rudel.dietrich
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Posts posted by rudel.dietrich
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YikesOriginally posted by civdiv:For the US side there is also something called 'the goat farm'. It is an advanced medical trauma training center. The name comes from the fact that they use goats to simulate human casualties. And yes, they shoot and blow the goats up with everything from rifles and crew served mgs to grenades, and then the medics have to go out and perform first responder trauma treatment. And then the goats are put out of their misery. It's mostly attended by SpecOps medics, plus some regular medics with some level of seniority. Years ago I had a friend who was a Corpsman supporting the USMC (An E-4 in the Navy) and he got to go there.
civdiv
Im about as dead emotionaly as they come.
But that sounds rather cruel even if it is just a goat
In Germany they stick potential medical personal in various ERs and them get their share of car wrecks and other such traumas.
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I gave everyone a high level overview of what I do.Originally posted by John Kettler:rudel.dietrich,
Don't know who you work for or quite what you do, but your sources, considering the granularity and specificity of the data you presented, must be phenomenal. I say this from the perspective of someone who, many moons ago, spent eleven plus years at Hughes and Rockwell as a highly regarded Soviet Threat Analyst for tactical and strategic systems. I can't recall ever seeing the level of detail for things like what you so casually reeled off. Color me both impressed and intrigued!
Regards,
John Kettler
Asset tracking
And alot of it is just educated guesses
Its like a jigsaw puzzle with 100 pieces
You may get 20 solid pieces and 30 half pieces with a few corners missing.
You take them and fit them together as best as possible and then look at the missing portions and using a little logic, a little history and alot of luck guess what the missing pieces look like.
It also helps since you usualy have an idea of what the overall puzzle should look like.
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From what little I read the TOW missle clones did not exactly work as planned and when they did were not as effective as the Kornet and Metis and were alot harder to use than the Milan
I have never heard good things about the infantry fired TOW even from the Americans I have talked too
But when it is vehicle mounted it really turns into an outstanding missle
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What was rude? I simply stated that there was nothing new in that whole post. And it is a fact that they are maintaining thier Milan stocks and have been for some time, even with the expected sale of anti-tank and missle platforms from the Russians. Plus the Milan 3 post will be able to fire the Trigat MR missile and the new MILAN ADT/ER which has a longer range and a pretty good penetration factor against ERA and RHA armors. So does it not make sense that they would keep up thier stocks?Originally posted by Sixxkiller:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by akd:
edit: that was rude sixxkiller. Rudel has access to some pretty up-to-date sources and given the very narrow focus of CMSF, these sorts of details are pretty important. I somehow seriously doubt that, for example, BFC knows that Syria is maintaining its Milan stocks (which is a fascinating tidbit if true).
But anyway I was far from being rude. </font>
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Any idea on the numbers? I presume these numbers are hopelessly out of date:Originally posted by Sgt.Joch:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:
Kornets and Metis missles seem to be flowing into the country in very large numbers.
Many of these are probably finding their way in Lebanon
But it appears both Hezbollah and Syria have a significant stockpile of these missles and their launchers
According to Arabs at War , all arab armies have major problems with accurate weapon delivery, presumably due to poor training. Results of the 1982 war showed that this was a problem even for Syrian SF/commando units.The accuracy numbers from the Hezbollah teams using these weapons agaisnt the IDF is pretty applaing (unless your the IDF)A shiny new tank busting Kornet missle is pretty useless unless you can hit a target with it
Again according to Arabs at War , after their poor showing against the IDF in 1973 and against the Lebanese militia in 1976, Syria started pooling all their best men in SF/commando units. This gave Damascus some relatively good units, but at the expense of lowering the overall quality of line infantry units. The SF/commando units even scored some modest successes against the IDF in 1982. It looks like they might be doing the same thing with their tank units.The Syrians seem to have slightly went over to the idea of 'quality over quanity'They are picking the best tanks and crews and focusing on that small % of their armoured force for upgrades.
Of course, the unanswered question in all this is why the buildup? The chances of an attack by the U.S. ( in real life
http://community.battlefront.com/uploads/emoticons/default_wink.png' alt=';)'> ) are fairly low,the chances of war with Israel are also low ,the Assad regime seems fairly secure from internal enemies and Syria is going through some major economic/social difficulties due to the estimated 1,000,000 Iraqi refugees crowding into Damascus. </font>
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Consider this an add-on for my Syrian TO&E thread.
