civdiv
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Posts posted by civdiv
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Have already finished 'By Tank Into Normandy', very good read but just slightly disapointing. I wish the author had done a bit more tank vs tank combat, but then maybe if he had he wouldn't be writing the book. But very well written.
I am about a 100 pages into 'Against the Panzers', and besides the semi-tedious first chapter, it is very, very, good. Very good accounts and maps down to positions of individual crew serve wpns and AT guns. I would think it is great fodder for scenario designers.
Oh, and before I revive the dreaded exploding flamethrower thread, there is an eyewitness account of a German flamethrower guy getting torched when his flamethrower tank was hit by a bullet.
civdiv
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Dr,
Did you buy the new CC that Matrix did? What are your thoughts? I was interested but the price was a bit steep for basically a modded re-release.
civdiv
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Apples and oranges.
civdiv
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Wow, I just picked through the offerrings and it seems I came up gold.
Thanks for the quick feedback.
civdiv
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I just picked the following up at the library. I'd be interested in the board's opinion on them;
'Saving the Breakout' by Alwyn Featherston
'The Relief of Tobruk' by W. E. Murphy
'Against the Panzers' by Allyn R. Vannoy and Jay Karamales
'By Tank Into Normandy' by Stuart Hills
Thanks in advance,
civdiv
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Come on Steve, you can do better than that! 56 children in an institution 7 decades ago weren't told they were ingesting radioactive material as part of a program to improve childhood nutrition. Based on the information available the amounts were too small to cause any damage. Unethical, sure. Wrong thing done for the right reason? Yup. Did it help more than it hurt? Sure it did since noone was hurt.It is clear that the doses involved were low and that it is extremely unlikely that any of the children who were used as subjects were harmed as a consequence.Jim Crow laws, sure. Japanese internment, yup. strike breaking and Pinkertons and wooden nickles and 'The Jungle' and Pinochet and Noriega and Whitlam and Mossadegh, you got me.
Oh, sort of an aside but related as it deals with the advance of science in unethical ways. Most of what we currently know about hypothermia and frostbite was learned from mad doctors in Nazi concentration camps.
And on that sick detail I will sign off for the night. Having trouble getting my body to shut down after an intense work out. Check out P90X, what an ass-kicker!
civdiv
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Blackballing them from Hollywood is a bit different than locking them up in a Gulag, or even worse, in an insane asylum, or putting a bullet in the baclk of their head and sending their family a bill for the bullet.Originally posted by MikeyD:Yup, J. Edgar Hoover proved to everyone's satisfaction that anyone who's pro-labor rights, pro-privacy rights, pro-environment, and pro-social justice was ipso-facto a yellow-bellied commie. Might as well have some fun attaching electrodes to their genitals because commie fellow-travelers ain't real citizens like you and me - heck, commies ain't even human beings! We'd simply be doing God's work locking up all those degerate fellow-travelers and their famlies.
One of my favorites;
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It's this;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wartech/
Not Stryker, high tech military stuff in general.
civdiv
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May be a repeat, can't tell yet.
civdiv
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I addressed your points;
Higher speed than a helo? Yes.
Longer Range? CH-53Es can refuel in flight. So how much further are you going to fly considering the Osprey is not pressurized? Cold, extremely loud, and very cramped; exactly how far are you going to fly?
Carries 15 combat loaded troops? The 53 can carry twice that. And carry vehicles.
More or less survivable? What is survivable? A/C crashes but some or all of the crew and passengers survive? Remember, all of the Ospreys that have crashed have been close to the ground. And so far just about everyone on board of all of them have died. I think like 2 survived, and 36 were killed. The crash in Arizona occurred from 245 feet and 19 people died there.
And the thing is still plagued by fires from leaking hydraulic fluid. The whole fleet has been grounded due to problems twice since August 2006. And the PR thing the Corps has been doing is just completely disengenuous. I saw some General saying that every Marine is eager to ride in the thing. I can tell you that just about every Marine is scared to death of them.
CH-46 replacement a tilt rotor design? You said that, not me. I was talking about an advanced helicopter.
Perfection IS the enemy of good enough. They went for perfection when good enough was available sooner and cheaper.
Just my $.02.
civdiv
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Bias, schmias. Aircraft that lose power either have the crews eject, or they glide to a crash landing. Helos auto-rotate. The Osprey does neither and turns into a 27 ton coffin. The passengers are packed into a very small, wondowless cabin. You can't put a vehicle in the thing, you can't fast rope out of it. The heat of the exhaust lights dried grass on fire and the down draft blows the roofs off buildings. And thus far they haven't even figured out how to mount a gun on it. The cramped passenger compartment combined with longer range just means you have less capable troops when you get to where you are going.Originally posted by c3k:Actally, the IDEA behind the Osprey represents a key improvement in force deployment. Before you get your panties all wadded up, look at the capabilities which separate the Osprey from other aircraft:
1- Lift capacity (15? fully combat equipped Marines. That includes all their field gear ~100lbs per man.)
