rocketman

I laughed out loud, when I read this fictional and seemingly ridiculous interview.
But then I thought of some of the people I recently met in the neighborhood, at work, and on the Internet; and it dawned on me:
that fictional interview may be much less ridiculous than it looks.
Maybe I've turned into a negative grumpy old man, but the amount of antisocial, ignorant, "ever-complaining about the stupidest things" and "blame everyone but oneself" kinda people seems to grow by the minute.
 

Lucky marine from 35th brigade %)
 

A warning. At the moment there is a video circulating social media  that show the gruesome beheading of an ukrainian prisoner of war with a knife. I have seen a lot but  this is one of the most traumatizing videos I have ever seen. DO NOT WATCH.
I have no idea how anyone can do such things to another living being. I wouldn't even do it  to my worst enemy. The culture that breeds such behavior is deeply sick. I really wish nato would do a lot more to end this bloodshed as quickly as possible. Not doing it hurts us a lot more than most are realising.
Worse, ordinary russians are celebrating this video.....

From my notes on fighting like the Soviets:
1) Time spent on recon is never wasted.
2) Time and resources spent killing enemy recon is never wasted. 
3) Have a plan and execute it. 
4) The artillery fire plan dictates the maneuver plan. The maneuver plan dictates the fire plan. These must be mutually supportive. 
5) A company of Sov tanks spots better than any single German/American tank. 
6) Take away the better spotting offered by the NATO habit of fighting unbuttoned. Get them heads down to decrease their situational awareness. 
7) When you attack, attack! Don't poke him with one finger at a time. Make a fist and crush the enemy with overwhelming force. 
10) Use a platoon to crush a squad > use a company to crush a platoon >> use a battalion to crush a squad. Fair fights are for suckers.
9) Keep pressing attacks until they aren't feasible anymore, but don't reinforce failure. The Germans/Americans never have enough troops/tanks. 
10) Just because you have mass doesn't mean the only way forwards is a frontal assault. There are other ways to win that don't involve sticking your dick into the meat grinder until it jams. Recon routes that bypass the enemy, the Germans/Americans never have enough troops/tanks to cover every avenue of approach. Infantry infiltration is a thing.
11) Take you time, don't be in a rush to die. You'll probably run out of people, tanks, and/or ammo before you run out of time. 
H

Even with x2 (add mobilized and tossed on frontline), these are very low densities.  Take Zap-Blue.  Double the density to 214 per km.  So chop a third for logistics/support, so 140-150 actual frontline troops (which is generous).  That is a healthy company with no one behind it, nor an ability to rotate out and off the line.  Based on what we have seen troop rotations are likely happening horizontally from loud to quiet sectors, not from front to rear.
This is the Russian problem.  A lot of people are handwringing about “frozen front lines” and Russian defensive belts but that is an enormous frontage to try and defend and nowhere enough troops to do it with.  Russian LOCs are interdict-able - I would be saving a lot of deep strike for that, so as the UA assaults the RA are going to be challenged to c-move (which will be highly visible).  The RA is simply spread too thin and likely does not have the logistics, ISR or C2 to be able to cover those sorts of ranges.  
I think that once the UA drops the hammer that whole thing is going to crack like an eggshell.  The RA counter-moves are going to get hit while trying to re-position.  RA targeting cycles are too slow and its logistics are fragile.  This has all the hallmarks of the setup for an operational collapse.

I've discovered my own cache of top secret government documents. Its totally legit, I swear!
 

this is getting really old and is a complete derailment of the thread.  Unless you think Ukraine has no right to decide its own future what the heck are you going on about?
If you do feel that Ukraine has no right to make any decision on its future that Russia does not approve of then go somewhere else.
Enough already.  Calling the Ukrainian fight to defend its right to self-determination from a barbaric aggressor state "choosing to become a party to various and sundry conflicts" is insulting to all our Ukrainian members of this forum who are currently part of a fight to defend their country's right to exist.

