[Question for devs/modders] Softkill countermeasures - IR/RAM camouflage, tactical area smokescreens, dummy vehicle decoys.

[ikalugin]

John, Rezun is a very, very, very bad source on anything Soviet. Any notion you took from his works requires to be severely re evaluated.

 

The Soviet training/tactical concept is a complex matter to discuss, and if you wish we could do that else where. In general I think that your views are heavily stereotyped and do not reflect the Soviet realities. Sadly the -better- (ie less stereotyped) materials that were meant to come out in the early 90s largely failed to do so, and even the ones that did (like the British manual I have) were not entirely accurate.

 

Arabs never utilised proper Soviet tactics, the Israel-Arab experience is not indicative of the Soviet performance in WP/NATO conflict type scenario.

Edited January 18, 2015 by ikalugin

[nuzrak]

I’m thinking is that if the Russians were able to produce Nakidka or some variant of it by 2017 in any kind of usable quantities that it would primarily be used to hide armour from USAAF strikes rather than in battle itself, which would of course take it out of the equation in regards to the scope of CMBS.

That’s not to say that I disagree with the OP on how important a factor this type of element would undeniably be on a modern battlefield, it just seems unlikely, to me, that the Russians would be able to make it a workable reality by the 2017 time frame that the game is set in.

 

Yet, having said that, it would be great if BFC decided to add some rare and theoretical future weapons and technologies into a future expansion pack, similar in tone to the last CMBN one? I’d certainly buy it! 

 

As for the smoke, it seems to me that a massive chemical based smokescreen could feasibly already be implemented (faked) by scenario designers by setting the electronic warfare setting to high and setting the weather to dense fog which I'm assuming will be available?

 

The decoy thing is really interesting and the use of decoy targets is certainly well documented in both the Balkan and The Iraq wars; but their primary usage in those theaters seems to have been almost exclusively used in regards to fooling NATO air attacks, which again would unfortunately be beyond the scope of CM battlefields.

But who doesn't love the idea of inflatable tanks, so maybe they could make it into a pack too???

[DreDay]

John, Rezun is a very, very, very bad source on anything Soviet. Any notion you took from his works requires to be severely re evaluated.

 

Agreed 100%. No serious military historian or analyst  would consider referencing Mr. Resun in their reports and writings.

 

Arabs never utilised proper Soviet tactics, the Israel-Arab experience is not indicative of the Soviet performance in WP/NATO conflict type scenario.

 

In my view it was not a matter of Arabs not utilizing the proper Soviet tactics (there were certainly plenty of Soviet advisors in Egypt and Syria) , but rather the fact that their social/caltural/econimic makeup was so different from the Soviet model to a point that Soviet tactics simply could  not be nearly as useful to the Arab states as they were to the Soviets. If you want to look at a proper use of Soviet Tactics and weapon platforms - you can always consider Indian wars with Pacistan. Where Soviet weapon systems and doctrine were used to their max by a capable and professional force.

[DreDay]

The decoy thing is really interesting and the use of decoy targets is certainly well documented in both the Balkan and The Iraq wars; but their primary usage in those theaters seems to have been almost exclusively used in regards to fooling NATO air attacks, which again would unfortunately be beyond the scope of CM battlefields.

But who doesn't love the idea of inflatable tanks, so maybe they could make it into a pack too???

 

The thing about those types of inflatable decoys is that they are not really deployed to the frontlines (where all the CMBB engagements take place); but rather rear echelons which would have no effect on the current game engine. They are more of an operrational rather than tactical asset; and I think that we can all agree that CM is all about the tactics.

[Nerdwing]

 

 

This is an interesting and refreshing way to look at things.  I've repeatedly read "Arabs are just incompetent" on different forums, which doesnt jive with their early successes like the Suez crossing in 73.

