Lethaface
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Posts posted by Lethaface
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1 hour ago, Kraft said:
I wonder when the western armies will start to manufacture them en masse and not in tiny quantities, if at all
When the policy makers have came up with a requirement and allocated funds. When that might be exactly is in the domain of tarot card layers I guess.
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2 minutes ago, poesel said:
It is much easier: you just park a trailer with a container which is filled with drones in a 20 km radius of your target. Unless you are in a desert, it won't be noticed until the rooftop opens.
A while ago Youtube featured some corny movies about shipping containers full of tanks, cruise missiles, airplanes, etc being launched from trucks in an hypothetical invasion.
However for an attack with a bunch of Shahed type drones (or better), controlled from some industrial/office/urban area nearby, it doesn't seem that corny indeed.
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9 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
A next wars could possibly begin with drone infiltration over a period of time, to lie quiescient until activated.
When other side gets aggressive and sends its drones across the border the hidden drones activate and strike behind that attack wave at support, C4, political and civilian nodes, disrupting the war from the start.
China, for example, could emplace drones in DC (directing them from China itself or elsewhere) and if attacked, send the drones against Congress, targeting voting members.
Hell, the next coup d'etat attempt anywhere would be smart to use this approach.
Could very well be a thing indeed. I bet most military bases deep in countries have lax defenses against (military operation volume) drones, as of yet that is. But I also expect some instances like the British Imperial army faced in North America. Where native-american / independence fighters refused to 'stand in line and fight' against the British regular troops, to the dismay of the British ;-). "This isn't fair"
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Another drone recollection gathering interrupted by a party pooper ;-).
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7 hours ago, JonS said:
The "-ish" is important. By ceding that airspace as no-man's land (no-man's air?) you at least avoid that whole iff dilemma to the engineering simplicity of "if it flies, it dies." Granted, you are still left with the considerable problem of doing the actual swatting.
Ceding the space possibly also opens up techniques that wouldn't be viable for a "theirs, but not ours" approach. (broad spectrum jamming? Fishing drift nets suspended from balloons?)
I imagine two powers going to war with loads of antiground drone swarms expecting to find a lot of enemy afv etc, only they just encounter enemy drones in mid air along the border and don't have any means of engaging the other apart from ramming perhaps; the drone stare wars.
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7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Right, but what to use to shoot them down? That's a couple Billion Dollar question. Drones for ISR are only going to get smaller and have even more capabilities to avoid detection, so this problem is going to get even harder to solve.
What your comment made me think of is that US and NATO should assume that no matter what they do they will lose a great deal of their existing armored systems in even a very short ground conflict against a range of adversaries. This should inform future purchase decisions, such as not buying $5m tanks that might get blown up thousands of KMs away from the frontline on day one.
It's kinda like Soviet tank production in WW2. They understood that the average tank wasn't going to last more than one or two engagements, so they weren't all that concerned about improving the technical and manufacturing qualities. It is one of the reasons they won the war. The Germans took the opposite approach and it is one of the reasons they lost the war.
To paraphrase many a WW2 sycophant... the Germans had the coolest tanks, small arms, and uniforms. They pioneered ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, guided bombs, night vision, and many other things. They were the first to put armored maneuver, submarine warfare, and tactical air support into mass scale practice. And yet... they lost the war. Badly. There were many reasons for it, but inefficient, costly, overly complex, and HIGHLY vulnerable industrial production was a decisive factor. Can't put mechanized warfare into practice if all you have left are bicycles stolen from the Dutch.
Steve
Lol nicely put. (Ps we have finally overcome that national tragedy).
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3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
47th Mech was moved to Avdiivka a week or two ago, so it is probably them as they operate both Leo2 and Bradley.
Unfortunately only 2 crew members are seen evacuating. Hopefully the other two were already out and off screen.
Steve
I thought I saw a third one in a single frame, hopefully driver and 4th crew could exit to front hatches covered in smoke or indeed were already out.
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1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:
And another Leopard out of action
Fire is from a ruptured fuel tank?
[edit... heh, looks like I didn't need to post this as Lethaface has it covered!]
Steve
I saw another video on X where it appeared to get hit in the rear, engine compartment. Supposedly around Adiivka, I guess part of a mobile arm. reserve to counter new attacks?
At least the crew looked like they can return to the fight after some R&R!
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26 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:
Makes sense if this report is accurate. Don't think Russia has enough personnel for them to sit around in Belarus. I doubt Russia is going to try another rush for Kyiv from Belarus anytime soon, like they tried in those crazy early days of the war.
AFU Bradley in action.
