BlackAlpha
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Posts posted by BlackAlpha
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That's the problem, does a trained marksman (military) get a sufficient benefit from having a modern optic at short/medium ranges (not talking about sniper rifles) to justify the investment of equipping him with it?
And how do compare two trained marksmen (military) when it comes to shooting with and without such aid? Do their performances differ much or little?
I just edited my previous post: Another big thing is being able to see and identify a target at longer ranges (past 200/300 meters). Optics help with that hell of a lot.
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There is a whole debate among personal weapon enthusiasts wheather modern optics of "small" or "medium" size give any kind of help over a simple iron sight shooter.
What can we say is that US army and marines for sure think they give an advantage, hence their wide spread issue to combat units, although we might argue if the costs/benefit is more or less efficient.
Well, it certainly doesn't hurt. And past 200 or so meters it makes it much easier to hit something for someone who isn't a marksman. Plus, if you want to effectively engage at longer distances, you really need to have some optics.
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Much appreciated, but I just can't believe that it was a jet afterburner, or at least no jet that I've ever heard of. I heard no noise whatsoever, nor did anyone else who reported similar sightings that evening to the best of my knowledge. It looked more like a shooting star (which it may well have been), but without any trail; it moved very fast at an apparently constant speed, stood still for a second, then started moving again in a new direction at a very fast, apparently constant speed.
I'm trying to find a video of something like it but not having any luck.
Might've been a maneuver they were practicing. Maybe on how to dodge incoming missiles? Remember that from your point of view it might've looked like it was not moving, but it could've been moving away from you like that jet in the video I gave you.
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I looked into that verification, they require that you have an active Google + account. Bleck. Also requires a lot of subscribers, probably more than I have.
I was able to successfully highlight the scenario design stream despite its length.
I think you are confusing verifying an account with verifying an account name. The latter would mark your name as official, ie. you are really who you say you are. But you don't really need that. You just need to verify your account to indicate you are not a bot and unlock all the Youtube features.
I verified my account ages ago and the system has changed since then, so I'm not sure how it's done these days, but I found the following that gives you instructions on how to do it with the current system:
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I did some digging on Youtube for a video and adjusted my previous post with better explanations. Check above.
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Well, I hope nobody was waiting with bated breath or anything, because it's probably pretty run-of-the-mill as far as UFO stories go. It was in 2007 if I recall correctly, while I was attending university in Waterloo, Ontario, which I later learned is a bit of a hot spot for UFO sightings. I went out for a smoke at night, and saw a point of golden light travelling very quickly on a downward angle, stop for a second, then zoom off in another direction. I shrugged it off at the time, figuring it was likely a small meteorite bouncing off the atmosphere, but the fact that it appeared to stop on a dime gave me pause for thought. There were several such sightings that evening; my then-girlfriend / now-wife saw one too on her drive home from work.
If it was a craft of some sort, I'm inclined to believe it was more likely military than extraterrestrial. They've been experimenting with flying saucer technology since at least the end of the Second World War - some of them in Ontario, such as the VZ-9 Avrocar - so god only knows what kinda toys they have now.
On a slightly related note, in 2009 while out having a smoke at another place we rented in Waterloo, my wife and I were buzzed by a jet flying at a very low altitude, especially considering it was over an urban area. Based on the silhouette, and assuming it was Canadian, it was most likely either a CT-155 Hawk or CT-114 Tutor. Not all that remarkable in and of itself, but what struck me was how incredibly quiet it was - even considering that they are normally quiet aircraft. We couldn't hear anything at all until it was right on top of us, and even then it was like somebody blowing softly in your ear. It was pretty nifty.
Terrain/buildings can obscure sound. Other sounds in the area can also obscure certain sounds.
The golden glow in your first story sounds like a jet you saw in the distance. The glow would've been the afterburner of a fighter jet. You maybe don't remember, but there probably was a very low hum as well, which would've been the jet engine.
I hope you don't think you saw aliens or something.