Edited January 18, 2015 by Nerdwing

[Krasnoarmeyets]

You are most welcome for the information. If you don't mind my asking, given the handle you picked and an evidently considerable knowledge of the Russian military, are you Russian, formerly from there or in one of the countries which regained independence after the SU collapsed? Also, are you a military veteran and of what?

Yes, I am Russian, born in the Russian SFSR of the USSR. I have left home to study in the US (long story) before I came of conscription age, but plan to finally return for good in the coming few years, which is when I hope to make my service in the Russian Armed Forces (specifically Tank Forces, I hope; unfortunately my beloved T-80s might all be in reserve by that point, but on the other hand I might have the chance to participate in putting one of the "Armata"-based vehicles into line service ). Modern warfare (actually, historical warfare too, and history in general) and its various aspects is of interest for me for its complexity, variability and sophistication; and because of a general concern for the current geopolitical situation and its prospects for the future (and also for a bit of practical application in various tactical simulators (my "primary" community is that of Operation Flashpoint and Arma) and wargames ). The online name is the one I have been using for more than a decade now, chosen mostly for moral / ideological reasons.

Thank You all for the replies, some of it has given me new food for thought; unfortunately do not have time to reply in-depth right now.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Krasnoarmeyets

[John Kettler]

ikalugin,

 

Disregarding his various exegeses on causation for WW II, please explain in what ways Suvorov/Rezun has things wrong. Offhand, from a historical standpoint he is a primary source regarding the events directly observed and experienced in The "Liberators." I can personally attest that US military authorities paid careful attention to what he had to say regarding Russian force structure, as clearly seen in the last issue of DOD's Soviet Military Power with its detailed maps and discussion of the TVDs, as well, I believe, of the enhanced force structure described below. I can also tell you that after his books started coming out, in short order the classified SAM counts in Russian mobile forces went up dramatically, in a manner completely reflecting what he said about the hidden SAM batteries not seen until units were fleshed out. The same is true of certain artillery formations.

 

I have seen high resolution color photographs (shot at Victory Day parade and appearing in official Soviet coffee table type expensive book--believe it was Na Strazhi Mira i Sotsialisma) of the IT-130 he reported, converted just as he said, from assault gun to ARV. Not an I-122. The plated over cutout for the gun was blatantly evident and dispositive in shape. The baby Grad for which he was lampooned in International Defense Review turned out to be real. As did the automatic mortar the Vasilek. IOC 1970. The DIA had a pic of it in the UNCLASSIFIED FOUO DIA pub SOVIET AIRBORNE FORCES--in 1982. Before that, all I saw from my end was satellite imagery of a tiny thing which looked like the US M101 105 mm howitzer, said image shot at Perm. This hi-res vid of the Vasilek was shot in Ukraine by the, ahem, Novorussian forces.

 

There are more such examples I could present, but I've been up all night. People laughed at the notion of the IT-1 Drakon. Said it never existed. Fascinating. This looks like exactly what he described. BTW, ignore the "Failed Tanks" episode on this AFV. Unless dying laughing is acceptable. Has more gross errors than a dog has fleas, including a doozy flatly contradicted by the test footage below. The ding dong asserts the IT-1 was rooted to the spot after firing. You tell me. The demo below was done in front of Nikita Khrushchev, but this clip doesn't show him in the KOP/COP on the Poligon. 

 

Suvorov/Rezun served as both a Motor Rifle Company CO and Tank Company CO, so ought to know those topics well, at least for when he served in them. I can directly confirm the existence of Russian Cold War maskirovka vs US recon satellites, having seen presumably deliberately blurred imagery taken by the subsequently compromised KH-11 "Big Bird" when those observed didn't know we could see them, Russians thought it was dead and didn't try to hide their activities from it, catching them busily trying to hide submunition craters from a TBM firing on the test range. I could see the men, shovels and the craters partially filled. This systematic maskirovka is completely in keeping with the Strategic Deception Directorate Suvorov/Rezun says was started by Ogarkov, whose career arc ended as the MSU, Chief of Staff of the Red Army and First Deputy MOD. Also, it is consonant with the terrifying discoveries made during the exploitation of Belenko's MiG-25 FOXBAT, during which the US ran headlong into War Reserve Frequencies and a previously unknown second J-band radar. I read that SECRET (with other control markings) report cover to cover. Equally, I think that, both because of his successive posts in Intelligence at the Army and then MD levels, it would be most unwise to ignore what he has to say regarding intelligence work, war plans at the time and at his level of access, as well as his stint in Spetsnaz. MI6 doesn't stand on its head and run grave risks to its people to extract a defector and his entire family if the defector has nothing of major consequence to offer. Clearly he did.

