apd1004
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Posts posted by apd1004
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Most airburst rounds are set electromagnetically, as fast as they are loaded. It's part of the fire control system.
The nosecone spring-wound timer is no longer used. Electronic timers count the rotations. Knowing the rpm, muzzle velocity, and range to target, yields the number of spins needed for accurate airbursting. That number is imparted to the fuse as it is loaded.
Ken
Now that one I will agree sounds easy enough because it takes the human factor out of it. That way it could be done automatically by the ballistic computer according to what range the gunner has dialed in. I'll admit I'm surprised to see that as an ability on such a small round, especially a belted round.
In the picture below is a Hungarian BTR-80A in Afghanistan circa 2009. If you can zoom in on the ammo it appears they have the two belts mixed HE/AP with AP being every 3rd or 4th round. The HE rounds look very similar to the ones in the photo further above, but I have no idea if the Hungarians might or might not have this type ammo. I've seen these on the range before and they must have had them set to impact or they were in fact just plain old HE rounds.
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Russia has new 30mm programmable airburst ammo and BTR-82A FCS can program it.
Do I believe you can select a specific type of ammunition from the sight, being fed from a different ammunition bin? Absolutely. That's how you do it on the Bradley, you switch between AP and HE by flipping a switch and it feeds from a different storage bin. Do I believe you can automatically change the setting on belted ammunition stowed in a box? Maybe, if the feed/firing mechanism has a way of grabbing the round as it is fed and turning a ring on the round or something to that effect. I'm betting it's the former - they load one bin with regular ammunition and another bin with this type of ammunition, and you flip a switch to change feed between the two different bins. You could probably add a third or a fourth if you have the room for it in the turret. I can even see a different reticle appearing in the sights depending on what type of ammo is being fired. If that's what you mean by "programming", then we are in fact talking about the same thing.
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I'm more inclined to think the behavior of a type of round has been abstracted more than it has been modeled to true ballistic performance. Even for tank rounds. A real ballistic computer on a modern MBT takes into account many factors which I doubt are all being modeled in CMBS.
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Ok, going to take a stab at this.
Re: A670 fuze in CMBS. Do you really believe that the developers have gotten so far down in the weeds and perfected their ballistics model to the point that they have been able to faithfully reproduce a specific type of fuze for a specific type of round? If they have, then I'll eat my slice of humble pie.
Re: Programmable timed fuzing on 30mm/25mm HE rounds. I don't buy it for a minute that anyone is taking a belt of several hundred or even a few thousand rounds of 30mm/25mm ammunition and setting time fuzes. First of all, when they load the belt into the ammo box of the vehicle at the resupply point, how do they know what to set the fuzes for? Second of all, for a weapon with max effective range of around 2500m you're talking milliseconds to try to get an airburst. I know for a fact on the M242 Bushmaster HEI round there is no "time fuzing" on that ammo. You load the belt into the ammo box and go. I've been on the range when the 30mm BTR rounds were fired and nobody there was setting time fuzes on anything. 20-100m arming is a safety feature to prevent rounds from arming in the weapon. The 9-14 sec self destruct you are talking about is most likely for when the ammunition is used in AA mode like with the Tunguska, so the rounds fired at high angle aren't coming back down to the ground and killing friendlies. At the typical ranges the 30mm is going to be used in ground mode, the round has long since detonated before 9-14 seconds transpires. And, .002-.004 seconds (that's 2-4 thousandths of a second) is going to look and act like an impact burst. Programmable distance input on a sighting unit is so you can manually enter range to target. Pretty much any sighting unit on an AFV is going to have that feature, or at least a sight reticle with a range scale on it. It doesn't set a time fuze on the ammo.
Time fuzing is for artillery type rounds where somebody puts the ballistics dope into a computer and it tells you how many seconds to set the fuze for the desired effect. Some modern time fuzing can be set to go off at a specific height from the ground or a specific depth of foliage penetration, thus eliminating the need for the time computation. Back in the day the old 105mm flechette or "beehive" tank round on the M48/M60 series tanks could be set to detonate at a certain distance.
