Vanir Ausf B

Same source:
 
"Red Army Handbook 1939-1945", by S. J. Zaloga and L. S. Ness, 1998 (Alan Sutton, Thrupp) gives on page 179 a table of the ranges in metres at which Soviet tanks and assault guns were knocked out by 75mm and 88mm guns in 1943-44, as follows:
Range_______75mm gun_____88mm gun
100-200_______10.0%_________4.0%
200-400_______26.1%________14.0%
400-600_______33.5%________18.0%
600-800_______14.5%________31.2%
800-1000_______7.0%________13.5%
1000-1200______4.5%_________8.5%
1200-1400______3.6%_________7.6%
1400-1600______0.4%_________2.0%
1600-1800______0.4%_________0.7%
1800-2000______0.0%_________0.5%
 
However, note the time period. Tanks and self propelled guns with weaponry capable of 2000+ meter shots with any sort of reliability comprised a very small portion of the total vehicles in battle until about mid-1944 when the Panther began to be seen in larger numbers (and were still a minority till the end of the war) so that is why the discrepancy with the NW Europe numbers.

Yes. Even humidity will degrade it to a small degree. The dust kicked up by large artillery barrages can block it (although I don't think that is modeled in the game). Infrared light is still a type of light, after all. But infrared light will penetrate obscurants more readily than visible light because of its long wavelength -- particularly light on the mid to far end of the IR spectrum, which is why thermal sights can see through most types of smoke.

It is the former.
 
Unless one of those mods is Vin's Animated Text you really don't have to worry about removing them at all. As a beta tester I get new "patches" nearly every week and I never remove my mods.

Unbuttoned TC does lose his sensors when unbuttoned, so here is a possibly incomplete list of vehicles that spot better while buttoned all the time (but only to the front of the vehicle).

M1A2 Abrams
T-90AM
BM Oplot
M2A3 Bradley
M3A3 Bradley
M7A3 B-FIST
Khrizantema
Tunguska

I don't know for certain, but I think it very unlikely that vehicle crews have night vision goggles, so nearly all vehicles should stay buttoned in low light conditions.

Russians are too good at history to hand the US a bloody shirt to wave.  The one way to ensure the US keeps doing what it's doing, only LOUDER AND MORE ANNOYING is to tell it to stop.
 
A better solution would be simply "OH NO WE ARE DEFEATED BY THE UKRAINE!"  and drawing down very loudly and openly then waiting two or three weeks for the US to get distracted by Kayne West again before going right back to arming the rebels.  American ADHD is by far more powerful than clumsy threats.  

Weapons are sometimes damaged, so they are randomly not salvageable. If it is NEVER salvaged then that could be a problem.

AKA mouse-holing. Very effective.

Overwatch is a good idea, but is most effective at IDing the enemy that just killed your guys rather than preventing your guys from getting killed in the first place. Accomplishing the latter requires the placing of speculative fires on all unsecured locations with LOS to your moving units. This is effective, but is also slow, methodical and will burn through a lot of ammo.

By doctrine at least in the modern US Army, you will find Lieutenants leading platoons, Captains leading companies, and Lieutenant Colonels leading battalions. You can go one down with rank if you have the Executive Officer in charge of a company or battalion, or in a platoon you might see a Sergeant First Class leading if they don't have enough officers.You will find them leading from the front up to battalion level, although you probably wouldn't see the company commander or battalion commander running point in an assault. They would be co-located with one of the elements (probably not an assault or breaching element in most cases) and that would be specified in the operations order.
 
Unless you are going to include battalion or brigade command post elements & staffs in a scenario, you probably won't see a lot of Majors leading units unless the XO is in charge of a battalion or a new battalion commander Major hasn't been promoted to LTC yet. Most of your staff guys at the battalion level are Captains with a Major or senior Captain as an operations officer, and at the brigade level staff you have a lot more Majors and now some Lieutenant Colonels on the staff. It's not that staff guys are cowards any more than anyone else can be a coward, it's just not their job to be out "in a foxhole". If I'm a battalion or brigade commander, I want my logistics officer back in the TOC getting me more ammo, not out in a foxhole with a rifle.
 
