DavidFields

As brave as the guy firing the NLAW  from 50 meters.
Edit she has been "detained"

That info was posted two days ago. Do try to keep up.

I didn't watch the video because of one single statement - "NATO expansion". That's how you know it's a complete and utter BS.
NATO doesn't expand. It is joined willingly.

Are we going on about this **** again?
Do you even know how medical research works?
Does your country have medicine or just pours snake oil over open wounds?
 
That's before you actually read an article you posted yourself.

Seriously   ....  think maybe a little bit before you post . There is clear evidence out there  freely available that these "Bioweapon" labs are actually remnants form the Soviet era which the Americans are helping the Ukrainians to clean up .
https://theparadise.ng/fact-check-the-russian-army-is-destroying-u-s-controlled-biolabs/ 
"While biolabs exist in Ukraine, it is misleading at best to call them “U.S. biolabs.” Laboratories that store and study dangerous pathogens are present throughout the former Soviet bloc, with many dating back to the Cold War. The U.S. did not build any of these facilities. That said, in 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine entered into a mutual agreement to work together to safeguard the labs as part of a broader effort to prevent bioterrorism. The installations are run by the Ukrainian government, with some funding for upgrades and repairs provided by the U.S."
As a fellow New Zealander  - although one out of the country for a very long while now - please try to show our education system in a little more of a positive light .
 

So conspiracy mongering folks, LOTS of places have bio labs that study deadly pathogens.  Where the F do you think vaccines come from?  Do you think all the world's disease fighters just sit around and wait to be attacked by the next mutation of something.  WTF does this have to do w anything?  Please just stop.  No one gives a F about this.  It's not any excuse for this invasion and you are just feeding propaganda. 
Did any of you see the post from a couple days ago about idiots chasing shiny objects?  Look in mirror.
I guess I have a vacation coming but someone has to say STFU.  GO SOMEWHERE ELSE W YOUR IRRELEVANT BS.

You clearly didn’t even look at NYT article.  Please stop.

No she didn’t, and spreading Russian and Chinese disinformation here is not welcome.

Lots of people here and in the media are talking about a possible siege of Kyiv.
It appears that the Ukrainians have been launching small localized counter-attacks and even pushed back the Russian forces in a few areas. But it still looks like the Russian forces might be inching closer to the city even if their supply lines are not secured and control of the territory they presently occupy is only partial at best.
However they're not quite there yet. And while still possible in theory, it is rather doubtful whether they can even manage to fully encircle the Ukrainian capital.
However what if Putin decided that instead of launching an assault a la Grozny on Kyiv once it is surrounded, to just shell it out of spite, not unlike what happened in Sarajevo, in order to exert political pressure and force the Ukrainian government to the negotiation table in order to get more favourable terms?
First in this scenario you wouldn't even need to fully encircle the city. Since the goal wouldn't be to trap Ukrainian forces inside a cauldron nor to cut the city off completely, leaving a corridor open for civilian to evacuate would actually be a good idea from the Russian perspective, as long as the corridor could potentially be brought under artillery fire.
Of course that would be really ugly and cause even more civilian casualties and international condemnation of the Putin regime. But then again one could ask what more have the Russians got to fear in the way of sanctions that hasn't already been imposed on them?
Militarily the Russians probably can't win this war. But the problem is that I don't see how Putin can afford to lose this war politically either. It would be disastrous for him. He basically has his back against the wall, he can't simply call it quits and needs some sort of face saving solution.
Ukrainian resolve looks really strong right now and justifiably so but how likely is it that if Putin follows this course of action and the situation just degenerates into a long stalemate with less offensive operations, that Zelensky decides to tap out out in the end and agree to territorial concessions in order to spare civilian lives and avoid senseless destruction?

