womble
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Posts
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Days Won
12
Posts posted by womble
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1 hour ago, dan/california said:
The selective pressure against free thinking liberalism in Russia has been extremely high 98% of the last thousand years. The degree it is out and genetic selection is probably unknowable, but either way that degree of pressure will get you less of it. Putin allowing hundreds of thousands to leave the country to avoid the draft has also had political positives as well as massive economic negatives. The people who would have most vigorously opposed the regime left instead. There is a strong parallel with the survival of the Cuban government. The people who would have REALLY fought took the out to Miami.
So, a thousand years. That's what? 40 generations (at 25 years per generation)? 60 (if you assume reproduction by age 16)? Compare that with bacteria with a generation time of 20 minutes. 60 generations is 20 hours. How much evolution is there going to be for a colony of bacteria in a day? Not very much. The pressures in Russia on genetic makeup are very small, because behavioural changes are sufficient to permit survival to reproduction. We humans are fairly adaptable creatures, and I don't mean in the stupid comic-book interpretation of "evolution" either
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The territory covered by Russia has hardly been some monolithic autocracy for 10 centuries. It covers a very broad range of phenotypes, and has, in the past, included larger numbers of differentiated individuals. Only in the era of the Soviet Union was migration significantly restricted, either within the territory of what is now Russia, or in and out of it.
You've heard, I hope, of "regression to the mean". While those individuals who have sufficiently high combinations of resentment of the current situation and resources have absented themselves from the gene pool, those genes still remain to be expressed in the next generation.
"The degree to which it is out and out genetic selection" may not be precisely determinable, but it is unlikely to be significant.
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22 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
For sure. But we got a bit off track with the extremes. The point I raised is that there are all kinds of naturally occurring "flaws" in Human Beings and that the Russian state, as the Soviet state before it, has very deliberately sought to exploit for their own benefit. Human conditioning which, over time, leaves a pretty hard mark on the gene pool.
I think that's where the geneticists would disagree. The gene pool won't hardly have a ripple in it, given the timescales involved. All that conditioning leaves marks on psyches, not DNA, not in centuries.
The difference, if you like, between Russia and the "Liberal West" is that in Russia, the crazies are the only societal element left that's allowed to speak, whereas in the West, both parties still get to voice their opinions, and the difference between "then" and "now" is that the Internet gives the crazies' voice a volume, connectedness and cohesion [chortle] it could never hope to achieve when media had actual sane people watching over it.
And because in Russia, "the only way is crazy", even people who would otherwise dismiss the nonsense have to get on board, to get ahead, and any human has the capacity to rationalise their self-interest as moral, in order to live with themselves, while only some have the fortitude to refuse to deceive/delude themselves.
It's much more complex than that, obviously, since there are different classes of crazy, from the sociopath-manipulator, to the violence-obsessed bully (none of which are entirely genetically determined; it's all "predispositions", and the system taps into those), and they all play their role in the dysfunctional "family" that Vova wants to be Patriarch of.If the cause for the "Russian mentality" were genetic, you'd have to characterise German mid-20th-Century Nazism as similarly genetic, because the societal acquiescence to the rise of National Socialism has broad parallels in post-Soviet Russian Nationalism. I don't think anyone here believes that the German genetic makeup predisposes them to Nazism, indeed the empirical evidence would indicate very much otherwise. So why assume the Russian mentality is any more based in DNA than Hitler's was?
I'm sure there are analogies between the action of human biological inheritance, and the development of theories of Society (pace Ser Dawkins), but we should not confuse one with the other in its expression in populations.
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50 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:
I'm trying to imagine how the TO&E would work for small, weapon truck style UGVs. Congratulations, the DoD has developed a small (maybe half the height of an average human, without a weapon mounted), tracked, unmanned vehicle with an attachment point for either an autocannon or an ATGM, and with just enough armor to be proof against 7.62. Now how do you use them?
I think it replaces whatever infantry heavy weapon is mounted on the truck, in the infantry TO&E, especially if it can be demounted to use "conventionally", or even as a lower profile static weapon station ("sentry gun") as well.
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I haven't looked, but are there different downloads for 32bit and 64bit versions of the software? Have you got the right one for your hardware, if there are different versions?
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58 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:
Is there any reason crew served weapons cannot evolve to be UGV capable of carrying their ammo load and receiving targets from nearby soldiers and drones? It doesn’t seem that hard to make something like a squatter ATV with a AGL and a few cans of ammo, especially if it is driven by remote control by a nearby soldier.
