hcrof
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Posts posted by hcrof
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39 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Not sure anything we are discussing here meets the "nationalistic" definition as no one nation is being represented, this is more a discussion on "what happens next" on a global scale.
It seems like every time I hear, or get into a discussion on China and the power contest with the current global order the usual suspects come out. We get the ardent anti-Chinese paranoia ("they are in my plumbing") and what you pose here, "The Glass Dragon", the only thing missing is poking holes in property bubbles and demographics.
I do want to pull on one thread here that often comes out of the "Glass Dragon" sphere, I highlighted it in your post. That has been the "get in line" strategy we have been basically relying upon for over 30 years. The hope that China would see the error of its ways as we demonstrate the benefits of the current global order, while we try to contain its rapid expansion. It is basically a version of the Cold War strategy, and it has not worked, nor is it likely to in my opinion. And most of the 5EYEs Security and Defence strategies agree with me, so there is that.
Finally, I am not sure what the definition of a "true superpower" is, but this gets thrown around a lot as well. Are we talking the ability to leverage influence on a global scale? Is it comparative to the US? Is it marshalling collective will? These terms get thrown around in what looks more like an attempt to make ourselves feel better than really looking at our environment (i.e. "well we are still a superpower and they aren't...oh look the Friends Reunion is on")
I think we are past "normalization hope" here, as this current war looks and feels like the opening of a new phase of this thing.
I was at a defence conference way back in 2015 and it was largely boring old stuff one expects hear at these things. There was a lot of focus on Russia because of the Crimea but it was the usual "we will win through teamwork and capitalism" type stuff. Then this old guy was on a panel that made the whole room sit up and take notice. He was in charge of covert action in Afghanistan back in the 80s, which was pretty impressive, but his points on Russia resonate to this day. His position was that the future global competition, as it relates to Russia, was which sphere that nation was driven or pulled into. We, the west, needed to pull Russia towards Europe, and that should be easy as gravity of history and culture was on our side. If Russia were to be pulled into the Eastern sphere 1) shame on us for letting it happen and 2) that would be a very bad thing.
Here we are in 2022, this thing is not decided but it sure looks like it is sliding in the bad direction to me. I frankly subscribe to the "who wins out of all this" as a metric, and right now China's position looks pretty solid.
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.
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23 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
There is a seed of a very important point here - No, we cannot trust anything Russia is saying...because they are the enemy. I am not sure it has sunk in yet within the western world but at some point -some argue from the very beginning- this whole thing has become a war between Russia and the Western Global Order. If the May 9th things happens or not, we are already in an undeclared war between Russia, its allies, and the western world. Ukraine gets the unfortunate distinction of being the battleground but this thing does not end if either Russia takes the entire nation, or is kicked out of the entire nation of Ukraine; this is a violent collision of irreconcilable certainties as to how the world will be ordered into the latter half of the 21st century.
I strongly suspect that we are seeing orders of magnitude proxy happening here. Ukraine is one, Russia is the other. And I am not going all "conspiracy theory" here but the other great world power is watching this all in the background and seeing a lot of wins as outcomes. China is not only tacitly supporting Russia and, it is grabbing up all that US intel - a brilliant move to beat Russia to the punch, but risky in its exposure to China, a risk I am sure the US was aware of. It could be argued that China is staying on the side lines because it has the most to gain in this collision, and it is likely in its interests to keep it going until Russia is burned out and pulled into its sphere further as a weakened and dependent partner.
This also sets up for further economic incursion into Europe as there is nothing illegal with Chinese owned oil and gas, coming out of Russian soil, being bought by Europe. Our sanctions are against Russian corporations. As this thing expands and intensifies, I am starting to see a Chinese long-game emerge as Russian and Western world drive whatever is left of Russia into the Eastern orbit. I personally would have thought this impossible given culture and history but here we are.
As to the current fight, this is very much us vs them and will be long after the shooting stops in Ukraine itself. Welcome to the Complicated War 1.
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.
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4 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
I thought about this marks, but I think they are just water/mineral stains.
Adding to what hcrof wrote, looks to me that concrete was the primary material used for both the bridge and the supports. I am not a structural engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but there's plenty of failing early 20th century concrete bridges around me that are failing. Pretty easy to see what happens to structural integrity over time.
To me it looks like the shoulder concrete gave way and the bridge "slipped" off its supports. Notice how the crushed stone from the rail bed is all neatly cascaded down over the horizontal surfaces and then to the ravine. I don't know that we'd see such neatness if there had been an explosion.