EDIT: It's kind of hard to find a proper video of it on Youtube. The following video is the closest I could find to what you probably saw. Note how it's very hard to hear the jet after a while, the afterburner hum is drowned out by other noises:
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Can't make it on Sunday evening. Will it be uploaded on Youtube?
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It's war. War consists of more than armies fighting each other. War touches on all aspects of life. For that reason, misinformation is created to manipulate people's opinion. Lies and half-truths are told. This happens by both sides. This has always been like that during war and this will always be like that in the future. So, don't be surprised by it.
I can second the claim that Kiev has told a lot of lies. Maybe not as much as Moscow but still pretty close.
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We do not model thermal crossover for any thermal systems. There are far too many factors involved in determining whether spotting any particular target with a thermal device would actually be affected in a meaningful way. It would be even more wrong to have a blanket "during this time period all thermal spotting is negatively affected" environmental effect.
For a future installment set a bit further into the future, it might be worth it to do research into weather patterns and how it affects IR systems. How to avoid being detected by IR using the environment and/or cloaking systems seems to be the next big thing.
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I'm guessing that the internal temperature is different from the temperate at the surface of the person/object.
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talking of the javelin, i've read that on a forum:
Javelin has two guidance modes... fire and forget and semi automatic command to line of sight.
The first mode is its trick, the second is just the same as most other ATGM on the market with most other missiles offering better range or penetration or speed or a combination of all three.
The fire and forget mode requires an IR signature to get an initial lock so Nakidka or a smoke screen will make that fairly difficult to impossible.
In conventional SACLOS mode it is a horizontal attack missile like any other standard missile and therefore vulnerable to the various defences against such weapons like Shtora, Smoke, and ARENA/Drodz APS.
Very simply as a command to line of sight missile the Javelin needs to be able to track where the missile is so it can detect any deviation from the line of sight and transmit course corrections to the missile. Shtora dazzles the optical tracking of Javelin making its position relative to the target impossible to determine by the guidance system hense it fails.
any comments ? he talks about three countermeasures here: nakidka, which we have already discussed, IR smoke, and shtora ..
I wouldn't call the Javelin the same as other man-portable ATGMs. Correct me if I'm wrong. Judging by what the Javelin manual says:
The CLU locks on to a picture and sends the picture to the missile. The missile then memorizes the picture and tries to fly to where the lock is. It can also somehow figure it out when the lock is moving and the missile can maintain the lock. It uses that method in both the top and direct attack modes. It's fire and forget, it is not SACLOS. The CLU does not send any data to the missile once the missile is in the air.
The CLU or the missile (I'm not sure which) checks the distance to the target. The missiles uses the distance to the target to determine how high the missile should go before leveling out. This happens so that the missile can go as high as possible while still being able to keep looking at the target during the entire time the missile is in the air.
In the top attack mode the manual suggests the missile impacts at an angle of at least 45 degrees. That might be enough to fly closer to a target behind smoke, regain the lock and hit the target. But that's just my wild guess.
I don't know what the maximum angles for the hard-kill APS systems are.
I'm assuming that to create the lock the missile looks for a certain pattern but also accepts small changes to the pattern. I'm guessing that it will lose the lock if the pattern suddenly, drastically changes (let's say a tank changes into something as large as a building or vice versa). I'm also guessing that the missile tries to predict the path of a moving lock and so maybe can also deal with situations where it loses the lock for a short while. But that's just another wild guess.
Fun fact: When you activate the seeker to try to get a final lock (you then get to see what the missile actually sees), you get 4 minutes to get the lock and fire before the battery attached to the missile runs out. You cannot make the battery stop. If it runs out, you need to remove the battery and attach a new one. Then you need to do the final lock sequence with the seeker again.
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Actually, the manual says multiple times that it can happen that the Javelin may not be able to distinguish a target due to crossover.
"4-59. Sometimes the seeker will not be able to distinguish between the background and the target because the two have the same temperature (crossover)."
- 4-19
"During these two periods, everything in the target scene is about the same temperature, which means there are few, if any measurable ΔTs. As shown earlier, when there is no measurable ΔT, the gunner cannot distinguish a target from its background."