 

I'm not from Russia, don't know some/many of the things you do, am not a Russophone and don't have any breakdown of what was direct knowledge on his part and what was research, though I think some of the research he did and presented regarding origins of Spetsnaz was really good. And what he describes of some of his Spetsnaz training is directly borne out by declassified or stolen Spetsnaz training films now watchable online. Am most interested in knowing what you say Suvorov got wrong, and be sure to indicate the time frame to which you assert error on his part. If needed, by all means start a separate thread.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler 

 

  

[ikalugin]

In his WW2 era books there are numerous factual errors (numerical ones - such as the tank numbers and historic ones - such as what the various tanks were developed for, how the events were unfolding and so on, not to even begin on his idea that it was the USSR that attacked first).

 

In his post WW2 historic books there are numerous factual errors such as the manner in which Soviet units were to be employed, OOBs, concepts of operations and what not.

 

Basically - even though there may be some odd grains of truth in his works, they cannot be used as basis for creating a view of cold war era Soviet Armed Forces. The materials (which were greatly influenced by him) that did come out during the time period were also wildly inaccurate and with strong bias (which itself came from WW2 histories, which were initially written from purely German perspective).

By late 80s/early 90s there were some materials about to be published (like the new generation of field/threat manuals), which were adequate, but they were not actually published due to the changed geopolitical picture.

 

If you wish to know more specific criticisms of Rezun (or cold war era western materials on the Soviet Armed Forces) - please message TacError, he has studied the subject in detail I believe.

Edited January 25, 2015 by ikalugin

[John Kettler]

ikalugin,

 

By a remarkable synchronicity, involving a wholly unexpected visit from my brother, I wound up at Half Price Books, where I came across Suvorov's/Rezun's Inside the Soviet Army, a book so valuable to me I kept it at work as a reference. The Foreword was written by General Sir John "Shan" Hackett, of Western Desert tanker fame and Market-Garden Para renown, not to mention the two collaborations Hackett et al (including Suvorov/Rezun) did in the Third World War: August 1985 novels. Hackett said that he agreed with most of what the man was saying, as regards Suvorov/s?Rezun's own experiences, but wasn't prepared to sign up for the full boat in terms of interpretation of certain evidence. He went on to say, though, that even if the man didn't have everything right, the book, given his advanced military education, command experience and other items, was valuable because of the insight it provided into a young Soviet officer's military world view. Hackett deemed Suvorov/Rezun to be highly representative of many other officers just like himself, though naturally they were not so ideologically rebellious as he later became. Please PM contact info on this TacError. Am most interested in seeing what he has to say. 

 

Tank-Net has a marvelous thread on the IT-122/SU-122/54, which features our own Jim Warford, who wrote the revelatory "Soviet Premium Tank" ( article on high end, highly capable tank--under the then-extant two tank (high-low mix) production approach--for ARMOR magazine in the mid-1980s. Also in the thread is our man Amedeo, and Vasily Fofanov (Modern Russian Armor, which really needs updating), who does not believe the IT-130 is a myth or lie and demands proof from anyone claiming same. After poring over the pics, in astounding quantity and diversity, may I add, I've concluded that I was seduced by the wheel spacing a la T-62 and have now decided that what I thought were degunned IT-130s in the Victory Day parade were, in fact, degunned IT-122s.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Edited January 26, 2015 by John Kettler

