cyrano01

Think it depends on setting, because on mine you did it.  Typical, upper management comes in just in time to cut the ribbon....

That's not politically incorrect, it's pure unadulterated anti-Semitism. 

That is straight up attritional warfare of the old school.  Echeloned human waves - sometimes supported, other time not is a straight up “we will trade 30 of ours for 1 of yours”.  Discipline is also extremely old school as well, basically you are shot if you don’t succeed, and this includes getting wounded.  They only thing missing is to put suicide explosive belts on these guys and you have Fedayeen, but insert Russian nationalism for Islamic extremism.
The major problem with this approach is that it is a road to nowhere.  Unless you have held back a breakout force that can exploit a breakthrough, you can crack the line but never exploit it.  It does not sound like there is effective integration between Wagner and the RA so how do they expect to actually exploit a breakthrough?

Well that is a loaded question to be honest.  Bil H will no doubt chime in but a few factors came into play as I recall:
- Resources.  We can take a really good shot at BAOR and not cripple ourselves in development for years - along with the other BFC titles.  The core team is pretty small and we were looking for a quick, but solid, follow up to the main game.  Germany would have been a lot more work, as would  any other NATO nations, and the French were just a non-starter.  Those modules will take much longer, particularly in vehicle modelling and artwork.  BAOR had a lot of new vehicle models but much more manageable in the timelines for a first DLC.
- Locale.  The Northern Plain was actually where the most likely Soviet Main effort was going to fall.  Hate to admit it but Fulda was a bit of a sideshow in the overall Soviet plan.  It made sense game wise simply because the largest market for the game is the US, and we had a lot of details on this fight - US research is a dream as they put everything out there, Canadians are a nightmare.  That said we really wanted to do the northern plains from the start and historically that is BAOR or the Germans.
- Expertise.  We had experts on both UK and Canadian orbats right out the gate, which made research a lot easier.  I joined in 1988 and had a lot of my old battlebox stuff to pull from and some old timers I still know from up the day.  On the UK side we had similar expertise.
- Timeframe.  Late 70s, early 80s is really the “tipping point” of the Cold War.  It was when the doctrine and equipment of both sides was pretty balanced, each offsetting the others strengths and weaknesses.  Before this you get the nuclear armies, which were just nuts. And after you get the  western advantage leaning into overmatch and then we start to look a lot like CMSF or BS.
- Straight up cool factor.  So how would the UK done against the Soviets?  Canadians are fun because they mix European and US kit.  You wanna know how a squadron of Leo’s would have done…well let’s find out.  Not saying the other nations are not interesting but when you add everything up it just made more sense to do BAOR next and they would be fun to play.
As to “how will they play”…totally honest…no freakin idea.  We also had no idea on the main game.  It wasn’t until I played those first few scenarios while we were early in did we see that we were onto something.  BFC doesn’t balance for gameplay or market. They literally plug in the data from research and then throw it at each other in game. The balance is almost entirely emergent.  When we do up scenarios and campaigns there is always a level of balancing that goes on but this is macro stuff like force size and enablers.  For CMCW we were amazed at how little balancing we had to do. I designed the campaigns and scenarios based on doctrine on both sides and basically how they would have gone into a fight with each other.  The fact that these led to tightly balanced fights that require deep understanding of what each side can do was all pretty much emergent design.

Cold Warriors.
  Well it looks like Steve has already dropped the mic over on the annual update thread, so let myself, Bil H and Cpt Miller (along with a small team of unwashed heathens - two of whom are actually from the UK), be the second to announce the first CMCW Module - CMCW - British Army On the Rhine (BAOR).

