LUCASWILLEN05

First the reason I used the term "heavy armoured divisions" was for clarity of communication with readers who might not be familiar with the nature of organisation of the modern US. Most of the senior members will know about these things but we could well have people reading this who do not know, And that's another thing, we should not use acronyms such as HBCT without explaining what they mean, You and ~I know it means Heavy Brigade Combat Team but we cannot expect a junior member new to the game is going to know that - we hope he will but should not make this assumption So I do in fact know what I am talking about. I am simply communicating effectively with th wider target audience by not assuming special subject knowledge which some individuals might not have. A point Panzrsaurkrautwerfer does not see,m to have paused to consider. Now getting back to the air war . This Russians are one of the top air forces in the world. It is not the Iraqi air force or is it he Serbian air force, We must assume that they will have been watching how the USAF does thing. Nor are there going t be months of planning for the air war as there was before Desert Storm. Plus, in this scenario it will be the Russians, no the USAF who start the the initiative. To assume, as Panzerkrautwerfer does hat US air superiority, let alone air dominance will be achieved instantly, as he appears to believe is arrogant to the point of hubris. And even when you have dealt with the Russian air force you have to deal with the Russian air defense network which includes systems such as the much feared S-300. Remember what happened to the Israeli air force i the opening days of the Yom Kippur War? Well, the same thing could happen to a overconfident USAF in the opening days of a war with Russia. I am not saying the USAF "won't win" just that that victory will take considerably longer than previous wars and will come at a higher price. In the meantime of course US ground forces will have to deeply into Ukraine and fight under conditions where the Russians have at least air parity. It is that phase of the war we should bwe worried about. As regards your bridge situation well, yes. That is how it should be handled. But mistakes can happen. And the reason I know it can happen is because I made exactly that mistake just once in one of my very early games. On that occasion it was just a computer war game. A simulation of really if you will. But if I had been a real commander, perhaps newly appointed to command and, perhaps because I feel rushed by the demands of my superiors I fail to take the precautions I should take and get caught by the Russian air force there will be real destroyed vehicles, dead and wounded men and real widows and orphans. Because I, the commander, screwed up and did not wisely take the time to deploy my air defenses to cover he move. Now, I am sure an experienced armour commander like panzerkrautwerfer won't make a mistake like that and I having learned a particularly hard lesson (this game can be really unforgiving) won't make that blunder a second time) The point is that my experience in the particular game I refer to is an object lesson of what can happen when someone messes up!

The point is that, at the start of this scenario it is the Russians, not the US that has the initiative, the US is responding, trying to catch up and gain parity. Much as would have been the case in the 1980s Cold War Germany scenario. US heavy aroured forces, as in that scenario will be deploying from CONUS by sea and by air exactly as they would have done in the 1980s scenario. US commanders won't be able to wait until the air war has been won to deploy heavy armour into Ukraine. And of course the Russian Atlantic Fleet will be making some attempt to interdict th Atlantic Convoy routes. The Russians are not fools. They aren't simply going to let US heavy armoured divisions and US logistics deploy to Europe just like that! I am certainly not saying that there won't be a serious Russian ir threat as the deployment to Ukraine stats. There will be and Russian SSMs will be chewing up ports and airports throughout Europe as will Russian air raids. Certainly for let;s say the first week to ten days before NATO gets a handle on this And I am not saying that a CVBG cannot at some point deploy into the Black Sea. It probably can but just not at the early stage of the conflict for the reasons given earlier. And he USAF is going to be directing more resources to the air superiority battle at this point. Later on, as the air superiority and sea control battles are won you can expect more asses for the ground forces.And don't try quoting Desert Storm at the There were almost 6 months to prepare for that one and the Russians are not going to sit there and let the US prepare a set piece conventional offensive supported by first class logistics - which is the kind of war the US loves to fight. Putin is no fool and he certainly won't be repeating Saddam Hussein's mistake. Far from it. Once war with the US breaks out he is going to push, and push hard Now the US heavy armoured divisions are certainly be going into Ukraine and they will be deploying as fast as they possibly can. But, and here is the rub, they will be deploying under conditions of t the very least a contested air situation. Which means that Russian air attack is going to be serious risk in spite of NATO air power and despite of PATRIOT. The point is that at least some Russian air strikes are going to get through and that could seriously ruin your day as a Combat Team commander given that you only have a few stingers to play with. What happens when fast moving attack jets catch you at a bad moment for example when you are crossing a bridge or one of your platoons is crossing some open ground. Sometimes you are going to have to do things like this and, despite the best precautions in the world you could take some pretty nasty casualties. And there are always incompetent officers who don;t know what they are doing who can make even bigger mistakes. You will weed them out pretty fast as the war develops I am quite certain but by ten they have already done their damage. Hopefully you catch most of them before the war but all it needs is one incompetent in the wrong place at the wrong time! I remember one CMBS game where I screwed up badly and fell foul of a Russian airstrke. But I learned from the mistake I made and never made the same error again. Luckily it was a computer simulation game, no a real war but nevertheless the experience taught me something about the danger of moving over open fields without air defenses deployed to cover the move, Just lucky it was not a real war and the casualties were not real ones. It might well be the kind of screwup that gets a commander removed from command in the real world. I am sure you personally can do your job and would not make stupid mistakes but you still could be unlucky despite doing all you need to

