LongLeftFlank

It's nobody's business but the Turks.... (well that'll bring the Greek gamers out of the woodwork. Or the They Might Be Giants fans)

Shameless self bump, since I want to put some more COIN and CM snips in here.... Hold

That's a shame about the lockdown on model swapping. I find it pretty non-credible that it hurt the business in any way. One of the few benefits of the old OpenGUI platform (or wev it is) is that the community could do neat visual stuff around the edges without being Arma3 type code monkeys, and without messing with the game. Is @sbobovyc still out there working on his compiler thingy?

Agree the faces are shaping up, but Team Syria 2008 needs more 'staches, unibrows and scraggly beards. The Arab/ Syriac/ Iranic lads got lotsa testosterone with no place to go. And outside a Westernized elite, clean shaven boys are seen as effeminate, or at least not grown up. At a guess, only about 1 in 4 is beardless. Also, I know the wireframe limits it, but is there a way to "bump" the shnozzles a bit, visually? A few blonde Crusader descendants aside, your average Syrian has a hawklike to bulbuous profile. (don't delay the release over this small stuff, of course)

Bil isn't the Edge Hugging Gamey Bastidge type, even though the objective placement might seem to justify AA1 and AA4. However, he might well send scouts that way.

[/snark]

Breaking away for a moment from the "Canadians who made it onto US cultural radar" banter, is this map new or a reboot (with water) of a CMSF1 map? Either (pronounced "eye-ther") way, a little constructive criticism of this village. It's presumably a bunch of structures dropped into an actual Google earth footprint. Fair enough for a start, but it looks more like something you'd see in the treeless deep desert, which is clearly not the dominant terrain on this map. All structures except shops (mostly open fronted) should have some kind of compound wall surrounding them; low stone walls for farmhouses, high walls for more modern residences. Houses should also have a fair number of palms and mature shade trees, maybe an orchard. And outbuildings. I was hoping the little shed would make it in from CMBN, but alas no joy. Where's the mosque? (a village this size will have one, even if there isn't a dome or minaret) This is *not* just eye candy; it has very real implications for the battle. A 'dense' village squarely in the centre of the map provides a ready made fortress, with robust and varied concealment and cover for units, especially infantry AT teams who can keyhole and break contact at will. I'd expect this benighted hamlet to be leveled by artillery or air in due course, but the rubble, walls and ditches would still provide plentiful and stubborn tactical cover. In its current barren state, AT teams can't so easily flit from building to building to keyhole, and can be readily pinned and killed off by ranged tank/IFV guns. Uber armour uber alles again, yawn. Settlements are one of the only features that counter the overwhelming superiority of (usually) NATO ranged weapons. If you want a fair fight and a more fun game (IMHO), give these features more of their real life tactical properties! Here endeth my catechism. Exit Falstaff.

I will look at Kieme’s mod, and definitely also want to reboot my Shopfront mod. Did they recycle damage decals from the WWII games? Those will need modding for a world of cement and cinderblock.

This screenie from @IanL indicates that not all that much is changed buildings wise since CMSF1, at least at this draw distance.

I liked your mix and match Uncons mod, with Combatants a 50/50 mix of masked and unmasked (Spy) guys. That's how they generally fight when TV cameras aren't filming.

Couple of interesting bits in this piece on urban sieges in the Syria and Iraqi civil wars. https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n14/patrick-cockburn/the-war-in-five-sieges In every case, ground troops have only been able to win with the backing of airpower, artillery and advisers most usually supplied by the US-led coalition or Russia. Whether the fighting was in Ramadi and Mosul in Iraq or Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, the way the sieges were conducted was similar. Few combat troops were used: no side could afford heavy losses in street battles with a well-trained enemy. The attackers relied heavily on shelling and bombing to clear the way or to batter the defenders into submission. It was a strategy that always succeeded in the end, but it had the inevitable cost... of causing great destruction and civilian loss of life. In the final months of the sieges of Mosul and Raqqa the coalition bombing, and the Syrian and Iraqi shelling, became considerably more intense.... They had always been less capable than they claimed of locating the right target, and now they faced another problem: IS and other jihadi groups were showing great tactical ingenuity in fighting guerrilla war in the streets, inflicting heavy casualties on Iraqi army and SDF ground troops. IS fighters moved swiftly on foot or by motorbike from house to house, cutting holes in walls and tunnels underground, making surprise attacks and avoiding surveillance from the air. Their sniper, mortar and mine-laying teams never stayed in one place for long: they would move on quickly from a house they had used as a base, leaving the civilian inhabitants to face coalition retaliation. Such tactics went a long way towards negating the advantages of the high-precision airstrikes.... In the end, maximum firepower was used to obliterate the last stubbornly defended IS enclaves, with no regard for the number of civilians killed.

Monneneywarria!

Come on bro, this (WWII) Bakshi sequence is pretty much right in the Mord Cuss Mod.... idiom! (And look, the landser aren't firing MG34s from the shoulder!) Lili Marlene

No offense to Gunny Tracy, it's a good service memoir, but not essential MilHist. His company (by chance) did not have the hardest tour in the Blackhearts battalion. His most interesting tactical tidbits (e.g. makeup of QRF "sleds") are in the compendium you have. Tracy is a vintage Company Gunny in that every unit except his own is full of effing rogues and halfwits (and half the time he seems sure he's surrounded by numbnuts too). We have all had a Gunny T in our lives.

