The_Capt

Some interesting tidbits in there. The RA is clearly pretty banged up in some areas. The employment of Spetsnaz as front line infantry is particularly telling, however employment of SOF in those whole war has been different. Spersnaz are supposed to be the Russian military Tier 1 guys. Simply sticking them on the line as infantry is pretty odd. Based on their assessments of RA line strength Russia has pretty much burned itself out over the winter. If the UA is sitting on 9 fresh and fully gunned up Bdes this spring offensive could be a real barn burner. Looking at the map I am honestly wondering if the UA is not going to go for the Dnipro river crossing assault. Risky and tough to secure but the RA is extremely thin and broken on that front. This is likely due to risk-creep around the river obstacle. The RA looks pretty weak on the far east of that line too.

This does assume that the RA can swing those guns to and from Close and General support quickly (building on your note #1) Based on what we saw at Severodonetsk last summer RA fire planning seems pretty linear, which may lean more the way Steve added it up. In fact I would bet good money that have plotted out rigid sector fire support that is pretty static compared to western doctrine. RA C2 has not shone in this war, I have my doubts as to it somehow stepping out of the phone booth now. Of course the UA should help this along where they can.

If this is true then they have shifted forces dramatically into this area. If we recall the intel leak on force density there was nowhere with greater than about 250 pers per km. So in order to focus this force size the RA will have had to bleed off other areas of the line a LOT. This is also a pretty dangerous concentration easily seen by the UA. There must be other areas of the line that are basically abandoned. So the RA clearly got the message on the “strategic land bridge”. My bet is the UA will attack elsewhere to pull that density away and then attrit them as they try to relocate.

How about just following the LOAC and letting people surrender without beheading/shooting/sledgehammering or whatever messed up thing the RA/Wagner did this week?

Exactly. Take any battlemap and put a Soviet tank platoon in a position about 1000-1500m out. Then blindly drive US forces right through their field of view. You are going to wind up with a bell curve of how quickly the US force get spotted - some early, some late. Now unbutton the Soviet tank platoon. Now move it closer. Move it farther. Change the crew experience. Change the tank. You are going to wind up with a bunch of bell curves. So the actual question for the developer is “where is the middle of the curve?” If the curve is indeed “They never see them, not once 10 time out of 10!” in a context where they should be closer to 50-50. Well then we do have problem. But having actually run a lot of tests like these, I know it is not the case. We constantly tweak and provide feedback on where that bell curve should be. So when a player comes on the forum frustrated with an experience the next question has to be “well what was the context and where would it fit on all those curves?” Big problem in this case is we are not given any in game ranges or data - how far, what conditions, which Soviet vehicles and how many, what crew experience? For example if this was a single buttoned T-62s with green crew at 2000ms, we’ll just forget it. That tank was not designed to engage at those distances and is basically looking through a straw at those ranges buttoned. In the end a lot of the frustration about CM centres on the fact that the game models tactical friction too well. Humans in combat do incredibly dumb and counterintuitive things - it is the stress. So when your stupid tank goes the wrong way around trees, that is not a bug it is a feature. It is brutally realistic. The trick is learning to succeed even in the face of all that unscripted chaos. And for some it is a major draw, others well maybe not so much.

This. And in Valley of Ashes I had a moving Soviet T64 spot and engage a static M60a3 in a wood line at 2+ kms. This does not prove or disprove anything beyond the fact that stuff on the end of either spectrum can (and will) happen. The problem the developers have is that these wild situations are what players remember. They do not remember the other 80% of the time when engagements happened pretty much as one would expect. And then once a bias sets in it becomes all one sees. So in beta we have run a lot of spotting tests and the US spotting abilities are superior in the main, pretty much as they were in RL. Always room for improvement, but no, “Spotting is not broken”…this is a conversation we have had many times.

They have been talking about this for years. Beyond cooking one’s own soldiers in their own juices, its practical application on the battlefield is really limited. SOF and elements of recon maybe, but large infantry units become unpractical very quickly and gain little advantage for the cost. NVGs and radars still work to pick up large bodies of infantry and the logistics of keeping a bunch of soldiers in space suits is just crazy. And it does nothing for the real targets of thermal, vehicles.

Next they will be asking for Alaska back. So when someone says “Revisionist Power” this is what they are talking about.

One also has to consider the timing and environment of the day. On Killing was published right at the rise of the liberal humanist wave of the late 90s. Rousseau was fully in charge because we had won the Cold War and a new order was going to happen...thousand points of light. I think it lasted even through 9/11 with Pinker and that gang. This war will probably put it that whole thing bed for at least for awhile.

