Sgt Joch

Bogging in CMx2 has always been on the light side. I worked on a scenario for the last CMFB module and set the ground conditions as “muddy” to force players to stay on the roads, but even when the AI moved AFVs cross country, there was very little bogging.
To minimize chances of bogging, 1) check the off-road rating; 2) check the ground conditions and 3) watch your speed. The faster you go off-road, the greater the chances of bogging.

Hmm I never subscribed to this vengeful nonsense either, if only for its massive simplifications (you definitelly have people of great civil courage there like Kara Mourza or, more controversially, Navalny himself; a pitty so few of them). But on other side that doesn't mean we should look at the world through pink glassess and project on Russia our own expectations how authoritarian system should look like (like folks still waiting Muscovia magicaly falling apart into ethnic pieces). This picture is often created by mediation of liberal Russian emigrees, who mostly try to avoid difficult issues, stick to safe topics like corruption and their conclusion is usually that Russians are just fooled victims of bad old dictator- which was btw. Navalny's greatest sin. Self-pitty is their driver here, not empathy, and that is why so many Ukrainians are pissed on them for.
As I understand their reactions, they are already sensing return of comfortable, relativistic narration "not us, it was Putin's fault" that West fell pray to so many times in history. While in reality it's Russians' long-lasting, deep-rooted mix of collective passivity, brutal domestic culture and historically- proven shauvinism that let them here; Putin is their creation, responsibility and lot. Note it is neither still not North Korea level of control; Russians are not cut off from information like Koreans and have basically unobstructed freedom of movement both internally and abroad.
Practically, we have no means of determining what Russia would look like within softer regime; it was political fiction long time before this conflict started. Important questions now are: how it's economy will hold in this, likely few additional years long war; If it will not hold well, what political and military means Kremlin is ready to apply; Will Europe have guts to supply UA through this period, especially when US fall out, and what would be our reactions to potentiall turmoil in RU (judging by our reactions to Prig's coup, not very proactive, but this attitude may change in time).

Because , as Bullethead used to say, it ain't over till a grunt sticks a flag on it.
Drones are cool, and all, but like aircraft they can't seize *and*hold* terrain, regardless of season, weather or terrain.

Interesting on the comments about the jpiv's. I just played the second round of chaumont and was impressed by their spotting. 🙃

Is anyone here subscribed to the sarcosaurus substack/feed - The daily emails are pretty in-depth on current situation on ground .  https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/

Can we find accurate reliable numbers anymore? I doubt. This could be true in earlier stages but since the summer offensive Ukrainians are losing a lot too. 
Gliding bombs, drones etc have inflicted big damage to their forces, which repeatedly are being cut off in big cauldrons and get hammered until very last minute withdrawal. 
Another hint is that we don't see any mass mobilization from Russia this time yet Ukraine seems rather eager to gather personnel even asking/forcing people to return from abroad. 
Lastly, they keep losing ground every day. Even the little gains of summer offensive in Zaporizhia front. There are also no signs of any new Ukrainian offensive plan, unless it's being prepared in complete darkness for maximum surprise. But it's very unlikely. 

Well, examiming some parts:
Attrition: Russia is winning that part, those of us that has read about the Great Patriatic War, this comes as no surprise.
War production: Russia is winning that part, 30 % of the Russian economy is now war economy, western sanctions has not destroyed the russian economy.
Morale: Ukranian morale is not as good as it was at the start of the war. Fatique is a problem, 6 of 7 russian drones now hit their targets, that used to be 1 out of 7 drones.
Ammunition: Russia is winning that part with their war production, western applause in Munich does not making any 155 mm shells, if Trump wins the election US contribution will almost dissapear, the EU countries really has to step up but how long will that take ? one danish ammunition factory will be ready in .......... two years, that is way to slow.
Combat: the russian army is learning from their mistakes, just as they did in 1941-42-43-44.
I dont like it but there it is.

I get a feeling that whatever territory is being taken by Russia at this stage of the war, will remain to russia for a long time. Kinda like northern Cyprus. I think Ukraine's military peak was at the summer offensive. Can't get better anymore imo. I think now the problem lies not in equipment but in manpower and collective will to continue the fight. 
It will be impossible for Ukraine to gather the mass needed to take back strongholds the way Russia does. Drone harrasment can of course continue infinitely.  I see no end to the attacks on the Black Sea fleet from Ukraine as well. Naval drones will probably continue to harass the russian ships. Unless they think of protective nettings and other measures, that would be a major headache. 
I think we might reach a point the best both sides could achieve would be a cease fire with probably Donbas and Crimea going to Russia. 
 

 

 

That's true, but the game was never meant to depict a real conflict, it was always intended to be a hypothetical scenario, set in the near future against a near peer enemy. When the game was released it was clear that it was meant to represent a hypothetical future conflict, in hindsight given how reality played out differently it might have been a better idea to set the game in 2027 instead of 2017 in order to get the same perspective.

