hcrof

I wish I could be so optimistic. I don't think the opinions of a retired intellectual don't mean much in China these days unfortunately. The Xi era has stifled free speech and we are left with rubbish like this: https://gaodawei.wordpress.com/2022/04/26/lin-zhibo-russia-ukraine-conflict-and-chinas-position/

Fair point, to be honest my thoughts on China are not quite as glass dragon as my post implied but I am not sure they will escape the middle income trap and become a "true" us-style superpower. Certainly a major regional power and a local threat to the USA and its allies in the region but not the full spectrum of power across the globe. However, I am very worried about the increasingly nationalistic Chinese rhetoric we see now as well as the concentration of all power around one man. "Get in line" has failed and Russia is probably lost, but we need to avoid sleepwalking into another cold war (or worse a crazy and needless war like this one). To your point about who wins, I agree China benefits by sitting out but I am not sure that is decisive. Their only major ally is tied to them closer but is weaker and even more resentful than before. The west has wasted a lot of money on a war but is more united at the end of it (hopefully). China learns a lot about modern war and US capabilities, but that also should give them pause to challenge the west in the near future.

I hear you, but as far as I can see the Chinese are completely caught by surprise by this war, have realised that they know practically nothing about the region and are scrambling to avoid committing to any position that might come to bite them later. It seems that for all their great power pretentions they have realised their diplomatic/intelligence corps is lacking, the western alliance has teeth and the Russian army they admired so much has feet of clay. I imagine their worldview is being challenged quite hard right now and I really hope this results in them playing more nice in the future - they have a long way to go before they are a true superpower and it would benefit everybody to tone down all the nationalistic stuff.

You made me have another look and yes, the shoulder of the concrete seems to have broken away - also there seems remarkably little rebar in such a critical location. Perhaps some building materials "went missing" before they arrived on site. Another thing I noticed is that the embankment seems to be recently eroded and very muddy. This would support my hypothesis of foundation failure - if they had recently cleared away some vegetation on the bank then a good rainstorm might have been the straw that broke the camels back. So: primary cause of failure was foundation failure, exacerbated by poor design/construction.

It is very hard to tell what exactly happened to the bridge from these photos. There is no obvious damage that might have triggered the event, but also strangely it doesn't look like the bridge hit anything on the way down. It is almost as if the supports moved apart from each other over time (i.e. a failure of the foundations) and eventually the bridge just fell off. As this is pretty adjacent to my field of expertise (I design buildings, not bridges) I would suggest that the bridge was pretty poorly designed by modern (i.e. post-1960s in the West) standards and only minor damage would result in catastrophic collapse like this. All bridges require movement joints to allow for thermal expansion and contraction but I would expect a bridge to be tied securely to its supports as opposed to relying on friction to stop it falling off. Bridges of this design would be very vulnerable to an explosion should someone genuinely decided to take a crack at them.

Hi all, another long time dormant member here re-emerging to say thanks for such a great thread. This really is the best analysis of the war I know of, due to the mix of on the ground people (Haiduk, kraze) and knowledgeable experts from lots of different backgrounds. I keep thinking about what a Russian or Ukrainian armoured offensive would actually look like in practice. They would require some kind of staging area, but surely these would be visible to ubiquitous drones and then nailed with a arty/air/SRBM strike before they leave the starting line? How long would it take for a brigade or more to assemble like that, or do modern armies stay dispersed even just before a big push? Maybe that is why the Russians have not concentrated for their big offensive? They would be too vulnerable before the order to move out? But if that is the case, how does the UA solve that problem?

Hi Buzz, I am afraid that I am not really technical enough to answer your question properly but as far as I am aware, CM is not perfect at clearing the virtual memory so if you open up anything before a large map like this one it will not clear the memory properly and you will get an out of memory error. Other than that I am a bit stumped as to why you could open it up once but not again, it seems quite strange. Maybe someone more knowlegable than me could help out?

To be fair, I think the editor takes longer to load than actual battles. I started a test PBEM on it and after deployment was finished loading times were reduced by a lot!

Thank you all for your kind comments! I would also be interested to hear from anyone who has a game on it too to see how it plays. Buzz, I did indeed spend some years of my childhood there and still return occasionally. It is a fantastically beautiful town in real life with a really nice community too so I was very lucky.

The full description is below. I made this map a long time ago but have only just been persuaded to release it. I am tempted to call it 'unique' in its scope if not its size but I would be happy to be proven wrong There is a small issue with pathfinding from a 'strategic' courtyard in town but otherwise it runs fine (if your computer can handle it!). Full description is below:

Funnily enough, I love BTRs. They do exactly what you want them to. They are fast, simple, reliable, cheap, surprisingly good off road, amphibious and that 14.5mm cannon will tear great big holes out of buildings at very long ranges. They can even be used to ambush light armour if you are desperate. Treat 'em right and they will do you well!