That theory has a lot of issues. First off, there have been questions as to its overall validity and application in WW2 itself. Did it take into account the PTO or non/low-US theatres such as Burma? Was the phenomenon isolated or more generalized? Then there is context. In WW2 you had masses of US “citizen soldiers”. These were people who had been living normal lives who got suddenly pulled into this war en masse. Was the phenomenon of “not shooting” endemic to them alone? While forces that had been in the war longer or more intimately involved in their own countries did not see this happen. For example, I sincerely doubt members of the French Resistance or partisans in Eastern Europe were avoiding lethal force at a high rate. Did US forces in combat see their “murder aversion” change over time? Warfare throughout history demonstrates that it gets pretty normal to kill, pretty fast. How does this phenomenon stack up against other wars in history? Am I to believe that Roman legions were only “stabbing to kill” 20% of the time? How about the Mongols? Then the modern era. We suddenly went from high percentages of not shooting to kill to murderous lust from WW2 to Vietnam? I know in modern wars that we did not see mass aversion to lethal force - quite the opposite, we had to rein it in. So what changed? Was it sugar, tv and video games? Or was the initial study flawed? From my own experience. 19-20 year old kids amped up an adrenaline - scared and angry at the same time, will go from “0 to Murder” in seconds and sleep soundly that night. It usually only takes one person to start shooting first and then the rest jump in. The challenge is to get them to stop shooting, or get them shooting at the right thing. That is why we spend so much time training them. I have never seen a widespread phenomenon of an aversion to apply lethal force, from any side, of the wars I have been involved in. Finally given our biological make up, this theory also does not compute. All primates (with only one or two exceptions) are murderous brutal little monsters. Our closest evolutionary relatives are some of the most vicious creatures in nature. The idea that mankind was somehow blessed with a higher morale standard is laughable given our history. We impose a lot of programming and frameworks just to get us to not kill each other in a peacetime setting, let alone open warfare. I am not sold on the whole idea to be honest.

I think it is a whole lot like waiting for an op. Sitting around and trying to fill the time as you sit on your ruck. Weapons are spotless, you can see the map when you sleep and redraw it from memory. Radios and gear have been checked twice. Some guys play cards. We played a game where we tried to figure out the order of who we would eat in the troop after a plane crash - Alive has just come out a few months before. So here we all are. Waiting for the UA to cross the start line. We have talked thru the scenarios. Keep checking social media etc. The kooks come round every now and again but even they don’t seem as into it. We have kinda done German/Euro Bashing Day to death. US Bashing Day isn’t even that fun - I mean we have to go back to freakin Guatemala in ‘54. So, ya, it tracks that we drift OT. So who do we eat first?

Dude, c’Mon. There are a lot of factual errors here. Afghanistan in the 80s? You mean support to the mujahideen? Ok, technically I guess. A lot of these were proxy actions during the Cold War against Soviet influence (would like to see that list with the same very liberal metrics). Some of these like Iraq ‘91 were UN coalition operations. I mean I like US-bashing day as much as the next guy but this is not credible research. It is starting with a premise and then working back to try and shape facts to prove it. Yugoslavia in 99-00? It wasn’t even a country by then, it was a bunch of fracture states. Serbia, maybe, because the world was a so much better place with Milosevic in power?

The other big thing about this war is that no one thought it would go this way. Even if Big Mil Contracting had the ability to stage such manoeuvres the community of expertise that could make a prediction that this war would turn out as it did, with high accuracy, is almost non-existent. In fact, most of the experts - both mil and academic - were predicting a pretty short sharp "Russian-win" affair and long insurgency; we definitely saw it through our own lens of experiences over the last 20 years. So unless this profiteering cabal was somehow hooked into some serious counter-thinking, and were willing to bet the political capital they would need to spend on that, well the idea kind of falls apart. It would have been an extremely high risk wager that Ukraine would somehow be a larger western market after a Russian intervention. That gets pretty "out there" very fast. I mean if a company has that level of accurate predictive analytics, why go through the bother of a war? They basically could own any market they want already. No, this was a sad scared little man with way too much power and no real feedback loops. He decided that for "reasons" the time was right to show that he was a still a "big boy" and talked himself into a really bad plan - he has been "digging upward" ever since. His military ran headlong into 21st century warfare, even though this is really a very early version of it, and got crushed pretty badly. It is now all about simply trying to stay in power and staying alive. No star chambers or CIA plots, just people doing "people".