Looks like something achieved a penetration and caused a fuel leak, but indeed most importantly most/all of the crew survived and got away into the Bradley.
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23 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Right, knew someone was going to pitch those. So take a hard look at those wars and the role religion really played:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Protestantism/Events-under-Charles-I
Religion while central, was employed as a wedge or leverage mechanism. Not the primary cause of the war itself, which was almost always about power balance between rulers. Religion was used to light fires under masses to convince them to support one side over the other, not a true objectives of war. There are exceptions, such as the Muslim expansions of the Caliphate era in the 7th century, but cynically these were also about power and resources.
Religion tends to be flavoring and energized to make wars happen harder and not core reasons. Even the Crusades have been re-examined:
" Crusaders did not only fight for control of the Holy Land; they also worked to secure the Church’s power in Europe. Like the wars against the Muslims, these conflicts were promoted by various popes in Christ’s name and led by crusaders who took vows and received special privileges and indulgences. The “enemies” of the Church in Europe included people who were not Christians. It also included Christians who were labeled heretics, that is, people who challenged the official teachings of the Church or who questioned the pope’s power and authority."
https://dcc.newberry.org/?p=14390
So I call BS on most of this to be honest. Northern Ireland:
"However, this Northern Irish conflict was not divided on theological lines but instead on those of class and politics, as those who had been so long oppressed were demanding change, equality and freedom. This paper explores the variety of factors which truly influenced the conflict in Northern Ireland and led to the Troubles, shaping what Northern Ireland is today."
https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1241&context=younghistorians
We can do this all day. Bin Laden wasn't doing it because God told him to. He was looking for some sort of weird Caliphate 2.0 that would put him in power so he could marry Whitney Houston: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS360594553620120214
In reality macro-social constructs have rarely (if ever) gone to war over a social issue such as religion. They have definitely used it and the impulse of faith is incredibly powerful, but do not believe for a second that secular power dynamics, along with good old fashion human failings such as jealousy, greed and fear, are far more prevalent in causes for war. A really interesting question is whether or not humanity would be better or worse off without religion.
Now in micro-social context, especially pre-history, you might have a workable angle here. Smaller groups of people and far deeper spiritual integration into society.
Yup, belief systems are a very effective way of getting people to push your cart. In fact it might be the most effective way of controlling the masses. The holy Emprah wills it!!
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On 10/30/2023 at 11:44 AM, The_Capt said:
And “raccoon stealing”…let’s not forget that. As if raccoons have no agency of their own!
Emptying our raccoon churches and filling them with ambiguously self-identifying marmots…wake up sheeple!
And that's how a misplaced racoon lost Russia the war. I'm not a meme producer or avid consumer but I'd guess this is good source material.
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On 10/30/2023 at 10:43 AM, Zeleban said:
Nothing surprising. This is called concatenation. This thing has been spoiling the mood of programmers from all over the world for a long time.
Now try teaching a nano computer to do basic math functions like additions and subtractions efficiently
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1 minute ago, Zeleban said:
There is nothing supernatural in my decision. I look at the people around me and come to the decision that nothing connects me with them. They are still trying to hold on to the realities of 2022. And so it is with most of my friends - they live the year before last
Nobody is supernatural, we are all human. People who do 'the things' which are necessary to be done, at any cost, are the foundation for success.
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2 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
Yes, but at the moment I am guided by the 0.7 liters of Madeira I drank. Rain outside the window, live concert of Depeche Mode 1993. And the lack of obvious successes of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Many of my childhood friends are afraid of this call. But I think. that this is the duty of everyone who lived carefree in the 90s
Not necessarily a bad guidance in certain moments
здоров'я!
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11 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
I can say that I am not afraid of death or injury, but of the stupidity of my command, or of my future colleagues
The stupidity of mankind knows no borders. But in itself that doesn't matter wherever or whatever your 'work' is. Dying for ones country in an ethically just war for survival is as good as it gets when it comes to 'dying' imho. It certainly beats many other causes of death, never mind how easy it is to say that from my position in a country not in (an existential) war. For what it is worth I have utmost respect for your decision.
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4 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
Be that as it may, I can say that times have changed. compared to last year. I had a development project. But because of the war, I decided that civilian projects would not benefit my country and decided to join the Ukrainian armed forces. Moreover, recently chronic diseases are not considered an obstacle to recruitment
May 'the force' be with you!
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On 10/25/2023 at 12:40 PM, The_Capt said:
You are baiting me, right? “Why they fail” is because this guy has zero idea what he is talking about. Maybe less than zero. As in, people lose knowledge just by watching his video.
