Elmar Bijlsma
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Posts
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Posts posted by Elmar Bijlsma
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27 minutes ago, akd said:
What Russia really needs right now is a new Beria:
I guess wishing for a new Peter/Catherine the Great is for pussies.
With North Korea, the Taliban, or the Lord's Resistance Army, I at least understand what disagreeable game is being played. This however, I just cannot place. Don't they know their history? Are they clowning around for ratings? Or are they such monsters that they think Beria's abilities (horrific and counter productive in themselves) outweigh his tendency to fill his rose garden with the bodies of young women? Russia has more than it's fair of brutal dickheads but you'd be hard pressed to find a greater villain. Yet they went with saying that.
Jezus.
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1 hour ago, Huba said:
Ukrainian Air Force bombed Snake Island:
I wonder if that went entirely according to plan?
That first impact seems a bit too close for comfort for the #1 aircraft that dropped it. And the #2 aircraft is entering airspace all of a sudden a bit more crowded with stuff than it was moments before.
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5 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:
And barring an utterly craven Western response, use of a nuke would bring China and the entire 'fence sitting' world urgently into the 'shut this maniac down, right now!' camp.
There is absolutely no 'win' for China in a nuclear war, whether or not it is a target (at once).
Among other consequences, I predict Japan would kit out a Trident fleet within 6 months to warn off both Xi and L'il Kim.
That is a key angle.
In my estimation, if there's one country that would hate to see the use of nuclear weapons, it is China. They know that they aren't under any kind of conventional threat from anyone. As such, a lowering of the bar on the use of tac nukes would be distinctly to their disadvantage. Not only would they hate it on the principle of lowering the bar on nukes and possible escalation, they'd be no fan of a nuke flinging neighbour in and of itself.
I would not be surprised if they have already notified Putin that they wouldn't be a fan of their use in Ukraine. And right now, China is the only friend worth having that the Russian cannot afford to piss off.
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Let's be very clear here, the M113s armour is pretty marginal. Just about enough to stop shrapnel from some shell provided it was not aimed at the M113 in the first place. That's it. And don't take the M113 being **** away from it, it is it's best feature!
When an M113 crew accidentally drives into an active combat zone, they will immediately think "Oh, ****, I shouldn't be in an active combat zone". And the passengers will have a similar stimulus for appropriate behaviour. "Oh ****, we are inside an M113 in an active combat zone. We should get out!" Both of which are the correct attitude to take for ANY APC.
I don't care what armour it has or cannon you stick on it, APCs need to stay the **** away from the actual shooting.
Don't get me wrong, I think IFVs may one day largely replace the tank. But it should be an IFV on steroids, with drones, optics out the wazoo, ATGMs and an auto-cannon on steroids, but with a marginal passenger capacity of 2-4. Bring back a cheap Universal Carrier 2.0 for the to and fro-ing.
As much as I once held a view on the Bradley shaped by The Pentagon Wars, I think the M3 Bradley is almost there. It is just the M2 I hate now because it carries too many crunchies, not too few.
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I am reading an awful lot of vicious slander against the glorious wunderwaffe that is the Gavin.
But tell me, is there any other IFV that if it gets holed by gunfire or shrapnel you can restore, nay, improve its armouring by duck-taping a flattened soda can over the hole? No, there isn't! The end of tanks IS neigh, our prophet has foretold it!
Anyway, I hope the Ukrainians weren't counting on the Dutch PzH2000s.
The Dutch army's (or rather, the various associations that surround it) response to the offer was: "You are going to do what now?". The feeling is that the Dutch defence has been cut to the bone and that what is needed is not for us to send the warehoused PzHs to Ukraine but to fund the re-activation of those things by the Dutch army itself. A fair point, sadly. Our artillery assets are currently pitiful.
And apparently there was no plan to send the support vehicles for comms and planning fire missions. So the Ukrainians would've just gotten the tubes, not the fancy abilities of the whole platform.