We are still in development so I will only outline the broad strokes of what we are working on, and insert the caveat that we reserve the right to add/subtract - 
 - Time frame of the game is going deeper backwards into the Cold War.  We are setting the clock back to 1976, so CMCW will now encompass 1976-1982 (including some minor tweaks to the existing US orbats).  As has been noted we are less interested in the later Cold War years largely because they really do start to resemble the later CM titles and we are shooting to keep CMCW distinct in its own right.
- UK BOAR - right now we have a pretty comprehensive build planned for the UK units as they transitioned from their 1974 structures - to where they landed in 1980.  As per the picture above players should be able to become deeply engaged within the historical BAOR sector of the ETO.
- And because I just have to represent the home team, we are also doing the Canadians.  That little black box is the planned 4 CMBG AO - you will note this was right at the tail end when the brigade was still part of the BAOR, although for those that really want to play First Clash and park them down in Lahr you are fee to do so because the basic unit structures remained the same.
- We do have plans for the Soviet side, but are going to hold off on details until we zero them fully in...more to follow. 
- I will let you all speculate and discuss what new vehicles and weapon systems we are talking about but there is a not insignificant list of new ones we are planning - more as we start to get some cool screen shots.  
As noted by Steve, we are well on our way and are planning for a release this year - content and full scope remains TBA.
Thank you all very much for your support, the response to CMCW has been well beyond what we were expecting and that is entirely thanks to you guys.

The Ruble is a terrible measurement for anything.
Its not actively traded, you cant buy it, Russians cant sell it. What determines its value? Its meaningless in anything but propaganda value which is exctracted and maintained by the Russian central bank.

So the thing about corrosive warfare is that is takes time…one has to let the corrosion set in.  Further, one has to degrade an opponents entire military system at a faster rate than it can recover.  By all accounts the UA is succeeding on both of these components; however, I suspect they are going to continue to bleed the RA and let it burn itself out until they can find or manipulate a break-in battle.
Remember we calculated that average troop density is about 200 troops on the RA side.  They have thrown minefields up but we have seen little evidence of how many or how much in depth.  And the RA logistics system has to be straining right now, it was before this winter.  So holding back, peppering with long range precision fires and hammering RA attacks does not seem like a bad strategy while they continue to force generate and integrate in the backfield.
Now what that break in battle will look like is really what we should be talking about.  My guess is that it will start with a concerted fires campaign on RA ISR to try and establish some level of surprise.