- E-8
The part you quoted at e-21 technically only says that the gunner may adjust the brightness to "locate" a target. But it doesn't specify if you then also can fire at it (will the missile get a lock?).
So, the way I understand this is that during crossover (thermal inversion) you may be able to spot a vague blur using high-end FLIR by adjusting the brightness to the extreme, but you may not be able to identify what you see or fire at it.
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Ok. But I think it's safe to say that antaress73's point still stands. FLIR has a tendency to have problems during dusk and dawn, and therefore a Javelin CLU/missile would have problems as well. So, as antaress73 asked, will this be modeled in the game? And if so, what about the other IR equipment/weapons?
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BlackAlpha,
There appear to be two different, but perhaps interrelated phenomena under discussion here. The one I described is entirely due to normal behavior of materials as solar load is removed and reradiation from the object being sensed becomes dominant. This sort of blanking occurs when the object and the background are temporarily at the same temperature. The other pertains to an atmospheric condition with which I'm intimately familiar with one variety, the inversion layer that traps smog, sometimes for weeks on end.
http://www.chaseireland.org/Thermal%20Inversion.htm
My technical argument is that since modern FLIR systems, including detector arrays in IR missile seekers, can now distinguish temperature far more finely than could their Nam era forebears, the period of zero thermal contrast will be markedly shortened, since even a tiny shift in emission temperature will immediately make the target seeable again in the IR spectrum, as opposed to, say, being forced to work with equipment of much poorer thermal discrimination. Restating, the more sensitive the detector array, the shorter the period of thermal image blanking.
Regards,
John Kettler
Ok, but I rather go by what people who have used it say. So I rather believe what SeinfeldRules says. Plus, that fits in with what I've read about the thermal inversion effect. It creates a barrier of air that is of a certain temperate which blocks/degrades the IR signature of objects behind/inside the barrier. I don't see how having more sensitive FLIR can bypass that because the temperature barrier will still be in the way.
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antaress73 and BlackAlpha,
While I can't speak to the Javelin system specifically, I can say that the loss of thermal contrast problem was noted as an issue during the Vietnam War. It was a problem so severe it made whole major steel truss bridges disappear. That said, modern IR sensors and seekers are highly sensitive able to operate on far less IR contrast than were their now ancient forebears, theoretically reducing the problem. At least, somewhat. Here are the specs on a modern Thermal Weapon Sight subject to ITAR and in use by SOCOM.
http://tnvc.com/shop/flir-t70-advanced-combat-thermal-sight-short-range/
Don't know anything about FLIR specs. Could you explain why you think those specs would negate the thermal inversion effect?
I did some searching on google and found some quotes that suggest thermal inversion is an issue for FLIR:
"...thermal inversion that blanks out the Apache FLIR by rendering all temperatures de-pressingly uniform."
"NAVFLIR
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Depending on the temperature differentials and wind conditions, a thermal inversion layer normally builds over the water as the evening temperature drops. This inversion layer has been shown to mask the presence of hot objects (boats) on the water, from mid altitudes until thermal conditions stabilize. Exact timing depends on daytime heating, cloud cover and object characteristics, but in general terms there is a temporary thermal washout in 6-5 early evening as the more "reflective" objects transfer from hot to cold. NVGs may aid in target/object detection during these thermal inversions."
"9-9. AVIATION URBAN OPERATIONS RISK ASSESSMENT
Risk assessment, as a step in the military decision-making process (MDMP), must identify and assess unique hazards associated with aviation UO. The following list is not all-inclusive, but it provides a good starting point in identifying possible UO hazards.
...
d. Weather.
(3) Night-vision systems are degraded due to city lights and thermal inversion."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-06-11/ch9.htm
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I read somewhere that everything that uses IR has problems seeing things at dawn and dusk due to something called thermal inversion or some such.
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Any infantry squad can now wield the firepower necessary to stop or at least suppress, armor.
No, not really. Do you see every western infantry squad/section carrying a Javelin anti tank launcher? Do you see every Russian infantry man carrying a RPG-30? No. Go contemplate why that is so and then you will have the answer on why the tank won't go away any time soon.
