Sgt Joch

There has been a lot of speculation. There have also been many threads on the forum debating whether Israel was seriously planning to attack Iran, (although they all seem to have been erased by the forum migration last summer), but as far as I know, this is the first solid evidence which has come out.

I missed it when it came out and only found out about it because the article was referred to in another article I read this morning about Iran's response to the Obama's press conference. That is another strange thing. It looks like a solid piece of reporting, but it was released on a saturday. I presume since the Bush administration was ending, it was not deemed newsworthy.

The fascinating part of the article is the strong evidence that Israel was planning or at least seriously thinking about attacking Iran's nuclear facilities in 2008. It is nice to see that the Bush administration was smart enough to realize that this could easily lead to a wider war. Of course, by 2008, most of the hard-line neo-cons had left and Cheney's influence was much diminished.

maybe he was not as much a cowboy as we thought... from the grey lady...http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?pagewanted=1

I always saw CMBO/CMBB/CMAK as being more an evolution of the Panzerblitz/PanzerLeader/AIW line than AH's Squad Leader, however since all these game have the same basic goal, namely a realistic simulation of armored warfare, there are bound to be similarities. I may case, playing CMSF often brings back fond memories of playing Arab-Israeli War when I was a wee lad...

actually Antietam was the bloodiest small-arms battle in American History: ..but when did history ever get in the way of movie marketing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antietam

Happy birthday BFC! I am still a relative newcomer. I completely missed CMBO since NW europe 44-45 was never my favorite theater. I only came onboard when the CMBB demo was released in fall 2002 and have been hooked ever since. Hopefully, the next 10 years will be as productive and succesful! ..and who knows, maybe I will eventually see my dream game: CM:VIETNAM!

This matches up with what other forum members who have military experience have said and with what I have read about many firefights going back to WW2 (...and even the battle of the wilderness and Cold Harbour in 1864), on a modern battlefield it is very hard to spot enemy soldiers who know that being spotted means being killed, that realization tends to make you more careful . The spotting in CMSF 1.11 reflects this.

Very interesting article. I had presumed that the Taliban fought much like the insurgents in Iraq. Their capability is worrisome considering their increasing encroachment in Pakistan. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/world/asia/25swat.html?scp=1&sq=taliban%20radio&st=cse

Adam, if we look at the differences, there are certain elements of CMSF which are distinct improvements over CMx1, such as relative spotting, improved pathfinding, better indirect artillery and air modeling, more refined LOS/LOF calculations. spotting is harder in CMSF 1.11. I am still debating whether we went a bit too far or not, but that is easy to scale back. In CMx1, it was much too easy to spot units because of borg spotting. the effect of terrain/cover is debatable. In CMx1, it was easier to fudge the results because of the level of abstraction. I agree that in CMSF, the pixeltruppens are not as quick as real soldiers to find cover, but BFC has factored that in the calculations so that the final results should be close to RL. There is still a fudge factor in CMSF, but it is smaller than in CMx1.

Adam, I am not sure where you get that from. I still play CMBB as well as CMSF (still have to get my eastern front fix ) and I can't think of a single aspect which is more "realistic/groggy" in CMx1 as opposed to CMSFv 1.11

spoilers . . . . . . . . . . . . . yes, I found some of them already...tough buggers, one team took out a hummer and its crew with machine gun fire and grenades. It was neat to watch even though I was on the receiving end..:mad:

I have played one hour into the 1st mission. Great campaign so far, great map, good force mix; good job on the RED AI artillery, it is a real pain...

In CMSF, I believe it is assumed the Army/marines units participating in the initial invasion are regular line troops, however reserve or national guards units would be easy to simulate by giving them lower than average physical fitness and/or morale so they are more brittle.

If you look at the bigger picture, part of the problem is that the current experience levels were conceived in a WW2 setting where the German, US and Commonwealth armies trained in about the same way and combat experience had the biggest impact on combat performance. Arab armies are completely different. For many cultural and other reasons, units rarely receive the type of ongoing training which is standard in western armies. Individual soldiers also receive only the barest instructions in operating the weapons they have and are often unable to use the more advanced functions. For example, egyptian F-16 pilots in Gulf War I relied only on their eyes and guidance from ground controllers to find their targets and did not use any of the onboard sensors. Arab armies are also excessively centralized with almost all decisions being taken by senior officers which leads to a very weak NCO corps. This has a substantial impact on small unit tactics where having strong NCOs makes all the difference. If you look at the Israeli army in 1967 and 1973, their capability was roughly similar to that of a typical western european army. Their spectacular tactical results, which make them look like an elite army, were all due to the very poor Arab peformance. The Syrian army also have another problem. In the late '70s, after they realized their army could not compete with the Israelis, they started concentrating their best men, training and equipment in elite units, such as the Special Forces and Republican Guards. This gave them a certain number of troops which had a capability comparable to western units with unquestioned loyalty to the regime. However, this also had the side effect of lowering the overall quality of the rest of the army. I would guess the quality gap between US and Syrian troops is probably as high or higher than the gap between German and Soviet forces at the beginning of Barbarossa. So if you take all these factors into account in picking the proper experience level, my best guess on the Syrians would be: -Special Forces/Airborne: mostly Regulars with Veterans for certain crack units; -Republican Guards: 1/2 Regulars, 1/2 Green; -regular line units: Green; -Reserve Units: 1/2 Green, 1/2 Conscripts -Militia: all Conscripts. U.S. regular Army units/marines are different since it is an all volunteer force which trains regularly and has well trained and motivated junior leaders, so for these units a mix of 1/3-1/2 regulars, 1/2-2/3 veteran is probably correct.

