c3k

^^^ ...and because your BMP-3's are clustered, each one sets off the adjacent one. A chain reaction sympathetic detonation, linking all the way back to your T-90's...which explode in turn. With one RPG shot, Scott has swept the field!!! Okay, that's one extreme. I'll say a fireball, a crater, and leafless trees. Stop teasing and POST!!!

Mike Spick's books are very good. Rudel: his book is a great read. I would not put much store in his total kill claims. However, I would not dismiss his actions as totally ineffective. There were witnesses to the various anti-tank attacks by Stukas. The G's, with 3.7cm cannon, did kill T-34's. I -think- each cannon only had 5 shots. (Modified for a semi-auto cartridge feed.) The only possible shot was from the rear. Not a steep dive, but a shallow dive. Engine fires do destroy tanks. Not every hit will be an engine fire. Not every shot will be a hit. Rudel was an outlier. (Really, the pun is there. ) He was a manufactured hero, and a real one, as well. I think his kill stats were exaggerated; his commitment was not. And, yes, he was the guy they talked to about the A-10. (Kind of like Northrop and the B-2 team. "Look what we did with your idea.")

Skwabie has it. Additionally, at a chokepoint like a bocage gap, a waypoint at each side of the chokepoint helps.

Like a cat and a mouse. Like a hunter and a deer. Like a woman and a man. I forgot where I was going with this. Nice map overview and sweet gif.

Not even close. I can launch a blimp with longer endurance. That doesn't make it better. The drones carry VERY limited numbers of VERY limited munitions. How many wounded can a drone pull out. (Skyraiders could, and did, carry 3 or more men in the cavernous fuselage. Not designed for it, and they just settled on ribs, but it worked.) Need a gun-run? No drone. Want to improve SA by dropping lower? Not with a drone. Maneuver away from ground fire to enhance survivability but still get the ordnance on target? Not with a drone. Guns, cannon, big bombs, little bombs, rockets, smoke, ATGM's? Not with a drone. Great vid exists of Apaches using Hellfires to kill a 4 (?) man team. Open area near a town. It took 6 Hellfires and only dropped 3. Direct hits and the guys would keep running. (Sure, maybe they were wounded...but who cares if they are firing at our guys? If they can still shoot, they're still in the fight.) That's SIX Hellfires. The kind of weaponry drones are so famous for. Sure, they can knock out a pickup truck. Great. Who's in it? Etc. Intel is needed. A platoon in contact: you want a drone or a skyraider? Yeah. It's incomparable.

F-35 has some great capabilities. F-35 has some incredible limitations. F-35 has some very high costs. Mix the above as needed to come out with your preferred result. Sometimes cheap weapons are just a waste of money. Sometimes expensive weapons are just a waste of money. I personally would love to see a more robust version of the A1 Skyraider resurrected. 8 hours endurance, massive lift capability, shade-tree mechanic repairs, etc. However, it would only be useful in low intensity conflict. (Or one where air superiority/supremecy exists.)

...or did Scott tell him to let that "slip"?

Man-in-the-loop kill decision, or automated? Personally, I'd like another human being to be the one to decide if I die, not an algorithm. Oh, you mean man-in-the-loop-via-datalink? Okay...now we jam you. Who's the trigger puller? Drones/UAV's have a place. That place is getting larger. I don't THINK it'll ever replace man-in-the-loop. (Kill decisions for air defense are a different matter.)

Early Tigers had 5 command detonated AP mines mounted on the hull for that very reason. Later Tigers did not have them.

Optics: back in the day, I was best in my group of 2 dozen on the M16 range. Using iron sights and a full-length barrel , I knocked down all the pop-up torsos out to 300 yards. Fast forward to today: using a 16" barrel, 2 moa aimpoint red dot and 3.5x mag, I placed 10 rounds at 300 yards in a group tight enough to be covered by my hand. Optics make a big difference with aimed fire. Using nvg's and properly zeroed ir lasers, it's even easier. Aiming is hard when adrenaline is pumping. Optics don't matter in room clearing. .300 Blackout has adherents who believe in its utility for cqb. Target shooting is not combat shooting. Dinging a gong is not the same as killing someone who is shooting at you from 15'. Rounds that are lethal in 2 minutes are not the same as rounds which are lethal in 1 minute. Rounds that you don't have don't help. Different tools are optimized for different uses. The problem is finding the right compromise.

It seems like your forces are advancing quite well! Great screenies and gif. Thanks.

Bigger is better. More is better. The balance between the two is the issue. Toss in the inertia of bureaucracy, and you have achieved stasis.

