Peter Cairns

Looks like an IED, this from flight, Peter.

I think the british are a must, because they are currently in both Iraq and afghanistan ( which is what a lot of people actually want to play), and are still the most likely military to get involved and back America. I would also go strongly for the French before the Germans, as again for political reasons they are more likely to deploy abroad and militarily like the US( and to a lesser extent Italy and Spain) have the transport ( air and sea) capability to do so. I have always been in favour of a Marine module covering US, UK and French forces, along with the game changes to allow amphibious operations. Another one that would seem obvious to include would br Turkey, and indeed Israel. Putting in Greece would also allow people to play that little Agean scenario that has been threatening to blow up for most of the last fifty years. Peter.

Steve, I wasn't thinking of using the Tanks designator to guide an artillery shell, I was looking at an infantry team using a designator for a TFGM, so the tank remained hidden. John, The other thing that i hve been looking at is Irans version of the Chinese CSS-8, which is actually the old SA-2 Guideline used as a SSM. This again has a realitively low trajectory, but also has the advantage of in theory accepting mid course commands, as it was originally a beam rider. Thus by altering it's flight path immediately after launch then bringing it back on target you make detecting the launch point far more difficult. In addition as most early Russian SAM's have been progressively undated, it might able to detect and attack CB radars or even if it had a terminal IR guidance package, recently fired field artillery. It's sort of a poor mans HARM when you don't have an airforce (left). Of course the Syrians may well not have recieved them from Iran and are unlikely to have the capability to utilise them this effectively even if they did. Also if the US or UK integrate CB radar capability in to JSTARSor ASTOR, none of it will work. Iran also as a number 0f 1,500km plus missiles with cluster warheads, up to 1,400 bomblets with a CEP of about 200-400m. These could well be used against Airfields throughout the gulf, particularly to target Tankers, AWAC's, JSTAR, Transports and Bombers, effectively anything that is a big target which can't be put in a hardened hanger. Diego Garcia might be in range from Southern Iran and I sustect every major oil instalation in the gulf will also be vulnerable. A PAC£should be effective against it, but I doubt the US has enough of them to cover all the possible targets. Peter.

Steve, As a follow on, I know that some Russian tanks can fire laser guided ATGM,s, do you know if they can operate with a seperate designator. I know the designation range for a Krasnapol is about 7km ( probably 4 miles) and I had thought of using SP artillery in a very flat trajectory from behind a ridge with the designator on it. That would mean a fairly short range under 10 miles, but depending on terrain might greatly reduce the ability of CB radars to detect it. (Due to the curve of the earth d=SQRoot (1.5h) where d is distance in miles, and h height in feet, thus a 6 ft man can see the horizon at sea 3 miles away, as 6x1.5=9, SQroot 9=3). By keeping an artillery round low you reduce the range at which it can be detected and the time to calculate it's trajectory, in addition any round that manouvres makes calculating the firing point hugely more difficult. If the same technique could be used by tanks using an external designator, it might allow them to engage targets without exposing themselves. I should add that this isn't really something I would expect to be allowed in CM:SF, in that although it may be technically possible, for a range of reasons that Steve has gone in to, it isn't probable and therefore it's a tactic that a smarter enemy might use but Syria almost certainly wouldn't. Peter.

Steve, I've come across a couple of reports that Syria was trying to buy Krasnopol guided artillery projectiles a few years back ( about the same time they got Kornets). Depending on the variant (120mm, 122mm, 152mm, and 120mm mortar laser targeted munitions seem to be available) is there any idea if these have actually been acquired, and even if they had, would they be in sufficent quantities to merit inclusion. Peter.

John, Last Week ( 2nd week of Feb 2007) the US hd grounded all 46 operational Ospreys becaause of a chip problem in the backup software in cold weather. Check light International news, under helicopters. Flight Peter.

There is a world of difference between a quality force like the Finns and the likes of Iraq, You only need to look at the name on most mobile phones to know the Finns know how to do communications and networking. CB is effective but it is also highly dependant on radar and radars are vulnerable, they can be jammed and hit. A nation like Finland is more than capable of depolying a lightweight UAV or light vehicle based ASM that can find and hit CB radar. They are also smart enough to line up six D-30's and get them to fire remotely towards the advancing opponent and to use the subsequent CB radar signatures to pin point them. I doubt the Syrians could do it but the Finns certainly could. The other thing they are more than up to, is using cheap obsolete artillery particularly towed small calibre rockets to draw down huge volumes of CB fire, which would be better used elsewhere on real targets. Peter.

Andreas, Given that the Finnes border on Russia, I think they have probably considered the fact that they won't have air superiority and last time I looked Russia still had more MRL's than anyone in the world. Peter.

Steve, A T-72 will take out an M-1 at 1,000m, so if you come over the hill and run in to 20 T-72's at that range with 5 M-1's you'll probably lose. In a flat desert with excelent visability day and night supported by Kiowas on the flanks to tell you where they are the M-1's will win the day, as they have, But in rolling hills covered with olive groves and trees with visability down to less than a 1,000m in most places and under 500m a lot of the time, it's a lot more even and can just come down to luck in terms of who sees who first. That's far more like the situation the Israeli's found themselves in southern Lebanon. Peter.

