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It's claimed to be able to do exactly that.

The wikipedia article suggests that Trophy is (now) effective against top-attack munitions too, and mentions two lighter variants of the system, the lighter of which is intended for installation on non-AFVs. So it looks like someone has thought of the wider force-protection implications. Is the top-attack defense capability "wishful Wiki thinking"? With a bit of tinkering, I'd bet Rafale could produce a "convoy protection" version that only has to be mounted on every third truck to provide an APS umbrella... But then the anti-vehicle weapons will just have to become EFP-generators that detonate outside the engagement range of the APS; I don't see any physically-aimed defense being able to react fast enough to defeat a threat incoming at Mach 5, launched from 100m. Static mines already have the capability to project this kind of threat, I gather, and if they can be keyed to listen passively for Trophy radar sigs and use 'em for targeting.

Ukraine needs to have amassed a metric butt-load of HIMARS and 155 ammo before they start rolling metal. They need HIMARS to interdict Russian LOC and countermoves, since their airforce can't do that, and they need 155s, precision and plain old boom-boom to support their breakthroughs, from tubes that can FFE from outside effective RUS counterbattery fire. I think these factors are actually more important than the presence of NATO armour of whatever weight. With enough tubes to service the targets identified by the overwhelming UKR ISR superiority, UKR can "do the necessary" with their Soviet-class direct armour, and the hotch-potch of MRAPS and oldtech APCs they already have. Which leaves the NATO supplied formations as their replacements for the elements that will, inevitably, get beaten up in their offensive, giving UKR the "confidence to go for it" with their familiar equipment. But of the NATO equipment that's being provided to UKR it's the indirect fire assets that are most important after ISR, but that's pretty much a given.

Nah, the OPEC cartel has just gotten used to the sweet, sweet taste of profiteering-level margins and have decided to try and keep it that way. Even if the higher prices mean shale reserves start to become viable, so increasing the market competition... It's just money-grabbing by the sheikhs.

Fixing this issue is going to require a rethink of the western military procurement process every bit as fundamental as the changes that Russia would need to make to create a military that functions as well as it was meant to. The levels of drag on military tech development are stupefying. I was very peripherally involved in a development for something military, over the course of about a couple of years. When I came aboard, I was dealing with "current" (not SoTA, not bleeding edge) gear. A couple of years later, that was falling further behind the curve, and the last contact I had with the project, the general in charge had been rotated out, and the new general was basically wanting to start the whole assessment process all over again.

This bit had passed me by: So the Chinese are going to let Russia buy Yuan with their worthless Ruble? Two artificially-maintained (in the absolute worst sense) currencies trading is going to be a really fun game of "let's pretend" to build an economic system on, isn't it?

Nobody. Because it's not the case.

On the whole, the TacAI for any unit tends to follow your orders til danger shows, then does one of three things: ignores the danger and continues your orders engages the danger in order to eliminate it retreats (perhaps popping smoke if available). Which it chooses depends on the unit's morale state and inherent soft factors, combined with the nature and proximity of the threat. Given that the AI only has to survive on its own for a minute, maximum, in turn-based play, this is usually sufficient for a plausible reaction. I'd counsel against leaving any unit in any situation entirely down to its TacAI for much longer, once contact has been made with enemy elements.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65015289 Just another factor in the lack of populist opposition to the War from the Russian people. If you don't live in a totalitarian police state, you have to stretch your mind a bit to recognise how the disproportionate responses to mild opposition can eliminate any potential tendency to stand up to the bullies in charge. Then you add in the lack of contrary opinion in the publicly available media, and you have a fermenting vessel for the zombies who grumble only about the conduct of the war, not that it is being waged at all. Those Russians who have the most Western-shaded comprehension of exactly what an atrocity the whole "Special Operation" is, are the ones with the most to lose, and still haven't enough power to make the damndest difference to State policy, so they're clearing out in their droves, where they can.

