civdiv
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Posts posted by civdiv
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Who were we fighting in 1998?Originally posted by longbore:The only thing we should be "hating" are the politicians who put the kids on the front lines so that individuals like Cheney and Bush can make billions on deals like the 1998 Dresser Industries (Subsidiary of Brown, Brothers, Harriman and Co.) merger with Haliburton. A 7.7 Billion dollar deal negotiated by Tricky Dick himself. Coincidence...? If so, Ive got some ocean front property in Nevada I'd like to sell you...
Regardless, your point is off topic from my off topic thread. You hate Bush and Cheney; I really don't like either one. WTF does that have to do with the NYTs showing video of a soldier KIA before the family was officially notified?
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First, let me indicate where my viewpoint on this issue comes comes from. I am former military, combat arms, six combat tours. Not tooting my horn just giving you the perspective that my reply comes from.Originally posted by Martyr:I suspect that this will go to the off-topic section soon, where the following question will be hotly debated: Does the NYT really hate America and the sacrifices of her soldiers, or is Malkin just an inflammatory blowhard who thinks that anyone even remotely critical of Bush's policies is automatically a traitor to God, country, and Mom?
Mom? Hi Mom!
This is not some drummed up issue. Some family got to watch their loved one die in stills and on video on the internet. Let's put it this way. Monday on the way to work you are involved in a horrible car accident and you are pinned, screaming in the wreckage as you slowly bleed to death. Do you want your wife/husband/mother/father/brother/sister etc to watch the video on the internet, or be informed by a professional police officer in a dignified manner who is experienced at this? Do you want the dignity of the official notification, or do you want the scenes of your death being traded by thousands on the internet? You want to be on "Faces of Death 23"?
These reporters should be in prison and the NYTs should be sued. And boycotted.
If you can't see the issue for what it is, then I can't help you.
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Steve,
Given all of this discussion and RW events, if you had to do it all again would you change Syria to Iran? Wait, don't answer that. If I were you, I would. But that is 20/20 hind sight. Iran; more interesting equipment OOB, more of it, more modern, more conventional (in some ways), diverse terrain, amphib ops from the outset, diverse force pool (IRGC, Regular Army, Basiig, Hezballah, yada, yada, yada.), etc. And when I say more conventional, less suicide bombers and VBIED, more conventional confrontations. But with the first points above it is more complex from the designer point of view.
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Cuirassier (and others),
Thanks for your replies. One point I needed to clarify; when I said Germany's plan in France failed I meant post D-Day, sorry for my lack of clarity.
But I disagree with some of your points. The Ukranians welcomed the German as liberators. They hated Moscow and Stalingrad and Communism. It wasn't an act when they welcomed the Germans.
Second, Germany come a hair from winning the Battle of Britain, their intel failed them. The Royal Air Force was on it's last legs when the Germans switched from targeting airfields and the aircraft industry and switched to terror raids. But I will agree they had the wrong type of Air Force to fight the Battle of Britain in that they had aircraft more suited for tactical and operational use rather than on a strategic effort. Light and medium bombers exclusively, short range fighters, etc.
Next, claiming that the Battle of France in 1940 was an attritionist strategy is debatable. Surrounding a large portion of the French Army is a classic manueverist approach. Manueverists tend to concentrate on terrain rather than on the enemy's army in their strategy. But they are still seeking to destroy the enemy and their will to fight through either destroying the enemy militarily, or through the capture of political targets which will cause the enemy to stop fighting. In France in 1940 the Germans sought the enemy flank and rear while luring the French forward into Belgium. Surrounding a significant portion of the enemy army to destroy it is not attritionist, it is maneuverist. Attrition warfare means forcing the enemy to attack against bad odds with small and short counterattacks to cut off, cut up, enemy penetrations, and attacking only when you have a clear advantage, or when the enemy has a bottleneck or something behind him. Manuever warfare is surfaces and gaps and attempts to get your forces through, behind, around the enemy to destroy his rear area and force him into rash and unprepared attacks and unfavorable odds. It is also the tempo of your operations forcing your enemy to react to a situation that is continually changing, and acting on increasingly old information. The name for it is the OODA loop; Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, or called, I believe; Boyle's loop (I think that's the guys name). You observe the enemy situation. You position yourself to act, and then decide your actions. Then you act. If his OODA loop is bigger then yours, then the enemy is reacting to what you WERE doing, rather than what you ARE doing.
