whitehot78

Sympathy. I 've been labeled as a somebody trying to condone Russia's policies because I pointed out at some discrepancies in several press reports, by using some basic logical reasonment supported by some equally basic technology facts. Trying to reason - and I'm one that has got no problems in changing his views if they are proven wrong - like you earlier stated is probably useless.
 
Stephen Cohen being called an apologist of Putin yet, in a democratic society, if he is, then so what? Listen to his arguments then decide if he is wrong or right, or something in between.
 
Yet, my impression is that people like him must be suppressed at once, quickly make them somebodies who are traitors, who have an agenda, who are apologetic. Don't you ever dare to put them debating the subject on the medias, against someone who has opposing views. 
 
Most of those who speak clearly are massively convinced that ALL what is good and just stays only on one side; it's one of the phenomenons that has hurt the human race more than most other things, that has caused so much wars, death and destruction that one must ask himself how come, in 21st century, humans are still prone to the same vices they had thousands of years before.
 
Also, some are quick in calling others reasons "wishful thinking", yet most of what they elaborate, when it comes to perform some mental effort (ie, not discussing news links), is that Russia failed, that Russian economy will not allow it to reach its goals, that Ukraine will come on top - not wishful at all.
 
You mention russia's policies of the last century - yet from your position you seem to fail to recollect all the disgusting feats the US has imposed to other countries, elected presidents assassinated and replaced by military juntas in all the third world: the unlimited support to fanatic religious governments like the Saudi one, who are even more liberticide and suppressive than Syrian, Iranian or Iraqi regimes (womens can't drive or go to school, thieves getting their hands cut and so on), and finally, when "soft power" is failing, the deliberate invasion of a sovereign country; also with the revolting intellectual dishonesty of an administration trying to justify it by inventing the presence of WMDs, and the goofy attempt to ostracize whatever countries tried to oppose that in the appropriate venues (freedom fries? u kidding?) That, on the aftermath of something like 911, for which whoever is responsible owes a neverending debt to the whole human race and of which, only folks who believe right or wrong always stays on one side may believe the explanations.
 
Today we are seeing all too well the results of the aforementioned policy - ISIS coming out right where the americans pulled out. Hey, the germans, the french, the russians did warn the international community of the danger : "The day america pulls off from Iraq, fanatics will arise and start genociding the populations of the area and pose a greater threat to humanity than Saddam Hussein". 
But Saddam had the biological laboratories on wheels - he had to be stopped.
 
Also the fact that the "previous administration" based part (not that it's known how big of a part) of its foreign acts on a document, beacon of freedom and democracy worldwide, entitled  something like "policies on US world dominance" (plenty of web content on "Wolfowitz Doctrine".
 
But, being this "whataboutism", I don't expect, nor desire, to get any sympathy. (Let the whole point of the world "Whataboutism" not concern us, some folks have arguments, others have tactics)
 
 
I am unsure whether the world is falling prey to a zionist conspiracy like somebody declares nowadays - it wouldn't surprise me, yet I want to think that reasonable men in places of power still can avert that kind of thing.
 
Yet accepting all the official views and propaganda on the Ukraine (and on all the other political/international crisis) , coming only from one side, to me equates to start calling folks "french" because they just don't want to accept my points of view.

Sympathy. I 've been labeled as a somebody trying to condone Russia's policies because I pointed out at some discrepancies in several press reports, by using some basic logical reasonment supported by some equally basic technology facts. Trying to reason - and I'm one that has got no problems in changing his views if they are proven wrong - like you earlier stated is probably useless.
 
Stephen Cohen being called an apologist of Putin yet, in a democratic society, if he is, then so what? Listen to his arguments then decide if he is wrong or right, or something in between.
 
Yet, my impression is that people like him must be suppressed at once, quickly make them somebodies who are traitors, who have an agenda, who are apologetic. Don't you ever dare to put them debating the subject on the medias, against someone who has opposing views. 
 