Bottom line is in CMBS when we see "airbursts", we are probably seeing impact bursts in foliage or something. I don't think I've seen small caliber airbursts in open ground in my CMBS experience. If it does happen, it's a bug.
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If CMBS is just the first step towards a modern-era "construction set", I don't see how you can possibly omit USMC or other NATO countries. There are so many scenario possibilities in and around the Black Sea region besides just the Ukraine that to OMIT USMC and NATO would be overlooking a huge resource for scenario builders.
I have never owned CMSF nor do I plan on purchasing it. It came out what, 7 or 8 years ago? So to say "they're already in CMSF" is not a valid argument for others like me who are in the same situation.
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If it is a company or battalion commander's vehicle, then the CO in the HQ team is filling the commander's seat in the Bradley, and thus gaining the benefit of the CITV. If this does not lead to the gunner spotting the unit then there might be a bug, but it might also be an edge case where the gunner's primary sight can't see the target for some reason.
In that situation then the CO is the vehicle crew and upon spotting a target he would have issued a fire command to the gunner. CITV is part of the fire control system so in CMBS terms that should count as the crew spotting.
In my situation from the first post, the scenario is the first campaign scenario from the 3-69 campaign and the BFV in question is the scout section leader (rank SSG).
There needs to be immediate hand-off to the vehicle crew when a passenger spots something. A buttoned up passenger shouldn't even be spotting anything but lets give them the benefit of maybe spotting something out one of the vision blocks. Still, you get on the intercom and alert the crew.
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The little "boop" mixed in with the radio chatter is enough to give me flashbacks.
*edit* This is a compliment, not a complaint.
Heh, from the mountains of northern Afghanistan it would take a constant loop of an RTO saying "negative contact, out" with squelch OFF followed by several expletives and "are you sure we have the right keys?" for me to be fully immersed. Iridium phone ringer would be a good one, that was the only semi-reliable thing we had. I called in CAS requests by email from a global Blackberry on more than one occasion, so "You've got mail" would be another good one for me. JTAC to aircraft overhead chatter would be the only one resembling what Mord has provided so I would also need some background F-15 or A-10 jet noise.
Speaking of which... the distinct ripping of a GAU-8 would make a good mix into the background loop...
@Vin...and if I did my job right you'll never figure it out. I specifically muddled it so nothing in particular would stand out. Glad you ended up liking it.
Mord.
Glad I saw that, I was also spending way too much time trying to figure out what they were saying.
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Hehe this game takes a fair amount of experience to get good at. you need to really get down into the nitty gritty of the terrain and be careful and slow while trying to have a numbers advantage wherever you might be engaged. I was just playing First Clash with my friend, he was telling me what he wanted his guys to do and I would give em some orders. 15 or so minutes in he decided I "wasn't doing it how he wanted" or whatever, and relieved me of direct command. 15 minutes later many question marks have been revealed but not too many enemy smoke stacks on the map but almost no Abrams left mission capable. He controlled everything from too high up. I think he's hooked though. Ive gotten 4 friends to play CMBS so far and none of em wanted to at first but after their first time they are all hooked!
First Clash is a great scenario to get the long range spotting & detection experience. I'm in my very first playing of it right now and have yet to lose an M1 (knocking on wood).
I've been wondering about the spotting & detection thing myself because like the OP I'm wondering how most of the time the first time one of my tanks finds out about the enemy is after he gets hit by something. With that being said, I'm still trying to figure out how in First Clash my M1's spotted two Khrizan at 2500m+ and killed both of them before the Khrizans could even launch. Maybe the Khrizans were just moving into position and got spotted first.
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Cool, thanks, that totally makes sense. You mentioned SA-11/15's earlier, I've always thought those things must be particularly terrifying (and they've been blowing me up in most of my simming life since the late 90s).
Would it still have to be aviation that went after those nowadays? I'm guessing you could use cruise missles, If they were available, but if not.... stealth?
Guess I'm wondering if they're as scary as they seem, basically!