The only reason I can think of not to do this is the concealability of the platform. A tripod mounted weapon is easier to hide "in a bush" than an ATV-class chassis with a tripod-mounted weapon strapped to it. You could make the weapon demountable, but that's additional engineering and potential complexity, if the weapon is automated, on its carrier platform.
But, if the tripod-mounted weapon can operate from full defilade, its concealability matters much less. If all that has to happen is that some "sneaky eyes" get forward and find the target, and feed the coordinates to the weapon system which automatically orients itself and lays its weapon, then the weapon itself doesn't need to be concealable at all; you just need to find a large enough lump to stick it behind. AGL can fit that bill, with the right mount and FCC; I'm sure other systems can be worked that way too.
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2 minutes ago, chrisl said:
That's exactly what Russia tried in Nov 2021. They took out a fairly large satellite in a quite messy way. It was before I was paying close attention to Russian space assets, and it confused a lot of people at the time because it would also threaten Russian satellites. But after Feb 24 when I started looking into Russian space based ISR, they really had nothing substantial to lose and had the potential to create blind spots in US/NATO ISR by "accidentally" taking out western sats.
I suspect that, along with cyber attacks on Western infrastructure, was clearly communicated to Putin at the beginning of his criminal misadventure as constituting a red line, the crossing of which would lead to strong measures.
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2 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
I haven't watched the video, but I already know I agree
The Wiesel is, basically, what UGVs are headed towards. Small, light weight, and heavily armed relative to standard infantry weapons. There's soooooooooo many advantages to a platform like this in a war as we are seeing play out in Ukraine.
Think back to the K2 "T" videos where a MBT was used to suppress the Russian trench. It unloaded it's whole store of 125mm ammo on a position that had only a handful of defenders. It almost got hit by an LATW of some sort and then put itself at huge risk driving over the trench. Infantry was required to ensure the position was clear.
Imagine if there had been one or two Wiesels chopping up the trenches with 20mm. Suppression would likely have been as effective as the MBT, but at a lower risk and cost to Ukraine's overall war effort. Now picture an unmanned version of the Wiesel and it gets even better.
Steve
An AGL platform (especially with laser rangefinder-timed-airburst fused rounds) would be even better than the AC for clearing trenches, wouldn't it? Or is there an airburst fuse for the 20mm ammo?
UGVs would be even lower profile, since they don't have to provide volume for the meat to sit in. And that would reduce their visual signature, and possible even the thermal visibility, since it wouldn't need to be expending energy to haul the extra superstructure around.
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22 minutes ago, Chibot Mk IX said:
They are not comparable. On paper Aegis is supposed to have far better performance.
And in the bit I've elided, I think you're saying that Aegis can stop whatever "unstoppable" missiles the Chinese can chuck.
And I'll stop asking questions there, cos that's Far East not Ukraine.
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5 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:
Their stockpiles of Storm Shadow aren't that small are they? I thought they had around 800, with plans to replace them within a decade. So that means they could potentially spare hundreds (I'm guessing low hundreds, since I doubt the UK will hand over all of them before they have a replacement) of Storm Shadows for Ukraine.
When it was announced, it was for 200 "now", plus 200 per year ongoing. Sounds like "manufacture rate" to me. Complex things, but should be able to manage 8 a week, surely... So, a quarter of our current stock, and half the factory output for the forseeable.
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1 hour ago, db_zero said:
Then the Japanese real estate and financial bubble burst. You don't hear much about Japans economic prowess anymore and they like China are facing a massive demographic time bomb.
And an even bigger real estate bubble that will cause direct pain down to quite low levels and to quite a lot of Chinese. Add that the real estate bubble also has an element of being created not just by overoptimism and bad judgement, but by "bad actors" who knew exactly what fraud they were perpetrating (to a greater degree than Japan, I get the impression) and the impact on their society may well go far beyond the pure economic disaster.
And if Western AD-at-sea is as effective against China's "ustoppable" hypersonic ship killers as Patriot-on-land has proved so far against Russian "unstoppable" hypersonic cruise missiles, it won't matter how many troops there are in the PLA, because the PLAN won't be able to get them ashore, except as floating corpses.
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How do seaborne missile defense systems like Aegis stack up against Patriot? If they're at least comparable, this wee demonstration has changed the whole threat profile of China's hypersonic shipkillers: they're no more likely to hit a Supercarrier or one of their escorts than a Kindjhal is to hit a Ukrainian target.