Most of those who speak clearly are massively convinced that ALL what is good and just stays only on one side; it's one of the phenomenons that has hurt the human race more than most other things, that has caused so much wars, death and destruction that one must ask himself how come, in 21st century, humans are still prone to the same vices they had thousands of years before.
 
Also, some are quick in calling others reasons "wishful thinking", yet most of what they elaborate, when it comes to perform some mental effort (ie, not discussing news links), is that Russia failed, that Russian economy will not allow it to reach its goals, that Ukraine will come on top - not wishful at all.
 
You mention russia's policies of the last century - yet from your position you seem to fail to recollect all the disgusting feats the US has imposed to other countries, elected presidents assassinated and replaced by military juntas in all the third world: the unlimited support to fanatic religious governments like the Saudi one, who are even more liberticide and suppressive than Syrian, Iranian or Iraqi regimes (womens can't drive or go to school, thieves getting their hands cut and so on), and finally, when "soft power" is failing, the deliberate invasion of a sovereign country; also with the revolting intellectual dishonesty of an administration trying to justify it by inventing the presence of WMDs, and the goofy attempt to ostracize whatever countries tried to oppose that in the appropriate venues (freedom fries? u kidding?) That, on the aftermath of something like 911, for which whoever is responsible owes a neverending debt to the whole human race and of which, only folks who believe right or wrong always stays on one side may believe the explanations.
 
Today we are seeing all too well the results of the aforementioned policy - ISIS coming out right where the americans pulled out. Hey, the germans, the french, the russians did warn the international community of the danger : "The day america pulls off from Iraq, fanatics will arise and start genociding the populations of the area and pose a greater threat to humanity than Saddam Hussein". 
But Saddam had the biological laboratories on wheels - he had to be stopped.
 
Also the fact that the "previous administration" based part (not that it's known how big of a part) of its foreign acts on a document, beacon of freedom and democracy worldwide, entitled  something like "policies on US world dominance" (plenty of web content on "Wolfowitz Doctrine".
 
But, being this "whataboutism", I don't expect, nor desire, to get any sympathy. (Let the whole point of the world "Whataboutism" not concern us, some folks have arguments, others have tactics)
 
 
I am unsure whether the world is falling prey to a zionist conspiracy like somebody declares nowadays - it wouldn't surprise me, yet I want to think that reasonable men in places of power still can avert that kind of thing.
 
Yet accepting all the official views and propaganda on the Ukraine (and on all the other political/international crisis) , coming only from one side, to me equates to start calling folks "french" because they just don't want to accept my points of view.

Negatory, it's like arguing the Ukrainian side on Russian forums. In terms of right and wrong, what Russia is doing in Ukraine is hard power because soft power has failed over the course of the last 25 years. I do not view my country's actions to protect it's sphere of influence as wrong. Methods - questionable in their effectiveness. Reasons? Not so much. Like I said almost immediately after joining this forum, to me, and perhaps to a lot of my countrymen, this is a natural repetition of 1653, 1919, 1939 and 1944.

The point of all this is when you ratchet up tensions and then engage in aggressive behavior human potential for error kicks in and really bad s**t happens.

KAL flight 007
Iranian air flight 655
MH 17

All these were avoidable but the parties involved allowed their aggressiveness to overcome common sense in the heat of the moment. The result is a lot of dead civilians who should all now be very much alive. This is the game that Russia is playing around with and when eventually someone pays the price of this stupidity we can all look at it afterwards and say how stupidly senseless it was. Better to just stop it now so no innocent civilians have to pay the price.

You are correct. Russia has reinstated patrols by the long range aviation in 2007.
General press is reporting intercepts just since the Ukraine crisis, while specialized press has always reported them since 2007 - at least in cases where the military shared the informations.
This also answers the question of a previous poster, who asked if this kind of situations started to happened only during the UKR crisis or were already in effect, and in this last case, if media were reporting the intercepts by the NATO (or non-aligned) fighters.
 
Also, there has been intercepts of american sigint/elint planes, in these years, by both russian and chinese air forces: one of them ending with a chinese fighter slamming into an american recon plane (hainan island incident).
 