These new developments are not nearly as exciting as the thread title suggests.
A few people around here know that I work in the 'security' industry.
My actual job is to track arms and hardware.
The who, what, when, where and how much of it.
Both on the record...and shall we say 'off' the record
Anyways without going into too much detail, I can comment on a few new developments.
The deals in place between Russia and Syria are still more or less static.
But some material between the two is happening.
Most of it is minor stuff like small arms, ammunition and spare parts.
The spare parts are interesting since they make up large sums of the shipments and Syria has a large fleet of hardware but it is rapidly decaying since spare parts and skilled technicians are lacking.
Modest quanities of spare parts and being imported however and some technicians to service the aging fleet of weaponary.
Plus large scale canibilization is occuring to strip badly decayed vehicles down to get the ones in not so bad shape into better working order.
As a result the entire fleet of tanks and APCs seems to be shrinking at a rapid pace, but at the same time those still around are probably experiencing fewer breakdowns.
That has an impact on CMSF
Small arms shipments are pretty boring stuff
But what is interesting is that it appears scopes and NV scopes for AK-74s and RPK-74s are coming into the country in modest quanities
The same can be said for NV scopes for Dragunov rifles
I think a decent % of Syrian SF and airborne (once they make it into the game) should be outfitted with scopes for their AKs and RPKs
And a smaller but still significant % with NV scopes.
These two sections of the Syrian military should have pretty good NF capability.
BMPs in Airborne formations are also getting pretty modern NV optics for their weaponary and vision capabilities.
This force looks like it is setting itself up to be a force to be reckoned with in night combat.
Iran is also shipping in a fair amount of weapons.
Most of it fairly standard stuff.
But some modern RPG rounds are finding their way into Syria as well as RPG-18s and more RPG-29s
The 29s still seem to be fairly rare
But in the last year or so the numbers seem to be on a steady increase
Probably still limited to SF and guards formations
But it would not suprise me if certain members of the mainline army had access to stocks of them in the outbreak of conflict
Modern tandem rounds for the RPG-7v seem to be ever growing as well
In fact most of the AP rounds for the RPG-7 should be modern rounds with many being tandem rounds
RPG fire should be alot more deadly than what was encountered in Iraq
This applies only to regular formations
Reserve and militia formations would still be fielding large amount of 'fire and pray' rounds probably with a large mixture of HE rounds
But regular army formations should never have to resort to HE rounds against armour.
MP Sam launchers are another growing field
But in CMSF terms that hardly matters
Tank rounds are another area of interest
Im not sure how BF plans to model varients of tank rounds
But it appears Syria for their front line T-72s and T-62 (guards units and a few regular army formations) have small stocks of good high quality modern shells
If different rounds are going to be modeled, then these tanks should each get a handfull of very good modern rounds.
Tank fired ATGMs are holding about steady.
Without a significant war to go on, it remains to be seen if these have any sort of battlefield applications.
They would be a total wildcard in CMSF
Infantry carried ATGMs have exploded since the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict
Kornets and Metis missles seem to be flowing into the country in very large numbers.
Many of these are probably finding their way in Lebanon
But it appears both Hezbollah and Syria have a significant stockpile of these missles and their launchers
They should be more common now in CMSF
The biggest hurdle still seems to be training personal on how to use them
The accuracy numbers from the Hezbollah teams using these weapons agaisnt the IDF is pretty applaing (unless your the IDF)
A shiny new tank busting Kornet missle is pretty useless unless you can hit a target with it
Milan missle stocks alos seem to be keeping up with expenditure
No idea where they are getting those... :confused:
Finally is the issue of tank electronics and sigting systems
The Syrians seem to have slightly went over to the idea of 'quality over quanity'
They are picking the best tanks and crews and focusing on that small % of their armoured force for upgrades.
I have a nice little document on the Turms system and how it is progressing.
It is going along on schedule and testing so far is positive and accuracy very much improved.
The list of what is entering the country is too extensive to list.
But new ballistic computers, thermal imaging systems, new optics and ERA tiles seems to be the main items in the shopping cart
Now sure if these are being haphazardly installed or if tanks are being converted into new varients :confused:
Is it highly confusing
If I was doing the game I would just toss out variants all together and allow the player to buy a base tank and them apply individual upgrades
But I digress
Anyways, that was a long post to really say nothing at all.
But just to let everyone know im still doing research.