Ok, so I guess it is time for another talk on this.  The main reason there has not been a lot of discussion on the progress of the war itself is because not a lot is happening - or wait, is it?  And being human means we simply cannot accept reality for what it is, we need to start reading meaning and implications at every shadow in the dark.
Nothing is happening because the UA has run out of steam.
Nothing is happening because the RA has rebuilt itself into a lurking monster that can freeze this conflict in place.
Nothing is happening because it is all a [insert boogie-man of you choice] - Belarusian Front re-opening is popular.
Or here is a crazy idea, maybe nothing is really happening because it is the middle of a wet muddy winter.  Or wait a minute, maybe something is happening - https://www.forbes.com/sites/katyasoldak/2023/01/23/monday-january-23-russias-war-on-ukraine-daily-news-and-information-from-ukraine/?sh=72a88a92ba69  but because of unrealistic expectations we think nothing is happening.  
In fact we have become so fixated on questionable criteria of success that the fact that the RA is bleeding out appears to be getting lost in the noise.  https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-5500-russians-killed-last-week-war-defense-ministry-1777316 (that is 1/3 of what they lost in Afghanistan in ten years).
Oh but we all know the mighty Russian bear can generate millions of troops - which it has not - and come crawling out of the snow to retake all of Ukraine and usher in a new era of Russian dominance. 
And then pundits - seriously who are these guys? Say things like "Ukraine can only make progress with a deliberate offensive."  Well no sh#t Sherlock, it is what they have been doing since last Sep.  In fact the only successful defence-only operation was arguably in Phase I when the RA over-reached and collapsed out of the North.  Every major UA success to date has been a period of heavy RA attrition/manipulation followed by deliberate offensive pressure - fast in Kharkiv, slow in Kherson - outcomes the same.
"Oh dear, oh dear, Russia is going to win the war."  Well Piglet, no Russia has already lost this one - we are only negotiating what that looks like here. (The_Capt's all war is negotiation has clearly fallen on deaf ears.) 
"But, but, Russia wins unless we take back every square inch of Ukraine in the next week."  Well, ok by that metric then I guess we have lost this one but that is a terrible metric.  "Russia wins if Ukrainians keep dying" - another bad metric because last I checked this is a war and people are going to die from it for decades - see UXOs and landmines.  "Russia wins if Russia is not a smoking collapsed ruin with Putin hanging upside down from a telephone pole" - ok, seriously?
The worst case right now is that the front does not move an inch.  The conflict is frozen in place, locked in Korean style.  The specter of Russia somehow turning those buckets of Chinese chips into a C4ISR enterprise that can achieve: information superiority; wage a SEAD campaign for the ages and somehow regain air superiority - and invent a CAS/AirLand doctrine while they are at it; then establish the operational pre-conditions they needed on 24 Feb - make Ukraine go dark - literally and information-wise, cripple transportation infra-structure, and paralyze political/military strategic decision making - is f*cking laughable.   I mean if the RA still has those rabbits in its hat I will be absolutely shocked and of course ask the obvious question - "what the hell were they waiting for to pull them out?"
So conflict frozen.  So What?  Russia has already failed on both its made up and real strategic objectives for this war.  The real ones are stuff like:
- Take full control of Ukraine, install puppet government and run the nation like Belarus.
- Shatter the western world through a display of Russian Imperial might and re-assert Russian hegemony.
- Render NATO irrelevant and neutered.  With no doubt a longer term campaign to push them out of the Baltics through subversive means.
- Simply wait for a few months before weak-kneed European resolve collapses and they all start to buy Russian gas again - renormalization, Russian supremacy in its neighborhood, western "rules-based-order" a burning wreck, and sit back and let the autocrat club rule the roost.
Ya so not only did none of that happen, in many instances the exact opposite happened.  So for all you students of history I think I am on pretty safe ground when I declare that this is what losing looks like.  If on the weigh scales of history Russia gets "blasted and shattered Donbas, complete with reconstruction bill", and "Cut off and highly vulnerable Crimea", and "Strategic land bridge to nowhere", I think we can bloody well live with it.  If we cannot and that is what breaks us, then we never deserved to be in charge in the first place.
Russia just burned down its own storefront.  It has isolated itself from it best customers.  Its reputation on the global stage is in shambles, re-normalization is a very far off dream.  It has been militarily crushed - I mean this is 1991 where Saddam drove the coalition into the sea type of thing - by all old metrics of warfare Ukraine should be in an occupied insurgency right now, the reality we are in should not have happened. Russian hard power credibility is a joke.  And it is extremely vulnerable to really weak negotiating conditions. 
Further NATO has not been this unified since the Cold War.  Western defence spending has been re-energized for a decade at least - I mean seriously Vlad, read the f#cking room, we were half-way to debilitating defence cuts in the post-pandemic economy but then you made your "genius" chess move.  Europe is actually agreeing with itself.   The US has finally found something they can agree on, mostly.  And most importantly, I think the West finally woke up from its "New World Order" hangover and realized that one has to actually keep fighting to stay on top.
And finally here is the thing....this entire affair is not over by a long shot.  We have not seen anything that suggests the UA has run out of gas.  We are pushing more and more offensive equipment at the UA, which suggests that they are lining up for another operational offensive.  The RA is still flopping around with leg-humping in the Donbas.  Spending thousands of lives for inches, just like they did last summer.  So before we declare this thing "over" why don't we just buckle in and show something that most people do not get in the least about warfare...steady patience.  Games and movies are terrible at teaching this because they are entertainment.  War is more often a slow and steady grinding business, until it is not.   