Thanks
There are a lot of professionally written articles on how Russia has invested a lot of time, money, and effort in upgraded and new AD systems to counter western (read that as US primarily) capability in ISR, Stealth, and PGM. Russia actually has some very capable systems for dealing with those 3 concepts which US military strategy relies upon. Many of their newer systems have impressive shoot-n-scoot capability that didn't exist back in 1991 when most of their longer range systems were almost permanent terrain features. Fortunately Russia isn't swimming in cash these days so I would imagine the more capable systems are not forming an impenetrable barrier from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea and will instead be used in most likely engagement areas. Still, I think we have the capability to overcome but it definitely won't be a repeat of 1991 Iraq.
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GPS guided bombs are great, they are very accurate (also there's a new JDAM with a home on jam setting, which is awesome). The thing is it's a guidance system, has nothing to do with range or propulsion. A bomb falling ballistic doesn't care how or if it is guided, it just falls. So if you're at 40k feet travelling at 500 knots, then it will cover a lot of horizontal distance (5-10 miles or so). Projectile motion equations will give you a ballpark idea, neglecting the drag on the bomb and terminal velocity. Meanwhile a missile from the ground has to overcome gravity so it does not have a lot of energy by the time it reaches altitude.
But yeah, you want standoff for obvious reasons. That said, your typical SEAD/DEAD loadout is HARMs + Cluster bombs for reasons previously stated.
More recently but before CMBS came out, I've been playing around with Command: Modern Air & Naval Operations to game out just those types of encounters. Not much in the way of graphics but the realism is definitely there. It only takes a few minutes to set up a simple scenario to test out different systems and tactics. The database of platforms, weapons, and sensors is incredible.
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Same issue in DCS. imagine trying to do NoE attacks in a helo when the AI sees clearly through trees...
I had such high hopes for DCS World to get into a tank but when you get down to the ground (be it in a helo or a tank) you can definitely tell the graphics were designed for a flight sim. Ground vehicles were barely more than notional when they finally made some of them playable, at least back in the beginning. Maybe it's better now. The graphics a year and a half ago anyway were meant to be viewed more for when you would be at some sort of altitude or at least flying over it fast enough to not smell the roses. I played Blackshark for a while when it first came out and later I picked up the Thrustmaster HOTAS rig for A-10, but the learning curve on both was so steep just to get the engines started that I stopped playing both.
HA! As a high school student I spent hours playing Jane's F/A-18*, dropping dem' JDAMS on Russian ultra-nationalists. Ultimately my poor eyesight and so-so math scores led me to realize I wasn't likely to become a pilot, but found that I still wanted to be in the military which led down its own winding road.
Re: Steel Beasts
It's a good training tool, but it's really built to have a trained operator building your scenarios or missions that are fairly basic exercises. It breaks down when you approach it like its a simulator-game.
Which is why I'm sad, because looking back at the mid-late 90's simulators like Longbow 2 and iM1A2, those were much better sims in terms of being "playable" vs being the civilian version of CCTT.
*To be fair, middle school I played iM1A2 like it was a religion.
Feeling a little old now. When Longbow 2 & iM1A2 came out I was a 1LT tank company XO. I played the heck out of Longbow 2, not so much iM1A2. There was something about iM1A2 that rubbed me wrong and I can't remember what it was. The first version of Steel Beasts came out just a couple years later and I put way more time into that than I did iM1A2.
I think we've totally hijacked this thread by now.
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My idea for a DLC expansion:
At the US Army CGSC they use a fictional scenario for the culminating exercise. It takes place in the Georgia/Armenia/Azerbaijan/Turkey (known as GAAT) area and revolves around the Iranian government collapsing and the northern 2/3 of the country with the bulk of the former Iranian military splitting off into a new regime called Ahuristan. Basically Ahuristan invades Azerbaijan to "reunite the people" common to both areas and the wargame centers on the US response.