And I know a few of you are interested in such matters
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How classic, you're talking about uneducated people and you post a line like this. It's almost sig material.Originally posted by zmoney:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:
Most of their soldiers are under education farmers or those from urban centers but just as under educated.
</font>
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Basic first aid is hardly rocket science Mr Dietrich! </font>Originally posted by Londoner:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rudel.dietrich:
Most of their soldiers are under education farmers or those from urban centers but just as under educated.
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Do Syrians do this as well?
I could find very little information on their battlefield medical capacity if they even have any.
Most of their soldiers are under education farmers or those from urban centers but just as under educated.
First aid is of course something you can teach but I would not think it would be high of the Syrians priority list
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You can get the 24 inch Dell model for much less than 800 Euros
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You mean I dont gather gold and wood and produce more infantry squadsOriginally posted by Battlefront.com:Since CM:SF has no bases or resources to gather,
Steve
:confused:
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I have spent time with all three weaponsOriginally posted by tiny_tanker:The problem I see is that we've been spending billions for small "improvements" on the M16/M4 for the past 40 years. What's spending a few billion more, to get what seems (i haven't fired the M4 or the M416 of course) to be a much larger improvement?
On a side note, what's the comparison in performance between the G36 and the M16/M4?
I was always a big fan of the M-16. I found it a little uncomfortable to handle and a little too unbalenced due to its length. But I was impressed with its accuracy and range.
With the 40mm grenade launcher I found the weapon to feel alot more solid and better balenced and was a very stable firing platform.
The M4 I do not have alot of experience with.
It handled well but I found the recoil to be pretty awful and very hard to keep the 'floating effect' from throwing off my aim when I had it in full auto.
Even in short controlled bursts the weapons barrel constantly drifted upwards because of severe recoil.
It was accurate as well for a carbine. But the range despite being listed as close to the M16s range, I found the drop off to be pretty severe past a certain range. The rounds spin started to fall apart after a few hundred meters and its accuracy was almost useless at that point.
In an urban enviroment that would matter little however.
I am probably very biased when it comes to the G36
I have fired probably 20,000 rounds from that weapon.
I found it to be an extremly solid weapon.
Very comfortable to hold in any posistion, very well balenced and the recoil was manageable enough in full auto mode if you limited your bursts.
It was also very accurate and with the standerd 3x optical site you could engage targets with reasonable accuracy out to medium ranges.
You also get a red dot sight with 1.0x magnification and you use that site with both eyes open which makes it perfect for controlled shots while on the move and in short range situations like urban combat.
It works both in daytime and is battery illuminated at night.
Penetration is about the same as the M4 and M16.
It leaves something to be desired since it it a 5.56mm round but is decent enough.
One final thing is that in a few minutes you can convert the weapon into a faux LMG by adding a bipod and 100 round box magazine.
It does not excel in that role but in Afghanistan we had two kits per platoon in addition to our MG3s.
At medium ranges we could put alot of rounds at a target and the bipod kept recoil pretty well controlled.
The box magazines led to a few more jams and the barrels are not made for that kind of abuse.
But when needed it let us convet a carbine into a decent LMG to increase our firepower.
Like all H&K weapons it is pretty lavishly manufactored. The parts fit together perfectly and we had to send back very very few back due to defects.
It took abuse pretty well, but the weapon does not like sand or dust at all.
Matinence is very important to keep the weapon in working order.
The only real flaw we had was early magazines tended to wear out quickly and warp due to heat and stress. They changed the plastic composistion on them and that solved many of the problems.
One final story before I move on.
In my first ever full gear practice jump we parachuted over the DZ.
Our platoon drifted a little and we fell in a wooded area.
I ended up falling into a tree and as luck would have it I got pretty well snagged about 30 feet off the ground.
Its not that uncommon so I was not that bothered by it. I pulled out my knife and began to cut the chute straps so I could climb down and get on with the mission.
Well I must of been full of adrenaline and nerves because I cut my rifle strap.
Oops
The weapon fell and never hit a branch on the way down.
I got down to the ground about 10 minutes later and went to get the rifle.
The stock was broken and the barrel was slightly bent
So here I was, green as grass and having to explain to my platoon and company CO why I had a broke ass rifle.
The company CO was an easy going man and was pretty good about it.
My platoon CO gave me hell about it for the next three days.
He assigned me to the 40mm GL and I had to haul around about a 1000 rounds of 7.62 for the platoon MG3 on top of 12 40mm gernade rounds and the launcher
After three days I thought the muscles in my legs were going to explode.