While this talk is interesting, please read the below. http://russiamil.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/russia-has-not-sent-troops-to-syria/

I would be very interested to see a source for that. If that is true then a pretty thick red line has been crossed.

Im not going to contest the fact that Soviet casualties were higher, or the fact that many of them where due to easily preventable deseases but they actually had less troops than NATO and they were fighting a lot better funded and supplied enemy, using 70s equipment (even at the end of the war). Most of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan were pretty bottom of the barrel troops as the good ones were in Europe and they never had the resources to do a proper job (the second part sounds familiar ). The VDV and Spetznaz on the other hand were effective but there just weren't enough of them. It is not impossible to make a comparison but the differences in the conflicts do have to be pointed out.

So far in this revolt we have seen around 6000 civilians killed. In my view, if Bashar gets hold of the situation we will see at least another 3000 deaths but he will remain in power. The west then imposes sanctions on the country which will last another 5-10 years and Bashar will start rounding up the remnents of the opposition and throw them in jail. Many will be tortured. It is a terrible tragedy to watch, but the alternative is open ended and I don't feel like that risk is worth taking. The Lebanese civil war resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths (out of a population of only 3 million), the destruction of Beirut and instability in the region for decades afterwards. The massacre at Hama 'only' killed some tens of thousands and ended the rebellion permenently. Later on, there was repression and a lot of arrests but Bashars father didn't conduct the large scale killings that Saddam did. From what I have seen so far, I have picked my poison and it is repression and organised brutality against a mostly innocent populace. It is a hard medicine and it should be washed down with active promotion of political Syrian opposition groups and international pressure for reform. Not that I would be too optimistic about that of course...

That is an interesting point you just made there - just who is calling the shots? Without a clear replacement for Assad, removing him would slide the country into anarchy. I for one would not want a messy sectarian conflict on my conciousness - if it takes more deaths in the put-down then I am willing to turn my eyes. As you say yourself, there have been too many horrific civil conflicts in the middle east already. Any change in government should come through peaceful revolution. The Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions put a new government in place that will take a while to shake out but I am cautiously optimistic, the Libyan revolution removed a tyrant but the replacement is looking very shakey. The downfall of Assad would in my opinion be a disaster as bad as Iraq that not only would potentially kill or injure hundreds of thousends of people but could also suck in neighbouring countries such Lebanon, Israel or Turkey. This is not a good/evil conflict. It is a a population that may have legitimate greivences against its government but is now throwing itself towards savage civil war. I for one would rather pay bribes and keep my mouth shut in public than live for months in fear of random violence destroying my family and freinds. Here is a question. If you wish to see Assad gone, how would this be achieved and what do you believe the eventual outcome will be 1-5 years on?

Personally I think that any western involvement should not be overt at this stage, the cynical approach the west took in Libya really didn't do us any favours here. After Libya, hellfires are really not so different to troops on the ground - that distinction has been lost and the TV just shows the west beating on Arabs again. We will just have to accept a more indirect involvement and see what we can do with our good old spy agencies. The sad thing is that the situation has got to the point where if Bashar stays he will be internationally isolated and paranoid enough to reverse any moves towards democracy he might have started (he certainly had a softer touch than his dad). If he goes the country will be badly destabilied and the crazies will start coming out of the woodwork, potentially triggering a bloody civil war and reversing economic groth and prosperity. Either way, foreign investment in Syria has been badly shaken, the economy wont recover for years and a generation will be scarred by the experience. Fun times!

The Shah, Saddam, Mubarek etc were indeed distasteful and while they provided a veneer of stability, the lack of an effective way for the people to express their greivences caused the discontent we saw in the Arab spring. If we want stability in the middle east we must promote robust government, not some petty strongmen. For this, I see the muslim brotherhood as a promising sign. While we might not agree with them, they appear to respect democracy and have a certain degree of tolerence for others. We may well get into massive diplomatic arguements with them but we disagree with Russia/China/Turkey etc all the time and it doesn't end in bloodshed. My point is that we cannot expect the Middle East to suddenly start respecting gay rights and opening jewish owned strip clubs any time soon, especially with the recent cultural shift towards conservatism in the Islamic world. We should instead opt for true stability and effective governance over wide eyed idealism or short term fixes and let improved education and prosperity work its magic in the long game.