re-reading "Arabs at war", all Arab armies have problems with artillery. They are fine with pre-planned barrages and firing on pre-registered targets, but have problems with rapidly shifting targets. This applies to the Egyptians in 73, the Syrians in 82 and the Iraqis in 91. This is the comment on the performance of Syrian artillery in 82, when the Syrian army put in its best performance against the Israelis: "Syrian artillery support was very poor and had little effect on the fighting. Their batteries showed almost no ability to shift fire in response to changing tactical situations or to coordinate fire from geographically dispersed units." (pp.543-544) In GW1, there is also an interesting example in the stand of the Nebuchadnezzar Infantry division. This was a Republican guard unit which was attacked by the US 24th mechanized division. Its artillery had pre-registered targets and placed 55 gallon drums as target reference points. At first, the US forces came under the barrage, but quickly realized the fire was registered on the drums and stayed away from them. The Iraqi artillery was unable to respond and just kept shelling the drums for the rest of the day. (p. 255) Based on those examples, the present modeling of Syrian artillery in the game, in terms of accuracy and response time, is very reasonable. One thing we should consider, however, would be allowing the placement of pre-registered Target Reference Point, as in CMx1.

My observations are all from the first mission of GeorgeMc's "Forging Steel" campaign. I was surprised by the results as well since spotting in 1.10 and before was very quick. It does appear to me that there is a advantage to spotting over several turns, but maybe we can get BFC to comment.

From what I observed, it can take several minutes observation to spot a unit. In a scenario I am playing, 2 AFVs were hiding in woods. A recon team on top of a building about 500 meters away spotted the first one after about 5 minutes and the second one after about 10 minutes. A M1 on top of a hill about 1 km away also took several minutes to spot them. Of course, the spotting has probably been reduced as far as we would want it.

In 1.11, spotting is harder. It takes a longer time before enemy units are spotted, indentified and acquired. It now pays to put recon units in a good observation post and just let them scan the landscape. GeorgeMc's new "Forging Steel" campaign really shows this off. I personally like the change, although it slows down the game, it finds it is more realistic. What do you guys think?

Yes, the fact that Syrian ATGM teams are harder to spot has a big impact. They can sometimes get off 2-3 shots before they are spotted which makes them a lot more deadlier. As the US player, you can't just bull your way through with tanks, you now have to use much more combined arms tactics.For example, scout with your infantry and take out suspected or spotted ATGMs with suppressive fire/artillery.

How good is the Russian stuff? As anyone who witnessed the forum wars regarding CMBB and IL-2 will know, even when you have a lot of documented info, you can still have heated arguments on its interpretation. Dealing with modern stuff, the problem is compounded since there is less info and much of the interesting bits are classified. Dealing with the Russian stuff in Syrian hands, you have the further problem that the export version is often less performing than what he Russians keep for their own forces. Own advantage with modern weapons however is that they are almost all one shot/one kill which simplifies the problem to one of spotting, reaction time and accuracy. When you get into that sphere, things become even more fuzzy since the quality of the troops handling the weapons become more important than the weapons themselves. So to a large extent the relative deadliness of weapons in a simulation like CMSF will always be a best guess based on published data and what little real world data there is. In 1.11, I think we have achieved a pretty good balance. I think you will find that the changes to the spotting rules have made all Syrian forces more deadly. You can no longer just park a platoon of M1s on a hill and have them spot and engage every Syrian units in LOS.

Good luck Mord...and try to come back in one piece...

Just finished it, as others have mentioned the ending is a bit abrupt and unexpected, but the game itself is very satisfying. To get the full flavour of it though, you have to spend time wandering about and not just be in a hurry to finish the main story.

If you want to finish 1.10 PBEM games, you need to back up: - your 1.10 exe; and - the marines module folder. I just switched them back and forth during beta testing. You can leave the 1.11 brz file in the Data folder, although you may notice the game misidentifies weapons, it has no impact on actual weapon performance. In PBEM, the main fixes were: - no more constantly erupting vehicles from secondary explosions; - no more vehicles bucking/rocking at the beginning of a turn; - no more twitchy vehicle movement during replay;

Nice to see Billy back! What would the release of a simulation be without some heated arguments over how realistic it is..