At one stage, we were cannibalising already-built machines sitting in the "shipping yard" for parts to get further machines off the assembly line.

Some people swallowed Russia's propaganda whole without thinking about the actual situation on the ground. There has never been any actual basis for Russian "fear of NATO". It's always been, y'know, Unthinkable that the West could achieve anything by attacking Russia, and Russia has always known this. The "Scary NATO neighbour" trope has always been two things: Pimarily, it's a propaganda act for internal consumption. It wouldn't fly if there wasn't near total State control of the media, so that the actuality never reaches the ears of the populace. Its secondary purpose is a fig leaf for Imperialist ambitions in its "near abroad". It's a crummy excuse tailored for people who don't get that the tree of freedom sometimes needs some watering with the blood of freedom fighters to blurt out and assuage their lack of conviction. Even the Internet doesn't change that dynamic, because the Russians read what's on the Internet through a filter of the propaganda they get fed. The older generation was brainwashed by the Soviet totalitarian state, then there was a Wild West period of what? a decade? when free media had a chance to get their feet under them but the State media was still peddling the xenophobia, and since Putin got his stranglehold on power, that potential for presenting countervailing opinion has been smothered. There is a new generation of Russian kids newly come, or coming to adulthood who haven't experienced anything but an autocrat's echo chamber.

Just to point out that $20 from 200 "subscribers" is $4000 a month. Barely enough, I'd imagine, to cover a single good programmer's salary. And BFC would still need to charge their current "keeping the lights on" prices for purchases to maintain the existing team. Subs models can work, but not at that scale. I'm pretty sure that: or similar are "on the cards", anyway; maybe another coder would speed things up, but only with, as has been said, a chunk of up=front investment of time. Personally, I think "major" improvements in hardware usage and other architectural revamps are going to need to wait for CMx3 (which can't come soon enough, but e this is the real world...)

So sorry for your reading comprehension failure, there. That's a list of what MOPP might affect. Not "MOPP makes them tired, so they'll...". Yeah, that occurred to me a while after I hit post on my last. Would probably need explaining in the scenario briefing.

Except it really doesn't. It certainly didn't before Putin poked the threadbare stuffed pussycat, but Russia, even post-Soviet Russia is really really big and the "West" simply doesn't have the manpower to throw at it and make it stick. Even with a Baltic-to-Black Sea buffer zone, whatever the West could do from Poland and Ukraine (assuming "our" SEAD capacity works as advertised, which is no given), it could do from Czechia and Germany. Any capability to actually kinetically "destroy" Russia relies as much on Nukes as the defense of Russia would in the (false/fake/paranoid) Kremlinoid scenario of some nonsensical armoured thrust across the border from Ukraine by first-line US columns. You're giving airtime to Kremlin tomfoolery, psychotic justifications for criminal misdeeds. The very same criminal misdeeds that have driven their neighbours to seek shelter under the NATO umbrella.

So? What? Why is the precise effect and labelling of "fatigue" in game relevant to whether to model the extra fatigue which wearing NBC gear would incur on active squaddies? Or do you just like making irrelevant-but-true statements? It might also be appropriate to limit NBC-clad troops to Quick, disallowing Fast moves.

One way that the residual effects of a tac nuke, or the possible presence of those effects, could affect the CM scale would be the degradation of infantry perfomance while wearing their personal protection, and the changed emphasis on fighting buttoned or not... "We made a hole with a nuke. Get through there before the enemy plug it with their reserves." seems like a potential setup for a scenario. AiUI, troops operating in MOPP would tire faster, and be less aware of their surroundings, potentially less effective with their personal armaments and less able to communicate by voice. All, of course, good reasons to stay mounted and let the turret on the IFV do the work...