Dude, not even close to the same circumstances as Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Searcher
As far as I can tell this was all stuff the Israelis sold to Russia years ago.  Along with a lot of nations, including Canada. Yes the Russians had/have a domestic licence to manufacture but again pre-war.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63318659
This does not translate into the Iranian sale of UCAVs directly to Russia in the middle of an illegal war in the least.  Meanwhile Israel has been selling anti-drone systems: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-defense-firm-selling-anti-drone-systems-to-ukraine-by-way-of-poland/
And providing humanitarian support pretty much since the beginning of this thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_aid_to_Ukraine_during_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War
 
 

 

Didn't they find literally dozens of US components in RA UAVs as well?
https://nypost.com/2023/01/04/iranian-drones-contain-parts-made-by-13-us-companies-report/#:~:text=The Iranian-made drones used,a downed Shahed-136 drone.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-war-russia-iranian-drones-us-made-technology-chips/
Does the US have some reasons not to "opposed some one else's war of righteous ethnic nationalism"? 

Not really sure what the issue is to be honest.  Neither the US nor Ukraine are signed on to the Dublin/Olso Convention.  DPICM are not outlawed at the CCW.
https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVI-6&chapter=26&clang=_en
 
So beyond some dirty looks from some western allies, and some noises from NGOs (but they all have to be remembering the Amnesty International fiasco), I am not sure what the real risk is in this context.  RoW are going to be a concern but Ukraine has a century long RoW problem right now, not sure if modern western DPICM are going to be the major issue compared to the Russian created nightmare, while their usage could make a real difference.
Definitely a possible political downside but as this war has progressed and Russia keeps lowering the bar, Ukraine employing these weapon systems deliberately and carefully (eg recording, transparency etc) seems manageable.
 

🔺The main sources of recruitment are - former personnel of the Airborne Forces and the GRU (including from among the so-called "blacklisted", that is, those dismissed from military service for committing criminal offenses and for "discrediting"), convicted citizens of the Russian Federation, citizens of medium and Central Asian republics, migrants, students. The first category is completed by the "permanent staff", that is, the organizational and combat core of the "company".
🔺The "company" was involved in the war with Ukraine even before the start of a massive invasion of its territory. The first divisions of the company began to deploy in the occupied territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions at the end of 2021 and at the beginning of January 2022. In addition, at least 2 divisions (groups) of the "company" became part of the Northern Main Forces of Russia in advance (they were deployed on the territory of Belarus 2 months before the invasion) and actively operated in the Kiev direction, starting from the moment of their deployment. It has been reliably established that the main combat units of the "company" - Surf, Hunter, Degtyar, Bumblebee, Mongoose - were actively operating (and continue to operate) on the territory of Ukraine.
Evidence of the "company's activities" on the territory of Ukraine, which became known from open sources:
🔺On February 23, 2022, one of the groups of the "company" crossed the Seversky Donets and conducted a reconnaissance and sabotage search in the rear of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, making several raids on the positions and locations of Ukrainian troops.
🔺 February 24, "company employees" took a direct part in the capture of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Subsequently, they acted at the forefront of the enemy’s Northern grouping and made several attempts to penetrate Kyiv in order to act against political, administrative and military facilities in the capital (by the way, it was the units of this “company”, according to known data, that were instructed to attack the SBU building on Vladimirovskaya Street, 33). These groups of the "company" were on the territory of the Kyiv region (and not only were "located", but also actively operated) until the end of March, after which they were withdrawn to the Donbass.
🔺At least 5 groups of the "company" also operated in the Kharkiv direction (Ilimovtsy, Wolves, Hooligans, Marines, Axes). They were also taken to Donbass on March 21-22.
🔺In early March, a case was recorded in the Kyiv region, when, as a result of poor coordination of Russian troops, two columns of this PMC, mistaking each other for an enemy, fired on each other, during which the commander of one of the Redut detachments, Ivan Mikheev callsign "North", was wounded. On March 20, Sever died in the hospital from his wounds.
🔺 On September 10, in the Kharkiv region, a group of the reconnaissance unit of the 25th airborne brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine ambushed one of the Russian columns, as a result of which they captured two mercenaries of the "employees" of this "company" - citizens of Uzbekistan. According to the prisoners, both were recruited into the Redut PMC a month earlier in Moscow.
 