There were still lots of G3s floating around as well when I was serving.
I loved that weapon and we got ahold of as many as we could to take to Afghanistan.
Most of them had bipods and 6x scopes on them and made a pretty dependable and cheap 'sniper' weapons.
The penetration was very good and the power of the 7.62mm round was something you could count on to bring down a target and makesure it stayed down.
Plus the accuracy was the best of any assualt rifle I have ever used or seen in action.
Simply amazing what you could do in single shot mode with the weapons sighted properly.
You could also beat the hell out of them.
Many of them had lots of nicks and fairly serious dents but they still hardly ever jammed.
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Milan IIOriginally posted by flamingknives:Sgt. Joch, which Milan do the Syrians have? I had the impression that it was the older variety that was scarcely better than an RPG7 in terms of armour penetration.
Plus modern MBTs have really good protection over the frontal arc, especially against shaped charges.
The missles they have should be a threat to any APC or tanks from the side or rear.
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My computer should be able to handle it with little problem.Originally posted by Battlefront.com:The bigger the screen, the slower the performance. Just a reminder for you big screen guys
Steve
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They make perfect economic sense and from a logistics standpoint, this should have been done 15 years ago.Originally posted by Challenger 2:EU Battlegroups is the biggest pile of S*** I have ever heard of. It is insane I hate the idea of lossing the Identities of the British forces and the Regiments to a "SUPEREURO FORCE".
It allows nations to split the cost of going to war/peacekeeping and allow them to specialize forces.
Most European nations have adequte force, but projecting that force and the cost of doing so has become prohibiativly expensive.
Combining forces and sharing the load is the perfect way to overcome those problems.
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I do hope the Germans make it in at some point.
As the most significant military and economic force in Europe it would make sense.
And German hardware is very widely used as Steve has pointed out.
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Steel Beasts is an amazing game.
I shelled out $125 for the PE version last year
As to the 'hide' question
From talking to M1 tankers, and I could be wrong here.
But I do not think you can idle those engines.
As I understand it, the engine has the same power output the entire time the engine is running.
The only difference is how much power the driver wishes to use.
A diesel engine on the other hand, like what you find in the Leopard can be idled.
However from talking to Leopard tankers, the engines in modern tanks are so powerful that in order to 'hide' they turn the engines completly off.
The engines can be restarted quickly in the event of danger or needing to move.
I know CMSF will not model it. But diesel engines have another huge advantage over the turbine engine found in the M1.
Fuel consumption.
The M1 uses a incredible 50 gph no matter if the tank is 'ideling' or traveling at top speed.
The Leopard on the other hand uses 50 gph if it is traveling at top speed, but only 5 gph if idled.
America is the only nations with the logistics and fuel resources to feed such a ineffcient tank.
M1 tankers defend the turbine engine to their deaths.
But I really wonder if the Abrams had a traditional diesel engine if performance would be any different.
Most modern tanks have similar mobillity to the Abrams but use far less fuel.
Food for thought.
Im sure the M1 tankers on this forum will give me hell now
The tank is an amazing piece of weaponary with virtualy no flaws and an amazing combat record.
But since its now my job to deal with the resource side of war, I have to wonder if the turbine engine is all that nessacary.
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I am hoping for 1920x1200 as well
Even 1600x1200 looks pretty blocky on it.
I have the hardware to run it as well so im hoping BF goes the route of most modern game developers and lets you pick whatever you monitor can allow.
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I would love to see a Korean war game done.
After a WW2 game making a game set in the Korean war would require very few changes.
Basicaly American weaponary versus Soviet weaponary carried by Korean and Chinese soldiers.
I dont think a 3-D Korean war game has ever been done
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Were does Hezbollah, AQ, and other Jihadist fall into this list? </font>Originally posted by Imperial Grunt:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Battlefront.com:
The old one was over the 300 post safety limit, so I closed it up and opened this one just in case there is more discussion to be had. I figure I might as well toss out something to you guys while I'm at it
From my research and that of Rudel's, it looks like the Syrians have four levels of readiness. This readiness dramatically effects the kinds of equipment they get.
Elite - Speical Forces and Airborne unit personnel. Best trained, best equipped bar none.
Regular - standing Army, including the single Republican Guards Mech Infantry Division (really an Armored Division). These guys get the best equipment, with the Republican Guards getting the top of heap, though not as good as Elite in some respects.
