JonS

I've been to Forks. I even spent the night there. Never again. Edit: dinner in La Push was well worth the drive though.

When you have a pet dog that keeps ******* on the carpet, you could stand around looking at the dog and mess on the carpet, and say things like "Clearly the dog's at fault here. I wish it would stop doing that." Or you could, you know, accept that fact you probably failed at some level, and do something about that. Maybe foster the dog to another home that's more able to meet its needs, or do some training with the dog, or maybe even put the old girl down because the ******* on the carpet is due to an incurable cancer. Or you could blame the neighbours for what your dog is doing. I'm not clear how that'd help, although it would mean you can avoid dealing with the behaviour, if not the resulting mess.

You seem inordinately keen to blame the Democratic Party for the results of the Republican's internal disarray. Why is that?

"an eye for an eye" isn't a legal defence.

Do you guys understand you are openly advocating for warcrimes? https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-56?activeTab=undefined

There are; Breech prems (horrible horrible events) Bore prems (bad, but can make for amusing photos) Muzzle prems (can be very bad, depending on battery layout) Flight prems (problematic, and a cause for serious concern ... quite aside from the potential for fratricide) The cause for any of those is far from easy to define, although the different types of prem each have more- or less-likely causes. It could be a wonky fuse, an obstruction in the barrel/muzzle, defective projectile, poor ammo handling proceedures, poor drills by the gun crews, force majure, etc. Without a full investigation, you're just left hoping it was a one off, and not a systematic problem with the ammo batch or fuse batch or the drills of the gun crew (assuming they survived). That particular barrel appears to be ok, but I really wouldn't want to push anything other than a bore brush through it until its had a full tech inspection. *Something* caused the prem, and it'd be more than nice to know what it was before trying that again. Also there could be internal damage to the rifling, the front section of the barrel was likely overstressed by the detonation, and the recoil system probably needs to be checked since it wouldn't have functioned in the way it was designed with this round. Specifically, the muzzle brake normally 'pulls' the barrel forward reducing stress on the recoil system, but of course that wouldn't have happened with this round, and obviously couldn't on any future rounds. Also, the mass of the muzzle brake forms an important part of the fine balance of the barrel assembly - without it working the elevating gears is really tough, and probably really damaging to the fine gears. It also makes the fine adjustments absolutely needed for accurate fire all but impossible. On the other hand, firing *this* gun /without/ removing the remains of the muzzle brake (to keep the balance roughly right) would do weird things to the trajectory since the air pressure on the round as it transitioned out of the barrel would be all over the place, which would itself bollix accuracy in random ways, due to the modern art sculpture now sitting where the muzzle brake used to be. *could* it be fired? Well ... yeesss. At least once more ... *should* it be fired? Oh hellz no! Edit: just saw Haiduk's post about Pakistani ammo. Aye, some manufacturers/countries rapidly get a poor reputation. We used to use Hirtenberger ammo for the 81mm mortar; lovely stuff - reliable and a delight to work with. But really expensive. So it got replaced by cheaper ammo from [differentcountry]. Yikes. Yiiiiikes.

Lol. You've sort of described a reverse slope, except for offence rather than defence. In other words, "ground dictates." As it /always/ has ...

You've just described a one-sided battle in which the only thing the red team have is one 70t tank. In that scenario your outcome sounds plausible. I don't think your scenario is very plausible, but that's a different conversation.

I assume that's an admin move. Rotating the turret avoids impaling the barrel in a tree or building - the barrels are long, and stick out a long way.

It's also slow as hell. These are nice for H&I, but if you want to maintain any kind of tempo, leave them in the box.

It's not really that new though? "Think of the people" was pretty much the genesis of the tank in the first place, and the core of US and UK doctrine throughout WWII, and the central plank of NATO doctrine for the last 70-odd years.

direct fire is useful for the same reason hyper-sonic is useful: it's really really hard to sense, react, and intercept in time. (plus, of course, that whole mv2 thing - increasing v makes a tank gunner smile. Have you made a tank gunner smile today? If not, donate some v now, our operators are waiting for your call on 0800-MORE-V-NOW)

But ... didn't they? The roles of the light and heavy cavalry (screening and recce on the one hand, and shock action on the other, exploitation for both) are still being fulfilled today. Hell, the squishies have even gone back to wearing breastplates Light horsed cav -> armoured cars -> light tanks -> heavy tanks -> light tanks/IFVs Heavy cav -> infantry tanks -> cruiser tanks & infantry tanks -> universal tanks/MBTs The equipment evolution has been pretty dynamic, but the role evolution hasn't been nearly as exciting. In most militaries the relevant units have also kept the traditions (hats, spurs, etc) and naming conventions (trooper, squadron) from the past, to emphasise the continuity within the change.

