acrashb

I think you're being sarcastic, but honestly a more detailed fire-panning interface would be awesome. Are you sure you're talking to the audience you think you're talking to?
Also, based on what we're seeing in this war, obstacles and breaching ops clearly are a requirement. At least if you want something that can accurately simulate warfare. And that is what I want. If it wasn't, I'd be playing Starcraft.

My day job is developing wargames for the USMC, and I wanted to address the bolded part above. Computer simulations are great, but they do not answer all the objectives of professional wargames, in fact many time the result is not even that important, many times the discussion and insights learned from going through the process are all that we are after. Computer sims also have a way of stifling this conversation, trust me when you have 50 professional Marine, Army, and/or Navy officers in a room, a table top game is the best tool for the job if you want to invite conversation and in-depth topic discussions.
There is also a dopamine hit players get from the tactile nature of a map and counter wargame and rolling dice that you rarely get from a computer simulation. That also has a value to get player buy-in, interaction, and enjoyment.  
Simulation based professional wargames are great when the results are important, testing a new tactical organization, weapon system integration, etc., but they usually turn into a series of in-depth planning sessions with a simulated vignettes occuring for flavor. There is also a stovepipe mentality with these types of games with different player cells huddled around their machines that is absent in table top games.
I've seen it all and there is value for all types of wargames in the professional setting and which is used depends on the objectives and research questions we are trying to answer. Table top games in professional wargames will not be going away anytime soon.
Bil

Ooh before I forget, couple of things, I didn't want to comment on these earlier because I was way behind the thread.
Bayonets.  Bayonet drill is still very much taught in the British military, well in all infantry units it is.  Firstly its a good beasting, erm sorry not allowed to use that term anymore.  It's a good exhaustion exercise.  It is absolutely knackering but you are expected to keep your tempo and aggression levels up all the way through it.  It is also a good way to teach controlled aggression, to keep awareness even while your knackered and slavering like a wild dog.  Lastly its bloody good fun.
In general, I would rather have than have not, as someone previously stated, bayonets don't run out of ammo.  Also what may not be quite well known is that the British bayonet can also be used as wire cutters.  How cool is that, you can either kill someone with it or cut fences. ✂️ 

CM:CE (Combat Mission: Combat Engineering) would be about as much fun as CM:LG (Combat Mission: Lawn Growing), and sell about as well as lamp oil.

What air defenses? ;D
Apperently, there's less and less of them. BBC was pretty quick to report the local (my hometown) events, so you may wanna check that out.
No air raid warnings, no nothing. Nothing is happening, as always. Just bavovna and smoke. Even the announcer at the train station skips the usual "be observant and careful, careful and observant" this morning. How come, I wonder?
 
ps: I'm okay, and the windows are fine, for now.

Looking from outside of the US, I must say that I do not get the Musk hate/presumption that Musk must be doing bad stuff.  Apparently in November 2022 Musk believed Russian propaganda that they will nuke the Ukraine if Crimea is attacked, got scared and refused to extend StarLink coverage to Sevastopol. With hindsight, that was a bad call and unnecessary.
However, the US governement with its intelligence apparatus, satellites, gazillions of security advisers also belived all sort of tall tales about Putin's "red lines" and dragged its feet disgustingly over each additional couple of km of range in the next batch of weapons. Artillery, HIMARS, tanks, cluster ammunitions, ATCMS, planes - each time there was a huge discussion over whether this will finally prod the Russian bear into its mighty rage, which always ended with a whimper, but the discussion never goes away. Sure, Musk bottled it that time, but so did the United States of America and the rest of NATO on a number of times. He may be the richest man on the Earth, but still he is a private individual and surely should not be held to a higher standard than the most powerful military alliance in history and its constituent governments.

SpaceX is offering the US government it’s own constellation, “Starshield” if they want to have full control of a similar system.
EDIT: To be clear, I understand why Musk doesn’t want his system used for this sort of attack (Kessler Syndrome), even if I disagree. The US military could offer up it’s satellite guidance tech if it felt like it, so it’s not just on Musk.

This is 100% not a Martian colonization thread. No, wait, 1000% not.

Because it takes a lot more energy to land on the moon (no aerobraking), and it is much less interesting long term.
Speaking of more videogames people should play… Kerbal Space Program, the best and cheapest way to develop an intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics and navigation.