Oh yeah, mains ruptured by IEDs were definitely a pungent fact of life downtown in "Little Hiroshima" by mid 2005. Crapping in bags in COPs was SOP, with latrine discipline enforced by the Company Gunny. See "Street Fight in Iraq" by the Gunny of 2/5/F.

...And definitely the Falco version (chain smoking video, not totally lame lame roller skating in front of bluescreen MTV edition). As for 'After the Fire' English remix, know O believers that it is haram and shall be consigned to eternal columns of fire, by Allah (pbuh)!

That should not just be possible but SOP. As I take a closer peek at the few teaser screenshots released to date, I go "hot and cold" on the new building textures and what work may be required to bring the Ramadi master up to spec.... On the positive side, I do love me those lingering dust clouds! Very atmospheric, far less sterile! Source

Stop. Mord. Will you. Stop. Mord. I'm a-fraid. I'm a-fraid. Daiiiisy, Daiiiisy.....

(been doing business in Beirut this week. Nice town, definitely safe downtown now and worth a visit, but more expensive than expected). The lessons of Ramadi and Anbar are very well summarized in a number of recent papers. This one discusses what happened in the wake of occupation up to the Fallujah/Sadr City uprisings of April 2004. http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/2383/06Dec_Broemmel.pdf?sequence=1 The security force presence in Ramadi changed frequently during 2003, never reaching a 20-to-1000 troop-to-population ratio. The estimated population of Ramadi in 2003 was approximately 390,000. According to the recommended troop-to-population ratio, a population of this size would require a security force of 7,800 police and troops.... With such a frequent force rotation in Ramadi, units had difficulty becoming intimate with their area of operations. In Ramadi and Samarra, the unit headquarters responsible for each city had additional priorities that focused the unit’s attention away from these two cities... vast stretches of western Anbar Province and the Syrian border.... These conflicting priorities forced each headquarters to assign subordinate units that it could spare with economy of force missions to administer these two cities as effectively as possible. The negative results of this approach became apparent in the spring of 2004.... units were not able to reach enough of the local security force or population to make a difference. Units made extraordinary efforts to train ISF (police and military) to alleviate the security situation in the city with varying degrees of success. Units reported that when accompanied by U.S. forces, ISF could accomplish small scale operations at the platoon and company level; however, they could not operate independently. At times, ISF check points were left unmanned. ISF leadership was frequently threatened by AIF personnel, causing some to resign or desert. One company reported an AWOL rate of over 70%. In some cases, insurgents who were detained were later discovered through interrogation to be ING or police personnel.... Insurgents penetrated some ISF units. As a result, Coalition Forces did not give them too great of a responsibility and did not give them information a long period of time in advance of an operation. In Ramadi during 2003, units operated mainly from two FOBs in north central and North West Ramadi. By the beginning of 2004, coalition units in Ramadi occupied combat outposts along the main supply route through the city. While security of the MSR was the main catalyst for this move, the result was beneficial to local security of the population. In all three cities, units that operated with squads in mutual support or with platoons in mutual support, often employed from neighborhood police stations, were best able to bring security to neighborhoods. In doing so, they were also able to reduce the IED threat faced when “commuting to war” from an FOB.... interpreters are essential to Iraqi and Coalition cooperation. [CPT Nick Ayers B/1/34 AR]"I found that a lot of the deployment is a credibility game with the public and the insurgents. I felt the insurgents targeted units that they felt were weak. The public didn’t trust units that were not professional or couldn’t provide security or assistance (especially if they promised such assistance).... "The enemy is human and succumbs to patterns and routine. Because the insurgency operates in the local neighborhoods, the population holds the solution to gaining actionable intelligence. Actionable intelligence is verifiable information that can place a specific target at an exact location during a particular time... [It is] time sensitive, requiring units to have the flexibility to react quickly.... If a unit routinely receives its intelligence about its sector from higher level intelligence sources, this may indicate that the unit cannot effectively see and therefore cannot control its sector. "The higher percentage of casualties caused by IEDs and indirect fire resulted from insurgent preferences that avoided direct fire confrontation with Coalition combat units.... units employed squads and platoons in the contested area in order to improve upon their information disadvantage.... Once established in city neighborhoods, insurgent groups were forced to take action against the Coalition encroachment into their area.... The willingness to establish small unit combat outposts in support of local security forces was a characteristic of units that effectively partnered and supported local Iraqi government.... Units must have the tactical, logistical and cultural skill to operate in platoon and company combat outposts." Of course, maintaining (and supplying and defending) a foreign military presence in the heart of Ramadi was purely optional, and driven from Washington. The Anbar governorate could just have easily conducted business from a fortified compound outside town. But ceding the city centres to Baathists and later masked jihadis didn't have look good on TV. They tried that in Fallujah from April to November and ended up having to assault a fortress. So Americans and Iraqis had to die to keep flags flying in increasingly shattered downtowns for 4 years.... That said, one cannot but be impressed with the intelligence and creativity most US commanders brought to this difficult mission. Even though each rotating unit seemed to have to relearn the same lessons, with both them and the locals paying a price each time. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92750254 MAJ John NAGL (Ops officer, CENTURION 3) September 24, 2003, through September 10, 2004 ...by September, two of its three tank companies were conducting combat operations in the Sunni Triangle mounted on Humvees and dismounting to fight as dragoons, with just one company fighting from M1A1s... The battalion staff had to change its entire approach to combat, shifting its focus from battle-tracking enemy tank platoons and infantry squads who fought in plain sight to identifying and locating an insurgent enemy who hid in plain sight.... a task more akin to breaking up a Mafia crime ring than dismantling a conventional enemy battalion or brigade. "Link diagrams" depicting who talked with whom became a daily chore for a small intelligence staff more used to analyzing the ranges of enemy artillery systems.