[Na Vaske]

 

 

I'm not from Russia, don't know some/many of the things you do, am not a Russophone and don't have any breakdown of what was direct knowledge on his part and what was research, though I think some of the research he did and presented regarding origins of Spetsnaz was really good. And what he describes of some of his Spetsnaz training is directly borne out by declassified or stolen Spetsnaz training films now watchable online. Am most interested in knowing what you say Suvorov got wrong, and be sure to indicate the time frame to which you assert error on his part. If needed, by all means start a separate thread.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

It is amazing to me that the United States did not require threat analysts of theSoviet Union to speak Russian or to at least have a working knowledge of at least operational terms and unit designation types. Our analysts most certainly speak English and/or the language of who they analyze . Differences in thought processes are interesting to me.

[Stagler]

Navaske, there are people who's jobs it is to translate the raw data so analysts who are technical specialists can then fill their boots with what they have - all anaylysts should know formations and stucture of their subject, it is bad practice not to. The beat analysts learn the lingo in their own spare time.

[Stagler]

Navaske, there are people who's jobs it is to translate the raw data so analysts who are technical specialists can then fill their boots with what they have - all anaylysts should know formations and stucture of their subject, it is bad practice not to. The beat analysts learn the lingo in their own spare time.

[ikalugin]

That book ("inside Soviet Army") is horrible, works by Hackett were (as absolute majority of other works pre late 80s) strongly biased.

If you wish to read a novel about cold war going hot - I would suggest Red Army by Peters (who went mad post cold war but still).

TacError is a forum member.

One of the problems that the analyst had was the historic bias, which came from WW2 histories (especially the early ones), coupled with poor understanding of the Soviet way of making war (which would require them to read Russian materials and learn an entire dictionary only new terms) it lead to some major issues.

Edited January 26, 2015 by ikalugin

[John Kettler]

ikalugin,

 

I've read Red Army, though right now I don't remember much about it. One thing which did stick was his description of a BMP-2 supported infantry attack in which the hapless character, like his fellows, went into battle with a whole 90 rounds for his AK-47--one mag in the gun and two on his web gear. I remember reading that with disbelief, but with the references I had on hand, I was of the opinion Peters got it right. Contrast that with the 300 (admittedly much lighter) rounds GIs carried in Vietnam for their M16s. Unsurprisingly, the Russian guy got into a firefight, ran out of ammo and became a casualty as a NATO counterattack mopped the floor with his unit, which I believe had taken a farm and was holding the buildings. I recall, too, how desirous I was of getting the book when I saw the author's background in military intel.

 

TacError may be a member of the forum, but a search on this BB found no one of that name. Am guessing it's a different one. I did learn a fair amount of Russian military vocabulary, had an official Army Russian-English dictionary, could figure out quite a bit if I had the transliterated words, many of which were essentially ports from English and elsewhere: artilleriya, komandir, komandny,divisiya, raketnya, punkt (straight from German, as schwerpunkt), avtomat, granat (again German) and learned others. Zenith Rocket Troops baffled me when I came across the expression, but it eventually made perfect sense. Grau was gray in German, but as GRAU, something altogether different. Was absolutely blown away by the incredible level of detail on Russian military maps, and I had a symbol interpretation manual for such things. Some military-technical terms confused me, such as shell or weapon of cumulative effect. Eventually, especially after looking at drawings, considering the knowns and such, I decided it had to be HEAT. Arrow or arrowhead was also a problem, but I figured out it was APCR/HVAP (US parlance, "T" in CM).

