Vanir Ausf B

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According to BFC the MG module is not being made by the same "team" making the East Front game. It's being made by the team that is going to do Shock Force 2.

1) Let Fausts, Bazookas and Schrecks be fired from buildings. 2) ...

Destroyed vehicles that are not burning block LOF, but not LOS, if the targeted unit is non-vehicular. If the targeted unit is a vehicle then destroyed vehicles do not block LOS or LOF. Burning vehicles always block LOS.

There are at least 2 new game "families" scheduled between now and the Bulge game. I would be surprised if we saw the Bulge game before 2015.

TBH, I would be surprised if any of those other than the Market-Garden module make it out by the end of this year. But I've been surprised before.

GaJ also mentioned that he hasn't forgotten that some people were disappointed when he gave up in the last AAR.

That is true. But Occam's Razor suggests one of those possibilities is much more likely to be true than the other. No, the US does not outsource testing of domestically developed weapons, although it would be different in the case of weapons developed in cooperation with foreign firms. The US is developing the next generation of penetrative bombs which will be small enough to be carried by a F-35. But it would be odd to assume that Israel is using these bombs in Syria when we don't know if the new design is even out of the concept stage yet, and with Israeli use of their own US-made GBU-28s a far more likely scenario.

:confused: Are you claiming that this is what has happened, or is this just a story you made up? If it is the former then you are going to have to explain how you came about this information. It's your narrative, you reference it. And while you're at it try to find some evidence that the mini-nukes story originated from a government source rather than a conspiracy website that has a hard-on for mini-nukes.

There is no evidence that I have seen that this mini-nuke idea originated from anywhere other than the conspiracist website Kettler linked to, nor is it clear why the US or Israeli governments would think that what the John Kettlers of the world think is important enough to make a directed and deliberate attempt to fool them, particularly when the truth of the matter is so mundane and uncontroversial. As for this ridiculous testing theory, the latest and most advanced bunker-busting bomb in the Israeli arsenal is the GBU-28, which they "purchased" from the US in 2009. The GBU-28 has been in the US inventory for over 20 years. It has been both thoroughly tested by the US and "proven in combat/combat tested" in 3 wars. Why the US would be relying on Israel to test a weapon that the US already has vastly more combat experience with is a question that needs answering. The need for such testing is doubly questionable given that the US has a new bunker-busting bomb that is far more capable than the GBU-28.

A mini-nuke decoy? Of course! That makes perfect sense, because it would be much preferable for the world to think nuclear weapons were used than a conventional bomb. LOL. And we have the Israelis test our weapons for us because I guess we're just too lazy to do it ourselves or something, and we never bomb other countries anyway.

Two days? Pfff. My PBEM partner hasn't sent a file in two weeks.

You've fallen off the wagon again.

I stopped reading right there.

Yep. Before PRISM there was ECHELON.

All non-US citizens are suspicious by definition. I would suggest removing pictures of your cat from the internet immediately.

The fact that they haven't waterboarded Kettler yet is suggestive of how much the rest of us should be worried.

Everything you post in this forum is public. I'm not sure why you would be worried about the NSA reading your posts when everyone else in the world with internet access already can anyways. In fact, I've been reading you posts for years without any judicial oversight whatsoever. Now try to sleep at night

I recall from my childhood Sunday school classes that this is how prayer supposedly works. Coincidence?

Hey Russia, haven't you heard that there are no lessons to be learned from the Gulf Wars?

This was only true at the beginning of the war. By the end of the conflict Iran had roughly twice as many men under arms as Iraq. It was the Iranians who were using human wave assaults, a tactic that relies on overwhelming numerical superiority. Regardless of whether or not Iraqi troops out performed Iranian by whatever measure you want to define performance, the bottom line is that there is no evidence that I have seen that suggests Iraq's "artificial" nature put it at a significant disadvantage vs. Iran. Iraqi Shia fought Iranian Shia; Iranian Arabs fought Iraqi Arabs. To any extent that this artificiality would be a disadvantage would be defined by to what degree it feeds into the politicization of the military. What you refer to as "artificial tension between the army and the revolutionary forces" within the Iranian armed forces is simply another example of the debilitating effects of the aforementioned politicization of the military. The purge of Iranian generals after the revolution of 1979 was similar to Stalin's purge of '38 and had a similar effect. That politicization has a negative effect on military performance should go without saying. That Arab armies have been generally more politicized than their western counterparts is also incontrovertible. Why anyone would argue against this is beyond me. "Russian (sic) crushed the resistance". In the second Battle of Grozny during the First Chechnya War a force of Chechen rebels attacked and routed a much larger Russian force garrisoning the city, a defeat which forced the Russians to negotiate a treaty recognizing the defacto independence of Chechnya (until they lost it in the Second war). During the First Battle earlier that year the Russians sustained major losses in men and vehicles when armored columns were sent into the city without infantry support. Russian units were given vague orders to simply "move forward" without any specific objective. Many units became lost and some units requested as reinforcements were found to be partying on New Years. Not that any of that is indicative in any way of the level of training and discipline within the Russian army at that time as it would have pertained to an engagement vs. a 1st world opponent because, you know, that's different. BTW, it is good that you corrected yourself on the characterization of the US withdrawal from Iraq since to call it a retreat would have suggested a profound ignorance of the situation.

During Iran-Iraq war Iraqi Sunnis and Shia of various tribes fought and died together against Shia Iran, and generally out performed non-artificially-constructed Iran. The Iraqi army was overwhelmed in 1991 not because it could not understand the technology is was attempting to use, but because its opponent had access to much better technology and was much better trained. Tribal divisions do matter to the extent that the ruling regime is typically of a particular tribe and/or religious affiliation and therefore senior military commanders are picked primarily from that pool because of their perceived loyalty rather than command ability, which has a detrimental effect on combat performance. That is what I was saying about armies that have the function of keeping the ruling regime in power. Less politicized militarizes fight better. Arab armies are, in general, highly politicized. As for lessons learned from LICs, you can compare tactics and results from, for example, the First and Second Battle of Grozny with the First and Second Battles of Fallujah and see clear differences in tactics and training between the Russian and US forces despite the fact that they were not fighting each other. That these are imperfect analogues to a 1st world conflict goes without saying, but they are nevertheless valuable sources if for no other reason than that they are the only sources we have regarding real combat performance, therefore our choice is to glean what information we can from them or to ignore them and rely purely on theory and guesswork. Both the US and Russian militaries have implemented changes in their forces based on their experiences in non-1st world conflicts over the past 20 years, so they apparently feel the lessons learned are of value.

We should be thankful that we don't have any real-world examples of high-tech, 1st-world armies clashing over the past 60-odd years. That doesn't mean we ignore the examples we do have and resort to pure guesswork. By 1991 the Iraqi army had spent most of the past decade at war. I don't think it could be said that they were still adjusting to new tactics and technology, unless you meant that of their opponents.

We know what the rebels want: anti-tank and anti-air missiles. That would suggest Javalins and Stingers. But I suspect the US will be loath to supply it's most advanced weaponry given the participation of al-Qaeda affiliates. I predict ammunition for whatever weapons they already have and RPGs procured from friendly Arab governments. More communications and night-vision gear. At some point there will be a limited no-fly zone via Patriot missile batteries along the border in Jordan and Turkey. When these incremental measures fail to achieve the objective then there will be airstrikes. At that point it will be interesting to see if the Russians follow through with their threat to supply S-300 batteries to the Syrian government.