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30 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
R18 or Matrice or other heavy copter drones, capable to lift more than 1-2 grenades are in use more specialized units with own specific of work. TERRA is mostly air-recons, so operate with most mass drones of "zero-line" - Mavics
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61482305
Have a look at the "heavy lift drone" bit ¬70kg payload. How long is that going to be relegated to humping supplies between friendly locations? The C-130 is a cargo plane, and we all know what kind of gunship it can get varied into...
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18 minutes ago, db_zero said:
There is a problem with what has become known as "Tofu Building" construction. One now has to wonder is this also applies to other parts of China, including the military.
China's real estate issues are well known. Shocking levels of leverage going on, and at some point, that's going to come due. There are "pyramid scheme" elements to the economy and the oncoming demographic locomotive is going to take some dealing with, too.
I, and I suspect we-here, don't know the extent to which the autocratic rot of "not wanting to tell the boss the bad news because you'll actually get shot" has spread in the armed forces, nor is it well known to what extent the corruption-entrepreneur class has taken root in their Military Industrial Complex. Xi has made much song and dance about clamping down on corruption, but how much of that is about using it as an excuse to get rid of opposition/rivals, and how much is actual effective anti-corruption work, I wonder whether anyone knows, except him. The corruption-entrepreneur has become a widespread cancer throughout the Chinese economic boom, and if Xi's measures are honest and effective, that'll help China out no end. I suspect it's not as bad as Russia, though.
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This demonstration of new capability (if it is longer ranged missiles, rather than just clever tactical use of existing ones) by the UKR AF is important for the upcoming offensive. If they can engage Air-to-Air at that range, they're back to being able to (?more than?) compete on an element-by-element basis, and that could make any Russian CAS missions sent to stop breakthroughs much more risky than they had previously considered them to be. Even if this was a special circumstance, it has to feature in their risk analysis for future missions. Might mean standing off further from the target, at least, or greater weight of EWAR needing to be committed to any given mission, either of which could degrade the effectiveness of Russia's "airpower as artillery" approach even more than their sclerotic C4ISR arrangements would.
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49 minutes ago, Jiggathebauce said:
"Everyone's leaving my shiddy police state that's leaving everyone futureless and impoverished! Nobody loves dear leader?What ever will we do to fix it?"
It would be funny if it wasn't tragic
Or:
"All these people are leaving. My job is to tell people to do something to make them stop leaving. I have done that. If people keep leaving, I will have someone shot. That'll get the best results out of the ones that are left. Job done. I remain a master strategist." -
53 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
Nope, widely accepted to be a highly illegal project that grossly violates Ukraine's sovereignty.
Splendid point, well made
So down to the escalation-prognosticators as to whether breaking it with Storm Shadow will send Putin nuclear (my prognostication: they'll decide it won't). Sayonara Kerch Bridge, then.
55 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:That argument might be able to be made against the Russian navy in Russian ports like Sevastopol. Still, I do not think even this is the case.
I certainly agree there. The naval assets in Sevastopol are "inside Ukraine's territory", for sure.
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2 minutes ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
I previously thought the Crimea Bridge is an unlikely target to be hit with Storm Shadow (because of the quantities required to overwhelm the AD). ADM-160 might make that equation different...
I was thinking earlier that the prohibition on striking targets "in Russia" might mean that the Kerch Bridge is (at least for now) off limits for Storm Shadow, given that it is distinctly a Russian project. Or maybe it just means they can only hit up to the sea territory limit. Depends on what the lawyers and escalation-prognosticators say, I guess.
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13 minutes ago, Centurian52 said:
There surely are some tougher Russian units. Some of them are bound to have a higher concentration of experienced prewar personnel and higher quality equipment. It might be a problem if the Ukrainians run into one of them during one of these limited attacks. But when it comes to the main offensive, the tougher Russian units will either have to run away with the weaker units, or they will find themselves isolated and vulnerable to easy destruction.
This is where we hope that the UKR advantage in ISR will tell. It would seem from the dominant narrative that UKR high command should pretty much have a handle on where all the snake eaters live, and even what snakes they had for breakfast. And those locations should have "bypass and isolate" pins stuck in them, along with "extra helping of 155mm" orders.
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37 minutes ago, Simicro said:
@womble Of course it cannot (will never?) replace a human, and in this case a CM expert one. But try to type in Google the request as formulated by kevinkin, which was very accurate and specific, obviously you won't get the level of response of ChatGPT.
So it's better than Google. Yay. And by "better", I mean "chattier". What does it give you, beyond the initial question, that wouldn't naturally arise from taking the initial proposition and opening the scenario editor? I see: dimensions; several villages crammed into too-small a space. What else?