2- Range
3- Vertical Take-Off and Landing
4- Speed
Now, no other aircraft can combine these. What helicopter can lift 15(?) combat equipped Marines? Seems only a CH-53 or CH-46. What are their ranges and speeds? Far less. Etc., etc.
Okay, men have died testing a radical new (and EXPENSIVE) aircraft. Please post the number of deaths in the testing of various helicopters, and post about your sadness.
Is it perfect? Not even close. Is it expensive? Maybe too much, maybe FAR too much. Shrug. Spears are cheaper than laser sighted, night vision enhanced, full-auto, selective fire, grenade-launcher assault weapons. Yet, you won't debate their relative costs.
These kinds of cost debates with an unproven (and some could say not fully tested) item often incudes all the development costs, ignoring any future return on the investment.
Am I defending the Osprey? Not really, just defending a new concept against a conventional mindset bias.
Thanks,
Ken
They should have left it as a technological model and skipped to the next generation of STOL/VTOL technology. OR, bought a few dozen for special missions. The Corps would have been much better off just developing a modern CH-46 replacement. That would have left them with a more capable helo for years to come and at a significant cost savings.
civdiv
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Ceramics?!?!?!Originally posted by Rollstoy:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by civdiv:
36 dead, I think. A friend of mine saw one crash. He said that because of all the ceramics used in the thing, it shattered like a plate when it hit the ground.
civdiv
From http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/v-22-design.htm
The airframe is constructed primarily of graphite-reinforced epoxy composite material. The composite structure will provide improved strength to weight ratio, corrosion resistance, and damage tolerance compared to typical metal construction. Battle damage tolerance is built into the aircraft by means of composite construction and redundant and separated flight control, electrical, and hydraulic systems. An integrated electronic warfare defensive suite including a radar warning receiver, a missile warning set, and a countermeasures dispensing system, will be installed.
The V-22 fuselage has a number of advanced composite structures. A rear loading ramp has been incorporated, which when closed, comprises the lower portion of the aft fuselage section. There is one side-entry personnel door. The fuselage is a semi-monocoque structure that connects the wing, nacelles, landing gear, sponson, ramp and empennage. External skin, bulkheads, and stringers are primarily constructed of carbon/epoxy with some metallic and fiberglass skin panels. Cabin floor panels are honeycomb sandwiches. Frames are constructed of either aluminum or carbon/epoxy.
No ceramics.
Best regards,
Thomm </font>
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36 dead, I think. A friend of mine saw one crash. He said that because of all the ceramics used in the thing, it shattered like a plate when it hit the ground.
civdiv
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The whole program is a huge waste of money. While a feat of technology the Osprey is an example of the exact type of aircraft you don't want in the military. I could see a few dozen for special missions, but it is not a helo replacement.
All the services have a big, dumb, overpriced, albatross of a military development project. The Navy just shut down their LCS program after unit cost reached over 300 million per hull. Throw enough money at a program and you will end up turning a big, ocean going, patrol boat into a destroyer. What are they fighting, Martians? At least it works, but it is over priced. The Army has Stryker or the self-propelled howitzer or the FCS program, and now the USMC has the AAAV and the Osprey. The air force has the F/A-22 program at what, 130 million per air frame? No service, IMHO, is as unscrupulous as the Air Force about money.
civdiv
[ April 14, 2007, 10:49 AM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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I hate to throw in something that consumes more computer cycles, but this is something I have been rolling over in my mind. Some AI cue for gunfire. I know this is pretty much a Iraqi model, but AFTER the initial stages of the Syrian invasion (or arguably throughout, depending on pre-invasion Syrian propaganda) how about some sort of 'conflict meter' within a given scenario. Something to give the part time insurgents/Syrian fighters/whatever some time to arrive at the firefight. I am talking about the guys that grab their AKs when the sounds of a firefight starts, and work their way to the scene to fire off a few rounds and then return to their homes to have chai. Give scenerio designers some sort of in-game 'meter' to cause AI decision making to create small, squad sized irregular units to appear and work their way towards the scene of the fight. This would be handled by the scenario designer as units that appeared ON-MAP (Is this on-map option for reinforcements currently in the game?). These units appear on-map based on some sort of 'cue' from a sort of level-of-violence/intensity-of-firefight meter. Or at a given time AFTER the meter reaches a given metric. Say, if a squad taking a single sniper round is a 1 and a full-on company sized battle utilizing indirect fire, tanks and AFVs, and air support is 100, is sort of the low and high sides of the meter. A scenario designer could say 5 minutes after the battle reaches a 30 (Say, a Stryker platoon encounters an IED and a Syrian platoon blocking position with ATGMs that attack the Strykers), three 3-5 man irregular squads begin moving towards the site of the fighting from throughout the city/town/village. Or the scenario could range it from a 25 to a 50 for each squad/unit/fireteam.