 

I owned the Officer's Handbook in Russian, which I couldn't read, but from which I was able to learn a great deal of interest, ranging from tube artillery, mortars, projectiles-various field fortifications. It didn't take a college degree to decipher what categories the tables represented, either. I had that coffee table book I mentioned and another one commemorating I forget how many years of the Warsaw Pact, and it featured the armed forces of satellite countries. There was even a pic of all the Russian and foreign military big cheeses in their COP/KOP watching one of the big military exercises. Clear large format photos which showed me things my threat docs didn't have, such as incredible close shot of the SA-13 GOPHER/Strela 10, with a spectacular view of the radar. I had a similar but smaller format book on the Russian Navy, and it had a threat analyst's Christmas worth of close range color pics of the various radars, optical and EO sensors, jammers, weapons and much more. But for real fun, as an English speaker, try making sense of a crude machine translation of A. Tonkikh's Overcoming Antitank Defense where every thee or four words the computer presents no less than three possible meanings for a word it doesn't understand. Almost went nuts plowing through that. I couldn't read Russian, but I had several file cabinets full of classified documents covering the full spectrum of the Russian military--from hand grenades all the way out to capabilities to mess with satellites in geosynchronous orbit. I read the Soviet Military Thought series, which GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky obtained for the West. These were TOP SECRET and SECRET General Staff pubs when he purloined them: Grechko, Malinovsky, Sidorenko, Rotmistrov and many others were in my bookcase at work. I read widely in open source and, as noted, had access to back channel data as well. When the Chief Technology Officer, an ex-Project Paperclip scientist, for Hughes Missile Systems Group needed to know about the threat, I was summoned, despite the fact he had clearances which dwarfed mine. Nor is it my opinion I knew what I was doing, for I had the generals and admirals from multiple services practically dislocate my shoulder shaking my hand after briefings, there were attempts made to recruit me for one alphabet soup agency, and on several occasions I caused huge uproars by looking at threat issues in such a way I uncovered black projects. Would I have been even better knowing Russian? Doubtless, and I'd begun working on it before imploding health forced me out of military aerospace.

 

You should also understand that I'd been immersed in espionage and covert ops since early childhood, studies I continue to this day. So extensive was my reading in espionage that when I interviewed with the CIA for a field officer trainee job, I'd read all but two espionage books on the "here's what this is all about" page 8.5 x 11" list. And I came into military aerospace with a considerable wargaming background at the tactical level, too. In fact, it was knowing Russian organization and equipment which allowed to make a big splash when I was being interviewed at Hughes. In walks this big cowboy type,a great guy who turned out to be a retired Army LT COL who'd been battlefield commissioned in WW II and had basically gotten TOW into the Army while serving. He ran TOW analyses for all the TOW projects, both US and foreign. He wore a perplexed look and said "I can't figure out where these 130 mm guns go in the division." To the surprise of everyone there (department manager, assistant manager, section heads and senior people), I reply "That's because the 130 mm M-46 isn't a divisional asset; it's found at Army and Front level." Lots of eyes went wide over this young lad presuming to speak in such august company, but what I said triggered a synapse in the cowboy, and he responded that I was right. I have no doubt this incident was key to getting me my first job in military aerospace. Summing up, I was by no means as crippled or clueless as you think I was, even lacking Russian language skills.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

[Stagler]

I’m thinking is that if the Russians were able to produce Nakidka or some variant of it by 2017 in any kind of usable quantities that it would primarily be used to hide armour from USAAF strikes rather than in battle itself, which would of course take it out of the equation in regards to the scope of CMBS.

That’s not to say that I disagree with the OP on how important a factor this type of element would undeniably be on a modern battlefield, it just seems unlikely, to me, that the Russians would be able to make it a workable reality by the 2017 time frame that the game is set in.

 

Yet, having said that, it would be great if BFC decided to add some rare and theoretical future weapons and technologies into a future expansion pack, similar in tone to the last CMBN one? I’d certainly buy it! 

 

 

I think it is likely we will see such things in the future. Like the USMC pack for CMSF had T-90 and BMP-3 for Syria despite not being in their inventory officially at that time.

T-14, Kurganets, Boomerang we shall hopefully see this year so they would hypothetically be included. Same as Coalitsiya for a support asset perhaps.

Edited January 27, 2015 by Stagler