Sorry for off-topic, but this proposal keeps coming up on this thread so I feel I should address it from perspective of someone who lives in Taiwan.
Something most "put a bunch of marines of Taiwan" takes are missing is the voices of the Taiwanese people.
Even though most Taiwanese do not consider themselves Chinese, also most Taiwanese do not favor changing the status quo. The country is in a bizarre place because it's plainly evident to everyone - including China - that Taiwan is already an independent country with its own government, laws and military... but nobody can actually say that out loud. Any time other countries try to engage with Taiwan, politically or militarily, both that country and Taiwan gets punished. Which maybe doesn't faze the US, but they're the richest and most powerful country in the world! Taiwan is a small island located right next door to the second richest and second most powerful country in the world, who also happens to be their biggest trade partner - the ultimate frenemy.
Putting marines on Taiwan is just moving a chess piece for America, but for Taiwan it is a major change to the status quo, something that could affect the lives of everyone in the country - potentially for the worse. As a democratic country, there are a lot of different opinions on this, and with the presidential election coming up in 2024, no candidate wants to be shown as the one who let the Americans mess up the economy. This is probably why the meeting with Speaker McCarthy happened in California and not in Taiwan, because the Taiwanese government doesn't want to escalate tensions, especially not ahead of a political campaign.

Possible example of ERA actually saving a tank from destruction by ATGM…temporarily:
 

History in the making.

Hacking a Dildo's account to buy Dildos instead of Drones. 
 
 

Bakhmut area. TERRA aerial recon unit targets enemy positions before UKR infantry assault. (ENG subs can be turned on)
Part1. KRAB strikes at two enemy bunkers and observation position. Then two tanks rolled on direct fire. Infantry awaits. 
 

Good candidate for the turret throwing contest...
 
 

Locals say Russian ammo dump was hit in Andriivka village 19 km SE from Volnovakha town, Donetsk oblast. Detonations all the night.

Interesting application of commercial magnitometer + drone for aerial mine searching.
Though, this guy now is serviceman of State Emergency Service, not army sapper. 
 

UKR soldier about YPR-765 and in whole about M113 series
Our "yupik" (YPR) was fu..d, there is a hole near the driver, the engine is burning, crew is alive. It's a big vehicle.
With BMP this, of course, wouldn't have happened. There each fu...g hit was with KIAs. Soviet engineers knew how to care about untilizing of population surplus. 
Its [YPRs] hulls also better. After blowing up by mine, there are no penetrations inside a compartment, when BMP-1 is just teared off. 

The tank is dead topic. The AFV has changed and is now a completely different system, it will develop further.

I dread the inevitable mass usage by terrorists against civilian crowds. 
We're not far off Drones being used exclusively in the first wave of a major assault, to suppress and terrify the Ivans in their holes as the main force pushes past. 
 

Good to see the newest NATO member state helping out. 🙂

New ATGM in UKR service. Silent support of Sweden.
PS. This system is out of service in Sveden since 2013. Wire-controlled missiile with magnetic and optical sensors. Tandem warhead, activating on 1 m aboove the target and striking hollow charge stream under angle of 30 degrees, so the stream need shorter way to penetrate glacis armor. Estimate penetration beyond ERA is about 550 mm 
 

I just saw in the news that Zelenskyy has invited Xi to visit Ukraine. I think this is a very clever move. It'll be hard for Xi to turn down the invitation while still trying to maintain China's self-appointed image as "arbiter of peace". However, I find it unlikely that Xi accepts. If China did though, Russia will scream like a stuck pig when Ukraine takes advantage of the opportunity to talk one-on-one with China. I can only image what clever things Ukraine might offer or what opportunities they might use to generate positive press.

It's always been questionable in my mind that some economists and commentators reckon that globalisation is a force that prevents war. It adds a layer to the decision making but trade as an absolute block on major powers not going into conflict due to economic loss? Seems like economic study/dark arts trying rationalise human decision making, that wealth is all that matters to everybody, especially at a time of violent crisis?
If I cast my mind back to my Uni days about 20 years ago (I'm old now), you have three primary causes for conflict to break out:
- Nationalism / Territorial - "I disagree with you owning that piece of land"
- Ideological - "I disagree with the way you think and do things"
- Ethnic - "I disagree with your religion, language, upbringing, race... I disagree with who you are."
The idea was conflict in 19th and early 20th century was primarily driven by the first point. This switched over to ideological in the run up to WW2 and the Cold War. The post Cold War era has been focused more on Ethnic issues driving conflicts. Now they are generalisations and it's pretty easy to argue that for many conflicts there are more than one driver in play or one is in play while others are used as political smoke screen by political elites to justify entering a conflict. Not to mention outliers or the belligerent sides having different perceptions on what is driving the conflict.
There was no reason not to think ethnic driven issues would continue to be the primary driver most conflict into the 2020's but I think the dangling of the idea of USA pullback/isolationism during the Trump years emboldened a bunch of other global players to start pushing against the west as the 'world cop' was potentially off the beat. Nationalism and Ideology (latter a smokescreen?) have been able to pop up again as a result. If we find ourselves in another 1939 situation but this time the world opts to let it happen because, "we want our trade numbers to stay strong", I think is a bigger cross against humanity and our political systems. The fallout of not responding to unwarranted aggression is also likely to have a bigger impact on global stability.
Mark Twain may have been right all along... "The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog."