🔺 On September 19, 2022, another "employee of the company" was captured in battle near the city of Liman, this time a citizen of Belarus, who, according to him, signed a "short-term contract" with the Redut PMC back in July 2022.
And in conclusion, the most interesting thing about pvk "redoubt". Sources of funding and those who cooperate with this "security and safety office" with a powerful "aquarium" loop.
The main source of funding, of course, is the Ministry of Defense and a number of structures and organizations affiliated with it ... Equipment, weapons, food, uniforms, "basic payments", and sometimes armored vehicles, artillery, and even certain watercraft and air transport, provides quite logical - Shoigu.
But not only.
 
Two, well, very "owners respected in certain circles" Monsieur Deripaska and Shoigi's deputy for "construction and mortgage" issues Timur Ivanov are also directly involved in financing this "consulting organization" of the Russian Federation.
The first, apparently, is responsible for the "additional rations" for her. According to Saleh himself, Deripaska buys almost everything for the company: from uniforms to weapons. It is he who also pays informal bonuses to the salary for staying in the “NWZ zone” for the company's employees.
In turn, Timur Ivanov, who has recently managed to get into some kind of "corruption scandal" within the framework of internal undercover showdowns of "high officials", is directly responsible for the logistics of the "company" and satisfaction of their basic needs in areas of accommodation , dislocation and displacement.
You will be very surprised, but according to certain data, among the structures and organizations that cooperated (interacted in one way or another) with these Shoigov saboteurs "for hire" are:
🔺 Western military firm - FDG Corp.
🔺Embassy of Somalia in Moscow
 
🔺 some respectable Iraqi company "Phoenix LLC"
🔺security service of the "President of the Kurdistan Region - Iraq" and a similar structure of the Government of this region
🔺 and the most interesting - Special Group ISG-13 (Austria, Vienna)
and this is by no means a complete list.
Well, very interesting "bodyguards" from Shoigu.

Very well, add "actually threatens us" to the list.
Sadly, we allow a lot of small Mordors to exist and don't give a damn if their orcs plunder, pillage and rape in Rhûn or Harad. Not if those Saurons help us make our rings of power.

Fair enough. But if you really mean that kind of moral approach, the West is in for a really unpleasant wake-up call. We all have blood on our hands. We all do business with dictators and we all look the other way as long as their victims suffer and die in a far away country and preferably have a skin color different from ours.
Ukrainians are just lucky (if that can be said about their situation at all) that their country is next door from Europe, that their enemy is a country many have old bills to settle with and that they look like many of us.

That Pistorius fellow hasn't got a leg to stand on. Or maybe it was a different one?
(Sorry, I could not let this one go. Getting back to work now)
 

Sounds like 'the curse of Jean-Claude Junker,' who said (when discussing potentially unpopular EU financial reforms),
' We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.'
 

Sounds like 'the curse of Jean-Claude Junker,' who said (when discussing potentially unpopular EU financial reforms),
' We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.'
 

Sounds like 'the curse of Jean-Claude Junker,' who said (when discussing potentially unpopular EU financial reforms),
' We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.'
 

Sounds like 'the curse of Jean-Claude Junker,' who said (when discussing potentially unpopular EU financial reforms),
' We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.'
 

The big fallacy in these discussions is the assumption that German behavior on the issue of weapons shipments for Ukraine is somehow strange or unusual.
It's not. Reluctance and restraint in military matters has been the single constant in German foreign policy for both CDU and SPS-led governments essentially since our current version of the country existed.