Norwegian P-3 patrol airplanes have often been intercepted flying inside, or just outside russian airspace - one case in 2012.
 
Also P-3s from other nations have been intercepted by Flankers, the one coming to my mind right now being a portuguese one over the baltic.
 
You are stating this is a strategy to disinform people, in fact I have no desire to condone Putin's actions. What baffles and seems unfair to me is that the public gets fed alarmistic news by a general press which is normally, in the best case, ignorant.
I'm pretty sure that many folks on this forums, which are informed and versed on a particular subject, have had to read some article or hear some report from the general press on that subject that was full of inaccuracies, or even lies.
 
For what concerns the matter of the interceptions over the baltic and elsewhere, seems to me that we have cleared that the ATC controllers were perfectly able to pinpoint the location of the russian af planes on their screens, and therefore, to steer them away from them, or to alert their crews of their presence; while it seemed to me that there was a general tendency to believe that the russians were aggressively, and somehow "stealthily" maneuver to endanger the safety of civilian airliners.

P-3 Orions may be employed in several different missions - both ASW and maritime surveillance. ESM equipment carried by them effectively makes them SIGINT capable.
Also there have been cases of USAF RC-135U being intercepted:
 
http://theaviationist.com/2015/04/13/su-27-aggressively-intercept-rc135/
 
As you can read in the article, the american spyplane was flying with its transponder off.
 
As for nuclear payloads, the Tupolev-95 is nuclear capable, but also in some version it carries the same kind of equipment the P-3 Orion carries, and in those versions is employed pretty much the same way as the Orion, ASW and maritime surveillance. Ofc the press reports are kinda sketchy about which kind of "Bears" were intercepted, although one may surmise that in the various cases, different kind of planes may have been interested (I didn't read anything about which unit they were from, but again, I wouldn't entrust the general press to single out the difference between, say, a Bear-H and a Bear-F).
 
Moreover, I would find it very unlikely that the airplanes spotted in the baltic sea were actually carrying any nuclear payload, but being this imho, I understand it's difficult to accept.
 
The baltic sea isn't thousands of mile away from russian airspace - in fact Kaliningrad is a port city on that sea, without citing St. Petersburg.
 
 
Yeah, metaphors always are tempting, yet this one is pretty much apples and pears.

Ofc you know by hearth all the routes and the patrol zones, or you have links that document that information?
Do we have an official SAC text documenting the usage of civilian transponders while on patrol? If I'd have to redirect B-52s and B-1s to nuclear strike Russia at a moment notice,
I wouldn't have them broadcasting their ids all over, even to russian civilian airspace controllers 
 
 
 
Really, the Estonians report "Military aircraft penetrated airspace for 600 meters?", the Japanese one is pretty similar. The swedish have a history with unknown submarines in their waters, for which some officers in the swedish navy coined the term "Budget Submarines", since when they appear, some forces advocate the increase of military spending in Sweden.
 
Moreover, when it comes to airspace violations, Americans have been doing that since the end of WW2 - U-2s, SR-71, drones nowadays and so on (Iran and Syria already shot down a pair), yet nobody has never been crying wolf.
 
 
 
 
I don't know if it's an american knee-jerk reaction, or an european one - The statement clearly said that entering the anti-ballistic system would make those country assets targeted by nuclear capable missiles (I presume that they are talking about Iskander theatre systems). Which, for those who can't really read properly, does not mean "We are going to Nuke you", but "If you will join a system which is made to intercept our nuclear missiles, you accept the fact that the assets you employ to contribute to that system will come under strike, IF a nuclear exchange should ever start"
 
Or, in your opinion Russia has to renounce to its nuclear deterrence ? Is that a new find that western nukes are pointed at Russia and Chine and vice-versa?
 
 
 
My perspective is that all over the west, medias and uninformed people are falling for some who-knows-induced mechanism by which Putin's Russia is the new evil empire.
Frankly what I've seen so far, is that most of the time one could realistically surmise that all the moves Russia has done, have happened after some kind of provocation.
 