Yeah, the correct answer is obviously 'it depends'. I don't recall what the specific area of effect for each submunition is, but let's go with a grenade, so a lethal radius (for unprotected upright soldiers) of 5m, which means you want submunitions landing in a regular pattern about 2-3m apart if your target is unprotected upright soldiers, which equates to one sub approx every 5m2 Vehicular targets is a different problem - for those - and especially for even lightly armoured targets - you need a direct hit since the jet from a shaped charge doesn't have an area effect; either it really ruins your day or gives you a giggle. And, again, I don't really know what number of hits you'd need to get on an armoured target to assure an effect - and anyway that depends again on the target - truck vs MRAP vs BMP vs T-72, the answer is different for each. The top area of a T-72 is 7m x 3.5m = 21.5m2. The projected area for an object approaching at about 40° from the horizontal - ie what a DPICM round would actually be faced with - would be different, and smaller (I think? Pretty sure smaller?) but I can't be bothered doing the maths to figure that out, so for this we'll just assume the rounds are approaching vertically. So if you just went with the infantry approach of one sub per 5m2 you'd be looking at most likely getting four hits on any T-72s within the impact area. That's probably good enough for government work, which means that you don't need to adjust the height of burst for different target types (handy!) and also means you could design the dispersal to work optimally at the standard height for a prox fuze (handy!). Each 155mm M864 round carries 72 subs (of two different types, but for this we'll assume equivalent effectiveness). Assuming even distribution, each round can cover an area of about 350m2, or a circle of radius 10-to-11m ... which is tiny for a 155mm round. A battery shoot of six guns with one shooting at the centre of the circle and the remaining 5 distributed around a ring or radius 20m ... you're only looking at a battery impact zone of radius 30m which isn't barely enough to cover a platoon defensive position, and unlikely to contain more than one vehicle. Hmm. That can't be right. Let's double the dispersion (and drop the effectiveness); so subs in a regular pattern 5-6m apart, or one every 24m2. That gives each round a potential effective area of 1700m2, or a radius of 23-to-24m, which is broadly equivalent to unitary HE rounds (handy!). So, if you want to increase the effectiveness - or increase the assurance of effect - you can then pump more rounds onto the target, or use time fuzes and fiddle about with the height of burst; lower for denser and increased effectiveness but lower coverage, higher for sparser and lower effectiveness by increased coverage. Or, to put that another way, lower HOB for armoured or dug in targets, higher HOB for unarmoured or exposed targets. Either way, though, accurate targetting is key. If you are even 50m off with your target grid you are going to miss and have no effect.

Quite right. When you cherry pick a subset of a subset, you can get a quick-and-dirty rule of thumb to fail. I'm not sure anyone has quite realised this devastating insight previously. Well done you. I have a slightly different objection to the model; it doesn't appear to take into account global population growth. 1-10,000 casualties in the early 21st century is a tragedy, especially for those casualties and their families, but eh, it's going to drop off the front page pretty quickly. 10,000 casualties 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 500 years ago, 2000 years ago - that's pretty big news. We still hear about the Teutoberger Wald, and that was 20k, tops, although granted it was a battle rather than a war. Anyhoo, the point being that when global populations were smaller, smaller casualty counts had a higher proportional impact (exception: China? Over the last several millennia they seemed to routinely kill 100k - 1M in various conflicts and ... no one really cares?). Nevertheless, I still get the point, and I think it's a useful one: if all you know about a war is the name of it and the casualty count, how do you assess it's impact. The order of magnitude scaling gives you a pretty good place to start. But, like using wikipedia for research, it's only a start. For some purposes that could be enough. But if you really want to assess the specific impact of the Anglo-Zanzibar War (1896), or the Pig War (1859), or the Football War (1969), or the Chaco War (1930s) you're probably going to need to - surprise! - look beyond just the casualty count.