I went through it before I knew about CMBS but I couldn't stop thinking the entire time about how it would make a great wargame. I tried with Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, but the ground forces in that game are pretty much just there for targets and are not really modeled, so I gave up on it. The amount of material CGSC has written about the backstory is incredible, everything from ethnic/economic/political/military overviews of each area in the region to complete orders of battle and equipment lists. We almost have the tools now in CMBS to start making scenarios for it, but we would need some USMC and more of the legacy Russian equipment used by just about everyone in the region along with the Iranian reverse-engineered equipment to really dig into it.
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apd1004,
Speak English, please. (grumbles and goes and looks up the blasted designator, then screams) Just when I had learned the confounded thing via the missile designator, you come up with the launch platform instead! I thought it might be, and my hunch was right. Here's an excellent vid of what appear to be two different versions of Krizantema. Is one a prototype and the other the production model?
Interesting video, and while the launch sequences look authentic, there is no way of knowing if the target hits are actually from the same missile and I would suspect that they are file footage from other systems. The tank and the bunker almost looked like it could have been placed explosive charges detonating rather than the missile. This is a pretty new system and there aren't a lot of them fielded yet. Russia undoubtedly has similar issues to any other military which is a reluctance to live fire a lot of real missiles because they ain't cheap.
The two different versions you see are actually the launcher vehicle and the battery command vehicle, both of which are on the BMP-3 chassis. The launcher vehicle itself is the 9P157-2. The vehicle that comes out first in the beginning of the video is probably the 9P157-4 which is the battery command vehicle. It is also visible at the very end. The launcher has the turret removed and has that stowable radar dish but the command vehicle still has a modified BMP-3 turret on it with only the coax machine gun as armament. The other bling items on the command vehicle are battlefield surveillance radar, daytime TV camera, and jamming suites.
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Maybe it is related to the other issues people have had with weird penetrations (after v1.01 release): http://community.battlefront.com/topic/118262-a-question-about-the-t-90%E2%80%98s-armor-protection-was-found%EF%BC%81/ .
Definitely agree with the OP from that thread. At 4000m the tungsten-core 30mm APFSDS rounds from the 2A42 would probably bounce off an inflated balloon. That's well outside the max effective range of that weapon (2500m) to begin with and I dispute the ability of the weapon to even engage the target at that range.
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I've heard verbal accounts over the years of 25mm DU ammunition getting penetrations on Iraqi T-72's during Desert Storm, although I've never found any documentation on the reality of that. I've always suspected that soldiers climbing on destroyed Iraqi tanks may have been looking at 30mm penetrations from GAU-8 fire rather than 25mm. I doubt even the DU rounds could penetrate frontal armor on the B models though, they have significantly higher RHAe than the Monkey models did.
But, nothing is bulletproof though so maybe your rounds hit just the right spot. I'd suspect some sort of armor modeling/penetration value glitch more than anything.
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Ugh - Steel Beasts is kind of like the Russian tanks we've been talking about. 1990's technology living in 2015. I really wanted to like Steel Beasts and actually there is nothing to compare to it as far as being in the gunner's seat or TC's hatch. Besides the price, I couldn't get beyond the outdated graphics and the lack of AI/need to script everything if you want to make scenarios. Someday somebody will make computer trees that aren't transparent to the computer opponent.
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Safe eventually. Once the USAF wins the air superiority battle. Unfortuneatly this may not happen right away. Re SSMs I recall somehing about 3rd Infantry Division HQ being hit by one during the final days of the Iraq War. You are not 100% safe and are unlikely ever to be so. (0 or 95% safe. Eventually, probably yes.
I think you are correct in saying that this may not happen right away. Given the 3-month time frame of our CMBS campaign, it may never get beyond the "contested" state that an earlier poster mentioned, hence more reason to create CMBS scenarios with zero to very scarce air support, including UAS's (the term UAV is becoming obsolete in US military terminology). This is because since the 1990's Russia has put a lot of resources into defeating the US ability to wage an overwhelming air campaign. I think it is possible to overcome, but it won't be as easy as 1991.