Most armies today have similar structure, although it varies by army to the level of initiative encouraged at each level. Most western all-volunteer armies encourage leadership initiative at the lowest level and their training and doctrine embrace that concept. Some former Warsaw Pact armies are working towards that goal. I spent a year with the Hungarian Defense Forces in Afghanistan, and I can tell you I was very surprised at the fact that their NCO's weren't used to having a voice when it came to operations. They were used to doing what they were told by their officers and were not used to taking charge of tactical situations. They were very good soldiers, it just wasn't in their doctrine or training for young NCO's to take charge if the lieutenant was there.

Also keep in mind that dedicated recon units are the closest thing to special forces currently in the game so they are a poor source of expendables. My advice is that these small specialized teams are better utilized split into two 3-man teams, and that you should look elsewhere for "red shirts".

When the unsplit squad is small you sometimes don't have enough good scout candidates to choose from. In the case of the Russian recon squad there are six men, but only one of them is ideal for the job. You have 4 guys armed with AKs. Two of them are the squad leader and the assistant squad leader, and a third is the radio operator. So you have one AK guy as your first scout then take your pick between the SVD and the PKP.

I found that pairing Khrizantema armed TDs with BMP-3s to provide IR blocking smoke screens is a viable tactic against US tanks.
 
I managed to easily destroy, with multiple frontal penetrations, ten M1A2 SEP tanks (some w/APS) losing only three TDs, and a couple IFVs (smoke cover doesn't last forever).
The radar system on the Russian TDs is capable to see through IR blocking smoke effectively while the sensors on an Abrams tank are blinded.

It's mounted on a traversable ring, along with the commander's sight and hatch.
 
The CM engine seems to not allow for traversable rings to traverse, so it has to be set in a some position permanently. Unfortunately, the chosen position is with the machine gun facing backwards, which is correct for when the commander is buttoned but not when he is unbuttoned.
 
I personally think this is a mistake; that it should be turned around and the commander's sight fudged. I will lobby for it internally but don't hold your breath.

Here's what came with all of those packages:
 
1. Egypt actually license produces the export model M1s, which rather makes them something easier to maintain
2. Saudi Arabia's fleet is almost 100% supported by western contractors due to lack of qualified local personnel.  It also falls into the whole Arab-standard "if I own this fancy piece of western equipment, then I am as good as the western military that uses it!" mentality than lends itself to purchasing equipment it cannot use, or support in the long run.  They also have a lot of money to throw at the tanks
3. Kuwait is mini-Saudi Arabia in this regard.
4. Iraqis believe in their heart of hearts they'd have killed every American and been able to fight all the way to liberate Jerusalem if only they had better equipment in 1991.  They bought the M1 because they believe it somehow made Iraqi tankers better vs was just something else for them not to maintain.  It also came with a full-on US Army established and for a long time, manned armor crewman school.  They also had money (abliet US aid money) to throw at the tanks.  
5. Australia is conveniently located at that Venn diagram point in which Australian desire for a new tank line up with the US strategic focus shift to Asia.   
 
Absolutely none of those were countries in the middle of a conflict with little to no practical US ground presence, no training mission, no industrial means to produce spaces, or not at all much money to buy its way out of problems.  
 
If there was going to be a western tank dropped into the Ukraine it'd be some manner of Leo 2 model, as there's a fair number of those on the market, and a decent number of sources for spares (and despite German disinterest in the conflict, the number of now mothballed Leo 2s outside the country, or in the hands of folks who don't seriously keep up tank fleets is fairly high).  On the other hand most of the US tanks in storage have the advanced armor arrays that 100% will not be exported until it's rendered obsolete by phased plasma cannons and proton shields or whatever.
 
And that's still going really far out on a limb.  The most likely situation is stimulating internal production as that's much less training mission/non-Ukrainian standard equipment reliant, some sort of former Soviet design from outside the country (again Polish refurbed T-72s seem like a good choice).  The best solution for a tank producing country isn't to drop a tank they don't produce on them, it's to help them make more of their own tanks (and the Oplot is nothing to sneeze at).
 
So yeah.  Can we talk about a more likely sort of aid vs the crazytown stuff?
 