Reserve - generally poor readiness and using the hand-me-downs of the Regular guys.
Militia - very poor readiness and using the hand-me-downs of the Reserves.
Syrian units are fairly straight forward and easy to grasp. There are some minor differences between this or that formation, but in general the infantry type units come down to:
Special Forces - best of the best. Organized similar to regular infantry units, but with all sorts of goodies. Supposedly formed into a Division and independent Brigades, effectively they fight in smaller units.
Airborne - pretty damned good, though not at parachuting (they are para in name only!). Like Special Forces, they are spoiled [note... this is for Module 1, not initial release]. Formed into a single Divisions.
Mech Infantry - mounted in tracked or wheeled APCs, this is the vast bulk of the standing Army forces. Generally formed into Divisions, but some independent Brigades exist.
Mot Infantry - organized similar to Mech Infantry, but lacking organic transportation. When they do get it, it's trucks from a central motorpool. I think there are only one or two of these Brigades.
Infantry - designed to be static defensive units. Basically this is a huge number of trained cannon fodder dopes. All are independent Brigades.
Militia - similar to Infantry, but even worse off than Infantry. All are independent Brigades.
The quality level is roughly in this order too. However, Mech Infantry spans Republican Guard, Regular, or Reserve formations. So there is a huge qualitative range even though organizationally they aren't very different. Mot Infantry and Infantry are Reserve formations only, and therefore generally pretty poor. Militia is its own classification, but is basically Reserves with an even shorter life expectancy
Obviously Special Forces and Airborne are their own beasts in all respects.Steve
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Looking at the latest benchmarks, even games coded before the advent of dual core CPUs run much faster under the newest dual core CPUs than under the fastest single core CPUs.
Even though speeds may be less, they are able to do other things much much faster which taken as a whole lets them crunch numbers faster.
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That sort of gore is so over the top that it has the reverse affect.Originally posted by MikeyD:"How about blood, gore, guts, scattered body parts"
Awhile ago I had asked if wounded souldiers could at least swap-out their uniform art to slightly ...'soiled' versions, but no-go on that either.
I spotted a couple super-extreme gore-fest combat games on You-Tube awhile ago. They were nasty enough to make me change my mind on the 'soiled uniform' topic. No gore is just fine by me.
IMO their is a bell curve of violence and when the violence and gore go past a certain point it losses its revolting power and becomes something else.
The Kill Bill movies are a good example. They are extremley violent, but it is so over the top that standing next to something like Saving Private Ryan, they pale in comparison.
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Originally posted by Barleyman:
This is a myth.Perhaps in the 1950s you would have a point.
But thereafter at no point was Soviet armour significantly better than anything the Western nations could produce.
Germany fielded the Leopard I in 1965 and it had superiority or parity with every Soviet tank afterwards.
The UK had late model Centurians in the early 60s mounting 105mm guns with superior fire controls.
Then in 1967 got the Chieftain which was vastly superior to the T-62/
It had the thickest armour of anything else in the world and a 120mm gun that was the most powerful fielded.
And the US by the early 60s had late model M48s and the M-60 which was a good all around tank well into the 80s.
Even into the late 80s, the M-60 was expected to hold its own against T-80s and in wargames had alot of sucess.
By the 1980s the situation could no longer even be called fair.
Computerized gun stabilization, 2nd generation thermal optics, early computerized fire controls and superior crew survivability.
Couple this with advances in SABOT rounds and new types of armour beyond steel.
The war would have been bloody and the WP would have had its successes, but in tank vs tank situations the Soviets would have been slaugtered at a 4:1 rate.
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People who were arguing based on anti-American "imperialism" rather than sound thinking. They were quite easily brushed aside in factual debates since their positions boiled down to "all I am saying is that Americans are arrogant and therefore someday someone will be able to stand up to them. Uhm, like Syria! Yeah, that's right!"Originally posted by Battlefront.com:</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Who were those people Steve?
Steve </font>
Are medics now in?
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
But im not sure how closely the anatomy of a goat can resemble that of a human.
And nothing can prepare you for the shock of seeing a human body mutilated and broken by the modern weapons of war.
I am by no means a grizzled combat hero. But I have seen what bullets do the human body.
Mortars, artillary shells and rockets do unspeakable things.
All the dead goats in the world cant prepare you for that.
But I will trust that they know what they are doing. Just wishful thinking that there is a better way that avoids the pain and death of a living creature.