"Shock and Awe" in 1991 definitely shocked and awed the Russians because all of the time, money, and effort they put into their IADS was easily defeated by the US air campaign against Iraq which had a fairly robust Russian-built densely overlapping complex IADS the day before the air campaign started. The combination of PGM, stealth, and ISR capabilities of mainly the US with a little UK thrown in quickly defeated the Iraqi IADS which in turn allowed US aircraft to freely roam the skies and rain death and destruction on the Iraqi ground forces. In our CMBS scenario this may not happen yet by August because the Russians have developed several systems to counter PGM, stealth, and ISR. The question is how effective will they be but that is definitely behind the scenes as far as CMBS is concerned. Scenario designers do need to keep it in mind even though there isn't word one of the air campaign mentioned in our CMBS scenario backstory (on purpose).
Getting back to the OP reference US air defense capability, I'll say it again - I think the Stinger in CMBS is broken. I'm playing First Clash and about 15 minutes into the scenario a Russian helicopter appears. My Stinger team launched its entire inventory of 6 missiles at it and not one hit. In fact, I have yet to see a Stinger hit anything in my experience with CMBS so far. Not necessarily looking for a kill here, just a break off or a missile going ballistic due to breaking the lock by the evading platform. The AT-6 Spiral gunner has to keep crosshairs on target and I can't imagine him being able or willing to do that with a Stinger inbound. Even the AT-9 and Vikhr are still beam riders and I think an evading helicopter may not be able to keep the beam on target.
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I think it's very clear that the US military strategy revolves around air superiority in any theater of operations that we commit forces to. I don't think the US would even put boots on ground in the Ukraine unless the tools were in place to achieve air superiority going in. As has been said many times over in this thread, the way the US military strategy sees stopping enemy CAS is not through robust IADS but through simple air superiority. Air superiority keeps the enemy CAS off the tankers' backs and it also allows the US to use CAS. That's the way our military strategy is designed.
You can make all sorts of assumptions about Linebacker funding or lack of it, but quite simply it gets cut because the Avenger can do the same job and it is a lot cheaper and we really don't need anything anything better.
The Stinger is actually quite capable at lethally engaging aircraft, and quite frankly I'm getting tired of my CMBS Stingers firing but never hitting anything. But that's a topic for another thread.
Look at how current & near future systems are funded and deployed. The US is far more concerned about theater ballistic missile defense (SCUDs, etc) than it is about ADA assets engaging CAS. That's why we have Patriot and THAADS. They are not intended to be used against aircraft although they certainly could be. They are to be used against ballistic missiles and not enemy CAS. This is because that is the job of the USAF. We have the Avenger and we have MANPAD Stingers to catch the stragglers that make it through. But we have nothing really any more potent than that providing air defense to the combat units. Sure there have been attempts to move a few of the sea-based air defense systems ashore, but I don't think they have gained much favor.
I think at the strategic level in our hypothetical NATO vs. Russia conflict, it would be a very real possibility that Russia would shift from losing hundreds of aircraft attempting CAS to pulling their non-nuclear theater ballistic missile arsenal out of mothballs and using it to strike targets in the rear. That's what Patriot and THAADS were designed for.
Nothing is a sure thing in warfare though so in our CMBS alternate version of reality, a scenario designer can come up with anything they want if they can articulate the backstory.
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Company XO proves he is no slouch when it comes to tank gunnery. It was really the gunner but the LT will take credit no doubt.
Capture5 by apd1004, on FlickrFirst round hit at 2708m, the longest one I've seen so far. Of course the target was a 9P157-2 so hit=kill, but it's still a dangerous threat.
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Although I agree with just about everything you said about the classification, I do not believe the story about the .50 cal SLAP going through, that sounds a bit fake were speaking about a tank here.
Unfortunately it really happened, There was no fire, just a hole about big enough to stick a pencil through one of the side skirts and then the lower hull near one of the support rollers. When I saw the write up on it, they weren't sure what it was but most people at the time agreed it was most likely a .50 SLAP.
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Interesting thread, typical of most M1x vs T-xx in that everyone has statistics and data that they're getting off the internet and therefore it must be true.