ATGMs seem like a given.  Especially ATGMs of unverifiable origin (Israel is great for stuff like that).  Also a large push to get the Ukrainian Air Force back to strength wouldn't be a bad choice, what's killing it now is lack of functioning airframes.  This is exactly the sort of thing Uncle Sugar could handle with buying up every loose MIG spare part, and writing paychecks for either Ukrainian mechanics, or other former-Warsaw Pact maintainers to go in and overhaul the stuff grounded for serviceability issues.    

Vanir Ausf B,
 
How's this grab you? Taken from here. aw_mm's #11, dated 8/26/14. I have never seen the like of the kind of detail. During the Cold War, analysts got all excited because the someone managed to image the underside of a T-72 turret, for some reason upside down at the tank plant, allowing determination of the cavity size for special armor in the turret front. This makes that look like a nonevent by comparison.
 
 
"ERA is highly efficient per thickness - afaik it is the most space efficient armor. The reactive elements in the Soviet Kontakt-1 ERA consisted of a 7 mm thick layer of explosive sandwiched between two 2 mm thick steel plates (so the total thickness is 11 mm) which can reduce the penetration of a missile warhead by 400 mm. The optimal protection is achieved when the ERA is sloped, but at the roof this is not necessary, because pretty much all top-attack weapons strike from an angle (except artillery bomblets).

The only thing I was able to find about the actual Soviet/Russian ERA used on their MBTs is this picture from a Russian news website/blog:


It shows trials done during the development of the enhanced roof protection in 1983. The (1) marks the 50 mm thick anti-radiation layer installed inside the tank. (2) shows the 40 mm thick roof armor made of medium hardness steel. (3) is a 2 mm thick steel layer for holding all stuff together. (4) is a 80 mm thick polyurethane layer and (6) marks a 10 mm thick armor plate of high hardness steel under which a Kontakt-1 reactive element is located.

So the whole array would be: 50 mm anti-radiation liner - 40 mm thick roof armor - 80 mm polyurethane - 2 mm steel - 7 mm explosive - 2 mm steel - 10 mm high hardness steel or 191 mm of armor of which 90 mm are part of the turret roof and 101 mm applique armor.
According to said blog (if Chrome translated everything correctly) the armor was tested against an artillery bomblet with a penetration of 200 mm (dent in the armor marked with (8) ) and was able to resist it. 
Such a bomblet strikes perpendicular at the armor, against a missile like Javelin which will strike at an angle a protection of 400 to 500 mm could be expected in my opinion. Still this wouldn't be enough to deal with the Javelin missile, but then again it is a prototype armor from 1983. I'd expect at least the T-90 (1992) or T-90A (2005) to have upgraded roof armor."
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

Gamey is whatever killed your guys. Fair game is whatever kills your opponent's guys

Come and check out the new modern ladder that started yesterday at theBlitz.org.  It is empty right now so you can still be there first.  You can find the announcement here: http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/showthread.php?tid=67572which includes instructions on how to join.

We-Go & Iron. I consider CM a simulation and i always play sims with maxed out realism settings / on maximum difficulty. I dont know why I should play a simulation if i tone down difficulty to acarde game levels. I WANT to be tortured .

Also you can not assume that the enemy vehicle spotted your BA-64 from a distance and intentionally drove up to it to shoot it. The AI doesn't have the ability to 'stalk' its targets like that. Probably it made its move for its own rigid AI reasons, and spotted the BA-64 only when it got close. 
That said, I don't blame you for being surprised and frustrated at the situation.
For my part, I just accept these unfortunate incidents as gaps in the alertness, judgement, and reporting by my troops. After all, in the real world they'd have to see a contact well enough to make sure it wasn't friendly anyway, before engaging it, and we don't usually complain about the lack of that limitation in the game, or about the absence of ground to ground friendly fire incidents. 
The consolation is that the enemy suffers as much from fog of war as you do. 

+1
 
True it can be frustrating. We all feel it.

This is huge. This game is not a "you are responsible for making the perfect decision to get out of a puzzle" game. This is game of tactics - assess the situation and create the best plan possible and guide your soldiers to execute it. Then expect the unexpected and roll with it.

Present.  What do you want me to say?  You don't want your tanks to back up?  Don't get lased!  
 