There must be some way to blame Scholz for this?

right ... except ... he's not trying to describe this - or any - specific war (singular). Instead he's describing wars (plural), and how they compare to each other (along one metric).

At the operational level; sure. But at the intimate tactical level (you know, the level that CM deals with), minefields were kind of a non event. They explain why particular actions were fought where they were fought, but they didn't really influence the actions themselves. SNIPE was fought 'on the far side' of the devil's garden, not in it. 8th Armd Brigade's inept reproduction of the Charge of the Light Brigade was 'on the far side' of the devil's garden, not in it.** Tel el Eisa was fought ... actually, nowhere near minefields. Alam Halfa was fought on the near side of the minefields. Ruweisat Ridge (battle no.s 1 through to about 6 or 7) was fought before the minefields were a thing. El Mrier didn't feature minefields. etc. There was some fighting for defensive positions on the night of 23 Oct, but those were mostly walkovers (= boring from a CM perspective). Most of the opening night consisted of extended lines of infantry plodding forward behind barrage lines across 2-3km of rocky desert in the dark, hoping like hell they didn't step on any 'slpodies. There were numerous platoon-company sized actions during that night to reduce defended localities, outposts, and listening posts (which could make for some interesting byte-battles), but as a designer there would be no play value in simulating the approach plod through the garden. Just cut to the good bit where the contact actually occurs. Then there is no need for breaching, and no need for artillery even since the barrage has buggered off into the distance. All of which is to say that a tactical level look at Alamein without breaching is at least as do-able as a tactical level look at OVERLORD without gliders or landing craft. ** in the process clearly demonstrating that armour has been obsolete since October 1942!

I wuv you!

Mate, I hear you. I pushed the barrow on increasing the depth of the guns game for a long time, because that's what I am interested in, and what I wanted to see modeled in more depth. CM doesn't - and doesn't pretend to - 'do' all of land combat. It does tanks and infantry pretty great, and does enough logistics, comms, med, engineering, and off-map fire support to reasonably accurately depict a pretty broad range of combat situations, in settings as diverse as a platoon in Sicily 1943 to a battalion in Ukraine 2014. But it doesn't do everything.

It depends what its being used for. I somehow doubt the US DoD is using tabletop to simulate the effectiveness of new weapon systems - for that I expect they are using some type of sophisticated Lanchester model, run over thousands of iterations, comparing baseline and upgrades and various permutations, giving probabilities and confidence intervals and all the rest of that jazz, to show whether the Skyrim MkII modA is worth the investment, what the rough scale of issue is likely to be required, and what consumption of munitions will be like. But for proof of concepts and operational plans - "tabletop" is the way to go. But that's not chits-on-a-hex-map and a six-sided dice tabletop. It's commanders standing around a birdtable, talking through the plan so they have a clear idea of time and space synchonisation, what everyone is doing at any given point in the battle to come, and where the key assets are by phase. You don't roll a dice to see whether 2 Platoon of C Company is able to take Hill 109. You just say "2 Platoon of C Company takes Hill 109". Then the int officer says what the most likely (or most dangerous) reaction by the enemy to losing Hill 109 is (based on doctrine, and posture, and known resources, &c), then the friendly commander outlines what his counter move is (or isn't; maybe ignoring the enemy at this point is what he chooses to do and 2 Platoon up on the hill will just have to take care of themselves). And so on, and so on. Calling it "wargaming" is kind of a misnomer - it's more like "battle talking". But "wargaming" is what we're stuck with, even though it has approximately nothing in common with what most people think of when they hear the term. Edit: I'm working chronologically through a backlog, and now see @Bil Hardenberger has already addressed this. The TL;DR of this post is 'read that one' Edit2: and @The_Capt TL;DR 'read those ones'

Well, clearly that isn't a requirement, but while we're making the game boring; can we add a fire-planning interface in there too?

CM:CE (Combat Mission: Combat Engineering) would be about as much fun as CM:LG (Combat Mission: Lawn Growing), and sell about as well as lamp oil.

An under-resourced and over-ambitious amphib operation is a great way to lose a lot of stuff really quickly.

Does "quite soon" mean 12-18 months?