Nine is not nein: it is niner. Five becomes fife.

Excellent! More!

Fast games? Just the opposite. Due to the extreme lethality, blindly rushing forth will result in high losses. A premium will be placed on terrain analysis, scouting, and patiently examining what's around. With on-call fires, one man with a radio can rain havoc on a large enemy formation.

Grabbed hold of one. Several bloody fingers later, I decided not to grab it that way again.

Here's an image: Cut a bomb shell in half and look down it: O. That annular cross-section zoomed in, upon detonation, produces these: <-- //////// --> (Imagine they continue in a circle. This is just a small section of the circumference. Each "/" from the top the character to the bottom ( _ ), is the thickness of the bomb case, about 1 1/2 inches. That's the cross-section. The edges, as stated, are razor sharp. If you handle it, you'll slice your fingers open. (Ask me how I know.) Plus, along it's length (think of a sword, because that's what they look like. The curve follows the bomb shape.), it's serrated, based on the metal pattern. They're up to 4 feet long. Whizzing about at supersonic speed after detonation. 'Nuff on bombs. Arty shells are similar. Or were. Now, the frag pattern is the standard, or the frag warhead.

Follow the install instructions! Sure, you're a computer pro. The game installer works, but only if it's done properly. (Otherwise, you'll get sorted with a Helpdesk ticket. But that's a slowdown, isn't it?)

Event 7 looks sweet; blowing grass and trees show the wind quite nicely.

Tunguska SAM and cannon top out around 3,500m altitude. Just FYI.

It's amazing how good some ideas look from a swivel seat, or the edge of a conference table. Power point can really "leverage" a lot of "synergies" in a "dynamic", "kinetic" manner. And then things look very different when YOU are using that gear. Ask any trigger puller how many times they wished for a smaller bomb. Yeah, looks good in theory: when you want a boom, you want a BIG boom. In a similar manner, thin-hulled ships look good on spreadsheets. A 16" belt of armored steel around the waterline looks better when you're inside that ship. A Humvee (or other fast vehicle) looks great on the slideshow. When bullets fly, a 60 or 70 ton armored beast solves a lot of problems.

"Satisfy" bloodlust? It can be slaked, it can be assuaged, but it can never be satisfied! Moar! Victory can only be truly won with a bayonet. Great set of links. Thanks.

Yeah, most rebuilt Euro construction is pre-stressed concrete slabs. Strong stuff. Nothing like the wide variety of US construction types. (I had a buddy, in cheap a development house; A big storm came, near hurricane strength. (Coastal Carolina, about 5 miles in-shore.) Anyway, his spare bedroom door banged shut. Odd. He went to check the window. It was still shut while the storm raged outside. Yet, there was a draft in the room. The storm had peeled off the corner vinyl trim piece, ripped off some more siding, soaked the exposed insulation and drywall, and blew a hole in his wall. It's never good when a wolf can huff and puff and blow the walls in. Or, if a guy can get a running start and tackle his way into your house.) Sorry. Carry on...

Of course, a LOT of the vulnerability was designing "warships" to operate in peace time. (OT: what the hell is it with multiple British governments adopting "10 year" white papers? See the pre-WWII study.) See, amored warships are heavy. They burn a lot of fuel. Can't have that. Budget buster in peace time. Make 'em out of thin, flammable, metal. Yeah, that'll save the $. Err, Quid. Works great. Really. Until there's a conflict. Then your "peaceships" tend to sink.

The design of weapons has gone for a more "even" footprint. As mentioned above, thick walls produce large, irregular fragments. They go quite far and are quite nasty. Wounds are similar to high velocity sabre wounds; a British soldier, standing in a field had both legs amputated at the shin, for example, from a round which went off about 100 yards away. Meanwhile, several men within spitting range of the explosion were completely unharmed. The ability to fine-turn metallurgy allows for metal crystallization to form in a specific manner which helps create these shards. These wound mechanisms aren't reliable enough. Rather, the new approach has a much more dense field of fragments which assure wounding within a certain radius of the impact. Given that radius, and the number of men, and their cover, you can calculate how many rounds will produce a % of casualties to them. See a company in light field works and you want 50% casualties? Hmm, spin the death-o-meter, and tell the arty how many of what type to fire. Small filler, thick walls: big chunks that go far and are sporadic in coverage. High filler, thin walls: small pieces that give uniform coverage over a short range. (Large bombs are tuned for this effect: the casing shears at a uniform sharp angle, producing hundreds of spinning "swords", 2 to 4 feet in length. The edges are, literally, razor sharp.)