US Army has no relevant doctrine for this yet, as we don't currently have LWRs on our vehicles.  Like the APS, the LWR is a postulated add-on that is commercially available and we can reasonably assume would be added to front line US units if we had say six months of warning to spool up prior to actual hostilities.  If it was 'come as you are, right *** now!' we would not (currently) have this kit.  At current defense budget levels we will likely field an APS sometime in mid 20s and a new tank long after I am dead <sad face!>  
 
Though our acquaintances in the IDF do have LWRs (I think I recall) on their systems, their threat is vastly different and so any doctrine they have hashed out against Hez/Ham threats would not apply to an adversary with MBTs and numerous different precision anti-armor threats.  In the absence of extensive use at our combat training centers (which would require a very substantial overhaul of our training equipment, as well as the LWRs applied) we must assume that we would be determining tactics/techniques/procedures through combat Darwinism/evolution.  If I was on a tank and the LWR so much as twitched, I would take immediate action.  While that might not include launching smoke, it would almost certainly include seeking cover.  Only difference is that I think running for cover forwards would be more frequent, as the crew is usually oriented that way on the offense, and it would be easier than trying to stop then reverse.  However, would be tougher on the TAC AI to get this behavior, so we've got what we've got.  My advice is...
 
Low ground is your friend.  Just because your Abrams is a rolling deathwagon does not mean you are invulnerable.  Move tactically.
If you cannot avoid it, consider using indirect-delivered smoke.  It doesn't stop thermals, but does a job on lasers.  Lack of direct-fire emplaced obscuration is a major gap in US capabilities.  One that I am literally hoping to rectify. 
Use overwatching vehicles.  Don't move if you don't have a friend covering you.  Keep bounds short enough for mutual support, but don't become overly robotic.  Flow like water over the terrain.
On the defense, look to array forces in depth, but focused into a defined killing zone (engagement area) with overlapping coverage.  Try to not allow the temporary withdrawal of a single platform unhinge your whole plan.  
 
Just my $0.02  Enjoy the game.  

I figured this would be a good place to hang impressions of some of the new for CMBS hardware for folks who are playing now (or like me, have stopped playing to eat/let fingers depart from mouse operating position).
 
 
1. Vehicle Air Burst is brutal.
 
Russia definitely has an advantage in the sheer proliferation of airbursting rounds.  It makes facing down BMP3s potentially messy with infantry, and tanks just as perilous.
 
On the other hand the US airburst capable platform is Odin level optics and sees all.  Seems well suited to killing ATGM teams and the like
 
2. ATGMs have been shaken up a bit.  
 
ERA is much more common, and APS makes what used to be a lot of sure-shot dead tank shots into total whiffs.  This seems to hurt RU/UKR more than the US.  Javelins are still something to hide under the bed from though.  
 
3. BMP3s are pretty much rolling JDAMs
 
Seriously.  They almost always wind up at the bottom of self generated craters if struck by large weapons.  It's rare to see one merely knocked out, the default hit is total vehicle, crew, and passenger loss.  From my experience so far the APS is the only protective package worth the effort.   On the other hand, the 100 MM is an awesome tool, and the ATGMs are as good as any of the other standard vehicle ATGMs in the game.  Might be better if you keep them back, feel forward with tanks and dismounted infantry, and then call them forward to deal with threats.
 
4. Precision fires is kind of cool
 
Haven't quite achieved the lethality I'd hoped for.  Mostly called for the US stuff, think part of it has just been a matter of how I employ fires.
 
5. Ukrainian tanks are a mixed bag.
 
They're both the bottom of the pecking order, and if you're playing as Russia, still capable of delivering very nasty surprises.  If I had to tier them against CMSF, they're comparable to the high end Syrian T-72s, with the Russian tank falling into the less capable NATO platform range.  The T-90 models especially are definitely superior, but it isn't the M1A2 SEP vs T-55 sort of superior.  
 
6. M1A2 SEP is still a monster.  
 
With the APS it certainly needs effort to KO.  On the other hand, I've had more than a few knocked out frontally from T-90s and the like, or badly damaged by 30 MM fire, or lesser tank rounds.  It's advantage is usually it gets the first shot in most engagements, hits in the 80-90% range (conservatively, I've certainly seen them miss at least!), and has almost universal lethality against what it hits.  Best I've seen a T-90 get off with was having surviving crewmen after it was knocked out.
 