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To All;
Attritionist versus manueverist beliefs. I am just now reading Doughty's "The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940". What is your opinion on what Germany should have done, post-Poland /Norway/Denmark. They went forward against France with the expectation that they could conquer the country in a month. This they succeeded at. Basically, at what point should they have gone to the attritionist strategy? Attrition would not have worked against France (IMHO). That is playing right into France's hands. So when (given Germany in WWII) should attritionist doctrine be used? When in Russia? After the initial drive on Moscow?
Given, as hindsight is 20/20, pursuing offensive action against the USSR was carried out too far. Given, their strategy in France ended up being flawed.
Also, what is your read on how things would have been different in the USSR if they had acted better towards the Russians who initially greated them as liberators. Actually, let me distill this further and give you three scenarios, or any combination of the three;
1. They convert to a war economy when they should have.
2. They treat the citizens of occupied Russia as a liberated people?
3. They had adopted an attritionist approach at the proper time in the USSR and post-D-Day, or in N Africa?
What combination of the three above would lead to either stalemate, or a German victory? What does an extra year of the Nazi regime mean?
I know you can 'what if' stuff to death but I am really curious what you all think.
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hanks for the feedback. So, command detonated, detonated by operatives? So you have to account for operatives moving away from the trigger? Wow, how difficult this gets. Command detonated (wire) means that operatives moving means they can't detonate the IED. What about jamming systems used by the US? There is no way you are going to get details on the effectiveness of this, so you have to swag this. Can a suicide bomber be a operative responsible for a command detonated IED? I would think not; two different missions. So every 'civilian' that apppears is an operative? So they are either a spotter, suicide bomber, or operator of an IED? I'll kill them on sight. I can always tell the media that per the game rules for them to appear they were either a spotter, suicide bomber, or operator of an IED, right? Wow, this is murky.Originally posted by Battlefront.com:Siegfried,
We are pretty much done with the Syrian TO&E, so no more information is requested at this point.
Civdiv,
We have several different sizes and several different ways they can be detonated. Off the top of my head we have:
1. Remote Detonated (wireless)
2. Remote Detonated (wire)
3. Remote Detonated (trigger)
4. Direct Detonated (suicide)
We are not going to go down the route of splitting these up into various different sub categories because we're doing IED counter technologies/techniques rather abstractly. The primary reason is that whatever the real world effectiveness is of these technologies/techniques really is is classified. Heck, most of the technologies/techniques themselves are classified! So there is no point in simulating something in detail that can only be portrayed abstractly anyway.
Steve
Is there a difference between a simple blast IED and an EFP? Hezballah loves EFPs and thus we can expect them to appear in any Syrian scenerio.
So which costs more, a 'victim detonated' IED or an operative initiated IED? I can make an argument either way.
And what 'types' of IEDs are you looking at. Blast, blast enhanced (cooking gas tanks), triple stacks of mines, EFP, etc.
And is there any differentiation between initiation types modelled; ie; command detonated, victim operated, combination, etc.
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How are different types of IEDs going to be modelled? Simply making them CMBB/CMAK mines seems too simplistic. There are command detonated IEDs, victim operated (Tacky title but that is what they call them.) IEDs with pressure plates, trip wires, command detonated to include cell phones, hard wire, etc.Originally posted by Battlefront.com:I am thinking the same thing that Cpl Steiner is thinking. Here's another way to think about it...
Martyrs are magnets and US forces are steel (queue cheezy music, for those of you who know it). When it gets close enough the Martyr suddenly goes from whatever state it is in to a rushed state directly at the steel. And suffers whatever consequences it suffers because of that.
We can spice this up with chances of it happening, different Commands being used, etc. This would mean sometimes the Martyr will do just like you want in just the right way, othertimes it's "oh crap... would you look at that. Idiot. (bam). Yeah, that's what I thought would happen." At least I think I can get Charles to do that
Steve
[ January 30, 2007, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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You can see the fax annotations in the corner of the page. It's a scan of a fax, period.Originally posted by Lt. Smash:To be fair, the quality of the document is on par with most documents like this. The type face is clear and readable...which is what you want when you buy an electronic book. I do not think it is a scan of a fax. I think it is a scan of the proof pages or a fair-quality conversion from the original electronic document.
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A Special Forces team was compromised. They did get evacuated by a very brave Blackhawk pilot that actually flew UNDER some power lines. IIRC, the rest sounds pretty fishy.
I didn't see the show; did they say how they got compromised?