I'm not willing to accept a vision to which many in the west are falling today, out of their fears, because they have always been injected by terror raising medias that keep barking about the enemies of our democracies and our way of life.
There is a war party in the west which evidently has the resources to manipulate and even create information that will scare people into thinking that "we need to act before it's too late", and act means usually not good news at all.
 
Older people (and you don't seem to be among the youngest here) remember the kind of "games" happened during the cold war period, and whatever happens today is pretty similar, although on a smaller scope and depth. Older people would also know that this kind of things happen because of economical reasons, and all the sabre rattling normally goes to the public which needs to be constantly pressurized into believing that "your life may be changing for the worse, look at this, how can your children sleep peacefully with Russian aircraft flying into international airspace". When some country, or coalition takes charge, with a self-claimed moral or ethical superiority, while employing basically the same means (and I don't even want to mention the Snowden matter, things he cited would kinda make Putin's secret police appear as amateurs, but for some reason it's totally missing when it comes to draw some democracy rating in the west), my reaction is to profoundly doubt about its agenda.

Seems to me that many here have no idea, none, how adroit the Pentagon and various administrations are when it comes to hiding the grisly truth of America's wars from both the American people and the world at large. What I've provided here barely scratches the surface.
 
Pentagon is hiding the dead
 
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-pentagon-is-hiding-the-dead-862a7b45ce57
 
American Military Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan Now Exceed 500,000 (Part 1 of 2) PENTAGON FUDGES THE NUMBERS TO PLACATE AMERICAN PUBLIC
Friday 18 June 2010, by Matthew J. Nasuti (Former U.S. Air Force Captain
http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article15450
 
KabulPress.org is a respected, much cited organization. The editor himself was arrested and interrogated for nine hours by Afghan Secret Police in 2007.
 
http://www.kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article4050
 
Former Air Force Captain Joyce Riley, a nurse who has tirelessly advocated for decades (I first came across her ~1997) on behalf of the grotesquely abused by the USG Gulf War veterans and herself a survivor of Gulf War Syndrome, despite having never been in-theater, merely nursed the medevaced troops, has put together a stunning array of evidence of the true cost to our warriors of wars and weapon tests alike. This is but a tiny part of a very substantial site, just a list of articles.
 
When it comes to properly accounting for the true human costs of America's wars to Americans, I have zero trust in the Pentagon, based on decades of deliberate misinterpretation, deception, definition alteration, and outright knowing whoppers of the cruelest sort. If possible, the situation's even worse when it comes to everyone else. 
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

the KIA count might not be referring only to combat deaths - in fact he says irrecoverable losses. Might include all the personnel who got discharged as a result of wounds or sickness, while the WIA count should refer to personnel that has been treated by military hospitals and put back into service, regardless of where or in which unit.
 
Could be an interpretation, although I can't be for sure since I didn't read any document in regard as how the Ukrainian armed forces categorizes this kind of information

Why are some people so trigger happy to post about and ridicule Russia(n media BS)? There are plenty of similar Western media sources that don't receive similar attention here. Yes the Russian state controls much of their media outlets which is different from our media, although ours are also mostly controlled by politics and or economics. BS is BS and doesn't deserve the attention. The average Russian don't like their country being ridiculed, just like the average US/NL/UK/etc citizen. Perhaps the average Russian is more susceptible to false information because of the state controlled propaganda but that doesn't merit ridiculing. At least in my opinion.

Ok, I just made a simple test:
 
- CMBN installed on the hard drive.
- I loaded up two battles from CMBN, the ones being the most complex ("My Honor is Loyalty", axis side: and "Colossal Crack", allied side).
- I measured the loading times with a stopwatch. They measure as follows:
  My honor is loyalty - 1:28 mins
  Colossal Crack - 1:25 mins
 
- I then transferred the entire CMBN directory from my sata3 hd to my sata3 ssd
- Repeated time measurements:
  My Honor is Loyalty - 1.09 mins
  Colossal Crack - 1.15 mins
 
Basically I must agree with wiggum, in stating that there is not much of an improvement (abt 20%), so I'll probably stick with  the hd.
One thing of note is that both the hd and the ssd are sata3 enabled.
That probably means that with a sata2 hd the loading times would be kinda higher, and maybe transferring CM to a ssd would give more of a performance increase.
 