Still missing the point actually. You want to position a Carrier battlegroup into the Black Sea. Fine, you can do that and the US navy can do it. But the Russians get a say in that as well. Like I said there is something called the Russian Black Sea Fleet for starters. And there is only one way our Carrier Battlegroup can go - via the Dardanelles Straits which are very easily interdicted by submarines (the Russians have some very good ones which are rather difficult to detect) and mines. Do you seriously believe that the Russians are not going to deploy submarines and minefields to interdict the Dardanelles very quickly after he outbreak of war to prevent or seriously delay just this move. Any Russian senior commander worth his salt knows this as would senior NATO commanders. Even a civvy like myself can see that much! And this makes it harder to use carrier borne US airpower to greatest effect at least in the opening battles of the war. Once air domiance is achieved after a few weeks or a couple of moths perhaps the story is going to be very different. At that point NATO air power will be blasting Russian positions with monotonous regularity. Oh,, and take a look at this discussion concerning he difficulties of deploying a carrier group into the Black Sea. It supports everything I have been saying. Although the discussion relates to the late Cold War many of the issues will remain the same today. Plus there are such things as land based anti ship missiles (some are mobile) and your response times are measured in seconds. We are talking shooting galleries here http://www.defencetalk.com/forums/navy-maritime/us-carriers-black-sea-during-cold-war-7744/ It could probably be done of course but it would be one hell of a fight and the US navy could lose several capital ships sunk or severely damaged to accomplish that mission. But if you cannot and will not recognize that this position won't be achieved right away and probably not for quite some time I really don't want to waste any more of my time on this. Please have the sense to recognize that the destruction of he Russia navy (including submarines), clearance of naval minefields, destruction of an effective Russian airforce is a process that will take several days in the best possible case and more likely several weeks to a couple of months. And while that is going on Russian airpower will, to some degree, be able to influence the tactical battlefield to some degree. I suggest you concede that principle and then we can move on from ther. If you don't, I am not going to waste more time on this discussion

Units certainly will have some idea of where to look and in terms of the modern armies we are looking at have n array of electronic devices to help them Perhaps here we could take the nature of modern naval warfare as an analytical starting point. Without going int unnecessary detail here the aim in that particular game is to find the enemy and shoot him before he does the same to you. To do this you use an array of electronic sensors (passive and active) and old fashioned recon. Much the same is obviously going on in terms of the battlefield environment we are simulating in CMNS One point we need to pick up on and consider carefully is, as Peter rightly states, the generational difference between the US systems and the reverse engineered Russian systems. A wrinkle to that is of course the Ukrainians who may well have purchased rel Western technology off the shelf. There is, I suspect, the issue of training to consider. You can have he best technology in the world but, if you are not trained to use it properly one cannot expect the best results So. when we set up our test range we must consider factors like the above. Even then our flat unobstructed tes range only gives us a baseline. We then have to take it on to the next stage of a real CMBS battlefield