They literally are not worth the logistical cost of importing them. On the off chance this isn't pure hype though, I want tape of them experiencing their first cold, wet night in Ukraine That will probably take care of ten or twenty percent of them right there

[From "elsewhere", apologize for repeat of some terms - I only have some many clever turns of phrase in the bank]
Can Russia win a war of attrition?  I think that is the question the Russians are asking themselves right now.  My assessment is "probably not" based on a couple dimensions:
- Quantitative - Russia is quickly coming up on 20% of declared invasion forces lost. As of this morning, Oryx is reporting 18 BTGs worth of tanks gone from the Russian side, they cannot sustain that indefinitely.  On paper Russia has 12500 tanks but some serious questions as to how much of that fleet is actually in any state of readiness need to be asked. Russian assessment is 200 BTGs in total or there abouts,  so they likely have between 2-3000 actual battle ready tanks or 25% of their total fleet.  I would think they may have another 2-3000 they can spool up, but from what we have seen about corruption I am willing to bet half that 12500 are basically wrecks maintainer-wise or museum pieces and will not be seen in this fight.  This extends well beyond tanks obviously and the Russian logistics losses are even worse, in what was already recognized as a weak system. 
   In the end it comes down to loss ratios, right now assessments are somewhere between 3:1 and 4:1 with Ukrainians being the "1".  In infantry numbers the Russians and Ukrainians are near parity in trained troops and Russia is upside down in manpower numbers once you take into account Ukraine has conducted general mobilization (listed as high as  900,000) while Russia has not.  Equipment wise, Russia has the recognized advantage but that is rapidly diminishing.  At those loss ratios Russia will likely lose it advantage as an offensive force (e.g. trying to keep 3:1 in their favour) fairly soon, the may already have.  Either way they need to reduce that loss ratio substantially to quantitatively have a hope of attriting the UA to the point of collapse. 
  Further if you look at the Oryx page an even more disturbing trend appears to have occurred, the Ukrainians have made a "net gain" in MBTs since this war started.  They have lost "46" tanks (and here we only have social media which is likely tightly skewed) while having captured "83".  So even if the Ukrainians have lost double what is being reported they are still at something like 9 tanks as a net loss.  This skews the loss ratios into crazy directions.  This is not just for MBTs, it carries over to just about every vehicle system.
- Qualitative - the Russians need to learn and "get better" faster than the Ukrainians and there is very little evidenced of this.  They will learn and adapt, war is Darwinian that way, however, the Ukrainians are producing veterans and evolving as well.  The question is what is the competitive equation?  The Ukrainians came in with a serious advantage (e.g. home ground, western backing) and appear to be learning very fast as we see integration of UAVs with ambushes etc.  Russia may be learning but it is much slower.  As late as yesterday we see complete cluster-f#$*s in Russian columns as they get hit, best thing for that one Russian unit on CNN was the commander getting killed.  In the logistics battle the Russians need to learn faster and better than the Ukrainians are learning how to kill Russian logistics, again not seeing it. 
Looking at those two pieces together, it is not looking good.  I mean Russia can keep conducting zombie muscle twitches for some time but tying those into some operational gains is a long shot.  As to "grinding", I think this is actually going the other way, Russian will can only be sustained off the power of one man for so long, especially one that does not have an ideology on his side.  Everyone keep wondering if Russia is willing to "double down" or "go all in", when in reality the Ukrainians are already there.  So when we get to attrition of will, the thing that really matters, time is also not on the Russian side.  Things are in balance, but I go by "follow the options" and right now Russian spaces are compressing while Ukraine is sustaining theirs, and in some places expanding.   The real battle of attrition is in that space and one of "how long can the Russians last?"

It didn't. Whatever number russians announce it's worth is irrelevant.
Why?
Because russian government forbid banks from selling dollars to population. Every USD account is in faux dollars now that will be forcibly converted into rubles at 110 rubles a piece when trying to withdraw.
No russian can buy dollars (or euros) legally anymore.
And on black market the real money, paper dollar is already being sold as high as 1000 rub in Moscow with Haiduk's mentioned 350 being the best deal you can get.
Ruble is over.
 

Well the first thing to remember when looking at UKR forces is that there are layers here.  Unlike the Russian forces who, for the most part, try to control where they are with LOCs back to Belarus or Russia, these are horizontal forces and relationships.
The Ukrainians have vertical forces and relationships in addition to horizontal ones.  So take any map of the conflict:

This one from wikipedia - So the interplay of red and yellow with tac signs is horizontal.  And from this it does look like the Russians are trying to do some operational pinching which would normally point to some trouble for the UA.  The reality is though that the map is really three dimensional.  Vertically there is a foundation of local and regional support and combat power in the form of an ever growing resistance (I hear a lot of western experts say "insurgency", I think I even used the term early once and this is inaccurate, a resistance is really something else from a lot of directions).  Further, for every day that the Russians bog down, that vertical resistance gets better armed, better organized and better prepared. 
So what?  Well from a Russian viewpoint that vertical layer underneath means two very bad things: support and friction.  Ukrainian force will be able to draw support from that layer in the form of manpower and logistics.  This means the Russians are now force to make those "pinches" air tight, which is extremely labour intensive.  For example, locals can push fuel and ammo into a pocket, through all the backroads and farmers fields, which they know very well, and continue to supply fighting power to seemingly cut off troops.  The level of control required for that is extreme, as the US learned in Vietnam.
Second is friction.  Having even low tech resistance everywhere is exhausting in terms of constant attrition and morale.  Every move you make is watched and reported on, every road move is like the freakin Memphis Bell mission over Germany - someone is going to get killed and we are all hoping it isn't us.  Logistical lines need to be iron-cladded.  And this will inevitably lead to over use of force on civilians which does nothing for the information war.   
So in this sense it is really hard to judge where the Ukrainians stand by using the pins on the mapboard.  They have already gone hybrid.  For example, how many major tank battles have we heard about?  There have no doubt been clashes but the Ukrainians are already fighting like Comanches with drones right now offensively and it is working for them.  Defensively, again layers, they can dig in and be very difficult to dig out, and even if you do, you still have a deeper resistance to deal with in the civilian population.
My assessment matches what we have been seeing all over mainstream.  The Russians have stalled...bad.  This was not a consolidation or re-org or clever trap, it was a significant stalling an a systemic level going all the way back through those LOCs.  The Ukrainians have created so much friction on the Russian advance that the war machine looks like it broke.  They are now staging local c-attacks and very visible attrition actions from what I can see. 
The question the remains is "can the Russians re-org/re-boot and somehow regain the operational offensive?" This, particularly around Kyiv.  Or are we going to see what I call "zombie muscle twitches" as formation commanders try and look busy to get the heat off them that is coming from Moscow?  These can even seem dramatic but they do not translate into any real operational gains.  Don't know, a lot of opinions out there for either side.
Few things I do notice:
- Russians are not even talking about Western Ukraine anymore.  If the aim was to take the whole perogy, Kyiv is more symbolic.  In order to do that "entire Ukraine" thing, one has to cut off support from the West.   Which really means that all this prom-night groping in the East - so sweaty but not really going nowhere - is missing the point entirely once we accept that Ukrainians will very likely keep on fighting both conventionally and unconventionally even after Kyiv falls.    Why there was not a very sharp attack from Western Belarus at what it the real strategic Center of Gravity in all this, Lviv, to seal up the western end of Ukraine, including the Carpathians, was the first sign that the Russians did not think this through.
- Operationally, the Russians have still not established pre-conditions and we are over two weeks in.  Air, info, electronic, cognitive/decision and logistical superiority have all been a hard fail.  For example, Russian Air Forces should be hitting logistical resupply from the west 24/7 - an air campaign for the history books- and they are largely tepid and absent.  They need to work on that or this grind is going to be much longer, to the point they very may well not be able to sustain.
- Operationally, the Ukrainians are not showing signs of buckling in all those pre-conditions areas. There is no doubt erosion but they still can find, fix and finish Russians and even do local offensive actions. All the while they coordinate and communicate effectively and are still able to push support in from the West as they get better and better prepared. 
So in summary, keep an eye on that vertical Ukrainian dimension because it is decisive and something needs to demonstrate the Russians are even able to set what should have been initial conditions and I may start to buy in on the "Russian Grind" strategy.  Until then we are at Balkan-No-Step, everyone digs in and tries to influence the negotiation table, or Death March to Moscow as the Russian military simply quits.  I mean the Russians do have the numbers for the Russian Grind but that is on paper and looking at the horizontal dimension only.  This is unfolding like a European version of that anecdote from Afghanistan, "Russians have all the fancy watches but the Ukrainians have all the time".      

I've played 4 scenarios of CMBB so far this weekend.  I last played CMRT last November.  The OP has a point. 
It isn't actually the QBs and time frame that make the difference for me, it is the game play and scale.
I freely admit that CMRT is more realistic and that it is visually much more immersive.
 
But the level of micromanagement needed to play it right makes it feel like a sergeant's level game, in which I am primarily focused on the tasking and decisions within one squad at a time.  With a platoon a comfortable total force and a single company leaning toward giant feeling.  The realistic fire is dangerous enough, moreover, that large portions of the fight "go static" pretty quickly, since staying in good cover and firing is often the right thing for most units to do, at that point.
By comparison, CMBB feels like a company commander's game.  It moves along quickly, the decision each game turn are managable but interesting, etc.
 