Starting with the flail is the first hint. A flail is for admin and rear area clearances. I know some militaries still have them on assault vehicles but everyone in the business agrees they are dumb. On the modern battlefield the flail is suicide anywhere but clearing parking lots for Bde HQ.
Minebots - IED work, not for combat clearing. At least not yet.
Rollers. Ok, these are not designed to work in isolation. In fact it is his entire problem. Minefield clearing is a team sport. This guy is pointing to player positions and trying to figure out which one is best at “playing football”. Plough and rollers are the primary breaching systems. Rollers are designed to 1) detect a minefield, normally through a strike, and 2) prove a minefield after a plough tank has done a breach.
Every plough tank can only clear a safe lane “that every one must follow”. Sorry bald YouTube guy we have yet to invent an area clearance plough. Ploughs are at the center of mechanical breaching. But they are also tricky and terrain dependent. Ploughs and rollers are designed to work together in a team. With their friends, explosive breaching and engineering vehicles.
So opposed minefield breaching is one of the hardest operations to pull off. Right next to amphib on the difficulty scale. You normally have multiple breach lane attempts that use the mechanical and explosive systems. Explosive systems still need to be proven after the breach, normally by rollers. And engineer vehicles for complex obstacles like AT ditches or dragons teeth in the middle of a minefield. Adding more systems ups the complexity a lot requiring a lot of training and skill to pull off in the time windows needed to be successful.
Breaches fail when the breaching teams fail. However that is why multiple breaches are done…we expect half to fail from the outset. Further based on density and cover, one has to scale the number of breaches to try and get a single success. In Ukraine the densities are so high we are likely talking double NATO doctrine: so Cbt Teams are likely shooting for 4 lane attempts instead of 2.
Of course this violates concentration of mass restrictions we are seeing on the modern battlefield. So one either goes small platoon bites and infantry infiltration. Or establish conditions for a major breaching op, and risk most of one’s breaching assets. Establishing those conditions has proven to be the hard part.
Minefield breaching operations as we define them in NATO are failing because the battle space is denied to concentration of mass. RA ISR can even pick up large concentrations of forces and pick out the breaching vehicles. We have not created the defensive bubble to fix that. So minefield breaching is not failing because of individual systems. It is failing because land warfare as we know it is kinda broken right now. Until we either fix it, or figure out a new way to do these things…we are kinda stuck.
Thanks for the detailed post.
Although I think the video was more directed towards the 'average' audience, who might wonder why Ukraine 'fails' it's counter offensive even though they got some / various mine clearing tanks. Do they suck at it or sumfink? See, we are wasting our assets sending them to Ukraine.
With that in mind, the video wasn't necessarily that bad imo; he basically said that mine clearing isn't easy and a single vehicle, even the best one, won't do wonders.
Although there indeed might have been a missed opportunity with regards to going into more detail about breaching operations, although like you note he probably doesn't have enough insight into the matter to really make such a video.And perhaps people just like to see numbered lists of 'which is the best' (instead of a lengthy one going into the proper details of breaching operations (boring!
)and headlines like 'why X fails' seem to be rather dominant on youtube channels, probably for a reason ;-).
In the end he probably made his youtube channel his profession so he needs views/clicks in order to put bread on the table. Overall his channel is at least decently researched, compared to many other channels who just collect lists of wikipedia and make up stuff to satisfy certain pre-convinced theories like how NATO has everything wrong ;-).
For anyone professionally involved in the subjects, especially above the 'i was trained to operate X vehicle/device', his video's are probably worthless. But most youtube video's are, except for some rare videos but they will usually only have 100 viewers and won't come up into anyone's feed unless one specifically searches for it (and knows what to look for to begin with). -
On 10/25/2023 at 7:42 PM, kimbosbread said:
Yeah, and then your corridor immediately fills up again with all the things from outside the corridor, and you are back to square 1.
In the current war at least it would also push towards tac nuke escalation, I'd think.
On 10/25/2023 at 8:03 PM, chrisl said:As already alluded to - high power lasers are typically pulsed. They might be powered by a system that’s in the kW range and hit GW in pulses that are a few ns long. And the short pulses typically are putting all the power in a small area virtually instantly, so you get tremendous local heating and ablation with every pulse - you neglected thermal diffusivity in your bierdeckel calculation. For example, you can power a laser that can engrave rock using a 9V consumer battery.
I think his point was that changing only the (type of) battery doesn't change the theoretical maximum output of the laser. But I guess somewhere the discussion diverged beyond the, for this thread, practical information.