And to really top it off, the whole thing is still in a preliminary planning phase. Knowing the Dutch MoD, they are going to come to a definite decision any year now. And it'll probably be the wrong decision that does no-one any good, here or in Ukraine.
I think the one good outcome so far is that it was one of the first offers of modern heavy material and got others to commit their stuff. But **** me, what a shambles.
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24 minutes ago, womble said:
"There were no train delays"
Plenty of cancellations, but no actual delays. But yeah, that second view looks much more like rain-induced landslip than explosive deconstruction of the embankment.
UGH! OT but this is exactly how the Dutch national railway operator keeps itself from being fined for lateness of trains. Trains running late get straight up cancelled to bring up their average On Time performance.
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2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
The interesting thing here is... I'm not sure pushing Putin to fully mobilize is a bad idea. If, and this is a big if, doing so is going to cause a general upheaval within Russian society then by all means do it. However, it could also solidify that Z = Zombie and the next thing Ukraine knows is there's hoards of braindead killers moving into Ukraine. It's a tough call and I for one don't think any of us, including expert Putin watchers, have enough open sourced information to know which way it might go with any real degree of certainty.
Steve
Russia mobilizing would be interesting.
Sure, the extra manpower may be hard to handle for the Ukrainian military. But I think whomever is in charge of Russian logistics would be more scared of it than the Ukrainians.
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I am mildly concerned about the variety of SPGs (and other vehicles) being sent. Sure, something is better than nothing but it feels like a logistical headache in waiting.
It would have been better if the powers that be put their heads together and swapped vehicles amongst themselves and send a batch of one single item per type to Ukraine.
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9 minutes ago, db_zero said:
If you move past the initial part of the report and listen to guest it sounds like most of the aid being sent is just piling up in Lviv and not getting to where it’s needed.
I am pressing the "X to doubt" button. I have seen too much exotic stuff being carried to believe that it is all piling up at Lviv. This is CNN working through their Afghanistan trauma.
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We
2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:Heh. I meant virtual Pros, not the real ones behind the wheels
You might have missed a lot of joking at the beginning of this war that Combat Mission's convoy behavior might be unrealistically good
Steve
P.S. dare I say that I'm happy to see your posts again? Yes, I dare. "I am happy to see your posts again". There, I said it.
It is good to be back and nice to be welcomed back.
Hang on to that happiness for when I start banging on again about long form campaigns.
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4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
We have one, but we pulled it from Upgrade 4 because even our testers couldn't help but to misuse it and then say "fix or do somefink!". We took a poll and we agreed to remove it. Upon request we enabled it for the Pro version because those guys have the discipline to use it correctly
Steve
Are you sure about that?!
https://www.paudal.com/2022/04/16/accident-with-dutch-patriot-convoy-in-the-czech-republic/
Convoy driving is hard.
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Finally some good news for the Russians. They lost an asset that Ukrainian farmers won't tow away.
They are getting better at this!
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2 minutes ago, amadeupname said:
So I guess the work on every CM title has just stopped so we can pretend we're defense analysts now?
I have read everything in this thread from one crackhead schizoposting about crisis actors and ancient alien bullsh*t to several of you speculating about the possible deployments of WMD's and other such nonsense.
Can we please get back to creating more content for the game?For over two decades, Steve has found time to mix it up with us grognards. Far from taking away from development, I think it only improves the end product.
Who do you want to make your wargames for you: someone that watches CNN and thinks himself up to date, or someone voraciously doomscrolling and discussing events here?
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1 minute ago, The_Capt said:
We have not seen this sort of irrationality from the Ukrainian political level thus far so I think it odd to be losing the pragmatic strategy in favour of a dangerous symbolic one based on "not one foot back". I mean, maybe but that is quite a philosophical shift.
That second part also doesn't quite line up, I mean why cede the initiative? Although it does make sense if this were in fact a trap.
At this stage it is not a situation that requires irrationality to stay put. It's far from a pocket yet.