Anyway, had no problems at all with drms.

If I have to be puzzled about something which has been talked about on this thread, I would say that the antipersonnel warheads on RPGs/RPOs are a little weak.
 
Specifically, the thermobaric ones, I would expect to cause horrible casualties, in situation where the rocket actually manages to penetrate the building (I would imagine that such rockets will explode inside only if they passed through a window, a door or another opening - if they hit a wall their load would splatter against a wall). Basically, the in-game effects imho should be that if you have a squad holed up on a floor, and a RPO explodes inside that floor, no member of that squad would be able to keep fighting - think about the pressure effects the warhead has on a man's lungs, without considering the incendiary effect.
 
Also, I was expecting the thermo warheads to have some sort of effect of their own; in WW2 CM titles we got the flamethrower effects, but in BS thermos seems to go up just like normal HE/frag to me. Are they planning to add some proper explosions or are we gonna make up with the current effects?

I generally try to encourage people to test things when they have questions about game mechanics, but I don't think nuzrak's tests show anything. What does "BMP-3M moving into the LOS of static M2-A3 in open ground" really mean? If the moving units are stopping the instant they move into LOS of the stationary units then the movement is irrelevant. If they are moving while in LOS of the enemy then the distance and speed need to be known. The results are further compromised by the separate commander not effectively communicating with the crew, a known issue.

I can't see why it would be changed from CMBN, CMFI or CMRT. BFC had always had a policy of having e.g. regular troops having the same morale behaviour regardless of nationality. I doubt they'd change it for different time frames. A WW2 'regular' level troop is about the same level of training in CM terms as a modern 'regular' troop. It is up to scenario designers (for the most part) to set the experience levels of the troops to reflect the level of training and experience they have. If modern soldiers should all be well trained professionals, they should probably all be veteran or above, where 'typical' WW2 troops might well be green (or worse on some fronts).
 
Also, don't forget that the incoming firepower troops are facing is considerably higher too. A modern platoon, with assault rifles and other goodies can probably put out more fire than a WW2 company, which has a somewhat higher suppressive effect.

Rison,
 
While I certainly don't know what's under the hood, I do have some insights to offer. In a given Russian ground combat force, the best troops will be in recon. This is an operational necessity driven by the need to gather timely intelligence, and those best suited for the task are those who worst fit the line unit model. These are the men who are clever, creative, highly adaptable and able to operate with very little supervision. Since they are, by the standards of their society, exceptional, they are scarce, therefore valuable. To further enhance their effectiveness, they are given toys which are too scarce and expensive to equip the line formations. Theoretically, both figure into the cost. I really haven't looked at them in game terms, but IRL, I suspect you'll find what senior sergeants and such will be able to do in them tasks requiring officers elsewhere. In principle, then, there is no fundamental reason why a recon squad, given an important enough target, couldn't call down fire upon it. Each squad, after all, has its own radio. Of course, our own RUS contingent may have information to the contrary. 
 
Judging from what I've read, the situation with RUS LRFs and LTDs is pretty ugly vs US. The equipment is heavy and awkward, as contrasted to US gear like this which is lightweight and gives ranges to plus/minus 1 m out to 20 klicks. This one doesn't reach as far, but it provides integrated daylight and thermal observation capabilities, LRF, LTD and geolocation functions. Certain units might also have the AN/PEQ-16A, which is pretty impressive, but is by no means the bottom of the toy box, as seen in the AN/PSQ-23, for snipers and squad leaders. Systems like these give the US and US equipped allies tremendous capabilities, but they're relatively cheap for the US to build and field en masse. No idea how that plays out in the game, either. 
 