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In regards to the delay and estimation of the shell travelling 6 feet within the tank I think you fail to take into account a couple of things. First, dependant on range of course, the round isn't travelling at 2,000 FPS when it gets to the target. Second, and IMHO more important, it isn't going 2,000 FPS after striking and penetrating the armor.
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First off, there is little in common between LAVs and Strykers. Second, the Marines love their LAVs. Probably their favorite vehicle as there isn't much it can't do. Third, that was three 155mm artillery shells going off right next to them and noone was seriously injured. 4th, the Marines do not have any M113s.
Re: the Iraqi Air Force, they clearly need ground forces first, and then naval forces. An Air Force isn't really a big priority. I mean, even after we withdraw our ground forces I can see us still giving them air support. We need guys on the ground with guns, not aircraft.
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The Middle East is relevent, because of the oil, but that doesn't make the culture relevent. You once had a great and glorious culture rich in the arts and in science. But guy, that was a loooonnng time ago. Your culture stopped learning 600 years ago and turned inward on itself. You need some popular figure to emerge to bring your culture and religion into the 21st century. But unfortunatly if a charismatic popular reformer did rise to the top and begin making progressive inroads in the culture, he would be assasinated by those he threatened; ie; bin Laden, Omar, Mubarak, Assad, Khomanei, Ahmadinajad, Hekmatyar, the Saudi Royal Family, Nasrallah, or a dozen others.
In regards to us being in your lands, prior to 2001 where were we? Quit ****ing with us and we will leave you alone. The reality is at some point your radical nut-jobs are going to drop a big hurt on the west. I'm not talking about 3,000 casualties, I'm talking about 10,000 or more. We took over two countries after 9/11, WTF do you think is going to happen after 9/11 x 3 or 4 or 5? What happens when the limp-wristed left stops making 'random screenings' involve 80 year old grandmothers because we wouldn't want to racially profile anyone, right?
So sort out your own mess, quit coming over here to kill innocent civilians, and try and address the complaints of radical Islam as they are very valid. Dictators sucking up all of the wealth of their countries. No political or press freedom. No democracy. No educational system or job market. There are few things as corrupt as the Saudi Royal family. Quit murdering your wives because they nag you or they get fat. Let them get educated and drive cars and hold political office. Get to the point where buggering little boys is not culturally permissive. Realize that you have a hell of a lot more in common with the other wing of Islam than you have differences. Educate your young so the only possible education isn't some half-literate, self-proclaimed 'mullah' teaching a twisted version of Islam. Quit squandering your national wealth so 80% of your population is poor and pissed.
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Empty reply.
Actually I served the Iraqi and Afghan people. And they were both very grateful. I served mostly in the Shia portions of Iraq up to the fall of Baghdad, and at the time their biggest concern was that we wouldn't stay. Obviously things have changed.
I served in Afghanistan up until early 2005. Every Afghan I met went out of his/her way to thank me. They were critical of our dropping all of our support after the Soviets left, but they were thankful that we had returned.
The fact is that we got rid of the Taliban, whom almost nobody liked, and then we got rid of Saddam, whom almost nobody liked. And your country is rulled by the alawites, whom almost nobody likes. Egypt is ruled by someone almost nobody likes. Iran, Pakistan, Libya, etc. See a trend here?
Why do your gallant insurgent heroes go around killing so many civilians? How can you defend that? Sure, the US kills some civilians, but when it happens, 99% of the time it is an accident. And in the other 1% people usually get punished. But your 'heroes' go out to deliberately kill civlians. How can you defend that? You do realize that the Iraqis are finally getting sick of the foreign fighters who are predominately Syrian. Out in al-Anbar the tribes having gotten sick of it to the point that they kill any foreign Arabs they find. On one level it frustrates the Marines out there as they would like to talk to these guys and get some intel, but the tribes only bring them dead foreign fighters.
[ January 27, 2007, 12:15 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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Actually they killed and wounded several of the attackers, and captured several more. They also recovered a bunch of the vehicles. This happened both right after the abduction and the next day. Yes, a well-planned operation but they were not unscathed. They executed the captives because the Coalition and Iraqis were right on their asses. One soldier was still alive when the Iraqi army arrived as he had just been shot. He died on the way to the hospital.