First it is entirely possible that Russian actions will be misread or indeed concealed. Remember the Russians are very good at deception (Maskirvoka) added to which the West won't want to get involved in a war with Russia over Ukraine. That delays military preparation despite the distrust of Putin. Consider that the preparations for invasion might well be concealed under the guise of military maneuvers. That carrier task force will take a few days to get into the area and its' ability to generate air support over Central Ukraine will be limited early on and it will be opposed by Russia's Black Sea Fleet and airforce/air defenses. .NATO will deploy aircraft to Poland, the Baltic Sates and probably Romania assuming of course Article 5 is activated. Which is be no means politically certain. It is Ukraine that is attacked here, not a NATO nation. Even though the US in this scenario does intervene the other NATO nations may not go along with this initially

Given the scenario portrayed in the game back story it would be reasonable to assume a Russian air surge from the start. The USAF will be behind the curve at the start needing to deploy aircraft and the logistics to support them In this scenario the Russians may very well have used maneuvers as a cover for the attack into Ukraine and probably staged/provoked a border incident or two to justify the invasion. It will take some time for US/NATO forces to catch up/ Classic Boyd Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop And as I already said the tactical weakness in air defenses will be a problem until the USAF win the air battle. In the meantime it might not take many aircraft to really wreck a Combat Team's day.

The point is that air dominance is not going to happen overnight as it was in Desert Storm or over Yugoslavia in 1999 s you blithely assume. You are making the classic mistake of learning the lessons from the last wars, not considering what may happen in the next. I am not saying the USAF won't win the air war. It probably will but the air war against the Russian air force will be strongly contested for several weeks at the least. And in this scenario ii is the Russians who start the conflict with the initiative. not the US. It will certainly not be an air war won on the first night as was the case with Operation Desert Storm or Kossovo as you assume will be the case. And, if you are wrong about your assumptions in regard to a quick US win of the air war then I fear the US ground forces are going to be in for a nasty shock. And may find itself experiencing a little of the treatment meted out to the Iraqis and others. The question you are not answering is what happens during the period before US air dominance is actually established. And the results may very well be deeply unpleasant and shocking for the US army given the weakness of tactical air defense,. Look. I don't have the time to debate the issue further so I tell you what. Why don't we just fight the war and find out Please assemble promptly at the Russian - Ukrainian border

There is such a thing as planning to fight the last war, not the next. While the USAF is very good, just having the best is not always enough. Look at the French army in 1940 which had better tanks than the Germans in terms of armour and guns at least. In the Ukraine scenario the USAF will probably get control of the air after a few weeks or so but will still have to deal with Russian air defenses for quite a while. However, the problem, will be the period before that happens and it may b the US military could be in for a nasty shock. While many Russian ir strikes might be prevented by air power some will get through. The in game Russian aircraft are the ones that do get through However, as I said earlier there would be field solutions including borrowing some Ukrainian Tunguskas to fill the gap. But there could be significant losses before the lesson is learned

US anti air defense does seem to be a key weakness. The assumption appears to have been that the USAF will swiftly dominate the skies as it did over Iraq in 1991 and 2003. The M6 Linebacker variant of the Bradley was supposed to fulfill that role but was cancelled in 2006. There is also the AN/TWQ-1 Avenger which is mounted on a heavy HMMWV. In the early days and weeks of a war like that portrayed in the game the US military would suffer the cosequences of the above defense procurement decisions and there might have to be "field solutions" to that such as borrowing some Ukrainian systems to fill the gap

The Free 'French were US organised, trained and equipped. All you have to do is chnge to French na,mes in the scenario editor and voila! :-)

I probably would not be all that inerested in the Pacific right now but I would be interested in an early war family (France and Poland) and a Western Desert family

I am not saying the British front was peaceful at that period. There were a number of major local actions but compared to the US operations against the Siegfried Line it was a relatively quiet period until Operation Blackcock at he very end of January 1945. There would certainly still have been plenty of small scale fighting in the UK/Commonwealth sector. My point was that, in this case, it was the right decision to prioritize the US sector as the really major Allied offensives as well as the Battle of the Bulge and Operation Nordwind involved US forces almost exclusively

Plus of course we can be gaming the US battles along the Siegfried Line October - December 1944, a period when the Brits saw relatively little major action except for Overloon. Aachen, Huertgen Forest, Lorraine, Saar and the Vosges Mountains campaigns are US affairs apart from some Free French - and they were US uniformed, equipped and organised in any case. And Nordwind, again, is a US battle That said the UK/Commonwealth forces are required for the Rhineland battles anf, of course, the final operations in Germany itself which is where you can add the German 2nd Marine Division (Rethem) and of course the Volksturm

Yes, watch out for tunguskas. i hate those things!