I freely acknowledge that people with other play priorities, or just a lot better at CMRT, may find it more enjoyable.  I just don't.  I'd love to have CMBB gameplay with updated graphics - wouldn't even need single man depiction.  But that's just not where we are.  In the meantime, I still consider CMBB the best tactical computer wargame ever made.
 
One man's opinion...

I have played this simulation for awhile, and am struck by how using smoke, on the attack, is something that I have never done.

1. Usually I prefer to suppress the enemy units directly--run a scout team out there, have it fired upon, and then deal directly with those threats. If I have the HE on a mortar, or some MGs and tanks, I seem to pick those to use, given the time constraints

2. I don't trust smoke. Running a platoon, let's say, across open ground, depending on smoke to keep them safe--gives me chest pain to think about. And if I become suddenly close to the enemy by using the smoke as cover, with it likely having me spotted, and I not spotting it, bad things are going to occur. Sure, if I have more powerful unit--but I have to be incredibly confident that I know about all the enemy units in the area.

But maybe I am missing something (and, always playing against the AI, that may affect my experience). Is there a scenario where smoke is vital, and do you use it often on the attack?

[unrelated question, is there a scenario which has planes?]

Thanks for the replies everyone.
 
I *have* played in the editor, quite a bit. But, heres the problems with creating my own scenarios:
 
1. Foremost, I know the OOB. Not knowing the exact OOB is, for me, half the fun of scenarios. Even if I use random reinforcements to the point where certain forces will appear in one go of the scenario and not in another, I still know the entire potential OOB and this affects my choices ingame.
2. Second, I know all potential setup and reinforcement areas. There goes the other half of scenario enjoyment. Even if it is all random and varied, I still know that potentially such and such unit could setup or arrive in a certain area.
3. Finally, the entire point of this thread, I don't have the consistent time to play big scenarios, let alone make scenarios. While I appreciate the encouragement to create my own scenarios, anyone who has spent five minutes in the editor knows that creating a *good* scenario is a serious investment of time. Sure, I could throw some trees in, a platoon of Shermans and a platoon of Panthers and watch lead fly, but to me, that's not why I own CM. I own CM for the best tactical simulation available, not for a beer and pretzel game.
 
I am a firm believer of the best experience playing any scenario is your first time playing it. You don't know the OOB, you don't know the enemy setup areas. I have been re-playing the CM:SF scenarios while waiting for CM:BS to get back in the modern mindframe. And even after, what, 6 or 7 years, I *still* remembered where things were going to be, that a platoon of T-72's was going to materialize and so on. It took a huge amount of enjoyment out of the, otherwise, great scenarios. There was still enjoyment in playing the game itself because CM is a great game, but it was a much, much less enjoyable experience.
 
As for the suggestion to play QB's, theres the huge limitation of solo QB play to fight against (bad AI purchases forcing me to purchase the AI's forces, see above for how much I enjoy knowing the enemy OOB). The end result is I find myself all excited for the new CM games, but not really having a lot of content that I personally have the time to enjoy. I have yet to play any of the CMx2 campaigns because each time I try, after one or two missions I just don't have the time available to play. The 'large' and 'huge' scenarios never get played because I open them up, see a reinforced battalion of troops, a 2km square map and realize that playing this scenario is going to be a 6 hour investment.
 
Again, there are room for both - big scenarios and small ones. However, as I mentioned in my original post, I have noticed a shift in each release to bigger, and bigger scenarios. As I pointed out with CM:RT, this shift has come to the point where *small scenarios are not even being provided in any significant number anymore*. Where there was once a nice balance between scenario sizes, there are now almost exclusively very big scenarios that take hours on end to play. This is a real shame because its limiting many players enjoyment of the CM series.
 
ASL Veteran, I realize the challenges in making a good, platoon/company sized scenario because I have tried, and failed, to do so. However, the best CMx2 experiences I have had so far have been exactly those scenarios that have been created in that size range. I can keep track of my OOB, I can take in the map without feeling overwhelmed, and more important in CMx2 with the change to 1:1, I feel each loss.
 
So again, I humbly ask those who are developing the official scenarios for each CM release, to please keep in mind that there are those who never play the big scenarios due to lack of time. Please include more smaller sized scenarios.
 
Thanks
 
Chad