benpark

I have this morning uploaded the 'final' versions of my creations including:
(1) Normandy and Netherlands Master Maps (7 maps)
(2) ASL/SL to CMBN conversions. (11 Scenarios)
(3) Kandu's Original Scenarios (6 Scenarios)
(4) 82nd Airborne in Normandy standalone scenarios (29 Scenarios)
(5) Mission Boston - Objective La Fiere; a short, five mission, linear, 82nd Airborne in Normandy campaign. A longer version is still in development.
 

I've seen original tweet about this. In comments one soldier told this clothes doesn't prevent thermal spotting, but can blur figure outline from distance.
PS. it's good for not hot weather, when temperature will grow up to 20+ to move in this "thermos" will be a torture

Russians have been testing anti-thermal imager clothing.

Man versus beast.
 

Tiger hunting
 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Let´s just say he had a bad day...
 

"Hey Hans ! Do you think their snipers saw us ?"
"Nah, we are fine Klaus. By the way are those some new ventilation holes in your panzerfaust ?"
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Yeah, I think that's right!

oh lord, his parents' kitchen countertop:
 

While I believe that especially during times like this where so much is on the line, "OG" should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
I do find it amusing that in the future when historians will write serious history books about the war that will forever change the direction of the 21st century. They will briefly need to mention what Minecraft is, as well as a Discord channel called "Thug Shaker Central". What an era we live in. 😕

The form of the leak  as described by the Guardian is kind of amusing - but a little baffling to me .
"In this case, the evidence suggests the person responsible is most likely a gaming and weapons enthusiast with motives no more complicated than a desire to impress other members of his internet chat group"
I mean  somebody who is a member of such a group -  I would expect to be posting materials on tank net or more serious forums  rather than  "Thug Shaker Central" or  minecraft groups  .  This implies "youth" to me which begs the question how they would have access to such documentation ? Stealing from Dad's Briefcase ? .
Looking forward to finding out more about how this leak occurred .

It is not the tanks that is going to kill the RA, it is the crews.  They likely only had enough crews for about 2000 tanks (ie those in ready service), with some reserves.  This crews must have been taking horrendous losses in the first year, and the Russian tanks do not look very survivable when hit.  We know some crews got out but a lot of examples of them not.  They do not have a lot of time to train replacements, so they go out poorly trained, make mistakes and become more casualties.  The “so what” is that  the effectiveness of their tank corps overall all is going to drop in a non-linear rate, compared to linear losses.  And then we could talk logistics and maintenance of the force in contact.

As a relatively uninformed software engineer, I think this is where things will go. We've been able to build small (10cm long) fixed wing drones that can fly for an hour at 100km per hour for 24+ years with a camera (at least when I was visiting the MIT aerospace labs in 1999). You can build something like this now for very cheap, and much improved performance just on the hardware side.
Let's say these are electric drones, so trade endurance for no need to truck fuel around and simpler motors, you could have thousands of these things in the air, with 25g of high explosive in the nose. Combine that with modern ML/image recognition software + GPS running on hardware that fits into a tiny package AND is cheap and easy to build, as in $100 or less cheap. Effectively this is a smart cruise missile scaled down to kill an individual soldier. Let's say Ukraine could have a ten thousand semi autonomous drones roaming 20km behind Russian lines looking for targets for several hours at a time; would you even need mass if it was cheap to dedicate a drone to kill each enemy soldier?
If the defences are cheap enough to scale with the number of drones, maybe. Lasers seem reasonable, but they require a lot of power and cooling, especially for longer range. As soon as a laser is identifier, something specialized can be sent after the laser.
The more insiduous thing with drones and small computers is there is no reason the drones can't be used to execute flexible tactics. For example, we've identified a laser on a bmp-9000, and we estimate it can only fire 20 times per minute, so let's swarm it with 25 drones at once, or attack from multiple directions at once with 5 drones.

CANDYGRAM FOR MONGO

A brief and interesting read. Russia losing its touch everywhere:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/he-came-to-dc-as-a-brazilian-student-the-us-says-he-was-a-russian-spy/ar-AA19cK0x
The revelations have also exposed serious lapses in Russian tradecraft. Authorities have mined Cherkasov’s computer and other devices and found a trove of evidence, according to court records and security officials, including emails to his Russian handlers, details about “dead drops” where messages could be left, records of illicit money transfers, and an error-strewn personal history that he appears to have composed while trying to memorize details of his fictitious life.
His arrest last April came at the outset of an ongoing roll-up of Russian intelligence networks across Europe, a crackdown launched after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that officials say has inflicted greater damage on Kremlin spy agencies than any other effort since the end of the Cold War.
Not sure what the writer is basing that opinion on. Let's hope it's not wishful thinking. But it does make sense the the west would go on the offensive behind the scenes. 

The outpost.

General Zaluzhnyi personally awarded the soldier of 22nd mot.inf. battalion of 92nd mech.brigade Ruslan Zubarev ("Predator") for his epic fight. He received Golden Cross - honorable sign of Chief-in-Command. Also Zaluzhnyi gifted him with name weapon - AR-15 rifle. "Predator" said this was his dream to buy this rifle, but he couldn't do this, because according to the law it could be possibly only in 25 y.o., but he has 22 only.

