womble
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Posts
8,872 -
Joined
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Days Won
12
Posts posted by womble
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1 hour ago, PEB14 said:
What do you mean? I just faced one such mortar in my last CMFI game (Hilltop to hilltop).
Any idea what formations you were up against? (and when's that scenario set?)
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19 minutes ago, kraze said:
West should concentrate on people who want to be with the West and stop trying to "save" people who are anti-West. Anything like that should be a result of people's choice, not trying to "white horse" it on them, even if you think you are doing a good thing. Extra 10 years in Afghanistan were a lesson in just that.
I don't disagree much here. I'm interested as to what you and other Ukrainians here think the logical progression of that approach looks like when applied to the Donbas and Crimea, should Ukraine actually achieve full reintegration of her internationally recognised borders. Some might say they're not worth getting back, being "poison pills" of resentment and resistance to Ukraine's full alignment with the Western Order. Others might have a more optimistic view that the hardcore anti-Kyiv element are mostly dead on the front lines, and the "don't care" brigade is worth including in the next Ukrainian census.
What are your thoughts, as citizens who'll get a vote when Zelensky eventually comes back from the negotiating table with a proposed settlement?
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5 minutes ago, Butschi said:
And "unaccountable burocracy"? That's the usual talk by populist politicians who want to blame the EU for their own failings. In Brussel nothing happens that didn't receive an ok from the respective national governments first.
And yet similar nationalist populist demagoguery managed to rip the UK out of the EU... It needs countering. Biden's doing okay at the moment, but it worries me.
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1 hour ago, MSBoxer said:
For the last few years their staging yards have been packed with "almost" complete equipment, ready to ship except for the key micro-chips needed to run the darn things. Imagine if something as benign as tractors are delayed by a chip shortage, what the impact is on high tech military equipment with more specialized chips. Then add sanctions to the mix and you start to get an idea of some of the problems RU is facing.
I work in a factory producing earth-moving equipment. Our production last year was sporadically disrupted by the lack of Engine Control Units until about September. Supplies seem to have stabilised since then. There were other disruptions, too, but those have largely settled out, as well.
Edit: should clarify that I'm in the UK, and not denying in any way that the sanctions on the RF are going to make their lives difficult, merely offering a view on the situation on "our side" starting to stabilise a bit.
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57 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:
What!? Security guarantees for Russia? The country currently ravaging every city and civilian it can reach? Raping and pillaging while insisting that Ukraine doesn’t exist as a nation?!! And China says RUSSIA needs security guarantees?? Depending on which official said this, I think we can guess that China’s peace proposal will not be joyfully embraced by Ukraine, sending gifts to China of puppies and rainbows.
At a putative negotiating table, security guarantees for the territorial integrity of Russia are an easy "give", since nobody has any interest in invading them, never* have. Easy to say, "Russia's boundaries, as accepted when they joined the UN after the USSR ceased to exist, are inviolate." It's just the way things are supposed to be, anyway. For everynation.
It's even a lever to press China to herd Putin towards extracting his genitals from the Ukrainian blender he's stuck 'em in, as per their first point: he wants guarantees, they have to be on the same basis as the state Ukraine ends up in.
It's not going to get that for for a while, natch, but security guarantees (or at least assurances** shouldn't be a stopper when jaw-jaw starts to bring an end to war-war. It's all the other contentious bits that will make the process painful and protracted.
* "never", here, being "since 1945".
** for what little they're worth....
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There's more to "being more like NATO than like the USSR" than "AirLandBattle" when it comes to armed forces. Basic principles like empowerment of the guy at the pointy end, treating your troops like you give a damn, not diverting their rations/pay/NVG into your own and your superiors' pockets, accepting that adaptation of plans may be necessary and failure isn't a capital crime. Basic stuff, of which there's more, doubtless, but stuff UKR will continue to benefit from learning to do more of and which RUS won't because their underlying society/principles simply can't.
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2 minutes ago, Pete Wenman said:
“reports indicating something like ‘general counteroffensive’ of the ZSU in the Bakhmut area”
Tom Cooper has thoughts
https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-19-february-2023-bakhmut-c282d043b148
More indications of UKR successfully degrading (attriting) the RU artillery park.
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3 hours ago, PEB14 said:
I cannot distinguish any visible difference between the pro and commercial version at first glance. Does anybody know what are the main differences?