Obviously no military in the world is truly an equivalent to the US army, but that's the suspension of disbelief required in order to have a game with a near future/near peer scenario (It is still useful to model what conventional modern warfare against a similarly equipped enemy looks like). A fully realistic game would probably just play like Shock Force 2 again with the US army stomping any opposition with ease, but that won't be very useful when trying to see how well the US army would do against a broadly equivalent enemy.

Perhaps a realistic modern scenario (without being set in the near future where you can write into the backstory that an adversary greatly beefed up their military and adopted new equipment) that doesn't just devolve into Shock Force 3 would require the US army to not be involved due to the sheer power disparity making the conflict no longer a near-peer one. However, the US army is basically required for a modern war game to sell well, thus the only real way to depict a near peer scenario is to have a hypothetical conflict where the enemy military is better equipped than in reality and have the audience suspend their disbelief.

A fictional setting doesn't mean it can't be based in reality, you can have fictional alliances of real countries like they did in ARMA, where there's a Chinese-Iranian led alliance doing a proxy war with NATO in a fictional Southern European country. It sounds plausible-ish but there's no such alliance in reality (yet) so there's no risk of it turning into a real conflict in the short term.
 
I don't think you can eliminate the risk, but there are ways to minimize it, such as having the game take place a decade or two in the future where you have a bit more freedom in the geopolitical backstory. A EU vs USA scenario might not be as ridiculous if there's 10-20 years of backstory to get to that point: democratic backsliding, radical political parties and leaders seizing power, new alliances being forged with traditional adversarial countries, increasing resource scarcity and certain flashpoint locations (maybe even a fictional flashpoint location) can create a reasonably plausible scenario where such a conflict can happen. It depends on the writing and how far in the future you are willing to go, we have to remember that current global alliances are not set in stone.

Or there can also be realistic-sounding scenarios that are extremely unlikely to ever happen, such as China vs Japan, with the potential involvement of Russia, North Korea, South Korea, USA and maybe Iran or select EU countries as expansions (North Korea vs South Korea directly is too risky of a title in my opinion). Such a scenario is probably impossible in real life, but you wouldn't have to suspend too much disbelief for it.

Yes, it’s too bad the expansion pack is dead, there was a lot of interesting stuff in there, although I understand BFC’s decision.
Now CMBS itself is not dead, the game still works fine. There are some mistakes since a lot of stuff had to be guessed at, but on the whole it is pretty accurate.
Now in terms of simulating the current war, that can actually be done as well, you can build immense minefields, fortified lines, play around with morale/command capacity, give both sides lots of UAVs, etc.
You can also easily upgrade UKR forces. The scenario editor is flexible enough that you can easily add U.S. weapons to UKR units. I have done various quick and dirty scenarios and UKR forces with Abrams, Bradleys, U.S. artillery and drones are VERY capable. Unfortunately, any U.S. vehicle you add to UKR forces will still show up as U.S. and speak English, but that is a minor point. Hopefully, that could be addressed by modders.
All CMx2 games are ultimately sandbox games and you can do a lot with them.

This is bull****. Either you support the western rules based order, or you do not. You cannot start to pick and choose which rules to observe when you think they've become a bit inconvenient.

Isn't it great that we live in a time where third-person plural possessive can spark social controversy?  

Using "their" in a sentence like that has been around for decades, possibly over a century.  Its not some new development. And not exactly on topic either.

Apart from the general logistical principles raised by The_Capt I’m pretty sure DPICM would actually have been particularly difficult to provide at that point in the war, since many of the nations who were making up the supply chain to the Ukrainian border had signed a treaty specifically obliging them not to facilitate the use of DPICM, even by transporting them elsewhere.  We’ll all recall that it took a while to find a diplomatically acceptable way around that and I’m pretty sure they/we only bothered because of the lack of alternatives as conventional ammo types ran low.

From a year ago;
The campaigning season has annual cycles, and so do sanctions stories, apparently
 
Edit: at face value - combining the two stories - it seems like the value of chips imported to Russia decreased quite a bit from 2022 to 2023, despite inflation.
Joch's story: $1.7b in 2023
Ribakova's tweet: $1.8b Jan-Sep 2021 (ie, 9 months, not 12) and $2.45b Jan-Sep 2022.
Normalising that, for full years, we get ...
2021: $2.4b 2022: $3.27b 2023: $1.7b ... which is an encouraging trend.
(although there's a lot of hairy-*** assumptions in there that the data probably doesn't support, incl like-for-like measurements, and the 2023 data being for the full 12 months rather than some shorter period)
 

Hi, so as to what the Russians seem to be targeting, Tom Cooper came up with some plausible conclusions based on available facts (see above). Last winter, the Russians seemed to be targeting the Ukrainian energy grid and this year, they seem to be targeting UKR defence industries, command facilities and UKR air bases.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-4-january-2024-q-and?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The problem in trying to make sense of what is actually going on is that the Ukrainians, quite rightly, keep a tight lid on what info is released and, of course, tend to highlight the Russian strikes which cause civilian casualties.

