Apocal

I have no idea what you mean by this. Could you rephrase it?

That wouldn't have changed things much, except it would have been a Maverick or JDAM rather than a Paveway that killed the Kurds. They were told to look out for a T-55, they spotted and correctly IDed a T-55, then placed the ordnance in the desired location... problem being there were T-55s on both sides of the battlefield. Just one of those mistakes that happens sometimes. The friendly-fire incident at An Nasiriyah was a bit more of a mistake on the ground; the A-10s were specifically told the north side of the bridge was devoid of friendly vehicles and, upon a second query on the matter, were informed it was definitely clear due to a doctrinal mixup (FAC assumed they would be doing their own spotting entirely, A-10s thought the FAC had eyes) and laid waste to some bunched up AAVs. A similar thing happened with a British recon unit pushing past the FSCL (i.e. the "do not cross without permission" line); A-10s were told to be on the lookout for vehicles carrying orange rocket warheads around in a certain sector, they spotted a few with flashes of orange (aircraft recognition panels that were supposed to be taken off at that stage in the campaign) and asked higher to ensure the area was devoid of friendlies. Higher confirmed the area was free of friendlies and the A-10s tore into them. If you give your support bad info, bad things can and do happen, regardless of airframe.

I was actually in Iraq. As an actual accounts of CAS delivered during an actual shooting war with actual MANPADS and AAA involved (my "dreamed up nonsense"): http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0312544146/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link ""Once they had the target description, they descended under the cloud deck to where both the pilots and weapons systems officers could actually see the ground. The F-14s were literally only a few hundred feet off the ground. They flew directly over our position, positively identifying our six GMVs and the two white Range Rovers. ... The Navy pilot had been told to look for an intersection with T-55 tanks just off the road, troops and pickup trucks. The Navy pilot looked out of his cockpit down at the ground and saw an intersection, a T-55 tank just off a road, troops and pickup trucks. His first bomb was delivered with great precision into a crowd of troops, killing many instantly. Unfortunately, they were not the Iraqi infantry. The Navy bomb landed among Tom Sandoval's Kurds waiting back at Objective Rock." Now, in this case it ended pretty badly, but it is just illustrative that flying low and relatively slow is bog-standard for CAS. There is one situation where high speed fixed-wing has an advantage over the A-10, but it isn't exactly a circumstance you'd be seeing much of in CM:BS. And at any rate, none of our tactical aircraft (with one notable exception that isn't used for CAS) can bust Mach near the deck when loaded with large amounts of heavy A/G, so as a practical matter, they all have a similar top speed.

I've been playing this game on-again/off-again for around eight months now and I still have not encountered a single aircraft shot down. Not just visual, but my own aircraft, launching attacks and being fired upon by AA; sometimes they get damaged and break off, the majority of the time they keep on trucking, but I've never seen one labelled "KNOCKED OUT" or "SHOT DOWN" or anything.

If I have LOS on the unit with a valid spotter, I'll sometimes put mortar rounds on/in front of the track while moving my own counter into position, unbuttoned. It is far from being a guaranteed kill, but it helps somewhat. Other than that, why bring just one when you can bring two for twice the price?

Yeah, I sort of wondered back in CMSF days why they went with specific aircraft when it could've been generic "Fixed-wing CAS" and "Rotary-wing CAS" without players noticing any functional difference. Call me spoiled since then.

None. edit: Unless you're trying to do loft JDAMs with a Reaper or something ridiculous like that.

Even guys stopping bullets with manjammies were surviving 500lbs. bombs landing within 10 meters and Hellfires slamming next to their feet while they ran. Not usually, but it apparently happens enough to be infuriating.

An A-10 can fly low enough to break LOS from air defense systems as well and still out-range every single air defense system appearing in CM:BS when firing Mavericks or lofting JDAMs in that profile, since they don't require overflight of the target area. Yeah, we expect UAVs to get shot down all the time and they are still in the game, so why not the A-10? As for the too slow comments: every tactical aircraft flies around the same speed when loaded with bombs and down near the deck. All of them fly the same attack profile since it's dictated by weapon, not airframe, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up as a point against the A-10. If the aircraft were actually flying at high speed, high-alt due to a pervasive gun/IRSAM threat, it would make a bit more sense to exclude the A-10 entirely, but the manual stipulates a situation where survivability is basically a dice-roll regardless of airframe since the US side is fighting outside its fixed-wing comfort zone and where most of our aircraft defenses mean nothing. Might as well fly A-10s in that situation, it isn't like their flares and other IRCCM are any worse than other fighters.

If this is the case, most of our UAVs and all of our attack helos would be unusable as well.

You'd actually be surprised how lethal stuff isn't IRL.You'd probably be sent into a rage if you saw a Abrams eat four RPG-29 rockets, all of which penetrate, and none of which actually do anything to the tank or if you dropped a 500lbs. bomb on a machine gun position and had the gun come right back up or if you sent a Hellfire into a loaded BTR and saw all the occupants bail out unharmed. But that kinda stuff stuff happens regularly on the battlefield, even with modern weapons.

http://www.army-guide.com/eng/product3786.html The threat display consists of 32 LEDs and a digital readout in the centre. Threat direction is indicated by illumination of the LED closest to the detected angle, while the threat angle is also numerically displayed in the readout. The laser warning sensors are normally mounted on the turret. While it may be less exact in practice, we've come a long way from quadrant threat displays.

I sailed around on a boat for awhile. That was fun. I went somehwere hot for awhile. That wasn't fun.

There's been a major change.

The area isn't that wide, since laser energy has to physically intersect the receiver at some point.

I'm surprised the already established technique of lasing the ground under/to the side of the vehicle rather than the vehicle itself isn't implemented in some fashion.

It certainly has been refined and gives a much smoother playing experience than the previous titles in the series. If anyone doubts me, just go back to CMSF and see how cringe-inducing the UI can be.

I forgot how I solved that particular tactical problem. I do remember at one point dropping airburst HE and WP rounds in front of a protected building to suppress the defenders long enough that my Strykers' machine guns (no MK19s) could take over and allow a squad of infantry to get in the side door and finish the job up close. But I'm not sure that was the last mission, it has been years since I played it.

I always thought it was an abstraction meant to account for the limited number of powder charges.

You must've missed out on CMSF. The mosque you were under no circumstances to destroy would inevitably be festooned with machine gun and RPG positions. Should you surrender to frustration and level it, you'd lose big-time points.

GMLRS (GPS guided unitary HE) is regularly used in battles at the CMx2 scale.

The snorkel allows fording of depths of five meters for their tanks (T-72 series). The Dnieper River has an average depth of eight meters.

There was only one functioning Browning throughout most of the fight; the other had been knocked out by machine gun fire within the first five minutes. Same story with the TOW and one each of mortar, Mk19 and M240. AFAIK, none of the M240s jammed up: one was unmanned due to its gun team being shot from under it, one ran out totally of ammo and the last one (with the Marine advisors) stayed in action throughout the fight.

They slip back out of sight to eat and drink what they carried with them.

Mines are supposed to be employed as a part of any competent defensive scheme. Command-detonated ones especially. But they could probably already use existing command-detonoated IED code from CMSF, since the concept of operations is similar.