These are but a few examples to show how things might work under the hood, but it all comes down to what criteria are used and what relative weights are assigned to which aspect. I submit, for example, there's a world of difference between a fully trained Russian soldier and his/her American counterpart. Training time, training quality, training aids, live fire ammo allotments and more all favor the American soldiers. Indeed, I think a strong case could be made that, generally speaking, US units should be superior, not because they're US (that would be ridiculous), but because they have an overall standard of training and equipage which is the envy of the armies of the world. Until recently, no one had anything like NTC, as a case in point. Back when I was a Threat Analyst, I used to cringe (for OPFOR) over Russian flight hours/ per fighter pilot of 120, vs 300+ for NATO, with many more live fire opportunities, not to mention things like RED FLAG. OPFOR had nothing remotely equivalent. 
 
Given the high complexity of the issues, to the extent I understand them, I'm glad I'm not MikeyD. I suspect there are times when his SAN loss, in trying to weigh, assess and decide a per man or unit value, is greater than that resulting from an encounter with a Lovecraftian shuggoth. Tech is cheap for the US, but producing veritable state of the art soldiery isn't, and it's long been a verity that the US prefers expending firepower over soldiers' lives. That trend has not only continued but expanded. An expression of that preference is an impressive new toy which definitely saves lives. No one in it, but can still dish out the pain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CxP7E2r8lA
 
I shall be most interested to see how the various unit values and such get sorted out over time. I also miss things like the Ambush command and the Combined Arms setting, which theoretically should prevent some of the nonsense I've run into in my current "computer picks both sides" QB, in which I have more bodies than seats. Oops. We're not UK and have no LOB provisions by which to fix this awkward problem.
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

NATO ROE will likely be a lot less restrictive than folks are giving it credit for.  Some things might be on restricted target lists like, national treasures/things important to Ukraine's functionality as a country level industrial locations, but anything else would likely be fair game.   Even then the restricted sort of targets likely would be "do not bomb without confirmation of targets of military nature" vs "do not bomb, even if it's crawling with Russians!" sort of ROE.  In a full spectrum sort of conflict there's a much higher expectation of damage, and a much higher value on destruction of enemy forces.
 
Also worth noting that NATO would be in the Ukraine at the permission of the Ukrainian government, and likely with no small amount of popular support from ethnic Ukrainians (as the separatist movement is top to bottom ethnic Russian outside of the actual Russian passport holders within).  People will be upset the local church did not survive the fight, but they will be happier they're no longer about to become part of the people's republic of Russiastan or whatever it calls itself these days.  This underwrites a much more aggressive military targeting behavior.  

GSR isn't a magic eyeray that sees through all things.  It's pretty easy to confuse, and on a battlefield there is a lot of terrain between the emitter and the possible targets.  It is not useless by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not like press button and on the screen the location of all enemy tanks within the claimed effective range appears.  
 
It's the same sort of logic that made the US Army buy up a million LRAS3 type systems, and the same unfortunate reality in terms of the tyranny of lines of sight, target fidelity, and the reality that most military forces avoid the wide open spaces that favor sensor-centric warfare.  
 
So to elaborate on my earlier comment, in a world filled with sensor contacts that are both targets, and not targets, ground based radar is good at telling you where things are vs not.  It's marginal at discriminating between targets, and still totally subject to LOS issues.  It can shoot at the maybe targets, but again its not good at bulldozer vs tank, and it is just as bad as every other optic at seeing behind terrain.  

-More single player campaigns - jeez in CMSF we had tens of missions in campaigns..
 
-ofc more countries. They will probably add UK and Germany, but it wouldn't be bad if we could have something totally new. France for example: would love to see the Leclerc in action, and the organization/doctrine of that country military formations. USMC is quite a logical presence in the region. Eastern NATO nations like Poland and Czech, maybe Hungary and Romania.
 
-more Russian formations and equipment - VDV and Naval Infantry should be a must in this setting.