7. ADA Is a pain.  Even MANPADs
 
Seriously.  If you're a CMSF NATO person used to having your way with airstrikes, prepare for sadface.  If you're expecting the Russian Air Force to nimbly pave your way to victory, again, expect some sadface.  
 
Best tool so far is if you know about where the enemy MANPADs are, dropping an artillery barrage to suppress them during your strike.  This requires some good optics, situation awareness, or really good guessing though.  

Loopy trajectory is modeled.
 
Fire rate tends to track closely with shell size. 105 will shoot less often than 75. But it hits harder.

Yes, over a year ago.

Gamey is whatever killed your guys. Fair game is whatever kills your opponent's guys

This is actually incorrect.
 
There's three kinds of Brigades currently in the US Army:
 
1. Infantry BCT.  Infantry squads have no assigned transport, but each battalion has sufficient light trucks to move around one company at a time.  Several of these brigades are also oriented on either airmobile or paratroop missions
2. Stryker BCT. Infantry rides in Strykers.  This is the only BCT that uses Strykers as transports
3. Armored BCT.  Infantry rides in Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
 
HMMWVs are not generally used as infantry transport, they saw use in Iraq/Afghanistan as patrol vehicles, but this should not be taken as the way the US plans to fight in a high intensity conflict.
 
The only real front line HMMWVs still in use are that the Infantry style brigades have weapons platoons in each infantry company, which is some number of HMMWVs allocated to carry heavy weapons (M2 HMGs, MK-19s, TOW-2Bs etc), and both Armored and Infantry recon units have some number of HMMWVs (Armored Recon platoon is currently a 5 scout truck, 3 Bradley mix, although it's likely going back to a "pure" six Bradley configuration, Infantry scout platoon has six scout trucks).  Next closest is the Stinger MANPADs teams usually have an uparmored cargo HMMWV to move around the battlefield.  
 
The remainder are all used for light cargo, transporting support or command type troops.
 
In terms of firepower in absolute terms the US infantry has significantly more in a squad for squad, platoon for platoon fight.  As I stated in my original post, the XM-25 and Javelin are both capabilities the Russian Army just lacks entirely in the dismounted role, and the allocation of designated marksmen systems and light machineguns (true belt fed ones vs magazine fed) is significantly higher.  Additionally US fire support systems are traditionally allocated one to two echelons below their Russian counterparts (especially so with heavy mortars and similar systems).
 
In terms of transports, BTR and Strykers are both fairly similar in terms of practical performance, the base model Strykers have superior fire control (turret really, and the MK-19 on a Stryker is pretty wicked), better protection, while the BTR-80A has superior firepower and all BTRs are much lighter and able to handle poor terrain better.  In terms of Bradley vs BMP-2, Bradley wins easily, Bradley vs BMP-3 really comes down to who's shooting first, BMP won't hold up to current generation AP rounds from the 25 MM, but the BMP-3 has overmatch against the Bradley's armor package.  Optics package, basic armor, and troop bay are all superior on the Bradley though.  100 MM with airburst is some nasty fire support, and the through the gun ATGM at least offers a better rate of fire (although the Bradley does have the ability to plop out two missiles in short order) however.
 
In terms of communication, there's a bit of an embarrassment of riches.  At the least each squad (9 man) and team (4 man) leader has encrypted short range communications, with longer ranged radio in the hands of the RTO at platoon level.  What is not at all uncommon is Squad leaders actually having their mitts on longer ranged radios, and encrypted HF type radios for Platoon and Squad leaders.  
 
In practice our infantry guys seemed to have more radios than they could practically use, so usually it was picking the right radio for the mission (larger manpack style ones for missions in fairly spread out environments, the smaller ones for urban operations or the like).   
 
Re: Ukrainian Quality
 
They've managed to bounce back pretty good.  I'm willing to credit at least the top quarter of Ukrainian units with comparing to the 60-40% percentile Russian forces.  The average Ukrainian unit isn't going to be up to snuff, but the better trained and equipped out to hold their own just fine.
 
 
Missed this on the first pass.  Maybe Russian optics, but US thermal optics are entirely able to maintain resolution for all engagements, on the move or not.  Daysights are the backup sights, or used when you've got some crazy-weird thermal crossover going on.