Steve, I pretty much agree with all of that. I don't for a minute expect the likes of Syria to build a national sound ranging system, my point was that as what you might term "High Street" as opposed to "High" technology proliferates, things like sound ranging which only a decade ago wer seen as both complex and obsolete, can come back in to play. It's one of the reasons the US has quite rightly moved away from towed artillery. It's slow, labour intensive and potentailly very vulnerable. The fact that the Iraqi's didn't and the Syrians probably wouldn't be able to exploit that vulnerability doesn't mean it isn't there. Peter.

They don't need GPS, They use peacetime GPS to position the microphones and the pre survey artillery positions and then they don't need it. If you know where all the microphones are and the wind speed and air pressure at each, then all you need to do is digitally check that the sound is the same for each microphone and compare the times of arrival. Depending on the arrival times to each microphone after the first, you can triangulate on the firing position, the more microphones the better the accuracy. Oh and I don't know if the Syrians have them yet by Russia exports these. SETS OF 152mm ROUNDS WITH 3RB30 SW AND VSW JAMMER PROJECTILE (Joint Russian-Bulgarian development) Round designations: - 3VRB38 (with long-range propelling charge); - 3VRB37 (with full propelling charge); - 3VRB36 (with reduced propelling charge). The rounds are intended for firing from D-20, 2S3M, 2A65 and 2S19 artillery systems to disrupt enemy command and control at tactical level by jamming SW and VSW radio communications facilities. Peter.

I see no reason why the syrians can't make it work, they have been capable of sound ranging for decades like everyone else, and neither GPS, networking or using laptops seems beyond them. As to arc of fire, it just requires discipline. If it's out of range and out of arc, you hold your fire until it is. It's true all US artillery is highly mobile and can "Shoot and Scoot", but that doesn't mean it does or will. I doubt if during OIF, when the US troops were being given coveringfire and support from 155mm , that the guns were shifting position after three or four shots, as by the first few days they would have got used to there being little or no Iraqi CB fire. Peter.

Oddly enough I remember looking at the penetration figures for soviet weapons and it turned out that at under 500m the 14.7mm was actually better than a 23mm. Obviously over range and particularly at 2,000m or so the 23mm was far better, and therefore the obvious choice for AA. but it does mean that if you operate helicopters even armoured ones in urban areas, you can get a nasty surprise. Peter

Such a national system would of course be made up of something like 5,000 Microphones masts of which only 250 would be real, but to take it out the US would need to target them all, in a classic shell game. Peter.

Andreas, However given that the CM:SF scenario gives the Syrians six months to prepare, there is the possibility that they could put in place there own dispersed sound ranging system. This would see them hide smallish groups of towed artillery in probably urban locations, with the role of quickly striking US artillery. The microphones would be prepositioned near forward forces well in advance using GPS and linked to a computer with the job of locating US artillery used in support of an attack. This way towed artillery that wouldn't be expected to last long, could be used effectively to counter US artillery. If the Towed batteries were to be located in key towns or cities they could be either targeted for a specific advance, or linked to a series of preset microphone clusters being able to switch to attack a target from any one. The other possible if we are talking ranges up to 50km, is a national network with SSM's tied in to it. At 185,000km2 Syrian could in theory be covered by a couple of hundred microphone stations. ( say 25km radius, 1,800km2 area each, so thats 100 to cover 180,000km2). Peter.

Steve, Maybe you didn't see any of the coverage of the Kosovo UN decision or the Serbian elections last week, but if you did, it's hard to match the idea that they just walked out and left it with their feelings about it. The threat of the use of ground forces in Kosovo was a major factor in the decision to pull out. The Serbs on the ground didn't want to be defeated on their own soil ( which is what they believed Kosovo was) so they "agreed" to leave before we went in. The refugee crisis had actually created the conditions and indeed the demand for ground troops to go in, certainly in europe if not the US, and that is what they feared, not the bombing campaign. There was also pressure from Serbia's neighbours to switch tactics from the air camapign as closing the Danubee was hurting them as much as the Serbs. As to a half assed Nato campaign, I've from day one thought that a game built around a "crisis" (whether it be Islamic radicals taking over in Pakistan and getting Nukes, to a Hezbullah getting Syrian nerve gas) would make for a better game than one where the US has six months without interferrence to put together another high tech steamroller. A game which is designed around what one nation does better than any other against one that can't stand up to it, won't be as interesting as a more even match. It's like chess where one side has four queens and the other none. I am not sure I ever actually advocated Nato, as again I've pretty much taken the view from day one that no one but the US would touch it with a barge pole. I have said that in a "Marine" follow up you could put in the British and the French, because Britain seems to want to follow the US anywhere, and the French have histotic connections with the region. Peter.

Rollstoy, We invaded Iraq. Steve, But ground troops did go in to Kosovo and many people think it was the threat of that more than the air campaign that finally got the Serbs to back down, as they didn't want to go head to head with Nato. Ground troops in Kosovo was always a practical option, just not one that Clinton wanted to use. Equally possible at any stage was to assemble a Nato armoured force in Hungary and drive straight to Belgrade, but regardless of the military viability there just wasn't the political will. As to Iran, if they decided to start putting 250,000 Republican Guards in to Iraq tommorrow then the US would have to fight with what it had whether it liked it or not. It would be madness for Iran to do it of course, but as you say can't always choose your wars. Peter.

Steve, I am not sure if I full agree with your comparisons of Iraq and the Lebanon. In Iraq the US had at least the potentialof a 1,000 mile southern front and a 200 mile northern one in Turkey. Iraq knew it couldn't cover that even thinly let alone in depth, so it didn't try. That left a fairly rough defence by town along a South North corridor from kuwait to baghdad. Which was how the extensive infrastrucure ran, along what was open unpopulated countryside. In the Lebanon, Israel had a 25 mile front along rugged populated terrain with limited infrastructure running predominantly at right angles to the advance, and an ememy dug in and deployed in depth. Short of amphibious operations which it isn't geared for and or cutting in to Syrian and flanking through the Golan heights, Israel never had many options. Like you I don't think they should have gone in, but even with a GW1 style 30 day air campaign I think it would have been more like Kosovo than Kuwait. To many targets to well hidden in civilian areas. It would be a choice between slow advance and mimimising your own and civilian casualties, or try to batter your way through with sheer firepower. firepower might have worked but the world would have gone crazy. Peter.

Steve, surely it depends on the casualties the Nato force are willing to take and the preperation time they had. Unlike the US in GW1 and OIF, the Israeli's were responding o an event and didn't really have the luxury of six to twelve months to prepare, or a thirty day bombing campaign to soften them up. You can of course argue that Israel shouldn't have allowed the capture of a few soliders to goad them in to a war, but it happens. i've said this before but I'd feel a CM:SF scenario that forced the US to move in quick with what it had on the ground would make for a better game. Peter.

Steve, I broadly agree but would add that there is also an asyemetric element of tit for tat. Israel attacks with aircraft and in taking out it's target kills five or ten civilians. That wasn't there intent, but to the people who lost friends and relatives, it then becomes if they kill our civilians then we can kill theirs. And so once one side starts to kill civilians intentionally or not, civilians become fair game. You can make a similiar argument for inbedding journalists. Once they are associated with or as part of a force they become fair game in the eyes of some. So militants target journalists as they see them as pro the US while we consider targeting arab radio and TV stations for the same reason. It's a sort of action and reaction, or if you want an example of a Hegelain dialectic of Thesis, Antithesis, and synthesis. On the random issue, there is also the possibility that although it goes off in the middle of a CM:SF scenario, neither side was the actual target, such as a suicide bomber attacking an aid agency office that just happens to be two blocks from a passing US patrol. Peter.

Random I think overcomes the gamey element. It also means that if you are replaying a scenario, then you could get a nasty surprise, particularly if the way you think you can crack it is to concentrate your force, thus inadvertantly triggering an attack. Peter.

The random route might be a lot easier to do in game terms as it would involve a vehicle or building just exploding for no apparent reason, so all the difficult coding bits would be avoided. It could simply be a percentage (1 to 3% isn't unreasonable) and then a location calculated on urban density and troop density giving the appropriate building car for location and a certain number of troops near by to detonation. It would be unexpected to everyone, but especially for the US who wouldn't be able to tell if it was a random, or a planned. Peter.

Given the nature of suicide attacks, they seem to fall into well planned and almost random. If it's well planned like an attack then it's more like a boodytrap or combatants with a vehicle that will explode violently when hit, and to an extent could be covered by the game itself. As to the second type, that seem almost random, I'd go for making them exactly that, random, controlled by neither side and with neither side aware they were in it. A bit like an airstrike from a plane that saw a target of opportunity, but which wasn't controlled by a player. If there are suicide bombers around, it doesn't mean that the other units in the game know about them or control them. Peter.

If it is from the East, then regardless of BFd bsck story you could argue for some more balanced scenarios where the US want so dominant. An alternative version might have a border flare up with US forces in the area, temporarily outmatched. I am not sure how much heavyarmour and artillery the US has in Iraq ready to roll at 24hrs notice, and where in the country it i. It might not be enough in the far west of Iraq to take on a Syrian Armoured Brigade. You could base it around US in hot persuit or just a pain mistake that saw the two sides at a time of tension stubble in to war. I could certainly see that happen on the Eastern Iraq border with US infantry in the mountainous areas trying to stop infiltration coming face to face with Iranian Republican Guards. Peter.

To knock out Chinese boosters on the accent phase with airborne lasers they would have to get them within about 250miles, and China has plenty of lauch options more than that distance from any border. They can certainly put things as up to GPS orbit if they want, as they have already tested a prototype GPS of their own. Peter.