As for ceding initiative, is initiative that thing where Russian armour advance along an ATGM lined road? I wouldn't want initiative like that. I wouldn't call it anything as grand as a trap, but sure, make them work and bleed for it. The decision to stay and fight or pull back can be made at a later date.
1 minute ago, The_Capt said:Maybe but after week 2 this became an operational zombie because it was obvious that Russia was not going to be able to take all of Eastern Ukraine. The "fig-leaf" idea does track, but the cost?! A city of 400k that has taken over a month of heavy street fighting, and still is not secure likely soaked up Divisions worth of troops and resources. All so Putin can point to one ruined city and declare victory?
This is always where Clausewitz starts to fray. What happens when policy becomes completely irrational, or invariable when the "military means" becomes the policy itself?
Who else is there that Russian commanders need to care about other than Putin and what he needs? The generals will cause the Azov battalion to drown in the blood of Russian soldiers, if Putin orders it. There are no other considerations.
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11 minutes ago, DesertFox said:
Azov Regiment strike Russian tanks and IFVs in Mariupol city.
How? HOW?!
I am aghast a, judging by the vehicles present, not insubstantial force can park in that courtyard and not defend it. What the fudge are they doing there?
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21 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
So a couple things about this whole thing as it appears right now:
- The UA likely knows exactly where the Russian build up is occurring thanks to it own ISR and western feeds. So they can see the Russian plan and build up clearly. So why stay in that “pocket of doom”? The UA defence has been excellent in positioning and anticipating Russian movements, so if they are leaving forces in that pocket I doubt it is an accident. The UA assessment must point to success by remaining in that pocket or they would simply pull out.
On a political level I think much of it is an unwillingness to give one more inch of Ukrainian territory than is absolutely necessary. After Bucha, who would?
On a tactical/operational level, it's not a pocket of doom yet. Better to tempt the Russians into a lunge to make a pocket happen than do the hard work for them and thereby allowing the Russians to move in their own time.
21 minutes ago, The_Capt said:- Mariupol. This one has been bugging me for weeks. What possible value does this city have in the overall Russian plan? Steve has proposed it as a symbolic “de-nazi” win but that is so weak. I mean how can one claim to have denazified an entire country by taking a single ruined city? Soviet doctrine was to avoid bogging down in cities at all costs but here the Russians appear to have done the exact opposite. How much combat power has been soaked up trying to take this place? How much has been lost? As a operational or strategic objective Mariupol just does not make sense beyond “do something…anything, the boss is watching”.
As the home of the Azov battalion, an attack on Mariupol was the fig-leaf of credibility the Russians needed to justify the attack in the first place. If you are going to go after the conquest of entirety of East Ukraine, it is the one city you cannot skip because of it. And now the Russians tripped over their own Richard, taking Mariupol is the only chance they have of claiming some sort of victory. This is very much the politicians calling the objectives.
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A squad of infantry being a bit careless in spacing and unit ID. Not a mistake they'll make a second time.
Though it is in doubt who is who. Might be Russians getting jumped by a Ukrainian tank. Hard to tell from the footage.
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There's a video doing the rounds that seems to show Ukrainians killing RU soldiers.
Not going post it here as no-one needs to see that gruesome ****. But those of you that have seen it: did you see the shoulder patch Ukrainian flag on one the soldiers involved? Upside down. What a curious mistake to make if you are a patriotic Ukrainian.
It's not even that my conscience needs it to be a false flag. If they are murdering Russian soldiers, I am okay with it at this point. I wish they didn't and I don't think it is smart. But my heart isn't exactly weeping for those "poor Russian conscripts". Unlike the Geneva convention, my conscience does value reciprocity. Act like beasts, get put down like beasts.
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Not so sure the supposedly dumb shot into the back is what it seems. Clearly, there is an edit point there. Seems more like they put it beyond use after abandoning. Everyone else is well clear when the shot goes in, and the tank starts moving right away. Not something I'd expect right after a foul up.