I think it's very clear that under Trump the support would stay the same.  It would just go to the other side in the conflict.

A quick word about the missions themselves. I play the game in Real time and I don't PAUSE the action very often so I tend to focus in one one area of the map and leave the other areas to manage themselves without my supervision. This means that the missions will be reasonably small, certainly a lot smaller than the battles you're probably more familiar with. I don't manage battalions in Real Time  with any efficiency but I can manage a reinforced company without any trouble. So all the missions will feature a maximum of one USMC company with some attachments. This is my sweet spot. as it happens, a USMC platoon manages the same as most companies. the manpower and firepower they have is awesome but it's easier to manage a platoon than a company, even when the squads are broken into three teams.
I also like to have a slow-ish start with a small force on the map at the start with the rest of the force arriving in stages. I often find it much easier to manage quite a large OB in this manner as I get it set up and into the action before the next packet arrives. However, both Watching the Detectives and Al Qusayr have the entire OB on the map at the start so they both have a faster pace. On the other hand, CAAT among the Pigeons is very small with only about twenty units to manage. And most of them arrive 10 minutes after the mission starts. You start with just three units but there's plenty to do.
I also like to play with all the bells and whistles so you'll have access to a lot of artillery and air support in these missions. The USMC is a light infantry unit but with the artillery and air support is more than capable of going up against the best the Syrians have.

Well, it's been a lot more work than I'd anticipated. This is a rework of my old USMC campaign, a six mission campaign I put together shortly after the British Forces module for CMSF 1 was released. I spent SO much time making 'The Road to Dinas' that I missed playing with the USMC, which has turned out to be my favourite US formation to work with. 
 
I thought I was just going to have to make up a new core unit file, sub in the new units and tweak a few bits and pieces to take advantage of the new systems but I ended up pretty much redoing it all from scratch. Anyway, let me show you the old maps and the new versions. Each picture is taken a 6 am in the morning from the same position so that you can see main differences.
 
The first mission is Meet the Flintstones. This is a NIGHT Missions and this is the old map...

And this is the new map...

As you can see, it's pretty much doubled in size. If you've played the original, it will probably feel reasonably familiar with the old version.
The next mission is The High Chaparall and the map for this one has changed very little. it's a DAWN mission.

And here's the new...

It hasn't changed much although there was a LOT of deforestation which took place to the new. Apart from the map, it's been reworked very substantially and the AI improved.
 
The third mission was a real problem for me. It was originally called CAAT Fight and it took place on this map...

The problem wasn't with the map but the battle itself. It was rubbish! It was an interesting idea and was inspired by the first episode of Generation Kill but it wasn't anywhere near as much fun as that episode. So this one got a new map and new forces with the same concept:

I really enjoy playing this one. It's a NIGHT mission and, like the original, you only have the CAAT units to work with. But it feels completely different and I find it a lot of fun to play.
Now we come to the HUGE reworks. These took over a week each to fit up and the missions needed to be redone entirely, new AI forces, new objectives etc...
the first of these is Watching the Detectives. here's the old map...

And here's the new...

It's more than doubled in size and there has been very substantial enhancement of buildings complexes etc. This is a DAWN mission and has gone through several iterations before the right battle was found for it. it's a tough mission with the player attacking down a slope in full view of the defender with little cover to work with. it took many attempts to make this feasible and I'm happy with the end result. You need to take this one slowly.
 
Then Mission 5, Bridges. Once again, the old map has been massively expanded.

And the new one is almost entirely different...

There are some similarities but as you can see, it's almost entirely new with new, more realistic villages added. Again, finding the right battle for this map has taken a lot of time and this is the mission I'm currently playtesting.  it'll probably change a little before I finish with it but I've finally whittled down the forces on both sides so that i can carry out the mission without having too much at my disposal.
Al Qusayr
The map for the last mission is almost the same. there are some significant improvements for it but you won't see these from such a wide angle. the mission has also been redone with new forces added and all-new AI.

And there it is. I'll go into each mission in a little more detail later. This is very close to finishing now. I expect to have finalised it by the end of this month.