Thanks formulating things in a way that allows to actually discuss them.
My feelingb is that theory is a bit far  fetched but not entirely unlikely. I really don't think that the SPD has much love left for Putin, he burned those bridges. But of course still many people in power in that party are those who came to power in Schroeder's wake, including Scholz. And compromising stuff Putin might hold didn't wouldn't even necessarily be illegal, it might just be inofficial extras to dinner contact that seem inappropriate in the current situation. Quite possible.
Still, I'm leaning towards more profane explanations: At least in Germany there v is always the next election in some federal state looming ahead. The SPD doesn't look good in the polls and we know that only a minority of the voters is actually in favour of giving any heavy weapons to Ukraine. Sadly, what strikes many here as inconsistent behaviour is precisely v what Scholz was elected for: I already explained this at some point, Scholz' whole election campaign revolved around him being Merkel 2.0. And it was one of Merkels hallmarks to listen to polls, telling people what they want to hear, make some token efforts to make it look like she is actually doing it and than (for examples at the EU level) doing the exact opposite. Merkel was just better at hiding it.
To conclude, maybe you are right but going by Occam's razor the simple explanation is often the correct one.

I think this is right, but the thing is that this really isn't physically sustainable for very long. Soldiers could keep up that for maybe 96 hours before they just, well, stopped. Stopped by falling asleep while driving, falling asleep eating, falling asleep looking through a weapon scope, falling asleep mid-radio message, falling asleep refuelling or re-loading, falling asleep mid-poo. And the guys that don't just falling asleep will be hallucinating, hard, which isn't going to generate good outcomes.
I think it's likely that forces will draw back from each other in order to give themselves enough time to OODA. So, no-mans land becomes something like 100km deep. Maybe some snake eaters are wandering around in there, but they'll be moving very slowly since there'll be so much EM radiation being dumped into that space that an overly dramatic eyeroll would be noticed. At 100km, practically all barrel artillery is out of range and all ATGMs are out of range. The only things with sufficient legs are stuff like hearty missile systems such as ATACMS, and air power, and the breadth of no-mans land provides enough time to sense and engage those before they get anywhere interesting. That way the human stuff can occur - eating, planning, sleeping, rehearsing, resupply, maintenance, and such like - with reasonable safety and security.
The obvious problem then becomes, well, ok, how do I as an attacker cross 100km of sensor-dense no-mans land and then break into and through the enemies defended zone? How do I achieve surprise? How do I concentrate? How do I feint?
Steve's 'bobbing and weaving' is part of the answer, but I believe you'll also need to break open some good, recent WWI histories and see how they overcame essentially the same problem 100 years ago. Then update and apply their answers in a modern context.
 
 

At least this Leopard/MBT crysis is giving a smoke screen for the GLSDB, that is a system that matters much, much more in the sort and medium term.

Quite. One of the factors driving the Challenger 3 upgrade is not having a producton line for 120mm rifled ammo any more. Given the rate at which ammunition is being expended in Ukraine the Challenger 2s would be a time-limited asset at best. My feeling is that the importance of the Challenger offer is that the UK is trying and push the Western nations over the MBT threshold rather than any sensible practical, sustainable capability.

An assault platoon can consist of 12-15 people, divided into combat troikas (small tactical groups), the composition and weapons of which change based on their specific task (storming a building, storming a forest plantation, etc.). The platoon can be reinforced by the reserve squad of the company (machine gunner, assistant machine gunner, shooter).
Variant of the composition of the assault platoon of the Airborne Forces on the BMD:
-Platoon leader;
-signalman;
-medic;
-senior shooter;
-spotter;
-machine gunner;
-assistant machine gunner;
-grenade launcher;
-assistant grenade launcher;
-sapper shooter
-sapper shooter
-shooter-quadrocopter operator
Variant of the composition of the assault platoon of the infantry on the BMP:
-Platoon leader;
-radio operator (attached from signal platoon)
-deputy platoon leader (squad leader);
-senior shooter;
-machine gunner
-machine gunner's assistant
-grenade launcher;
-assistant grenade launcher;
-medic;
-sapper(Attached from the engineer-sapper company)
-sapper(Attached from the engineer-sapper company)
-shooter-quadrocopter operator