Yes, counter air would also be a good feature. Regarding off map artillery assets we have no way of countering these. T some extent we can counter air strikes to some degree in BS (we could not do that in CMSF) If you look at the reality of large scale modern conventional warfare (eg Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom - and to some extent in the Donbass War and the 20008 Georgia War) these counter battery missions are undertaken. Even though our battle might only include company to battalion size forces this may very well be part of a far larger action which makes counter battery and counter air far more significant. Having said that it will be up the the scenario designer to decide whether the assets to do this are available or not. Just as the scenario designer in BS decides whether electronic warfare is available. As with the electronic warfare function a scenario designer could turn these options on in the scenario editor data section if he wants one or both sides to have them in this particular battle. This choice would turn on a simple large area map which would show basc features such as roads. hills, BUAs and rivers on which artillery units could be moved. In fact. on he same map you could place and manouvre reinforcements with certain restrictions allowing you, the commander or he AI to bring reinforcements into the battle in the most useful place. That at least is my vision for the vollution of the game.

I was thinking more of modern although CB was possible in WW2.

it would be really nice if BF were able to work out a solution to allow CB fire against off map targets. Perhaps a simple map grid off table to allow for artillery positioning etc Each grid square could represent an area of, let's say 1 mile/kilometer into which off table assets could be positioned and maneuvered during the game. If suitable assets are available off map artillery could be hit within the game tself

Question/request re Black Sea Module. Please could the other new forces include the Ukrainian and Russian militias. This would certainly contribute to the fleshing out of Ukrainian and Russian forces :-) Also a winter variant would be great allowing for either an extension of the war into the winter of 2017 or an alternative winter war scenario :-)

I would expect at least a coupe of Bastogne scenarios. For future reference to scenario designers there was a series of battles near that town over the new year of 1944 - 5 which should generate ideas...

It is unlikely but possible. Considering your example we would be looking at a pretty hopeless tactician but he partially makes up for this with his charisma. This sort of thing would be unusual of course. In most cases the numbers involved would be about the same. This way you have the option of fine tuning various ratings for a squad. Not just leadership but experience. motivation (morale). fitness (are they tired/out of shape), supply (short on ammo). headcount (re they below strength)

Looks interestig. Personally I would change the date to slightly later than 2 June. Maybe something like 5 - 8 June?. I don't see the US getting their intervention in earlier than that. Maybe some Ukrainian mechanized forces intervening later in the scenario would be good. I can see Russian forces pushing out of the Crimea as well as from Russia itself so maybe lead elements of Russian armour Can I suggest a follow up scenario taking place a day or two later when the heavy Russian units arrive and begin attacking 82nd airborne and Ukranian units defending this town with US airborne units with some Ukranian units tasked to defend the area against heavy Russian units

So, assuming this is accurate the Abrams is spotted 3000m away when stationary and in perfect test range conditions. In reality of course, under battlefield conditions the terrain will not be flat and visibiity will not be great - there can be a lot of smoke around sometimes and plenty of crops/vegetation. It may well be that the T90 can see the Abrams but at 3000n the commander chooses not to ire as the chances of a good, penetrating hit are too slim.

I would however still like to see a 1939 - 1940 Blitzkrieg game (Combat Mission Blitzkrieg) and a Western Desert game (Combat Mission Rommel) eventually but these are obviously a long way down the track. WW2 Pacific however is not really my thing at the moment due to the lack of armour compared to the ETO. For the same reason I see the French and Polish campaigns being combined into one game with other campaigns such as Norway, Finland and a hypothetical Czechoslovakia campaign being dded on later. Though the early Blitzkrieg campaigns look like easy German victories they were not so in tactical terms. British and French tanks were often better than those of the Germans which should make for interesting encounters at the tactical level, Just an idea for the game designers to contemplate while they work on the rest of late WW2 and the res of the Russian Front series :-)

Nordwind is a fascinating campaign with some very interesting battles every bit as gqmeable as those in the Ardennes Regarding Red Thunder I agree. My priority for the Germans at least must be the Waffen SS. For Italy I had no idea Volksgrenadiers were even present until I gt a copy of Victory in Italy by Richard Doherty which lists 98th, 278thand 334th Volksgrenadier divisions as part of the Wehrmacht orbat in the spring of 1945