Pretty much everything you see open source on the internet, whether it is US, Russian, British, whoever, is all best-guess based on speculation. Most of the systems on any of these tanks are classified when it comes to their real technical specifications. There might be pieces/parts that are declassified or have been compromised because somebody got hold of them and now it is no longer classified, but most stuff is still classified.
I've been to the Lima tank plant and even though I had a clearance at the time, I wasn't allowed to go into the part of the factory where they were installing the armor on the turret. The US has been working on the technology for that armor for 35+ years and have been performing a lot of tests over the years and the technology is constantly evolving in response to tests and speculation about Russian kinetic and ATGM technology.
You can take out a measuring tape and measure the thickness of the armor on the front turret of an M1 but they refer to "effective thickness", which is far greater than the real thickness and is based on the armor technology.
Nothing is "bullet proof". There was an M1 in Iraq a few years ago that got penetrated in the side of the hull by a .50 cal SLAP round and the round went into the crew compartment and struck the back of the gunner's seat.
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The base armor on the A3 version of the BFV is supposed to be able to withstand 30mm fire from the front. That's without ERA. There is laminated steel & aluminum armor pretty much all around, and even some titanium on the turret. A 125mm sabot round definitely has the ability to go through one Bradley and into another, and the ERA blocks aren't a sure thing for defeating a round like that. A few years ago in Iraq there was an M1A1 that got struck in the side skirt by a .50 cal SLAP round and the round penetrated the skirt and the side of the hull and went into the crew compartment and hit the back of the gunner's seat. Bullets can do strange things.
I have no doubt it could happen in RL, I'm more surprised and impressed that the game can simulate such an event occurring. I shouldn't have had my Bradleys in a parking lot like that anyway.
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I never thought I would see this happen, but it did. Years ago I used to joke about sabot rounds passing through multiple vehicles.
In the first photo, the round hits the front of the Bradley furthest from the camera. There is only one incoming main gun round from the tank in the distance, the rest of the tracers are outgoing 25mm.
In the second photo, the same round passes through the first Bradley and penetrates the right side of the Bradley behind the first one. Note the time - 34:53 in both photos.
Unbelievable, but true.
In the third photo, you can see how the round took out one of the reactive armor blocks and then you can see the hole in the side of the hull on the other Bradley (in blue circle).
Kudos to the design team for that much attention to detail and realism.
Courage Conquers campaign - halftrack drivers
in Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg
Posted
Not sure if anything can be done about this but here goes. I understand that the conditions of this campaign are no replacements and no repairs between missions.
Bottom Line Up Front: I got some core unit halftracks as normally scheduled reinforcement groups in the second mission of the campaign and when they appeared on the battlefield the halftracks had no drivers.
During the first mission of Courage Conquers campaign, I embarked some units onto halftracks that were not part of their organic platoon transport (i.e. - they were halftracks from a different platoon and just happened to be parked near some infantry I wanted to load up). I do not recall whether or not those particular halftracks did or did not have drivers when I embarked the units onto them, they may have been unoccupied with no drivers. I didn't think anything of it at the time.
The mission ends unexpectedly with total US victory before the time was up and I progress to the next scenario in the campaign. So far so good.
Fast forward into the second mission and when the same platoon of infantry shows up as a reinforcement group, they appear on the map all mounted on halftracks as I would expect. The problem was that some of the halftracks were showing "disembarked" status with no inherent driver present, even though there were other infantry units embarked on the halftracks. These "disembarked" halftracks were not lighting up as being part of the same platoon as the embarked units, but due to their "disembarked" status there was no other info on what platoon the halftracks actually belonged to.
I get it that there are no reinforcements or replacements, but it seems to me that to eliminate this problem, halftracks and other transport should still be re-crewed with drivers between missions to keep driverless transports from morphing into the next scenario. Is there any way to fix this or is it something I just have to deal with? If not then I think I would have rather received the infantry replacements in dismounted mode rather than inside a halftrack that isn't going anywhere for lack of a driver. Or is there a way to re-crew with a driver from an infantry unit? I had no luck with that in-game.