Colonizing Mars isn't insane. The insane part is that he thinks it can be done in a decade or two (he has absolutely no sense for what sort of timescales these things take place on). But, as an Isaac Arthur fan, I do think we'll colonize every planet, moon, asteroid, comet, and grain of dust in this (and every other) solar system eventually (assuming we don't blow ourselves up first, but I'm feeling optimistic).

These terms have caused pretty significant debate among western militaries, especially in Canada.  The issue is really one of identity and culture, which of course has come under significant scrutiny in the post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq era.  For some it is no doubt a bit of macho flexing, for others it is holding onto core identity for very important purposes.  Up front, I personally fall into that latter category - but also recognized people are going to have differing positions.  So to try and break it down more simply:
- The term "warrior" [aside: 'warfighter' is in reality an attempt at compromise on warrior and largely has no other point of reference], has been mal-adopted and appropriated into toxic sub-cultures within modern militaries.  Of this fact there is little argument.  The most recent scandal in the Australian SASR and many examples of a warped or toxic use of that term are well documented.  People adopt all sorts of crazy ideas as to what a warrior means and how they behave.  This has to do with the fact that a modern warrior concept has yet to truly evolve so people look at history which was an entirely different context (eg we don't scalp anymore).
- The actual term of "warrior" has deep roots within indigenous cultures around the world.  In many it was a class of citizen with a clearly defined purpose.  You can read a lot on this but the most common and prevalent definition was in line with "One Who Does War" on behalf of their people.  A person whose role within a society is the function of warfare.  In most cases it became part of a cast or class system.  In some cultures this was seen as a sacred duty-to-protect bordering on a pseudo public service.  The recent bashing of the term has drifted into colonial insensitivity in some cases as it really reads like "white folks screwed it up, so now all 'warriors' are bad" when in fact indigenous cultures have employed the concept for millennia and many, like North American natives, still hold it sacred.
- The term is important because it incorporates a key pole of the two-worlds problem.  Militaries are not armed humanitarian aid agencies, or slightly better armed police forces.  Some nations have tried to go that way but they tend to be geopolitical anomalies.  The role of any military is state sponsored and legitimized homicide.  Dress it up anyway one likes, call it "self-defence", "use of force" or whatever helps one sleep at night but the core role is "murder for effect.  The second a military culture, or the society that pays for them, forgets that reality very bad things happen. 
- Militaries that get watered down for various social or political sensitivities tend to do several very dangerous things: 1) They forget themselves. This can lead to significant collective shock when war actually happens and generations of military officers and NCOs have basically become bureaucrats.  When that culture runs head long into warfare it is never pretty.  I lived through such a time in the 90s and trust me it is really bad. 2) Societies go into armed conflict with eyes closed.  Sanitization of war and its consequences becomes very easy when one scrubs out what it actually means.  This can not only dangerously shape political calculus, it can create major flaws in military advice to policy.  The reality is no matter where you may be in the kill-chain, there is blood on your hands. That is a serious burden. Those that forget it can start to make very poorly informed decisions quickly.  3) You cannot order identity.  Troops in combat or preparing for combat are going to adopt an identity and culture that will provide them survival advantage and cope - find me a war where that did not happen.  Problem is that if leadership does not define that identity, troops will do it themselves and sub-cultures form.  Those sub-cultures can become dangerously toxic very quickly.  So bottom line is, ignoring warrior reality comes with significant risks.
- Many like the term "soldier" better.  Feels more civilized.  The term it self actually comes from solidus or coin and refers to mercenaries.  The major historical difference between a solider and warrior is that a soldier stops fighting when they don't get paid.  Warriors keep fighting because they don't need to get paid, they believe.  There is an element of righteousness (and I do not mean in the religious sense) in the role of a warrior. Righteousness being a higher ideal held sacred (all war is sacrifice..."to make holy") by the people who sent you to fight for them.  Soldiers by definition live on a more transactional contract with society.  These are deep and important distinctions that often get lost in the noise.
- To your point, "machoism".  The problem we have with "warrior" is that we never actually define it.  It gets tossed around because it sounds cool but as an identifier we do not unpack it and then teach it to people when they enter the service.  It is all over the place, the US Army uses it all the time:  https://www.army.mil/values/soldiers.html.  Likely the closest I have ever seen is the US Army's Warrior Ethos:
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
https://www.army.mil/values/warrior.html
Not bad, but not quite there either as it lacks definition of role as an extension of American society and elements of righteousness.  
So without a clear definition, the term gets hijacked into a macho "ra-ra" tag line.  The reality is far deeper in speaking to balancing our two worlds - war and peace: home and away.  As military we live within and are part of our own societies.  I have kids, bills and go to the same grocery store.  I watch the same shows and play the same game.  But that is only half of my existence.  The other side lives out in a place of conflict and warfare.  In many ways I did not get this until after my first war.  When I got home I realized that part of me would always be in those hills (and then years later, in the desert). 
As I see these young guys fighting and dying in Ukraine, I see them all fighting and dying in the tradition of the warrior.  They are the Ones Who Do War on behalf of their people.  To them it is more than a tag line and will be for the rest of their lives.
So we definitely need to develop a modern definition and concept here and build a concept that not only better fits modern society but resonates.  If we, as modern militaries do not, then we will get hijacked.  I have already been in discussions where terms like "aggression" are being scrubbed out of our ethos by academics and civilians.  If a modern military cannot define itself, someone is going to do it for us.  And they will very like not understand the two-worlds problem.  We are The Ones Who Do War and we need to get much better at explaining what that means in 2023. 
 