And in regards to their training and sophistication, only a small percentage are that. At least 50% of them are of the 'stick my AK blindly above a wall and pull the trigger' variety. Maybe another 30% or so have the basic military skills that your typical 3rd world draftee has after basic training. Maybe 5% have the training of your average US infantry private. And maybe a tenth of one percent could be considered equal to a SpecOps guy. I mean, three Marine HMMWVs going for supplies bumped accidentely into Zarqawi's security detail out by the Syrian border back in like 2005. They were on a very narrow road in the middle of a city, so they should have been dead meat. Instead they killed about a dozen of Zarqawi's men and didn't take a casualty themselves and they lost no vehicles. They said Zarqawi's guys had first class equipment and they were very brave and went toe-to-toe with the Marines. And they died in great numbers. I would assume Zarqawi's security detail would be the best of the best, right?
Oh, I've served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, have you? I'll bet you're a alawite, right?
While I agree the Iraq invasion was a mistake, and I felt that way at the very beginning as I participated in it, the reality is that the Arabs need to keep on a grip on reality and try and progress beyond where they have been stuck as a culture, around 1300. That's why the wahabbists want us to go back in history and live in the cultural norms of 1300; because they haven't progressed any. I mean, what has the Arab world invented in the last 500 years or so? The suicide bomber?
You are part of a proud people deep in culture and history (though very dated) that is just damned angry because you are now irrelevent.
I actually hope you get to reply before you get banned.
[ January 27, 2007, 11:49 AM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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This restriction is silly. In the field (or designed beforehand) they had a system where the wire spool spun freely when the vehicle moved. And only in static defensive positions was comm wire buried below the surface. This is a guess but I would say over 95% was surface laid. And SOP meant when laying wire from a vehicle, a guy was spinning the drum to keep slack in the wire. So if the vehicle was going anything over like 15mph they should be able to lay wire w/o restriction. Maybe that should be a restriction for wire FOs in vehicle; imposing a speed limitation.
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I removed my post as it was off-topic.
civdiv
[ January 27, 2007, 12:07 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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I got an email from a friend of mine who is a sniper. I'm not going to say where he is or what service or type of unit he is with. Well, two sniper teams were hidden in hides in an urban enviornment (He didn't say whether they were in buildings). This vehicle with four guys pulls up like 30 meters away, and two other guys come out of this building and start loading weapons and munitions into the car. The sniper teams lob some grenades and then start firing. The insurgents react pretty quickly and start to engage one team which small arms about the time the grenades go off, dropping 3 of them, and the other 3 drop their weapons and start running away, evidently wounded. And second car with 6 guys starts firing on one sniper team as they drive closer, but they didn't see the second sniper team. When they are like 30m from the second sniper team they get their own dose of 40mm grenades, frags, and small arms. Two don't even make it out of the car, a third makes it a couple of steps, and three others take off wounded. The sniper's react moves in and finds a good sized arms cache in the building.
A few minutes later they get a call from the Iraqi police that they think they caught a bad guy at a traffic control point. Another react goes there, and it turns out it controls access to a local hospital. The bad guy they ID'd turns out to be a guy on the bad guy list, but he is wounded and dies. He has two accomplices, one of whom is lightly wounded and has GSR on his hands. So the final tally;
7 EKIA
5 EWIA
2 detained (One of whom was wounded)
1 sizable cache
This all happens in like 15 minutes. None of the friendlies has so much as a scratch.
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Oh crap, EF and WF. Goddamned I hated those games. Panzerblitz with counters that went 'vroom, vroom.' Buggy crap that never got fixed. Remember the manual fiasco? Then they finally fix EF but no, it's a new game, give us $50 for your copy. The copy protection scheme that led to lots of users not even being able to install the game. Everything Talon-fraud did was a buggy mess. Panzerblitz loaded on top of whatever that series of games that they used the engine of, yeah, real tough to execute. I used to get banned from their forum like once a month for complaining about their buggy crap and lack of company morals.
Sorry, you struck a nerve there.
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Correct, the effect is more pronounced with the larger weapons.
Are you sure of that? I would assume losing 1 man from a 4 man crew (25% loss) would be more significant than losing 1 man from an 8 man crew (roughly 12%).
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Steve,
I was merely alluding to the habit of some people of a particular political view to label anyone who disagrees with them as Bush lovers.
For example, I responded to a rant on another site where someone was bashing Bush over the dated report that he was AWOL while he was in the Air National Guard. I pointed out that a rather well-known media icon lost his job over those forged documents and I was promptly labelled as a 'Bush lover'. I am anything but, but anytime you poke holes in some of these people's arguments you end up getting labelled as such.