civdiv
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Good thread on ampulomet use effectiveness in CM;
http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/showthread.php?tid=39972&pid=213062#pid213062
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Building clearing is very complicated, and it's interesting in that the basic tactics change every couple of years. I can only speak for the Marines, but our tactics prior to Iraq were pretty much acquired from SWAT. Since then tactics have changed as law enforcement tactics are very different from what encountered on the battlefield.
Regardless of evolution, somes basics remain the same. And keep in mind these tactics are from the SpecOps side, regular infantry probably won't use all of these tactics. CQB starts with the seizing of the entry point via simple door kicking or an actual breach. The breach point is ALWAYS controlled throughout the room clearing. It is sort of a safe haven. There is always a security element there, so if you run into trouble, say, get you and your buddy wounded, you always know where aid will be present. Like the breach point all hallways are also continually controlled by a security element. It doesn't do much good if you clear a room and then some terrorist in another room runs across the hall and reoccupies it.
Room clearing itself is usually done in two man teams. Whomever gets there first stacks at the doorway. It used to be there were designated two man teams that never broke up. Like Rommel said, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Casualties and the friction of war made this unworkable, so this evolved into you just teaming up on the fly. If you saw a guy stacked next to a doorway, you just ran over and stacked with him, signalling you were ready by kneeing him in the butt. You never entered a room w/o a back up. Whether there was a door or not didn't really matter (A disclaimor here. I have seen a lot of videos where they stacked more than 2 men, and the first guy kicked the door but didn't enter, the guys stacked behind him ran past him and entered the room. I am told this is because if a guy sprains his ankle kicking the door, you don't want everyone waiting for him to hobble in. Also, this applies only to exterior doors, not to flimsy interior doors. If it's an interior door the door kicker enters the room.). The first guy used to cross the doorway, but the Marines did away with that a few years ago and the lead guy picked whether he crossed the doorway or 'button hooked' the doorway (Ended up on the opposite side of the wall he stacked on). The second guy merely went where the first guy didn't. When you entered the room obviously you engaged any target you saw, but your first responsibility beyond that was to 'dig' the corner, meaning clearing the corner of the room behind you. If a door was present an additional responsibility of the guy on the side of the room where the door was to wedge the door with his boot just in case someone was hiding behind the door.
When engaging targets the goal was two rounds, center mass, within about 4 inches and within .5 seconds. The reason for this was hydrostatic shock. As rooms were cleared they were marked in the doorway. Marking was usually chemlights with different colors to indicate cleared room, dead terrorist, intel stuff, wounded/dead Marine, etc. I know, seems callous, but in a CQB situation you don't stop due to casualties. Your buddy gets drilled entering the room you don't stop clearing. You continue to clear until the building is secure and only then do you tend to casualties. If you cleared a room and there was another doorway that's what you cleared next. If you lost your back-up in a room and there was another room you went back into the hallway and stacked on the room yet again until someone backed you up, and then cleared the same room, and then moved onto the second room (Does that make sense?). If it was a simple room (With no ajoining rooms) you moved back into the hallway, after announcing 'coming out' AND getting a reply from the hallway security detail, and then you moved to the next room.
That's the simple, barney style version. There is much more to it,
civdiv
[ April 12, 2007, 07:37 PM: Message edited by: civdiv ]
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The military went away from the MP5 as it limited them to just Close Quarters Battle (CQB), and was of little utility getting to and getting away from the buildings they are hitting. SWAT doesn't have to worry about getting to the target, the military does. In an outdoor shootout the MP5 is next to useless, but the M4 is good for all occassions. And one of the things that makes the MP5 so special is the inherent suppression system in the suppressed versions. A supressed MP5 is very quiet, with the round's report being actually quieter than the simple cycling of the weapon system. That is of little utility to an infantry squad.
Room clearing has, to a certain extent, been discarded in large scale operations. I'm not saying it doesn't happen a lot, but in future Falluja type operations the building is just blown. You just take too many casualties clearing rooms, regardless of how good you are. In Falluja I each house was cleared room by room. In Falluja II houses where resistance was encountered tended to be leveled with satchel charges. Now, Falluja
was evacuated during both operations, so it was really sort of a free fire zone. If you take sniper fire from a building on patrol and want to take down the building (as in assualt it, not to destroy it), the ROE is such that you usually can't just flatten the building.