It is nice to see us getting back to the precise grog-ness this forum excels in. Well done.

All I can say is that in over 20 years being a member of this forum, I've never hit the Ignore button. Until today.

Well, this turned sour quickly.
I was about to say how I admire the way most people on this forum give room to people who, let's say it gently, have "a different outlook" on one or more discussed items. That is, as far as my pretty extensive experience with discussions on all kinds of topics with all kinds of people goes, pretty rare.
Even when posters repeatedly showed factual ignorence, persisted in refusing to corroborate their unsubstantiated claims or statements, shied away from being reasonable, the average Battlefrontforum-poster stayed civil and patient. The administrators on this forum showed an even more lenient attitude towards "dissident" posters; also when those posters ignored CLEAR warnings that they were becoming a disruptive presence.
This forum is one of the most democratic and most reasonable "places of discussion" I have ever experienced.
If one poster gets multiple posters this annoyed, then there is no other conclusion that this poster wants to antagonize. Usually there is an underlying reason that has to do with things like loneliness, lack of self-esteem, unresolved anger, mental issues and what not.
But whatever the reason is, disrupting a perfectly decent and exceptionally high-leveled forum in this way, is reprehensable.
What a shame.
 

I have never gone from disliking to outright love so quickly in my entire life.  

There are plenty of lengthy posts on this very board covering that very topic. Do your own research. I'm not your assistant.

In my opinion Putin made the same fatal error many in the US (and this board, at times) are making: seeing and hearing only what they want to, not what is actually there.  Putin grossly oversimplified the problem of a major invasion of Ukraine.  He and his cronies built a framework of weak and dangerous assumptions, willed them into facts, and refused to consider any facts that did not fit the house of certainty they had constructed.
Problem is we are seeing the same weakness in strategic thinking/ understanding within our own populations and some political players are simply exploiting that.  The real danger is when that flawed framework hits reality, which does not care about human fictions no matter how hard we may believe them.  We saw it during COVID, we see it in Ukraine - flawed strategy colliding with reality.

Fully endorse this. The claim the Biden administration somehow blinked is, let's be entirely clear, idiotic. It played every card it could play within the political/military/strategic restraints that it could in order to avert the invasion. That the Russians decided to go va banc is on them, not on everyone who tried to stop it. 

No it wasn’t and I don’t think you need to.  It is a stupid narrative proposed either by opportunists or fools.  The time for “staring” was between 2014 and 2022 and we failed on that at every turn across the entire political spectrum.  The reasons were pretty simple - you can’t just stare, you have to be ready to back it up, and no one in the US or entire western world was going to do that for Ukraine.  The costs were simply too high on too many levels. This entire post-crisis “tough guy” narrative is a pretty oblivious ploy to try and pin the blame for this war on one side or another.  We all watched Russia doing dirty in the region and basically did nothing…in some cases we made it worse.
”But air power!”  Ok dingus, how much do you think positioning that amount of AirPower in the region would have cost?  Air power is not a magic wand, it is a massive military capability one has to surge, stage and keep at readiness levels, costing billions to do so over the timescales the “staring” would have occurred.  The bill for massive overmatch of the Russian air forces would have been (and frankly still is) very high.  Let alone if we really had to do it, and completely ignore escalation risks. Same people would be quacking about “ridiculous government spending in Ukraine” that is would have taken to actually set up “staring” - unless it was their guy in charge, which is a whole other problem.
 One is not an expert “strategist” because you can regurgitate some spin-lines dreamt up by a political ad agency. You are fool being played because it is so much easier to let someone else do all that hard thinking and make this whole complicated world so simple.  And before anyone weighs on on left or right…both sides do it so let’s just not get into that.  Best thing you can do for yourself is get a library card, read a lot of history and a wide range of political sciences/military affairs.  Do the hard work for yourself.  