My takeaway from the descriptions of Pro that I've seen (on here) was that the biggest difference was the editor: you can edit TOE and equipment parameters. This, I'm surmising, so that the professionals can try out hypotheticals in terms of both force makeup and gear performance that are difficult to properly set up in the "amateur" version.
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On the conduct of the war: I think that, as important as it may be for killing Russian soldiers, the continuing defense of Bakhmut may be as much about degrading their arty via effective counterbattery fire. We know that Russia can't get anywhere without lots of tubes chucking HE at targets their "assault waves" identify. We know that UKR CB is efficient and outside the reach of most of Russia's CB. We've seen that their losses in guns have recently started climbing, and there have been accounts of Russian assault barrages being shut down by counterfire in short order.
So is this another tendril of corrosive warfare? To keep attacking, RUS has to transfer guns from elsewhere in to replace their losses, and UKR knows where to find the assets they want to destroy, rather than having to send hunter-CB-killer groups of PzH2000 and HIMARS all along the line of contact. They probably have enough range-superior guns to cover their own preferred areas of activity, too.
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
When I finally retire I am going to write a bit on the Strategy of the Empire in Star Wars - this is but one example of some pretty baffling decisions and inconsistencies.
You're probably joking, and I may be about to commit heresy, but "Please, don't waste your time." The whole tottering cinematic edifice is a collection of convenient macguffins and Mary Sues meant to tell a vaguely-connected series of fun action stories. There is no actual consistency for you to analyse, and the characters make decisions that suit the story the author wants to tell at the time, whether or not there's any prior indication that it would be a good idea or otherwise.
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8 hours ago, chuckdyke said:
That's what you're up against. Journalists can't ask rational questions.
Morgan isn't a journalist. He's Howard Stern in a suit.
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And now NORAD have fiddled with the gate parameters on a few signal processing units and the balloons are no longer sneaky, they're not going to be delivering any "kinetic packages" anywhere there's an F-[pick-a-number] within scramble distance...
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16 minutes ago, AlsatianFelix said:
U.S. Politics. I said this in May on this forum, "U.S. politics will have an impact on Ukrainian strategy if the war is not settled by the 2024 election. The state of US politics is such that, whichever position one party takes, the other party stakes out the exact opposite. Regardless how Ukraine polls now with Americans, the two parties will corral their voters into the paddock they're supposed to be in."
American partisan politics has been nothing but Star Bellied Sneetches since 1988.
I'm no American, but I'm pretty sure you're wrong to make such an absolute statement. Sure, there are elements of each side which will instinctively take whatever contrarian position stands against their opposition's stated position, but, to date, the support for the war has, in political circles looked pretty bipartisan to an outsider. Even some "arch-Republicans" who I'd instinctively adopt contrary positions to have drawn, instead, reluctant appreciation.
So, without wanting to indulge in any debate about the rights and wrongs of positions held by either side (cos that way lies madness and unwanted attention from BFCElvis after his team came off second best), I'd suggest you have another look at the overall record of each side on this particular issue. I think you'll find that it's perhaps the most unifying matter that Congress has had to deal with for a couple of decades... -
15 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
This is interesting. That looks to be four PGMs striking one after another. To me this seems like the spotter made four different target designations, handed them off to the FDC as a single fire mission, and either the battery fired in sequence or one gun fired all four in succession. Either way, that's something I've not seen before.
Steve
And once again, we see static vehicles failing to respond in any way to incoming fire that shows their location is compromised. Surely they've learned by now that they should get under way as soon as the first PGM comes in?
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35 minutes ago, Lethaface said:
Interesting to read from your POV, thanks.
Seconded.
35 minutes ago, Lethaface said:Edit to add: at the moment the Taiwanese (semi conductor) industry is very important for global economics. As long as that is true and would be hampered by Chinese efforts, there are significant geopolitical interests ensuring Taiwan can continue operating. If the economic situation changes, so will the geopolitical interests and the resolve on the side of Taiwan. At least imo from realpolitik POV.
I think the importance of Taiwan goes beyond semiconductors, at least if the Ukraine situation pans out anything like the "rules based world order" hopes it will. If Russia somehow manages to persuade the world that we really are back in the time of literally shelling any port you fancy has done you a disservice, then such idealistic politics will, of course, be dead in the water.
But as and when the world is finally shown the error of Russia's ways, Taiwan becomes the next poster-child for "not taking what you want by main force," if PRC thinks its might is enough.