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About the depot going up in flames:
What if someone showed up to actually take stock, and the people in charge prefer the counting starts and stops at one giant hole in the ground?
A theory I've come up with more because I enjoy it than that I believe it.
Or maybe the depot told a joke about Jada Pinkett-Smith?
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Sometimes Twitter is a cesspool. Sometimes it is not.
"I am the very model of a Russian Major General
My standing in the battlefield is growing quite untenable
My forces, though equipped and given orders unequivocal
Did not expect the fight to be remotely this reciprocal
I used to have a tank brigade but now I have lost several
My fresh assaults are faltering with battleplans extemporal
I can't recover vehicles but farmers in a tractor can
It's all becoming rather reminiscent of Afghanistan
My ordnance is the best but only half my missiles make it there
I would have thought by now that we would be controllers of the air
But at the rate the snipers work my time here is ephemeral
I am the very model of a Russian Major General"
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51 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
China is still quite sensible. They are not likely to risk worsening economic relations with the West over Russia without thinking they will benefit from it at the end of the day. I'm guessing Beijing is not convinced Russia is the better bet right now.
Steve
Agree.
I think china might have backed Russia more if they weren't alluding to nuclear escalation. As much as China enjoys making the West squirm, I cannot imagine they appreciated that level of recklessness. And of course Russia tripping over their own dick hasn't helped. They are going to buy cheap Russian oil/gas and otherwise stay out of this.
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27 minutes ago, sross112 said:
If we are mothballing the tanks, I vote for POWER ARMOR!!!!!!! Now it is only a matter of deciding:
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If these options are not logistically friendly or something I guess mechs will suffice.
I am not an unreasonable guy. Behold! The compromise solution: Mech riding Elementals.
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18 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
@The_Capt sure a Tac Op CP - but if I was a Inf Capt I'd still want a 120mm+ barrel throwing shade down range at whomever is hurting my feelings. And as we all know, even @sburke, one does not mix functions in a platform.
So you could then have a dedicated TAC CP type...tank...thingy - but you'll still need/want an (integrated) MBT with a dedicated heavy weapon system scaring the knickers off the OF across the valley.
Hmmm. I am not sure big guns are all that they used to be. These day modern targeting and fusing doodads can make auto-cannons plenty deadly. 120mm HE's "close is good enough" isn't really needed as much as it once was.
I am thinking armour of the future is going to be (or at least, should be IMHO) a multi-role vehicle. A large-ish auto-cannon (where is the 50mm there was talk of a few years back?) backed by ATGMs for the vehicle and perhaps the handful of onboard infantry. And its own drone bay. Ideally a drone that aside from recce can also guide an ATGM to an otherwise unseen target.
Unmanned? For patrols, recce, forward supply runs and maybe for tip of the spear stuff with actual humans nearby in support. But there's still so much you need a set of hands for. Who is going to put a thrown track back on a unmanned vehicle?
Ultimately though, it's gotta be mechs. Because **** ground pressure, mechs are cool.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
So what is the Ukrainian plan in Kharkiv? Having pushed the Russians beyond artillery range of the city, I don't see the point of continuing to push there. Would I be right in thinking the offensives there are mostly about pushing an already off balance RFA as far back as they can while they can. And that now that effort seems to have stalled, we will see them tidy up the lines a bit and dig in there?
I concur with previous posts on the matter, the real contest for the Ukraine seems to be the Kherson area. That's where you can change the strategic picture, I would think.
As for what is keeping the Ukrainians, I too think they aren't in a hurry to throw half trained troops into a tricky offensive. The smart move is building up such strength as they have and keep bleeding the Russians. While it is hard to say for certain, the Ukrainians seem to still be degrading the Russians capacity to fight more then the other way around. So yeah, why lunge at an enemy still on his feet when you can wait for them to fall on their arse and only then proceed to hand out a kicking.