Not touching the COVID one. However, it is really a bit of a myth that the US or any western nation has standing policies where the use of military conflict is considered a tool for economic expansion. The famous action you are talking about was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company Which built on these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars However these were 1) 80 years ago which in North American terms may as well have been the Middle Ages, 2) really did not turn out well as the next 80 years demonstrated in spades and 3) never were conducted on a nuclear superpowers doorstep…for very good reasons. During the Cold War a lot of proxy actions did happen but these were more about containment of the Soviet sphere of influence while outcompeting which was the US primary strategy…and it worked. US reliance on contractors happens for many reasons but I have seen no proof that their “need for employment” is so influential that the US would start a war over them. And before anyone brings up Iraq 03 - I call BS and Hollywood myth again. That whole mess along with Afghanistan did more harm than good to the US in the end. In fact China and Russia have better access to Iraqi oil now than they did 20 years ago. I am sure Halliburton and Blackwater got well but the idea that they managed to convince US political leadership to conduct these ill-conceived ventures does not match up with the facts of the day. The major problem we have with strategic narratives in countries with weaker democracies is that they tend to see US actions through their own lens. As you note, your government did exploit misinformation and likely has levels of corruption. The US is not immune but the checks and balances of good old fashion bureaucracy are much tighter. That and a free press (such as it is) makes engineering something like we have seen in Ukraine pretty hard and very risky. Unfortunately the political divisions within the US are so stark right now that extreme ends of that spectrum will construct fantasies to explain reality to vilify the other side and justify their own.

Well some of on the development team might take a throttling personally, we do have feelings. So what is happening here is that the US Campaign has limited refit/resupply throughout because, WW3. The 28th is under really heavy assault and having pristine vehicles lined up like horse guards for the next battle is not realistic. So this is not a “glitch”, it is built in on purpose. So damage and limited resupply is in effect. Now as to cross loading ammo. Simply not an in-game feature for major weapon systems. It would be realistic to rebalance ammo but really it is a bit of a dice roll right now and you appear to have come up with a natural “1”. This is an abstraction of all the messed up stuff that happens in warfare. Clausewitz called it “friction” and wargamers are notoriously skittish on the idea. Considering a lot of wargames are being a god and micromanaging large forces like a chess game (and if that is something you like, hey go for it) a lot of chaotic friction can really drive them nuts. But it is entirely realistic. You would not believe the stupid human errors that happen in combat - human beings in that situation tend to go that way. So good commanders basically “deal” and keep trying to make lemonade. I get if this is not your personal thing and frankly Cold War is on the spicier end of difficulty - if the US Campaign is making you this angry, you may want to wait a bit before trying the Soviet one. CM is not a nice hex turn based affair. Nor is it a fast and loose shiny RTS. It is likely one of the most realistic combat simulators for Company to Battalion operations. It is so hardcore that at least one western military uses it for training. But is it fun for everyone, not always.

Nothing we have not discussed here, in fact we could have probably written it. Looks at both sides of a Russia post-war collapse. One side argues that there is real risk in a nuclear armed fractured Russia. Further some say the West should see it as opportunity to exploit, others as a nightmare security scenario. Others point to the risk of another strongman replacing Putin who could ride a wave of populist nationalism to wonderful new crappiness. My read is that “victory” means being able to engineer a defeat Russian can live with without totally overreacting one way or the other. Tricky.

Oh dear, this is not from explosive damage as far a I can see. Collision and maybe a partial flip. One helluva on to knock that turret up and out. Back to 4th line likely. Going to happen, especially with new trainees on a compressed timeline. Luckily no one got killed

Back when it still played music. I swear reality tv and emoticons were the first two horsemen of the apocalypse.

I think they both might be right. And they both sound a lot smarter than we were back in the day. Good gawd we were a lost generation back in the 80s.

I don't do emjois (or "emoticons"), however if I did, mine would show a lengthy eyerolling - which is actually derived from a look towards heaven. As if to look to God, despairingly and in supplication for guidance and Job like patience in the face of what is presented.