Thanks for the comments LUCASWILLEN05, the NATO version just has trucks so makes it incompatible with those without the NATO module. Given such a small change, there was little effort in replacing the trucks with jeeps to let others play the scenario As for reinforcements I think the game would struggle if any more units are added. PBEM turns are dangerously close to what it takes to crash the game as it is! I was aiming to get a lot of movement in this battle with non existant "front lines" so all troops are mechanised and there is a lot of terrain to drive around in. Making the country quite rough allows me to let more troops occupy a smaller area without becoming static. I considered air support quite hard. It would be fun for plinking tanks certainly, but I couldn't add it at deployment because people would just bombard their opponents starting areas and their call in times are very long for a fluid battle! I have played through 2 versions of this battle now and this is the 3rd iteration. Every time I play it involves a lot of movement and horrendous casualties on both sides - there is a lot of firepower here! One satisfying this is that you never feel limited in your forces you can direct a company to attack a squad or position a whole platoon of ATGMs or bombard the enemy with a battery of artillery... :cool: I welcome people remixing the scenario in any way they like. If you want to add western forces then be my guest

Just to play devils advocate here, having visited Syria it didn't strike me that the population had zero. Generally it seemed like whilke the government was corrupt, it wasn't nearly as bad as many other countries. I believed at the time that reform was beginning the happen but inertia in the regime and entrenched interests were slowing it down to a crawl. At its best, the government was actually quite European/liberal even if it did occasionally pull its citizens off the streets for torture if they said anything stupid. Bashar still has the support of a large section of his populace, despite the violence. Perhaps even majority support. In fact you could say that the regimes initial attacks on were calculated to force people to take sides - perhaps Bashar was gambling that he had clear majority support? At any rate, there is no leadership amongst the Syrian rebels, no muslim brotherhood, not even a "NTC". For all his faults, Bashar is the only person in the country to prevent another Lebanon and I for one would hate to see that level of pointless sectarian violence. My (ill informed) opinion is that we bail Bashar out of this crisis and then screw him hard for reform once this is done. At the very least encourage a clear alternative to him for power, but this needs time to happen.

Thanks boche. I should mention that it is multiplayer only - I have always been terrible at AI plans. In fact, I ought to update the repository page! The battle is actually a modified version of "Farm Wars" http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=89839 The map and forces have been heavily reworked to give better balence though.

I will take your word for in on the 2003 war - I just did a very quick count from wikipedia, and lumped some independent brigades together to make division. As you say, the numbers of personnel are very different With regard to the Iranian ORBAT - they seem to have a remarkably small number of listed troops for a country of its size. Does anyone know why this is the case? What are the chances of new divisions suddenly appearing out of nowhere once the reservists are called up? With respect to the route from Baghdad to Tehran, the terran looks just awful, especially considering there is over 500km of it. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/54145281?source=wapi&referrer=kh.google.com Very pretty but difficult enough getting a company up it, let alone trying to put 4 combat divisions and their logistical tail up it, preying that there are no attacks/breakdows/need to reorganise order of march. A single division typically advances up multiple roads to prevent massive tailbacks but there just arn't any in that part of Iran. In this example, the next nearby road is nearly 8km away and looks even more dangerous. Essentially, terrain like this could stop a major attack all by itself, without the need to defend it. Further south, you could make further progress from Basra but the mountains protecting Esfahan are literally a wall with a few single lane roads winding their way over some high passes. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4769552?source=wapi&referrer=kh.google.com Maybe I would like to go there one day, but with a camera, not a tank! (actually, looking at photographs of likely routes reminds me how beautiful Iran is!) Afghanistan looks a little more promising from attackers point of view (as in merely and not :eek:) - except that it would take so long to get to Tehran that defending forces could reposition into the mountains around the city. Also, supply into Afghanistan is hard enough right now without adding some highly mechanised high intensity warfare. Finally, any attack from the Persian Gulf would quickly turn into gallipoli again. Um. I guess the short answer is that an Iraq style invasion is militarily impossible. I tried to look into options but there does not seem to be any feasable way to deliver a significant force into the important Iranian cities and conquer the country. I will even state that Iran is probably one of the hardest countries to invade in the world. The only states that are in a position to do it according to the terrain are landlocked themselves... I would be interested to hear other peoples opinions and any AARs but I think that it will have to be a fictional country if you want to realistically invade it!

Personally I think it is extremely small to take on a country the size of Iran (75 million people). Russia used 3 divisions to take on Georgia and you are proposing to defeat Iran with 6? Just a quick check on wikipedia shows the 1991 Gulf War involved 11 US/UK combat divisions as well as a large number of allied blocking forces. The 2003 invasion used about 12 against an even weaker opponent. I am not even including the enormous amount of artillery, logistic etc support involved. This was a campaign against a lesser enemy, in a smaller battlespace, in favourable terrain, with far more limited objectives. The problem about invading Iran strikes me as being threefold: Firstly the size of the country means supply lines are going to get extremely stretched Secondly the large population would not take kindly to invasion. Finally, Iran will use its rough terrain to its advantage, trading space for a steady flow of casualties that may well become unsustainable before the government capitulates. I am interested by the idea though, and I will see how this thread develops

wombat_of_war you have a PM!

If you are interested I can add to your collection. My forte is the Soviet army of the 70s and early 80s but I have a bunch of interesting US documents as well. In addition to tactics, I also have reports, TOEs and pictures. Most of it is cold war era. Total size is about a Gigabyte.