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On 10/23/2023 at 5:14 PM, akd said:
Mini-cope:
TC had some spare money, but not enough for the whole crew
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On 10/23/2023 at 4:39 PM, Battlefront.com said:
The challenge of discussing unmanned systems is defining what the threat is. State actor with resources measured in billions of Dollars? State actor with limited resources, but still counting in the hundreds of millions of Dollars? Non-state actors with access to resources equivalent of poorer states? Non-state actors with significant resources? Non-state actors with fairly tight budgets? Lone wolves with lots of money? Lone wolves with modest means? Combinations of any of these?
Money = capability just as it always has, except that now a little money buy offensive capabilities that cost a LOT of money to defeat. This has kinda been true forever (WW1 was started by a guy with a pistol), but now the offensive potential that a single person can wield for little money is expansive.
If I were in charge of addressing these challenges I would do three things:
1. reject any proposed solution that cost more than 5x the threat it was intended to defeat
2. ensure that any one proposed solution could deal with a wide range of unmanned threats, not specialized responses
3. take up drugs and alcohol like a 1980s hair band rocker
Steve
I presume people are already working on various products and services for the various ranges of threats you are describing.
There doesn't need to be a single solution able to deal with all the unmanned threats. Or perhaps better phrased, a solution could implement a combination of shared generic components and specific components which combined in various ways and numbers, which ultimately could deal with a variety of threats.If we look to relative recent developments in software and more specific infrastructure as a service type of systems, one doesn't need that much alcohol or drugs to come up with an idea how such systems could work ;-).
Now combine that with mobile chip building machines and 3d printers (now we're ta(l)king some good ****) and voila.
A lot of taxpayer/risk capital money will be wasted on various of these ideas, that's for sure. And it will be scary because where is the role of the human in these systems? I imagine some 'target tinder' (or 'terror tinder') where some 'red card holder' swipes right or left to OK/N. OK a target for destruction.A distributed self healing automatic 'HE delivery' service coming with a target discovery service and optional (premium) 'human in the mix' service isn't that wild of an idea, unfortunately perhaps.
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22 hours ago, SonsofUltramar said:
Like many of us, I have been here since CMBO demo days, under various forum names as I have lost access to old email addresses in the early/mid 2000's. CM has been a part of my life, off and on, since CMBO - much like ASL since the 80's.
I am very curious to see what our New Years bone will look like for 2024. I am very unsure what the future of content for CM looks like. While I think all of us would love to see a CMx3 series of games, I dont know if that is even under consideration from BFC.
Ill be honest, it is disheartening to have 100's of posts from Steve on the Ukraine thread, and one or two posts a month about the actual game. Thats not a rub on you Steve - I have a business to run as well, and need free time somewhere to balance my life.
I want CM to succeed - and I am very happy to see the team up with Slitherine, and for CM to be on Steam, opening it up to many more new players.
But, outside of expansions made by the community, what is the future of CM?
Rooting for you guys.
Chad
I guess the Ukraine thread investments will eventually pay out in the form of a new installment where that information has been processed into an improved simulation. Although it could also just be a hobby
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On 10/20/2023 at 10:13 PM, Vacillator said:
I have the view that my chirpings on a forum will not alter in any way what BFC (and/or others) will choose to do or be able to do, but at the same time I'm quite interested in updates and news on what is or might be coming along the tracks. Hence the occasional chirp, but never a complaint.
Well people have all right to complain if they feel it is warranted and I didn't mean to say liking updates is wrong or whatever. Just thought to chime in to paint the picture not everyone has the same Comms preferences.
Although I also like bones, but preferably meaty bones
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I guess over time the no shows will improve but RL can always show up as it did for me during last tournament. These are 100day+ lasting tournaments after all.
Nudges etc can improve stuff but after someone has some experience I guess the reasons for no shows aren't due to people forgetting about the tournament. Afaik there were always mails informing me that new challenge awaits, although sometimes I wouldn't get an email about a new turn. That could be improved perhaps.
And yes the scoring isn't ideal but then again the scoring system was designed more than a decade before the tournament feature was implemented.
Not to say that things shouldn't improve, but it will probably never be perfect. And yes I'm also fanatical about competing when I'm fighting a battle but afterwards I realize it's only a game
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Sounds like a glitch if I understand you correctly (and if your observations are 100% correct
). Individual mortar sections having lost their direct HQ should still be able to be called on for indirect fires if they have close c2 with a higher HQ. At least that is my experience / belief how it should work. It is also strange that it did work when the Platoon HQ casualties were still around, but not after they had been medevac'ed.
Fire is from a ruptured fuel tank?
Annual look at the year to come - 2023
in Combat Mission - General Discussion
Posted
As long as he buys enough green veggies, that's allowed!