And then they claim they were denied their right to free speech despite the fact that no such right exists on a third party's website. Forgive me for not being more clear.
I enjoy honest intellectual debate but I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent. And here, just to be clear, I am talking to mobear.
[ January 06, 2007, 08:42 AM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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You mean the post by Corvidae on the previous page? Quote:Originally posted by mobear:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
Firstly, political posts like this have NO PLACE here in this particular Forum at all.
"He is another nameless face in a picture.
A boy from some small German town probably.
A believer, who probably thought that "god" was on his side.
He probably realy believed that jesus was talking to Hitler.
He probably had his rifle blessed by a priest or pastor.
He probably wrote letters home to his mother telling her all about the "sinners" he was "saving" on the holy crusade that Hitler was sending him on.
And he probably struggled to hold that belief despite the abbominations he saw all around him.
And he probably died far from home.
In regard to Corvidae's original post, I certainly agree. All I did was up the ante.Thirdly, this post was simply designed to shock and insult, nothing else.
For many reasons, I find that hard to believe. A picture speaks a thousand words, as they say.Secondly, the image I deleted was out of bounds due to its nature. The specifics of it are irrelevant... I would have deleted it no matter what flag was present.
Well, look at my posting history and you will see that this forum is not exactly a preoccupation of mine. </font>If you put another post like this on any of the Forums here, it will be your last. -
Glad you added McDonald there at the end. In your (slight) criticism of Wilson's account, I'm not sure I see that as justified He seemed to care very much about his troops, and he went out of his way to praise other officers and men around him. In the last attack when he was wounded he said, w/o referring to himself, that if Holcomb or whatever the company commander's name was, if Holcomb had not been in command they would have taken much heavier casualties in the attack. In saying that it is a tacit admission he, himself, would have been in command, and they would have taken heavier casualties.
In regards to the gulf between officer and enlisted, that is sort of part of the life of an infantry officer. He is sort of on an island. He can't say; '****, this is a bone headed order and we are going to get waxed' in front of the troops. He can't confide in his subordinates. Sure, when he has some familiar officer around him they can take counsel in their fears, but with a bunch of 90 days wonder replacement officers, he has to keep his own counsel.
Having spent a lot of time in the military, and having gone through like 7 combat tours, I can tell you it's a tough thing, this leadership thing. I remember talking with a young LAV TC right before the invasion of Iraq. He had this mistaken impression that his LAV was immune to an RPG. I had a bit of a dilemna in terms of whether to correct him on this. Ultimately I did, and let him know the truth, but then I also let him know that his and his unit's training would carry him through. And in the end it did.
Leading young men into battle is one of the greatest honors anyone can expect to undertake. But with it comes the responsibility when some of those young men come home feet first, and that is a responsibility that you carry for life. And thankfully I never lost one.
I see Wilson constantly questioning himself when his own troops go down. I also see him fighting bad orders, expressing his objections, and in at least one case refusing to carry out what he though was a dumb order. I also see cases where he knew a mistake was being made, but he knew his outright objection would lead to someone else, most likely a less experienced officer, undetaking the mission if he dug his feet in too far.
But thanks for the list of books. I will see if my library has any of the one's I haven't read; I've read '7 Roads To Hell' or whatever it is called. I also have 'A Soldier's Journal' by David Rothbart, 'Blood Red Snow' by Gunter Koschorrek, and 'The Secrets of Inchon' by Eugene Clark on deck.
Currently I'm reading 'The Making of the Atmonic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes, at the request of a friend's father-in-law and I just finished 'No True Glory' by Bing West. The latter I highly recommend.
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I just finished the audio book version of George Wilson's 'If You Survive'. I was on a long road trip VA to NC and back, hence the audio book. What a gripping book!! What do the grogs out there think of it? The engagement where Wilson has ID'd an enemy held hill, only to be told repeatedly that a friendly unit occupied it just makes me cringe. Wilson's company advances into the open with Wilson knowing the enemy is on the hill, and promptly takes like 95% casualties.
And other parts really struck a chord with me. The jackass who thought Wilson was dead so he's campaigning for some BS Silver Star Wilson supposedly promised him, when it turns out the guy's sole combat experience was dropping a rifle grenade inside a house and wounding 17 of his comrades. I like that Wilson showed class and didn't name the guy; I would have pilloried the guy in the press for the fraud he was.
New Syrian TO&E thread
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
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As such, *within CM's scale* I think you'll find that Syria's equipment provides a much more interesting and challenging opponent than that of Iran. </font>