Coming back to this one because this is how misinformation and conspiracy nonsense starts. And again the US operates under a similar but different legal framework. So government does have control of who they grant security clearances to, or not. Absolutely. However, that authority exists within a legal framework that also ensures that unlawful discrimination is controlled out of the system. For example, imagine if this kid was black. Does anyone think they the US government should start filtering out 21 years old who are black, or Jewish based on that alone (and if you do, please leave)? Security clearance in the public sector = taxpayer funded employment, and as such has to walk that oversight and transparency line like anything else. I have no doubt discrimination happens but the system is built to ensure it is minimized as much as possible, with lengthy reviews, audits etc. These systems are also in place to protect the employer (i.e. the US Government) from law suits of discrimination in hiring practices. E.G. Say this kid held onto his racial bigotry ideas and got a job in security clearances, what mechanism are in place to prevent him from simply only granting clearances to other sad, lonely white men? Before we put this to bed for good, the reason to address it is that there are a LOT of just garbage myths and information out there on how western governments actually work. I mean these are massive enterprises in the 21st century and it is too much to expect the average citizen to understand the layers and layers in play. However, the problem with this is that people fill in the gaps with anecdotes and misinformation. Suddenly the government is capable of doing all sorts of things that legally it simply cannot do, or at least do easily. Hollywood has done us exactly zero favors in all this too. Executive actions (i.e. political assassination's) is one such area. If you believe TV and movies, western governments are doing these everyday and twice on weekends. In reality the levels of controls and authorities to conduct an extra-judiciary killing (outside a defined operational box) are enormous. Hollywood is likely much more accurate on how the other teams are operating, such as Russian FSB but have little to zero reflection on the actual work going on in western defence and security. Probably about as far as I can take this line right now. Bottom line, when you hear some of these claims, just do the due diligence and cross check along a few lines to be safe.

I like to think this is a result of the Digital Refugee generation - a lot of over 50s who have very high voting turnout and political opinions and almost zero modern information assessment skills. People like my mother who was convinced that the Rust shooting-tragedy was a Trump supporter-staged conspiracy to discredit Alec Baldwin for all his unflattering impersonations of the former president. My mother has a PHD in English literature and is a retired college professor, demonstrating that higher education is not really an counter to just plain old online stupid rumors. My hope as we all die out the generations coming up are so much more savvy...because I am not sure they could surpass our current nadir.

If you are telling me that the US is basically a kangaroo court within national security, then it has got some real problems. This is the kind of situation our adversaries are dealing with and it results in gross abuses and overreach along with extremely bloated internal security organizations. Everyone who gets a clearance is made well aware of the consequences of a breach and investigations of breaches happen; however, they need to hold up in court - unless that magic waiver suspends presumption of innocence as a legal norm. What you are describing set up scenarios where someone in CIS who does not like someone can unilaterally and without oversight unpeel an employees life outside of a legal system. I am sorry but that does not match my experience and frankly all these “gunpoint” stories are either exaggerated, or freakin insane. What possible reason does security enforcement have to draw weapons in a conference over uncleared slides?! I mean I think you are being truthful and heard this stuff, don’t take me wrong, but these second hand stories sound a bit strange. I mean seriously where did these guys work? (Don’t answer that, I really do not want to know) Further, no matter how much whizz bang AI keyword search engines we are talking about this is going to require attention and resources. First off one has to gain access to that discord channel, or hack the kids home computer. Then you need to track and record everything going on in there to build a legal case for prosecution. Keywords are easy to dodge with jargon and slang, so to actually go anywhere we are talking a team of living people, with oversight. We just lived this in GWOT. The last time the US played fast and loose with drag netting and broad intel it 1) did not really yield much and 2) blew up in peoples faces badly. I am a big fan of precise and professional jobs not ham fisted butt sniffing exercises, but that is just me. Look, I think we have ridden this little whoopsie about as far is we can to be honest. People can believe what they want to, in the end I have no doubt there will be a lot of heat and light all over this. I am quickly hitting a threshold of things we do not talk about and am not that invested in trying to prove my points on this subject. What we do need to be talking about is how this leak may affect this war, if at all. And where it goes from here. One sad lonely kid who is going to spend 20 years in jail is about as relevant as Chinese balloons at this point. I for one do not think the kid had the know how or skills to do more than a broad intel vomit, most of which are likely already tied off. As to real damage, we will have to wait and see.

Well without getting too far into it then and I am not entirely sure about the US but even with the legal waivers one signs there are still a lot of legal hurdles to jump over. For example one cannot simply send the MPs into this guys home off base, kick in the door and toss the place. There is still due process in place. They can do all sorts of background checks before granting clearance but going after someone for violations is a criminal investigation, not done randomly on a hunch. Your people who have been tracked likely had due legal processes and oversight put in place to do that or anything collected would likely get tossed by a decent lawyer. The US actually has some of the widest protections for citizens as granted by the constitution. So I am pretty sure that no matter what one signs they are not going to start tracking and tapping without due process. That and we are talking about a lot of people to put this kinda push on, probably thousands. Letting loose the AI hounds and waving waivers sounds cool right up to the point you wind up in court.