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25 minutes ago, pintere said:
3) Ukraine has to learn how to effectively launch local counterattacks. If they can have effective reserve forces (ideally equipped with night fighting gear) then they should retake lost terrain as soon as possible. By all accounts the Russians aren’t the best at rapidly calling in artillery fire, so if they can avoid getting pinned down they could be very effective.
They also need to be able to deposit "welcome gifts" for the next "wave" of assault troops who will be aiming to employ and expand whatever hasty entrenchments the first, now-eliminated wave had begun to develop before the mortars and AGL rounds stopped their diggin'.
They need to be able to stop any given probe axis from more than one location, and only use one of those to do the stopping, so that any follow-on will not know where all the UKR defensive positions are. They'll call their support fires on the one that stopped them (which should probably be vacated once the RUS have been made to go to ground), wasting ammo and time on an empty position, only to be dialled in by another defensive location once they decide it's safe to move on again.Local, small-scale counterattacks to change the shape of the front line faster than the assault waves can adapt to.
Perhaps too nuanced for full-on battlefield tactics in the ISR environment that the UKR find themselves in.
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31 minutes ago, dan/california said:
How do we send a signal to Xi he CANNOT misinterpret that all he is getting of a Taiwan adventure is sunken ships, dead soldiers, and the destruction of China's economy.
We keep supporting Ukraine. A touch of bickering and lack of lock-step won't dilute the message below the level of comprehension.
Xi is not stupid. Taiwan is not worth the cost unless that sort of foreign adventurism is the only thing that they think will save their Chinese Communist Party behinds because everything else has gone to Hell in a handbasket. It's far more useful to him as a tub to thump to maintain the spectre of the threat from outside. -
16 minutes ago, Lethaface said:
What I understood is that they struck a drone factory. But haven't really dug deep it's Sunday so I had to show up at some football field for 90min + 3rd half
The comment you're replying to is part of the sub-sub-thread about "Whether the Stuxnet attack on Iranian Uranium enrichment facilities can be considered a war crime." They've left the current situation quite far behind.
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22 minutes ago, Erwin said:
Spain and Portugal together have the largest reservoir of Leos in Europe and it's unclear why quite a number of those could not be spared.
Well, Morocco has historical beef with Spain, and, unfortunately, the US sold 'em a passel of Abrams, so the Spaniards probably have as legitimate a need for their currrent-gen MBTs as Greece does.
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12 hours ago, PEB14 said:
Biggest amount of work is probably adding graphics stuff (uniforms, vehicles, guns, etc.), isn't it?
I'd suspect that's probably one of the smaller tasks. The effort involved in scenarios and campaigns is probably the largest consumer of hours.
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12 hours ago, PEB14 said:
Biggest amount of work is probably adding graphics stuff (uniforms, vehicles, guns, etc.), isn't it?
I'd suspect that's probably one of the smaller tasks. The effort involved in scenarios and campaigns is probably the largest consumer of hours.
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4 hours ago, Erwin said:
It's long been requested to have various formation commands to make this much easier, but alas...
Given the difficulties that even a simple "follow" command throws in the face of the programmer, it's hardly surprising that formations haven't been cracked. It's easy to see how they'd cause at least as many problems as they solve, given the complexities of CMx2 terrain.
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Any HQ can act as a lower HQ in its own "tree" (the units that highlight if you select the HQ). So if you lose a PltHQ, you can move a Coy HQ nearer to the platoon's squads to pick up the slack.
The chain of HQs also passes information, so that, once it's gone "up and back down" the chain, your elements at the "pointy end" will have better situational awareness.
So, where you want the Coy HQ varies. Generally, somewhere out of the way and stationary if it's infantry and you want its comms to be active (sometimes enemy fire incoming will cause the radio to be out of service, and obviously, the risk of casualties if incoming fire). You might want it somewhere that can get eyes on somewhere important if you want to use it to call arty. Or you might want to send it forward to the firing line to take command of a headless platoon.
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2 hours ago, DesertFox said:
There are no problems made public due to "reasons"...
So it's the BW PzH2000s that aren't serviceable, not the ones being actively used in a combat zone. Plenty of embarrassing reasons for that which don't involve systemic problems with the design and manufacture. Ask the Russians.
Is the small German 50mm mortar in CMFI somewhere?
in Combat Mission Fortress Italy
Posted
They're available, IIRC, in the late CMBN timeframe, when the second-line German units (Kriegsmarine etc) start showing up. Not sure exactly which TO&Es have them, but they're there.