Vanir Ausf B

Hopefully the translation is off kilter, or the Russians are taking combined arms to a new level

CMBB runs at about one frame per second on my CM laptop so I don't have any choice.

Israel has no incentive to fight ISIS. Israel and ISIS share many of the same enemies: the Syrian government, Hezbolla, Iran. The Syrian government has Russia and Iran as patrons, ISIS is universally despised. Victory for ISIS in Syria or Iraq would not be a bad outcome for Israel.

The Quick Kill comparison may be apples to oranges. It appears that Quick Kill is an all in one system that launches vertical and then transitions to horizontal in mid-air as needed. Afganit has separate horizontal and vertical launchers so would not require the same level of aerial gymnastics.

For sure. I think that making the autonomous reaction part of the APS makes more sense than the stated purpose. For the onboard computer the question of "is there an incoming missile at top-attack altitude, yes/no?" is easier to answer than "Is Boris really dead or did his heart rate monitor come loose again?" Agreed, but how important is meeting the 2019/2020 time frame anyways? My impression is that the date was chosen more or less arbitrarily rather than because that's when they are going to retake Estonia or something. The United States is really the only country anymore that still buys large numbers of new armored vehicles in short time spans. Germany is buying 350 Pumas between now and 2020. France has build 800 or so Leclercs over the past 20 years, nearly half of them for export. The UK built 450 or so Challenger 2s and then called it good. Pumping out thousands of Armatas in a few years only makes sense of your goal is to match the US which is plainly impossible even with a good economy.

RE: Russia's ability to buy these things. It's not really as big of an issue as it's being made out to be. Let's say that Russia's defense budget is 50 billion per year USD. That is lower than what they are claiming to spend (80+ billion USD) but is probably more in line with economic realities. Lets further say for simplicity's sake that Russian is going to procure 500 vehicles per year at an average price of 6 million USD per vehicle (by comparison a new M1 Abrams costs around 8 million). That calculates out to 3 billion per year for Armata production, or 6% of our projected budget.

Forgot about this. Yes, it could be very effective for moving vehicles but may only degrade the precision of the missile if the vehicle is stationary since AFAIK Javelin will home in on the last known location of the target if it loses lock. There is an intriguing possibility here. Given that Armata is claimed to have the ability to automatically reverse the tank if the crew is incapacitated I wonder if the same reaction could be tethered to activation of the APS.

I actually think this is the most likely explanation rather than the horizonal-only theory. The objection to this seems to be that there are no radars "pointing upwards". But that's not entirely true and in a soft-kill scenario it may not be necessary. The radars are angled slightly upwards at about a 30 degree angle (my estimation from eyeballing the overhead pics). This would be adequate to detect Javelin during its approach phase and probably the early stages of its terminal phase, which is when you would want to deploy your multi-spectral smoke screen anyways. This is the only explanation for the vertical boxes that makes sense to me.

Wait a second. Have I missed something here? According to the Jane's article Armata has both vertical and horizontal APS launchers. EDIT: Ok, I missed a few posts. In my view there are some problems with non-APS explanations for the vertically-oriented boxes. 1) Storage bins typically have lids or some sort of overhead cover, particularly if those bins are intended to store munitions. These boxes are open air. 2) Mounting smoke dischargers vertically makes no sense unless you want a smoke screen directly above the vehicle.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/04/can-we-just-give-up-on-the-iraqi-army.html

Was probably hit by a US airstrike. There's our tax dollars at work.

You probably just had a little streak of bad luck. If there was something majorly out of whack with a round that common someone else would have noticed before now. But I'll run a quick test.

Looks like you are correct. I think I was remembering how it worked in an earlier version.

What type of unit was the shooter? The Germans have several different varieties of 75mm munitions.

Also do make sure the name you give the file matches the name of the dropbox folder (minus the turn number of course).

That's not even true of T-90s, unless we got it wrong in the game I think we need to not become so fixated on the turret that we forget that most of a tank is not turret. The Armata turret is small but the hull looks decidedly large-ish. I would almost bet money that it is massively armored across the front. That could mean that in our proverbial head-on mashup at 2000 meters the Abrams has to hit the turret, as apposed to not caring where it hits a T-90.

They haven't modded the same stuff.

This. I think...

The 911 truther crap had been so thoroughly debunked that anyone who still gives any credence to it either doesn't know much about it or is delusional.

Many times. It's because most buildings can't be collapsed in reality like they can be in the game. Having everyone die all of sudden when a building goes boom basically turns buildings into bombs and your enemy has the detonator. The CMx1 games actually did work like that and people quickly learned that the most dangerous type of cover was inside of a building, which turns reality on its head.

The outer shell, yes. But the armor on the turret itself is unknown.

True, although most of the gadgets mounted on the Armata's turret appear to be related to the APS. It would be intriguing if they really did blow their entire armor budget on the hull. Putting all 3 crew in the hull and then making it impregnable across the frontal arc might be a worthwhile trade off. While a mission kill is still a kill of sorts, in an extended conflict turrets can be replaced more easily than trained crews.

Smaller turret means sensors and sights more densely packed, so all else being equal a hit will be more likely to break something. But there are a couple of mitigating factors. A smaller turret is a smaller target, and while Armata's armor is a huge unknown a smaller internal volume would allow thicker armor for the same weight.

To be fair, he probably did not count them himself

There hasn't been a patch released for CMBN since the original report.