The beaver in the trench. Background sound will be familiar to Poles 😆
 

This what Putin is counting on. Really, his only hope for redemption is being re-embraced by a newly elected president Trump: Sanctions lifted immediately, resumed threats to leave NATO, verbal attacks on all USA allies as before, and leaning towards foreign dictators (again). With a Republican House of Representatives bent on spending cuts, a return to threatening to withhold Ukraine military support unless it agrees to various demands is probable. Demands many here would find appalling. At which point Putin and Xi announce their “Peace Plan”, with loud Trump endorsement. Europe in disarray not just over the war, but much more fundamental, over what they feared four years earlier. USA no longer a reliable partner, perhaps in anything. Not trustworthy. The end of the Atlantic Alliance.
This isn’t a prediction! It’s a possible scenario with more than a 50/50 probability because it is based in many aspects on past behavior. So, all the more reason to underscore the critical need for providing Ukraine with *everything* it needs to win convincingly on the battlefield this year. To deliver such a major Russian battlefield defeat that the Russian military in Ukraine is finished. And no one can doubt the fact. Because the only reasonable guarantee of ending the threat of future Russian attacks is full NATO membership. And the only way all NATO members might consider this is the convincing, devastating Russian defeat. Gambling *anything* about NATO until after 2024 is gambling Ukraine’s lives and future.

Guys form Bakhmut write about completely other things - Russians in contray after some reducing of intensivity of assaults, in past day sharply increased number of assaults - as if they have thrown all available reserves to breakthrough defense. 
The dynamic of number of attacks for March (for all frontline), according to General Staff info
 

Seems this is for real, although of very little real impact - excuse the fruity language from Eliot H
 
P

I´m waiting for the day when we will see T-34/85 and IS-2 upgraded with ERA...
 
 

--------------------------------------------------------------
Mini map pack for Battlefront Combat Mission Red Thunder
--------------------------------------------------------------
 
Description:
 
Three maps in Estonia one in Latvia.
All the maps in this mini pack are based on google earth satellite images, photos and also street view when available, not historical maps. So obviously these locations were not identical during ww2. I however tried to downgrade the type of roads when I thought it made sense, on rare occasions removed a couple of houses or farms here and there but for the most part they're as accurate as I could make them.
Some have attack or meeting engagement setups, some are raw (no deployment zones or objectives). The latter will require a little bit of work to be playable.
I tried as much as possible to frame the maps so they're versatile and can be used in various ways: both for meeting engagements and attacks. But there are also usually several possible setups that you could use i.e different directions for the attack with potential objectives and road in all cardinal directions. There is often not just one single way to play them.
It should be noted that most of these maps, except Talvikese which is fairly open with rural terrain, are basically dirt roads going through forests, marshy ground and lakes. So it can be very easy if played as attacks or assaults to block the roads with anti tank mines depending on the deployment zones. So you could just have infantry battles, have an agreement with your opponent to limit the usage of mines or even modify the terrain a little bit by replacing marshy ground with mud or something else where needed. Or just play them as is. It is up to you.
Feel free to use them for whatever you want. Simply credit me and provide a link to this thread.

The maps:
 
1/ Estonia - Kapera (raw map)


size: 1408 X 1072m
type: forest/rural
60km west of Pskov
google earth coordinates: 57°46'12.40"N 27°19'33.80"E

2/ Estonia - Kahri Koorvere road


size: 1168 X 1184m
type: forest and lakes
35km south east of Tartu
google earth coordinates: 58° 5'19.20"N 26°58'28.02"E
Includes both a raw map and a version with a red attack setup. The map with the attack setup is slightly cropped on the northern edge for gameplay reasons so I decided to also include the original one.

3/ Estonia - Talvikese (ME)


size: 2688 X 2832m
type: open/rural
20km south of Tartu
google earth coordinates:  58°12'3.76"N  26°49'7.02"E

4/ Latvia - Courland - Lemzere (raw map)


size: 1776 X 1008m
type: marshy forest and lake
55km south west of Tukums
google earth coordinates: 56°36'15.63"N  22°34'36.97"E
 
Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8d4xsu2bbu1sbbe/CMRT Baltic mini map pack.rar?dl=0
 

Installation:
 
Extract the map in the following directory:
Documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission/Red Thunder/Game Files/Scenarios
 
Zveroboy
 
 
 
 

Can't see that this has been shared before
https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?ll=50.46236913639948%2C31.009234156915404&z=9&mid=1hit_p7DptnwsFEyv5g_sD2dE-SH0vvc

P

I like to try to match the video position on-map to better follow along with the more telling videos. Not a lot of defining features in the background of that column video, but this is the area. It looks to be a berm. The bridge with a gate the column was headed for is just north of Nova Kakhovka, over the river and marshy, marshy, marshy terrain. It also looks to be flat in the surrounding areas. That looks to be the case far and wide around these parts.
I wouldn't think moving in the open around here is very relaxing, which the column found out.

I like to try to match the video position on-map to better follow along with the more telling videos. Not a lot of defining features in the background of that column video, but this is the area. It looks to be a berm. The bridge with a gate the column was headed for is just north of Nova Kakhovka, over the river and marshy, marshy, marshy terrain. It also looks to be flat in the surrounding areas. That looks to be the case far and wide around these parts.
I wouldn't think moving in the open around here is very relaxing, which the column found out.

I like to try to match the video position on-map to better follow along with the more telling videos. Not a lot of defining features in the background of that column video, but this is the area. It looks to be a berm. The bridge with a gate the column was headed for is just north of Nova Kakhovka, over the river and marshy, marshy, marshy terrain. It also looks to be flat in the surrounding areas. That looks to be the case far and wide around these parts.
I wouldn't think moving in the open around here is very relaxing, which the column found out.

I like to try to match the video position on-map to better follow along with the more telling videos. Not a lot of defining features in the background of that column video, but this is the area. It looks to be a berm. The bridge with a gate the column was headed for is just north of Nova Kakhovka, over the river and marshy, marshy, marshy terrain. It also looks to be flat in the surrounding areas. That looks to be the case far and wide around these parts.
I wouldn't think moving in the open around here is very relaxing, which the column found out.