Again, even in advanced Western countries there's a huge problem with early/mid 20th century infrastructure being on the critical list. And this is stuff that has most likely seen at least regular maintenance and adherence to safety parameters. Therefore, it should be expected that Russia is worse off. They will likely see things like this happening on a regular basis even without pesky people putting 'splody things underneath them.
Steve
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.
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13 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Looks like standard structural failure due to age and (likely) over use.
In the West when a bridge is found to be weakening it is "posted" to restrict weight on it until it can be replaced. This is an involved process that is, itself, quite expensive to do. Even small bridges can cost several tens of thousands USD for proper assessment and larger bridges can cost hundreds of thousands. I very much doubt the Russians are big on this sort of thing.
Steve
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.
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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?
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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?
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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!
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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.
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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:
A huge (2.8x2.7km) map based on the picturesque town of Bruton in the South-West of England. The map incorporates the town of Bruton itself (population 3000) as well as surrounding hamlets and farms and the river Brue which lends its name to the town.The countryside is rolling hills and farmland which makes using tanks a challenge and the large size of the map means that infantry movement will be slow, especially given that every hedgeline and village could prove to be an ambush in waiting.
This map has no AI plans and has been created with QBs in mind. The attacking force will need to be a battalion+ to realistically have a chance of clearing the town and both heavy artillery support and a lot of ammo trucks are recommended.
Just by way of disclaimer, this map is 100% realistic and therefore there is no 'gamey' tricks to make the action happen faster or to provide options where there were none before. As a result, any battle here will be a long, combined arms operation which will require a lot of patience! On the other hand, this offers a perfect example of how bloody and logistically demanding clearing a town can bein the real world.
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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!
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While this talk is interesting, please read the below.
http://russiamil.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/russia-has-not-sent-troops-to-syria/
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The regime won't -- can't -- stop at a "few thou". As we speak every (Sunni) male remaining in Baba Amr is being trucked away by the 4th Mechanized Division, which is essentially an Alawite militia with tanks.
I expect that that on the sectarian militia pattern pretty much all these men will be shot and buried in mass graves, many after being savagely beaten and tortured in custody. The rationalization will be easy enough; it's too much trouble to keep them, much less make any serious attempt to sort the "guilty" from the "not so guilty".
I would be very interested to see a source for that. If that is true then a pretty thick red line has been crossed.
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Well you can look at like this. They had about 3 times as many troops as the US and COA forces did, lost a hell of a lot more men, had a lot more soldiers wounded from battle, had a butt load more wounded due to diseases, but also killed a massive amount of Afghans compared to us.
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.
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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...
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Well like I said, the terrorists and Salafist Sunni supremacists and would-be ethnic cleansers are definitely there, but they neither began this rebellion, nor are they calling the shots.
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?
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Well, if that's a hope at all, perhaps the US at least puts some Predator Hellfires on the artillery to signal that This Is Evil and bring him to the table. Implication is that the next steps involve annihilating his air defense net and forcing him to run from bunker to bunker.
Otherwise, this goes on the heap of inaction with Srebenica, Rwanda,Warsaw, etc. Boots on the ground? Not necessary or advisable. But we can definitely move the needle.
Oh, and I definitely hear you guys on the opposition. I'm not blind -- I see the AQ "bug" logos and hear the martyrdom music on the vids. Those scum are definitely in there and aren't going away. But that ugly confrontation can be fought out without mass bombardment of cities followed by kids dying of dysentery and cholera, which is inevitable when the water and sewage is blown up. This is just the beginning of the tragedy.
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!
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We need to still see how things pan out in Lybia, Egypt etc. There is danger is assuming that "the people" want western style democratic secular government.
We may end up finding that we have merely assisted the rise of extremist religious/Islamic regimes.
As much as they were distasteful, The Shah, Saddam, Mubarek etc held these extremists in check,
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.
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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
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Well, centralized control for its own sake isn't worth much either when the incumbent strongmen in question have long shed any socialist/nationalist principles they might once have had in favour of open economic plunder by a tiny clique of cronies and a Praetorian guard. What hope for a better future, or even maintaining their ramshackle status quo, do the non-crony 99.9% have? Zero -- that's why they're up in arms even though they knew the likely consequences. They'd rather take their chances with warlords and mullahs, who are at least local.
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.
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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.
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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!
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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
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wombat_of_war you have a PM!
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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.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
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/