This situation will probably only change when infantry will be able to carry larger loads, like for example by using exoskeleton suits (which won't happen for a while). If exoskeleton suits never happen, then this situation won't change, not for a long time, at least.
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That article was probably written by somebody who doesn't know what a tank is.
The wikipedia article makes more sense:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_GXV-T
It's definitely not a tank, but it might be an interesting armored vehicle for recon maybe.
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If the squad doesn't move, then indeed they will probably die (get bombed or blown up in some way). Don't blame the AR for that. You can do suppressive fire on the move, you know. Or if you want to stay hidden, don't fire at all, while moving. Militaries have been doing this for ages, so what has changed?
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50 and 100 round mags are in development but I don't know offhand how close they are to deployment.
Again, remember that the current USMC TOEs keep 9 x M249s in the Company "weapons locker," for distribution as the CO sees fit, so the Marine Rifle Company can hit the beach with 1 x M249 *and* 3 x M27 loadout per squad anytime it wants to.
Given the changes in the nature of ground combat since WWII, it's also debatable how useful comparisons to WWII are. Tech, tactics, and doctrine have changed a lot. Not to say there isn't still a need for a lightweight belt-fed automatic weapon, but given advances in other weapons systems, you can make arguments that such a weapon in every single rifle squad isn't the best loadout anymore.
I understand what you mean, but even in this modern day, suppressive fire works. People tend not to shoot back when there's a hail of bullets coming their way.
The arguments I heard were that it's lighter and more accurate, allowing the AR to easier keep up with the rest of the team. I compare this with the future combat systems light brigades. Maneuvering your way around all the threats is nice but there will always come a time when you stand face to face with the enemy, and then you need raw firepower and brute strength to win.
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But as in so many things, when the Marines really want something, they find a way of getting it.
In my opinion, the whole USMC M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle program is actually a stealth program intended to eventually convert the entire Corps to the M27 as the base infantry weapon. Note that the M27 is really just an H&K 416 with a few minor modifications. The M27 isn't all that different from an M16, but it has been demonstrated to be considerably more reliable, and also more accurate, especially at long ranges.
Officially, the M27 is only supposed to be carried by one man per fire team (3 per squad), replacing the M249 SAW as the "base of fire" weapon. This change is already well underway and will presumably be complete by CMBS' 2017 timefame.
However, note that the M249 remains in the USMC TOEs at the Company level for use "at the CO's discrection." So Marine rifle squads can still go into battle with M249s, if the Company CO sees fit. I suspect in a "hot" war (as opposed to a police action or COIN op), you'd see USMC rifle Companies going in with M249s AND as many M27s as they could muster, leaving the M16 as a minority weapon relegated to non-rifle squad and second line units.
Crafty, those USMC procurement guys.
Did they get the 100 round magazines yet for the AR? Because without it, it's essentially another rifle. That might work when fighting insurgents, but during a conventional war you need a lot more firepower. Remember the BAR and WW2?
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Well, anti air weapon technologies have advanced quite a bit since the A-10 was introduced many years ago. I know it can survive AAA but what about modern missiles during a conventional war? And then I'm thinking, it will probably need to survive a lot of modern incoming missiles.
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Looking good! Would love to see some gameplay footage (video) containing lots of infantry.
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How easy is it to destroy a helicopter or a plane on a modern battlefield? Very. So, why do we still make use of helicopters and planes? Because they still have their uses in certain situations. The exact same thing can be said about the tank.
Tanks A Thing Of The Past?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
There are physical limitations. You need an X amount of explosives to be able to defeat the armor. This means the missiles need to be of a certain size. That's why something like a Javelin is so large. You try to create a MIRV version of a Javelin and you make it impossible for an infantry man to carry it.
Something different now. Something that I don't see people discuss is strategies and tactics. The tank has survived all this time and is still doing so well because it can fulfill certain strategies and tactics very well that no other vehicle can. What else are you going to use to maneuver quickly while still being able to deliver a lot of firepower and sustain a lot of incoming fire?