Yup, as noted earlier in this lengthy thread there was a whole Tony Soprano stew of tribal subgroups, Baathists, Salafis, sects and community organizers (lol) at work here, and elsewhere in Anbar. To its credit, the US command was in fact well up to speed on all of them. But awareness and ability to manage, much less control events, are two very different things. To the kids at risk out on the sharp end it all looked FUBAR, as always. Also, don't miss this article. The gist is that satellite mapping shows humanity to be vastly more urbanized (as in 6.4B out of 7B+!) than demographers previously thought. http://www.thisisplace.org/i/?id=0150beca-e3f5-47e0-bc74-9ccc5ef1db8a Takeaway for military minds: *learn* the lessons of Ramadi, Basra, Homs and Mosul! You'll be seeing this sh*te again. And again. No disrespect, but Kursk, Fulda and 73 Easting are history, about as relevant as Gaugamela.

Well that's part of the point of the JOKER 3 scenario; the Marines 'community policing' approach didn't work any better, in the absence of a credible Iraqi allied authority. The real deal needed to be made with the Sunni tribal sheikhs, and it eventually was, but after a lot of bloodshed and destruction. Read this commentary by a Florida NatGuard officer for an alternate approach they tried in Ramadi prior to the Marines coming in. Of course, running a USD-fueled patronage machine has its own pitfalls and risks. I just discussed this very recently with @sburke (pbuh). 1/124 Florida Guard experience in Ramadi The Iraqi Police Chief, Chief Jarda'an, had a close working relationship with the 1-124th's battalion commander, LTC Hector Mirabile, who is himself a career police officer in the Miami-Dade police department.... When the new unit came to town, though, Chief Jardan came calling. The 2/4 sent him away. He had lost his connection to the Americans. And when he lost his connection to the Americans, he lost his power base and his leverage with his constituents. And so he was forced to cut deals with the insurgency in order to survive..... Our front man for running the reconstruction effort was a Captain with over 20 years in the Army who was also a construction project manager in civilian life. Between the two of them, they knew how to keep constituents and crews happy. As a result, the contracts were carefully divided up among the different clans, so that each clan was dependent upon the others to play ball in order to continue performing the services. If my neighbor's clan screws up with the foundation, I don't get to build the brick walls, and my cousin's clan doesn't get to do the painting, etc. Each sheikh therefore had a vested interest in maintaining peace and order in his neighborhood. If his area became inoperable, he would lose out on his ability to provide money and jobs for his people. And so when there was trouble in a given sheikh's area, we could go to him and say "Someone's making trouble for you. Find out who he is, and drop him on our doorstep within three days." And very often, that's exactly what happened. When the 2/4 came in, though, they regarded the 1-124th's system--well imbedded in municipal politics in the U.S., to be unethical, and forced an open-bid system. Penny wise and pound foolish. Yes, they saved a bit of money, but at the cost of freezing out the smaller clans who got frozen out of the work. Boom. Vested interest in success gone. These clans became prime targets for terrorist recruiting, and their areas became nearly inoperable within weeks of the 2/4 taking over. As the old song goes, "the keys go up an' down, the music goes round an' round and it comes out.... here"

In the "Why We Fight" department, I just ran across the award winning essay that inspired me to tackle Ramadi not long after the release of CMSF back in 2007. Well recommended for those interested. VQR Online: the Jarhead Underground Ramadi has always been darker and weirder than just about anywhere else. Even now when I try to recall what the city looks like, what comes to me is nothing more than a pocked stretch of boulevard surrounded on both sides by heaps of rubbled concrete, iron palings, trash. Swirls of dust playing over the blacktop. The smell of cordite. Everything still but a grizzled dog patrolling the ruins. It can be like this—high noon, not a soul around, no threat imminent—but you can feel the sheer sinister energy of the joint. As if even the streets want you dead.

To misquote Preserved Killick: "When it'll be ready when it's ready now, won't it?"

Well noted, cheers. Fingers crossed that infantry will still be able to move from an upper level via door to an adjacent rooftop. Losing that would seriously mess up the 'Madi.

Yeah, definitely for AI plans. But I'm taking it on faith that maps will port pretty well.