I think our political classes lack creative flair for tackling problems, honestly. I would simply offer visas at almost guaranteed rate for attractive women younger than 30 without children from axis of evil countries. Their demographics are already messed up, but it wouldn't hurt giving them an extra kick as they roll down that hill.

Alright, I’ll bite (just this once) in case clearing it up once and for all might stop it being posted 3-4 times a day…
What does this even mean?  Amongst all the thoughts you post (which are honestly sometimes pretty hard to untangle) this one seems to come up more often than anything else.  It’s an analogy, right?  ‘staring down Putin’?  What is it actually an analogy for?
The article in your own post points out that “The United States thus sought to leverage intelligence in a manner to convince allies of the imminent threat and, to a lesser degree, dissuade Moscow from acting, while signaling that it had deep insights into the Kremlin’s plans.”
So the US basically told Russia they knew about their plans, told all their allies, told Ukraine and mobilised the alliance we see today to implement unprecedented sanctions against Russia and unprecedented financial and military support for Russia’s intended enemy.  I’m honestly not sure what other reasonable measures could have been taken at the time.
What else do you mean by “stare Putin down”?
Oh and, fair warning: if your response mentions B-52s or a no-fly zone I will be forced to conclude that you’re either trolling or basing your suggestions on video game experience, at which point I’ll apologise to the rest of the board for bringing it up and duck out.

Frankly,  you're very naive about this. 
1. Russia is not occupied. There's no population crying out to know whays true,  what's going on outside, if there's hope.
2. They have the internet and, controlled as it us,  they can access BBC.com any time they want. They've had very wide access since D0.  
3. External media has nothing on the RusGov control and manipulation of domestic media. It's a fart in the face of a hurricane. Russian domestic propaganda is relentless,  pervasive, omnipresent and backed by legal authority, criminal prosecution and determined political direction. 
4. UK is not at war with Russia. There's no military or political imperative to inform the Russian population about anything. Investing in BBC WS is pointless. 
5. Russian population is not going to be swayed in any shape,  way or form by the BBC world service. They don't care about western narrative or values. 

Rare footage of tank vs. tank fight. Reportedly this is June - the beginning of UKR offensive. One Leopard 2 against two Russian tanks. Distance 1500+ m. After Russian tank was hit and damaged, both Russian tanks rolled back. 
UKR Leo likely used HE shell. But maybe ERA on Russian tank saved the vehicle from penetration
 

No. Each UKR soldier will tell you, that BTR-70 is a piece of sh...t in comarison with M-113/YPR-765
BTR-60/70/80 have too weak side hull armor, which can't maintain proper protection from 7.62 and often against 5.45 AP from close range, when M113 protects. Inner compartment of BTRs is too narrow for soldiers in modern equipment and body armor, because both and BTR and BMP series were designed in ColdWar era, when soldiers haven't such equipment and in design was put an avarage height of Soviet soldier in 1960-1970 as about 160-165 sm, this is one more answer, why RUS and UKR soldiers ride on the top of armor. Not only because if it hit, all will burn alive (it's enough exaggregation if it not 125 mm HE), but because of full squad of troops will waste value time, trying to disembark from narrow compartment under fire. So, UKR soldiers always ride inside M113 to enemy positions, because it much safer, and disembark time is much shorter, than from inside BTR-70
Enclosed turret of BTRs doesn't give enough protection, but instead strict natural LOS of gunner. M113/HMMMWV guneer can better to observe battlefield, when he gets targeting from comamnder or spot the target himself. 
One guy from "Azov" NG brigade wrote brigade try to get at least several dozens of M113 and he amazed, why it so hard. Even 3rd assault briagade "Azov", using M113/YPR, as he told indeed have very small of them and all M113, which you can see in their videos are the same several APC. 

Disagree. It could be the hammer that puts the final nails in the coffin.
IMHO, the Russian, North Korean deals, made this system a priority. Not the counter-offensive. This is to be used as a denial of future ammunition supplies.