Speculative theorycraft answer, but serious, even if it makes me slightly queasy to type: The Russians send a fire team to die. The death of the fireteam exposes one or more UKR positions, which might be manned by a fireteam. Indirect fires reduce the locations of the UKR fire team(s) to rubble graves for pulverised UKR troopers. Depending on the ratio of "death by recon" elements to "fire positions located" over time, it's possible that this form of warfare, if the RU economy of force is well-controlled and they can put enough HE on the targets revealed by their recon, it's not inconceivable that the RU commanders are getting somewhere close to unity in the casualty ratios just in that form of warfare. So, in the best-case-for-Russia where Wagner have enough drone-observers to real-time the guns assigned to that assault phase onto the revealed targets, maybe 1:1 is more credible.

At least they've switched from exclusively targeting the "do not target" list, and not just because (I think) they've flattened all the schools and hospitals... Even Vlad recognised that approach was counterproductive for the Russki image, internationally (I give him no credit whatsoever for recognising the barbarity of the tactic).

I wonder if this is because any RU arty positioned in numbers sufficient to interdict or support any attack on the supply route has to be within CB (and ISR) range of UKR systems, due to the geography. It's been noted several times that UKR CB has been flaying the RU arty train, and that this might be one of the major objectives for the stand being held for so long.

Squirrel sausages are nommy. Mm-mm-mmmm.

I've probably got my polity names mixed up. I know that the other "successor states" of the USSR didn't hang on to any nukes: Ukraine, Khazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia etc which are now sovereign, non-nuclear states. The question I'm asking is, to pose a more specific example "How many nukes would Siberia end up with on its soil, if Russia fell apart tomorrow and couldn't pull them back to Moscow before doing so would need another Special Military Operation?" And the same question for any other successors to the Russian State that Putin rules today. Edit: Having a bit more time, I did a cursory Google, and it looks to me like there are a few bases that might be retained by Moscow, but others are in the Far East and south of the country...

A very simplistic example: Land Rover agreed to provide spare parts for the vehicles they sold to the British Army for 30 years after the model went out of production at their assembly lines. In order to do this, they sourced a load of components and put them in storage, specifically earmarked for MoD use. Then that storage burnt to the ground because of a forklift fire. No more spare parts for old Army Landies. Or, at least, they have to be sourced from the "general market", so are much more expensive and availability is potentially spotty. Keeping "legacy" equipment maintained is always going to be a bit of a lottery, unless you actually keep the entire production process "live", which is hellishly expensive. Maybe the Russians have had enough to spend to do this for the strategic forces for the last thirty years, maybe they haven't. Still risky to assume a 100% failure rate of the systems, though. A side question: how much of the Russian offensive missile establishment is based in "core" Russian provinces? If the RF collapsed, what proportion of those 60 Insanities would be under the de facto control of the "successsor" states who'd be in the same position as Ukraine were at independence, i.e. unable to maintain or contain the systems?

I'd've thought that if you can run one (of the demos) you will be able to run them all. Machine specs (mostly processor and memory size) will affect how large your map and forces can be, at a given image quality level, past that. Fortunately for your onboard graphics, the graphics subsystem isn't a big chokepoint. Memory and single core processor speed are much bigger factors, AIUI.

Just in case anyone else needs reminding, this is a misapprehension of the facts. What were given and accepted were "assurances", which anyone in diplomatic circles including the Ukrainians knows mean very little. But that was the price of having others clear up the mess they couldn't maintain and contain themselves.

Beeb's latest on the response of Putin and his laughable cronies to the Bryansk incursion... Thing that made me chuckle: So they dropped an artillery stonk on the hostage situation... I mean, they probably didn't, from what was said earlier, given that no hostages were taken and the raiders didn't hang about to be blown to smithereens, apparently, but it's so emblematic of the Russian approach to problems; I'm sure they would have, and the Zombies back home would be just as enthusiastic, which would be funny if it wasn't so sad. It's such bull that it its only purpose is internal propaganda, but it remains a bit terrifying that the intended audience will lap this nonsense up like it's vodka.