gap title too far forward. With CMSF and CMBS we've got plenty of opportunity to play with supertanks. I'd want to go back-back-back to the NATO of my childhood - the early late 60s - early 70s. M48s, Leopard 1s, M60A1s, Chieftains. Wouldn't it be fun to fight M47s versus T55s? Even going back that far we'd still have the then-top-secret T-64 'supertank' to content with. :)

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Really, I think we're dating our theoretical Fulda Gap title too far forward. With CMSF and CMBS we've got plenty of opportunity to play with supertanks. I'd want to go back-back-back to the NATO of my childhood - the early late 60s - early 70s. M48s, Leopard 1s, M60A1s, Chieftains. Wouldn't it be fun to fight M47s versus T55s? Even going back that far we'd still have the then-top-secret T-64 'supertank' to content with. :)

A post-Vietnam pre-Reagan setting would be really interesting, say 1976. The clashes between M113 inf and BMP inf would lead to some interesting situations.

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I think if any date to set a Cold War themed game in best, its 1985. The A-Typical cold war scenario year.

This would work!:D Also if CMFG was set in the 1980s moders and scenario designers might be able to give us The Falklands, Operation Just Cause in Panama, Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada etc .............

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Combatintman,

The "them" does not refer to the intel. Rather, it refers to certain topics Steve has asked me not to bring up. I agree it would've been preferable to have all the information in hand, but it doesn't always work that way. I am certain, though, I'm not citing myself. I either read it or saw it. I just need to recall where. Wicky made a sweeping general statement, but because of the topics involved, I can't give the whys and wherefores here. Again, this is to honor Steve's direct request. The thought model was for Wicky. I used the Imperial We. I know those publications weren't marketed as fiction. Equallly, I'm aware of the Spycatcher story, have read the book and seen some interview footage of Peter Wright. There is quite a bit of fiction which treads on security ground. SecNav John Lehman nearly had apoplexy (said he'd bring charges if a serving officer had written it) over The Hunt for Red October, and the Navy specifically assigned an officer to the film version with the objectives of: making the Navy and the Silent Service look good, while providing a credible depiction of submarine ops to the viewer, yet not giving any secrets away. There are books full of information so hot that the only way they could be published was to label them as "fiction." See, for example, the work of Edgar Fouche, who wrote a "fiction" book with insider info from no less than six people working on black projects. The US government can and does censor films and TV over national security issues, to include fiction. One such example was an NCIS episode, with a fictional story line, shot at Patuxent River NCAS. The story line was not the issue. The issue was a scene shot in front of an open hangar door. Inside the hangar was the then highly sensitive X-47B strike drone. The offending frames were doctored to remove the problem areas. Hackett was obviously not Nelson, but The Times devoted a great deal of attention/space to him in his obituary.

http://hill107.net/battle-of-arnhem/john-hackett/hackett-obituary-the-times/

Regards,

John Kettler

So far it is a no then.

This link may help clearing up the argument

http://www.royal.gov.uk/hmthequeen/contactthequeen/overview.aspx

Let me know how you go

Regards

Combatintman

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  • 2 weeks later...

From time to time I go rooting around in the CIA's FOIA Electronic Reading Room. Here is a link to a now declassified 1980 SECRET article in the classified CIA quarterly Studies in Intelligence. Written in Summer 1980 by then MG Paul Gorman of the US Army, this speaks directly to how dire our situation was then and what the IC (Intelligence Community) could do to help deal with a crisis which had already influenced multi-billion dollar decisions regarding TOW, XM-1 and tank ammo programs. When this was written, neither the M60A3 "Starship" nor the XM-1 had entered service and things were looking grim indeed.

 

US INTELLIGENCE AND SOVIET ARMOR

 

http://www.foia.cia.gov/document/0000624298

 

Starting on p. 22, there is a series of charts which I saw in one of the UNCLASSIFIED FMs circa early-mid 1980s at Hughes. The charts summarize a whole series of technological and performance improvements, comparing them to both a US tank (Sherman 76 mm) in WW II and Korea (Pershing). In WW II, it took 13 rounds, from a standing tank to a standing tank at 1500 meters, to obtain a 50% chance of a hit.  By Korea, that dropped to 3 rounds. By the mid 1970s, it was only 1. 

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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  • 2 weeks later...

Wanted to pass the word regarding an inexpensive ($3) Kindle book on Cold War Russian armor and other mobile weapons, to include SAMs. It's called Red Steel, is by Russell Philips, and it covers from immediately after WW II through the collapse of the SU, with tank coverage through the T-80, SP arty through Pion and MSTA-S and SAM coverage through SA-10. On balance, it's a pretty good book. Except when it isn't. There is a wealth of material, much of which wasn't in the threat docs I had back in military aerospace, so likely reflects post Cold War discoveries. Images are all over the place and confusing to people who aren't familiar with the systems to begin with. For example the acquisition radars for both the Shilka and the Tunguska are shown stowed. The picture of the T-64 is tiny, because the shot is the somewhat iconic one of a column of T-64s going through the TMS-65 jet powered decontam. The T-10 is on its angled war memorial plinth, and there are quite a few pics of AFVs in foreign armies and, in one case, a dead AFV but not obviously so. Two vehicles are represented by 3-view line drawings, which look like they came from an AFV ID guide. There are repeated surprises on what went into service and when, with many AFVs in full service before we started getting threat data (I started in early 1978 and watched developments unfold). In one case, the gap was around a decade.

 

What I found helpful in the book were the enumeration of the various tank model designators, the alphabet soup changes to the baseline and what they mean by way of changes. Pity he talked about the (US Army lingo) Dolly Parton and Super Dolly Parton (think her endowments), but  showed no pic at all. Rather marked appearance difference from baseline T-72s. Also good was the laying out of various protection options for a number of tanks (ERA, applique, Drozd, Shtora--alone or in combination). Again, most of which wasn't in the threat docs. He seems to think that for the T-62 w/ horseshoe armor, the armor is monobloc, when it in fact is spaced and w/o any inserts. He contradicts himself a few times, such as when he claims the SS-12 was the longest range TBM to serve, then later talks about the SS-23, which didn't serve long, but was a real sore point until the Russians killed it, as a gesture of good faith during the INF Treaty discussions. He doesn't realize that the 2 A3 Kondensator (406 mm Russian answer to US 280 mm Atomic Annie) was ever in service when claiming the Pion was the largest SPA to serve. Likewise, he completely missed mentioning the SA-6b (one TELAR and three TELs), the transition between the SA-6 and the SA-11. Some of you may be shocked to discover that certain SPA formations jump strength by 50% in wartime. Gulp. 2S1 is missing its nuclear capability, but you'll never look at FROG rockets the same again. The highest yield setting was a whopping 22 KT (Hiroshima was 15)! Another surprise is that the BMD seen running around in Ukraine with a ZU-23 atop it is NOT a field expedient; it's factory and is not only gun armed but carries two 2-man MANPADS teams--at least as originally intended. I wish he's said more about some of the technical issues, but what's there is pretty good for a mass audience book. Speaking of which, there's a German translation of this due out in February. Amazon's taking preorders now.

 

Since I no longer have Milsom's Soviet Armor 1917-1970 (purloined but may eventually get back), I find this book, especially for the tiny outlay, to be quite helpful. It has tons of tech specs, armor material, , weapon stabilization, gun launched ATGMs, construction details, performance and such goodies as armor slopes, composition and thickness, where available. I recommend this book, but encourage additional checks before presuming something of importance to you is correct.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Edited by John Kettler
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