Hi, so as to what the Russians seem to be targeting, Tom Cooper came up with some plausible conclusions based on available facts (see above). Last winter, the Russians seemed to be targeting the Ukrainian energy grid and this year, they seem to be targeting UKR defence industries, command facilities and UKR air bases.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-4-january-2024-q-and?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
The problem in trying to make sense of what is actually going on is that the Ukrainians, quite rightly, keep a tight lid on what info is released and, of course, tend to highlight the Russian strikes which cause civilian casualties.

Short answer, no. Tom Cooper had an interesting write up on this. The F-16/AIM120 combo is out ranged by the SU35/MIG31/R37 combo.
You also have to remember the F16 Ukraine is getting are upgraded A models which while competent are not as deadly as the latest models in the U.S. inventory.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Way too much emphasis has been placed on the F16 and aircraft in general. One important feature of this war is the way in which SAMs dominate the air battlefield and shape all air operations. Both Ukrainian and Russian air forces are very skittish about  coming into range of the other sides SAMs since that is almost guaranteed death.
More Patriot batteries would be a lot more useful to Ukraine than 40 year old F16s.

Short answer, no. Tom Cooper had an interesting write up on this. The F-16/AIM120 combo is out ranged by the SU35/MIG31/R37 combo.
You also have to remember the F16 Ukraine is getting are upgraded A models which while competent are not as deadly as the latest models in the U.S. inventory.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Way too much emphasis has been placed on the F16 and aircraft in general. One important feature of this war is the way in which SAMs dominate the air battlefield and shape all air operations. Both Ukrainian and Russian air forces are very skittish about  coming into range of the other sides SAMs since that is almost guaranteed death.
More Patriot batteries would be a lot more useful to Ukraine than 40 year old F16s.

Short answer, no. Tom Cooper had an interesting write up on this. The F-16/AIM120 combo is out ranged by the SU35/MIG31/R37 combo.
You also have to remember the F16 Ukraine is getting are upgraded A models which while competent are not as deadly as the latest models in the U.S. inventory.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Way too much emphasis has been placed on the F16 and aircraft in general. One important feature of this war is the way in which SAMs dominate the air battlefield and shape all air operations. Both Ukrainian and Russian air forces are very skittish about  coming into range of the other sides SAMs since that is almost guaranteed death.
More Patriot batteries would be a lot more useful to Ukraine than 40 year old F16s.

Short answer, no. Tom Cooper had an interesting write up on this. The F-16/AIM120 combo is out ranged by the SU35/MIG31/R37 combo.
You also have to remember the F16 Ukraine is getting are upgraded A models which while competent are not as deadly as the latest models in the U.S. inventory.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Way too much emphasis has been placed on the F16 and aircraft in general. One important feature of this war is the way in which SAMs dominate the air battlefield and shape all air operations. Both Ukrainian and Russian air forces are very skittish about  coming into range of the other sides SAMs since that is almost guaranteed death.
More Patriot batteries would be a lot more useful to Ukraine than 40 year old F16s.

Short answer, no. Tom Cooper had an interesting write up on this. The F-16/AIM120 combo is out ranged by the SU35/MIG31/R37 combo.
You also have to remember the F16 Ukraine is getting are upgraded A models which while competent are not as deadly as the latest models in the U.S. inventory.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Way too much emphasis has been placed on the F16 and aircraft in general. One important feature of this war is the way in which SAMs dominate the air battlefield and shape all air operations. Both Ukrainian and Russian air forces are very skittish about  coming into range of the other sides SAMs since that is almost guaranteed death.
More Patriot batteries would be a lot more useful to Ukraine than 40 year old F16s.

Short answer, no. Tom Cooper had an interesting write up on this. The F-16/AIM120 combo is out ranged by the SU35/MIG31/R37 combo.
You also have to remember the F16 Ukraine is getting are upgraded A models which while competent are not as deadly as the latest models in the U.S. inventory.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Way too much emphasis has been placed on the F16 and aircraft in general. One important feature of this war is the way in which SAMs dominate the air battlefield and shape all air operations. Both Ukrainian and Russian air forces are very skittish about  coming into range of the other sides SAMs since that is almost guaranteed death.
More Patriot batteries would be a lot more useful to Ukraine than 40 year old F16s.

Short answer, no. Tom Cooper had an interesting write up on this. The F-16/AIM120 combo is out ranged by the SU35/MIG31/R37 combo.
You also have to remember the F16 Ukraine is getting are upgraded A models which while competent are not as deadly as the latest models in the U.S. inventory.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/its-the-range-stupid-part-1?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Way too much emphasis has been placed on the F16 and aircraft in general. One important feature of this war is the way in which SAMs dominate the air battlefield and shape all air operations. Both Ukrainian and Russian air forces are very skittish about  coming into range of the other sides SAMs since that is almost guaranteed death.
More Patriot batteries would be a lot more useful to Ukraine than 40 year old F16s.