I'll reiterate that nothing I can see in that response is specific to CM. What am I missing that is? It could equally well be a scenario generator for Flames of War, or any other computer game that works at Company level and lets you make up scenarios. And still it ignores vital elements of the "experience" (force ratios for D v A; ; the difference between H v H and vs AI; mortars). It has just added a lot of useless verbiage to the original proposition.
What about this constitutes "impressive"? -
On 5/6/2023 at 6:07 PM, Simicro said:
Impressive!
I disagree strongly. It's anodyne generic pap. It adds almost nothing to the original premise offered to the engine.
It includes almost nothing (actually I think it's absolutely nothing, but I'll hedge my bets) specific to Combat Mission. It mentions nothing about the relative morale and experience of the two forces, let alone getting into detail about CM 'soft factors'.
It understands nothing about the necessary force ratios to make a hasty attack-to-overrun a "fair fight" for two human players given the single objective. Conversely, it offers no insight about how to make the AI defender work.
It completely neglects to mention any indirect fire assets, even the organic mortars each company will have. Smoke would be invaluable for the Soviets, and if it's offering "Briefing hints", that should be mentioned. The briefing hints it does give are so generic as to amount to "Use your forces and terrain to defeat the enemy," and it mentions "AT weapons" in the Russian half, which don't really exist outside the tanks; AT Rifles have specific limited effects, at this stage of the war; just assuming that because they might have "Anti tank" in their name they can "take out" a PzIVH while on the offense is perhaps dangerously misleading. I'd also expect some Panzerschreck on the German side, as well as Panzerfaust; looks like they got cut by the "list 4 infantry weapon systems for each side" rule.
There's more, but I really can't be bothered. It'd be impressive if you could ask that question and it posted the scenario file to you. Whether it was a good fight or not, that'd be impressive.
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The isolation of the mobik probably starts in their training period, if they have one. Given the "training methods" traditional to the RA, and the, ahem, "accelerated timescale", there's probably little or no cultivation of the attitudes that lead to the development, once deployed to unit, of the "bond between squadmates" that remains the primary motivation to fight of an infantryman. And there's no leadership at the low level with the competence to compensate.
This might contribute to the execrable treatment of casualties, fatal and otherwise: there just isn't any motivation to waste any effort on the guys around you, since you barely know them from Adam.
Both sides have been using tanks for indirect fire, so the Russians digging deeper into their reserves to find (temporarily) mobile HE chuckers that don't need new barrel linings isn't really a surprise. Putting artillery guys in the vehicle might be a good way of getting more effect out of the platform, or it might be an indication that they haven't anything better to serve.
If the UK is sending 10 score Storm Shadow, the US commitment of ATACMS can't be far behind. What temperature is the frog-water at now?
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12 minutes ago, Simicro said:
Until recently I used entire squad indeed but tend to split more and more. Like Ian, I'll start paying more attention to this.
i'm a micromanaging martinet to my troops
They go where I tell them. I also sometimes struggle to see the outline of the squad's "natural" landing AS selection against whatever background texture and colour they're heading for, so using teams solves that issue. It also clears up a lot of the crowding problems and lets you split off Assault groups with grenades and SMGs, then AT teams with any organic AT assets (and unable to hog all the grenades like they will if you split them off first), leaving the long range support weapons in the third team. I prefer an inchworm bounding scheme to a bounding overwatch maneuver plan, at least in the WW2 titles I have the most experience in.
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I'm pretty sure that your pTruppen will align themselves with cover/concealment/sundry terrain within the AS that their move terminates in. I suspect that the occasional Face command is added by the TacAI when such adjustment materially changes the direction the unit will end up "pointed", due to the requirements for adjustment within the 8m square (and maybe its neighbour(s) if you're operating with unsplit squads).
Alternatively, it might only appear when the facing of the entire squad (when operating unsplit) has to change to adapt to the terrain. I'm somewhat convinced that I've never seen this, and I operate almost exclusively with split squads (a platoon is 6-9 teams plus the HQ, as far as I'm concerned
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Given the relatively minor role of air power (due to airspace denial) in the Russian Genocidal Misadventure and its inherent mobility, the lack of a flypast speaks of something curtailing Russian options for the parade. Birds wouldn't even need to rebase, they could probably sortie from their operational stations and make a round trip to Moscow for a quick linear formation run. Maybe the Kremlin was nervous that Ukraine would choose May 9 to start kicking in doors, and wanted their air frames ready to scramble for CAS and its CAP, rather than flouncing about in the skies above the capital.
Were there flybys at any of the parades at cities other than Moscow?
Demo Problems - help pls
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Both have to be using a demo install. Version of current software is irrelevant.