Sure, CQB still goes on, especially for Special Mission Units going after High Value Targets (HVTs). But they usually have some element of suprise while the infantry squad working its way house to house down a street doesn't have much element of suprise.
Top down clearing has several advantages, some of which have been mentioned. Mainly, gravity is a huge bonus. Try kicking a grenade UP a staircase. Part of the advantage is psychological. Another advantage is the fact that the terrorist might not have planned for it. And still another advantage is line of sight. You can look out a window or through a peephole, you can't see what is on the roof. This sight issue works both ways. If you enter a building and the enemy runs out the back door, you probably can't shoot him. If you climb onto the roof and he runs out the back door you make rasberry jam out of his back. Also, it's a lot easier to see a booby trap under the light of day on a roof than it is to see in a room with no lights. You can hide a booby trap easily under the floor in a room, but it's more difficult on a roof.
civdiv
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Was that Stug video showing the (what looked like a) Russian ATG staged? That one explosion looked staged.
civdiv
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I love these kinds of discussions! They make me just keep coming back.
civdiv
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Wow, someone turned this into a very detailed and time intensive hoppy. I never would have thought you could do this at this scale;
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John,Originally posted by John Kettler:Michael Dorosh,
Years ago, I read an essay by a former Scotland Yard detective in which he analyzed the potential impact of the Holy Grail of the antigun forces, total gun ban for everyone save police and military. His conclusion was that per attack lethality would go up. Why? The average chance of being killed if shot was ~25%, whereas if one of two likely alternate weapons (lead filled pipe
or knife) were to be used, the chances of survival dropped to around 50%. This is because the former tended to inflict massive head trauma as normally used, and the latter could not only reach internal organs but tended to carry surface contaminants deep into the wound, increasing the likelihood of sepsis atop deep wound trauma. Thus, taking firearms out of circulation would've had the splendidly ironic effect of making the average mugging much more deadly.
Regards,
John Kettler
Studies done in Florida clearly indicate that lack of gun control (freely distributed concealed carry permits, open carry, less restrictive gun laws when engaging intruders, etc) leads to less crime and a vastly improved rate of survival and less injuries for victims.
civdiv
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dbl post
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You might consider a drop pouch to stash used magazines in (Not empty ones). I used two mag pouches plus the mag in my rifle (7 mags). I hung one on either side, with the drop pouch (a SAW pouch) more towards the middle and slightly to the right (I'm a lefty). If I expended more than a few rounds from a mag, anytime there was a lull I dropped the partial mag in the drop pouch and reloaded with a fresh mag. The drop pouch was handy so if I expended all my full mags I could go straight to the drop pouch in front of me and grab a partially filled mag. Anytime there was a major lull I redistributed rounds between the mags in my drop pouch and put the filled magazines back in my mag pouches (right one first as it's easier to get to). Plus I had 200 loose rounds w/ a stripper clip in my raid bag or camelback. If I had solid down time I'd have a buddy grab a box or two from the loose rounds and load up all around. 200 extra rounds is easy to carry if it is centered on your back and fairly high up.
I also made a 'plug' with some MRE cardboard wrapped in 100 mph tape. I wired that into the left shoulder of my body armor to give me a 'pocket' for the butt stock of my weapon. Previous to doing that I had major problems getting my butt stock to seat due to the concave SAPI plates.
MBITER I carried in my chest rig with the antenna folded over so it didn't even stick up above my shoulder. It still worked fine. Boom mike mounted on right so I could still shoot, PTT on my right belt.
Ammo pouch placement is sort of to the wearer's preference. With a chest rig I don't mind them being in my middle as I don't feel it when I hit the deck. If I have to mount them low due to my gear I prefer to the sides as it hurts when you land of them and they are low. But anytime you land on them you risk denting them.
You might also grab some XF-7 from MD Labs. It's a dry lube and much better than CLP or LSA or anything else I've come across.
As for knives I bought a huge Busse combat knife and then didn't even bring it. I just couldn't see myself stabbing someone with an expensive knife like that, I'd rather use my old Kabar that I use for throwing. Oh, the Kabar is an AWESOME throwing knife. Some people prefer fixed blade, some prefer folding or autos. I ended up carrying a Microtech Scarab auto. Great knife there but around $400. I also had an old CRKT M-16. If you carry a folder make sure you can open it easily and quickly with one hand. I prefer a smaller (less than 3 inch blade) for general utility work (could be a Gerber or a Leatherman), and a bigger killing knife. Never had to stab anyone but better to have and not need than to need and have not.
On my belt I also had my 1st aid kit, an extra utility pouch (second SAW pouch IIRC) for glasses, camera, carmex, sun screen, power bars, etc, and a frag pouch for my compass.
Just my $.02.
civdiv
Gotta Love The Troops
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted