Peter Cairns

I watched him speaking live and he was way over the top. It's the mans constant over reaction and make policy on the hoof in response to the last thing he's heard that keeps getting us in a mess. Domestically it's irratating, but internationally it can get people killed... Peter.

I tend to go with most of what Steve said, one of the key issues in this whole Heavy v Light debate seems to be a tendancy to confuse "Tank" and "anti-tank", with the Heavy Brigade arguing that the way to defeat their armour is principally to have better and usually heavier armour. The Light Brigade arguement is that what you need is ways to defeat armour and as long as you have these and they work you don't need to match them tank for tank, which liberates you in terms of mobility tactics and logistics. For me one of the key things in CM:SF should be the new ARH (armed recon helicopter), because in the type of scenario that BF are making the ability to protect flanks and give the Stryker force the edge in engagements against armour will be essential. It should also be able to not only directly engage them but is large enough to carry a Javelin team in it's own right. The Strykers mobility advantage and speed will be of little value if it blunders in to hull down t-72s at 1,500m. Another key factor for me wil;l be the 120mm mortars, how quickly and accurately they can lay down covering fire, particularly smoke will be crucial to allowing the Strykers to overcome a fixed or less mobile force by using their flexibility to best advantage. The real challenge for the Stryker force will be learning how to cooredinate the different elements at his disposal to maximum effect to overcome theoretically stronger opposition. Finally I don't know the current US situation, but if available I'd like to see a terminally guided 120mm Mortar round in the game on the US side. Peter.

Don't hold your breath for the much vaunted invisible camoflage anybody. Two problems with active systems. Ambient light and Detail, both determined by the position of the Observer(s). When you look at a white plane, up close you see the detail , but far away it's a black dot. Threr is however a point at which the weak reflected light from the aircraft is roughly the same as the background and at this point you are hard to see. Thats why grey works so well on aircraft in europe, because on an average day at medium altitude a grey plane blends well with the background. In WW2 they put high power lights on sub hunting aircraft to hide them in daylight, sounds daft but it worked a treat and got us many a U-Boat. However the problem is theat it all depends as much on the distance to the spotter as the colour of the plane, at 5,000ft and 3 miles you may be hard to spot, but someone directly below you are lighter than the sky and to someone 10 miles away you are still a black dot. Its the same with detail. Lets say you have a 30 ft pine tree 30 yards behind you. To someone say, 10 yards away, your tank might block the tree so to fool them you project a tree on your tank that looks the size the one behind you, would look to them. However to the guy with the Javelin 200 yards further back you stick out like a sore thumb, because he can see most of 30ft Pine behind you and to him what you've projected looks like a 3ft ornamental shrub..... Active camo on the leading edge of a stealth UCAV set to match the background ambience as you approach an known target , the light emission level being constantly altered depending on target range, I think is pretty possible and indeed likely within 10 to 15 years. Predator style stealth suits, might quite literally be impossible. Peter.

DirtweaslOkay, as ever it's difficult to tell whats serious and whats a joke, especially with a one line post. I think we more or less agree that the guy is talking like an idiot, but the west using force to stop him talking like an idiot would do more harm than good, Of course that didn't stop Tony rushing to the first available microphone and threatening to move towards exactly that. Peter.

"really heavy stuff (SP 155s, MLRS, mobile SAM installations)" How would we getthe stuff abroad, what domestic use have we for it, how often in the last fifty years has the Un or anyone else really required that kind of hardware, would the quantities we could provide be in any way decisive, or even meaningful in such a situation. The Uk has about 390 MBT's and 80 SP155mm SPGuns, Scotlands proportion of that would be about 35 and 7. Even to focus on that, at the expense of Infantry would be 100 tanks and say 40 SP's, assuming we send a third, which is a huge proportion which we couldn't sustain over any long term deployment You are talking an armoured company and a gun battery. Such a deployment would be rarely if ever needed, would never be independanly depolyed and never make a huge difference. It makes far more sense for Big nations to do big heavy thinks (UK, France< Germany, Italy) and smaller nations to speciallise on the secondary but vital long term low tasks which are the mainstays of UN opperations and where the real work is done. In that repect the medium weight deployable regiment makes sense. Look at international operations over the last fifty years and such a force would have been in almost constant demand. I should point out that if there is a difference in emphasis it is that these would very much be "Infantry" in the British tradition equiped with a better armed and better armoured vehicle to support them, as opposed to mechanised infantry who primarily fought out of vehicles. Peter.

Steve, My points weren't aimed at you, just general observations on the thread. What can be said about the M! can be said about almost MBT, used in the wrong way you'll get problems. Likewise the Stryker, or indeed anything else. Personally I am a big fan of the concept of Intermediate forces for two reasons. Firstly being in the UK I watched the Uk army effectively split in to two. It had the BAOR in the Germany which went from Chieftan and FV432 to Challenger Warrior, while the bulk of the rest was light Infantry with armoured landrovers being rotated out of Ireland. This made real sense given the two dominant missions of the time but left us with a situation where for rapid deployment and a crisis or heavy stuff could be moved by air, and or light stuff was too bloody light. If you look at current MOD plans and what has been done over the last 5-10 years in terms of aquiring equipment and changing structures then we are well on the way to creating forces to fill that gap and in many respects they mirror BCT and a Stryker force. Secondly, and this is a birt Bizare, For a good few years I've been a member of the SNP's ( Scottish National Party) defence working group, looking at what kind of army we would need ( and could staff and afford). We strted with the existing infantry regiments and then one of Light armour, Engineers and Artillery, plus some form of Special forces. About 10,000 in all. However over time I have come to think that having say an Artillery regiment of 700, and say 50men in evry infantry battalion with 81mm mortars isn't the way to go. Given that I don't see a nation of Scotlands size needing Braveheart SP 155mm or MRSL;s and that 155mm towed artillery is vulnerable it would be better to take that total of 1,000 men and divid up. We would have an artillery training unit as part of a training regiment and give every Infantry regiment an artillery company of it's own with 120mm vehicle mounted mortars. Do that with Engineers and light Armour and mechanise your infantry with a common wheeled vehicle and you end up with a Scottish army post independence that would to all intemts and purposes be a Stryker Brigade. It would probably never be deployed as such, more likely Regiments ( which would be more like perminant UK battlegroups) would be rotated in and out, For a small european nation with no real domestic threat, but a committment to playing a rule with the UN and EU, then it seems to make pretty good sesne. So you can see why I am quite keen on CM:SF, for me it's a sort of "Future Scottish Army" simulator. Peter.

panzermartin, Why wait a year I here the Iraqi's are recruiting right now..... Peter.

Just an idea, But not a very good one.... Peter.

Couple of points. On destroying M1's, There is some evidence that the current Russian and potentially Chinese and Iranian UAV programmes have benefited from technology that has been aquired from downed UAV's in Bosnai and Kosovo. Lesson:- If in five years time you don't want Chinese tanks to have reverse engined copy of the M1's fire control system, you spike M1's. Point two, Everything performs badly at the limits, be it sandstorms or whiteouts, including people, that's why we have friendly fire deaths and the like. You never know how good anything is until you push it too the limit. In the six day war the Israeli's had some early night vision equipment but didn't really use it, because well after 12 hours in a tank in the Sinai, to use a military expression, everyone was f**ked.... One issue that may be worth discussing is a sort of CM:SF speed penalty, where people who complete scenarios to quickly or successfully find their force more and more fatigued, because in effect they are pushing themselves to hard. It depends on Scenario design, but their are plenty of historical cases ( which I can't quote not being a grog) of units running low on fuel or ammo, or just having to stop because they were exhausted or had outrun their support. That alone might make a good scenario. Horses for Courses, the fact that an M1 has limits doesn't mean it's bad, the same for the Stryker, It's not as if the US is abandoning one for the other, If you find yourself with a tank in a swamp, the fact that it's the best tank in the world won't do you much good. The CM:SF setting seems to have been designed to make sense for the STryker and as such it will probably show it at it's best. As people design their own Scenarios people will test it's limits and show it's limitations, but they would do that with an M1, M2/3 game as well. That will be all part of the fun. Peter.

Dirtweasle, You'd kill a guy for waving a chainsaw on his own roof, isn't that a bit over the top, not to mention illegal. Wouldn't you be worried about his friends and relatives coming for you in the night, or would you just plant claymores with trip wires all around your house and hope no friends came to visit.... Peter

Stop sitting on the fence Matt which is your choice ( I am not asking you to commit BF). Now, Near, or Nirvana.... Peter.

If we went to war every time an Iranian politician said "Death to Israel", we'ed all have been conscripted twenty years back. The ex-mayor of Tehran is a radical who's constituency is the poor. This goes down great with them, who are the ones it was aimed at, but that doesn't make it a change in Iranian policy or likely that they'll act. Hard as it might be to ignore the jerk standing on his own roof, shouting his head off while waving a chainsaw, about the worst thing you can do is climb up their and try and take it off him.... Peter.

The idea behind the Boxer of having interchangable modules seems to me to be a bit daft. It might have made sense a decade ago, but we are fast moving to a stage where to turn an APC in to a comand vehicle you should unload the eight guys with M4's and load up with six guyys with laptops. The idea of unloading an 8ton module in or near combat to replace it with another with a different function seems a logistical disaster in the making. About ten or 15 years ago the idea of demountable trailers that you could leave to unload anywhere was all the rage, but commercially few systems actually worked, thats why 95% of haulage is dominated by semi's or flatbeds. Things like Drops vehicles (which are overgrown skips) have worked because they copied a system that was working well in industry, particularly construction. Having failled commercially in haulage I think demountables like Boxer are trouble... Peter.

Well as yet another candidate for a far future setting, people should maybe take a look at "Mortal Engines" by Philip reeves. This is set in an arid desolate future earth, which runs on the principle of "Municipal darwinism"...... Basically huge moving traction cities hunt own smaller moving towns and cities and when they catch them they eat them for scrap... Great books , wierd world. Peter.

Again the problem with going for a five man vehicle is logistical. If you have two crew per vehicle it takes 11 men to transport 9, 20% non infantry. If you go for two vehicles it's 14 for 10, thats 40% non infantry, plus twice the fuel etc. There is an obvious point where putting three sqads in an unarmed truck with one driver, is efficent, but just asking for trouble. As long as Stryker is part of the picture and not the only thing you havethats ok. Like any vehicle it has clear advantages in certain roles and should give way in others. Peter.

There is a risk that if things "Go Hot" in Syria over the next 18 months BF could find itself with more trouble that it bargined for. I suppose that's the risk you take when you try to go for the most realistic scenario, you might get it too right and be accused of good knows what from war mongering to being CIA stooges. Peter.

Okay i accept I took mRuddy all the wrong way. am I for one have no problem apologising. In my cringing defence it's the fact that when you look at lots of games and films from Halo to "V" thats what you get. even things that are fun to play for a while like X-Com, are essentially guys in costume games, so you struck a raw nerve and I jerked like kerks occationally do. As to Us getting pasted in a near scenario, set in our solar system well there a few what I might term legitimate ways round it. First, We created the lobsters. They are genetically produced to live in outer planet moon enviroments, except like introducing Cane frogs to australia it goes wrong. Second the regulars v the colonists is always a possible and can be fun. Third, Men v Droids, and I don't mean R2D2 or the Terminator, I am talking far more like advanced versions of current UCAV designs and some of the light robots and remotes the army is playing with for guard duty or house to house. I quite likewe the idea of a sort of light Quad with a central column that mounts two helicopter stub wing type fittings on a bar, so it can be fitted with appropriate weapons, like twin 5.56mm miniguns or a chaingun on one side and a auto grebade launcher on the other. Peter.

Personally I can wait a few months, i don't want to but I will. who knows maybe we will end up with the first CMx2 mac game being WW2 and not Shock Force. that would upset the grogs. oddly enough what caused BF the problems was apple doing what BF are doing now. having taken their core product as far as they could until it couldn't do what they wanted and they were facing growuing customer frustration and falling sales they decided that they would need to go back to basics and redesign the whole thing from more or less scratch, so they had a product that would both match the best and (profitably) grow in future. It's a bit like the A-4 Skyhawk, the late versions totally outclasses the original, but the time came when the JSF made more sense that upgrading. I know Apple made some mistakes and as ever played things too close to their chest for too long, but then BF have always been cautious about giving dates at promising things before they could deliver ( look at the PBEM debate). I suppose I stick with Apple and BF because in there way they both make the best things on the market. Peter.

J Ruddy, Your space lobster army comes across as just people in costumes, theey have different names and the guns hvae fancy titles, but it's basically WW2 in drag again. It's like WH40k, it's all about looks and nothing to do with trying to create a good combat game. If people are going to go for the far future then at least come up with some imagination. It's like hover tanks, I mean whats the point, first you have to "invent" Gravity drive, and then what do you get. Well if it stays close to the ground, you get a tank, and if it flies around at speed you get a plane. So what. Oh and on the subject of bending physics to make the game work, i was wondeeering how long it would take for someone to bring up Telepathy, I mean since when has that every had a scientific basis. It's a good way of getting round a lot of problems, like "how to I get to use swords in the future" I know I'll make them laser swords and create a sort of magic that lets them deflect bullets. Peter

I am pretty much for near as opposed to the extreme future as, most of the things people like most ( tanks and infantry) could well be redundant in a few hundred years. That and I've never liked it when people just re write the laws of physics to make a Game/Film/Book, work, antigrav and hyperdrive and the likes. One of my favourite"Near" books is Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" (the series goes down hill as he chases a big ending). This has a small group of astronauts exploring a huge ark ship. I never played the game but heard it was only just passable. As to ignoring the Fan base, thats what the WW2 modules are for, and things like Korea and vietnam. CM:SLoD, or CM:WoT, fantasy and Sci fi, are about bringing in new people who wouldn't look at WW2 or Korea, and hopefully getting them to buy more BF products.

Just watched the film of the hotel attack and bagdhad, and was taken back by just how much dust their was ( although these were Big Bombs). To what extent will CM:SF simulate this, how much does in impeed Thermal imaging gear, and if it is effective would it be a legitimate tactic to use to negate the advantage of the side using Night vision gear. Peter.

Now given how many supposedly sane people went ape when BF didn't do a historical scenario I know I am taking a risk here ( especially as it might reawaken Dorosh). Given that a CM:SciFi is a possibility, what setting do people have in mind or would prefer. NOW. Like the new WWW's or Stargate, or even god forbid "V", this would see the game set in the near future ( although hopefully not while Strker force is actually in Syria). This makes the human side pretty easy to do at at least pretty acturate. It has the disadvantage that anything that can come from beyond the stars will probably be able to kick the **** out of us. NEAR. This is more Bladerunner, Outland, Event Horizon, 2010, time scale, set in space and in the near future ( within 50 years or so) with advanced versions of what we have now. It could be set entirely in our solar system ( we now have a wealth of data on the moons of Saturn and Jupitor, right down to detailed maps). An advantage of this period is thet the weapons would be familiar and the difficulites of space travel such, that a Company sized force would be about the limit of what you could reasonably depoly, as opposed to huge fleets of star destroyers. Of course, Alien, Pitch Black, The Fifth Element, Starship Troopers and Serenity, all have a sort of mix "Stardrive and Shotguns", which i have to say I've never been comfortable with, a bit like landingcraft hitting Omaha beach, to disgorge guys with swords and shields. NIRVANA This is your far in the future ( or Long Long ago) scenario and covers startrek, starwars, dune and even the terrible Highlander 2. This setting is ultra in the future and has weapons and technology we can only imagine. The problem here is that in some respects you either downrate all the weapons to make it a combat game, or you push the limits but make it incredibly lethal. Phasers are great because they can make people dissappear, but if you actually used them like that in a game a firefight would last about five seconds. Most films set in the future that have "Rayguns", get round this by just making them like colt 45's that fire a beam, no more accurate no more lethal. Things like WH40K, are supposed to be set in the far future, but they are actually more like WW2, in Football gear . So if there was to be a game, what setting do people like. Peter.

Couple of points. No one has pointed out the loss of MBT's and even tracked IFv's while on the back on transporters. the need to use these for a lot of long distance travel makes them vulnerable ito guerilla tactics. Then there is fuel, i am not sure of the exact figures but if a Bradley is using five times the fuel of a Stryker, then thats five times as many tankers for the enemy to shoot up. I haven't looked at the Combatreforum web site, but I have in the past came across a tendency on some US sites to go for the heavy solution and the heavier the better. I remember one that post BHD in Somalia, was advocating fitting Humvees with Recoilless rifles. Given that anything up to 1,000 Somali's got killed or wounded in one night, god knows what would have happened if they had been charging around in M1's and Bradleys. Peter.

Ivan, I am slightly more worried by the fact that with all that body armour Us troops now look strangely like Turtles..... "Combat Mission: heros in a Half Shell". Peter.

The two most obvious reasons to intervene quickly with the most mobile force possible, (largely ruling out airborne because of vulnerability to ground fire), are the extraction of friendly civilian personnel ( though there aren't many US citizeans, if it's a UN mandate, it could be EU, Russian, Chinese and probably asian). and secondly genocide. The deterioration of a domestic collapse that saw us in a Dafur/Rwanda/Kosovo situation wher armed units were literally exterminating civilians, would justify a Stryker type Force. If this has a weakness it's that when it comes to dieing civilians other than their own the UN/US/EU have previously done bugger all till it was time to count the bodies and organise some show trials. Still A "Humanitarian" need for rapid intervention would probably be the most "politically" acceptable back story for most. Peter.