Livdoc44

Although I've known about the Combat Mission license for a long time (I bought Shock Force in 2007), I acquired all the WW2 Combat Missions on Steam over the holiday season (and Final Blitzkrieg last week ). Better late than never...
For the moment I have a lot to do with four games, the campaigns, the scenarios, the content created by the community but I will buy the other modules to come without hesitation.
Good job at Battlefront, keep it up!

Please forgive me in advance for my extreme lack of knowledge on what to me seems to be and inordinate amount of time crank out these CM games. Steve mentioned 10 years ago that it took to complete CMBN, Yeah, that's right. I retired 13 years ago, and I was playing it before then. The business model involved in the development and all the computer work required and all the research that goes into these titles to me seems somewhat staggering. I was in Law Enforcement for almost thirty years, and I spent a lot of time investigating traffic accidents and other criminal activity. While I am in no way making a comparison to my prior work than what the Battlefront folks are doing is to say this. The dedication and hard work that is put into these "games" that we all love so much, certainly for me and I'm sure for everyone else out there in "Battlefront" land is greatly appreciated. Whatever Steve and his coworkers decide to work on is fine with me. I own every title put out. I will conclude my remarks with this. I am 63 years old, and I hope to the Lord above I am around to see and "play" the next full installment of whatever it might be.

Wasn't there another Asimov story about the world being managed by AI, everything had been going great but then things started going wrong in a big way, famine etc. The main character investigates and discovers it's corrupt humans feeding incorrect data to the AI that's the problem. Might have been one of the Robot short stories, this human computer can't remember.

UA proclaims that they sank Russian corvette "Ivanovets" with kamikaze USV.
 

Tanks behaving like they often get used in CM games? As an uninformed tangent, I always got the impression that most players used tanks in CM (thinking WW2 games here) in a historically unrealistic way, where instead of tanks being the spearhead, in CM games they were more often kept hidden until the infantry had identified targets and enemy AT assets had been located.
In CM, this is the combination of:
(a) scenario balance means that if you've got a platoon of tanks, the other side very likely has the capability to kill a platoon of tanks (as opposed to reality, where an assaulting tank company might just roll through the enemy positions because they didn't have anything that posed a threat to heavy armour - but that would make a boring CM scenario)
(b) Borg spotting, perfect terrain knowledge and the players' ability to co-ordinate their entire force to a wholly unrealistic degree meaning that they can afford to keep tanks at the back because they will be able to scoot forward through defilade to a keyhole firing position to take out a threat in literally 1 minute, while in reality that's more like 15+ minutes with far more chances to screw up, go the wrong way, shoot at the wrong building etc.
So is it possible that the incredible C4ISR available, replicates in effect much of point (b): enemy positions are known pretty well in advance, real time drone observations funneling information back to units on the ground, and so on, mean that something closer to (although still far short of) CM player levels of planning, co-ordination and responsiveness is achievable, meaning small armour packets can be held back and used on demand with more effect than a full platoon could two decades ago - never mind the increasing number of things that can quickly kill an exposed and hard to conceal tank.
And on a higher level, the higher situational awareness, and prevalence of longer ranged things that can kill vehicles in particular mean that it is hard to create a situation where you can mass e.g. a tank force against a position that has no meaningful defence against it. They will see it coming, and tank-killers can hit from a much larger range, so wherever you attack there is going to be meaningful anti-tank capability, meaning you're always in more of a "balanced CM scenario" kind of situation in practice.

That's a great point. It took, for example, 40-odd years to unpack and deconstruct "blitzkreig" from a mythically wondrous imagined doctrine to its actual reality as a marketting elevator pitch. And, frankly, 40 years after that epiphany there are still plenty of folks who continue to prefer the marketting take.
One concern I have about analysis of this war is availability bias: drone feeds are new and exciting and ubiquitous, but are they representative? I wonder if we give drone's effectiveness too much weight due simply the the large supply of feed videos.

Good lord this sentiment is so 2024.  We are not even entirely sure if we are looking at defensive primacy, let alone if it will be enduring.  We have suspicions, but we really do not fully understand the full impact of what is, or is not, happening.  I think it may be a little too early to start "challenging our challenges."
The defensive primacy shift of the 19th and early 20th century took roughly 50-60 years to fully emerge.  And then it lasted roughly 30 years before technology broke it.  The current possible shift has taken maybe 20 years to sink in and no on knows how long it will actually stick - if it is indeed a thing.  I personally do not think manouevre is dead, I think its selling points have definitely have taken a hit.  But the principles of manoeuvre are very old - "hit em where they ain't, faster than they can recover" likely has roots in pre-civilization warfare.  What we, in the western military complex appear to have forgotten is that detail (or "task") command and good old fashion attrition ("me smash, you") is not dead, in fact it never was. 
Once this war is over, two things are going to happen. 1) modern militaries are going to scramble like mad to jump on all sorts of bandwagons based on how this thing has gone down.  And 2) they will immediately stuff these new phenomenon into the existing box.  We will see Battalion TFs wearing unmanned hats as next-gen collides with legacy inertia - we can see this already.  Some may over subscribe and read the tea leaves wrong - get ready for some crazy ideas in all this.
I suspect it will take at least a decade to fully unpack what has been happening in this war.  Right now most of the evidence is happening on social media - of one digs around for scholarly analysis, we are not there yet.  What we have are some pretty skeletal frameworks that roughly fit what we are seeing, but I am still not entirely sure why.
As I also tell my students - the trick to this war is understanding what is fundamental and enduring, and what is a unique manifestation that will only occur in Ukraine.   

Thanks Capt.
I share your concern for western casualty sensitivities. They have and remain a major constraint on western operations. I worry politicians and the public in democracies will not adjust their thinking as fast as a successful peer level campaign would require.
I am hopeful in this war an eventual combination of new technologies, organization and doctrine will restore battlefield mobility, the ability to successfully execute offensive operations. I do worry it is possible the war could get stuck like Korea before this happens, leaving it to theory until conflict resumes in Ukraine or elsewhere.
I also hope none of the western democracies reach a Maginot conclusion. Adopting isolationist policies looks like that to me.

If you are watching the back and forth between Zelensky and Zaluzhny today, I would warn against the way in which most commentary is treating if as if it's a football game...as they do much of what has happened in the war so far. Shashank Joshi at the Economist is going to drop an article soon that looks more deeply at the reasons and the forces motivating the move. I would recommend it in advance. 

I've been thinking a lot about this. The physics of the battles in Ukraine feel like amphibious assaults everywhere all the time. In an amphibious assault you've got an illuminated battlefield (the attacker is a finite quantity of very visible ships and the defender is tied to a linearish boundary that the attacker can observe from offshore at leisure before the assault). The attacker can mass fires from behind the line of contact, but will have difficulty advancing those fires as their beachhead is in a pocket surrounded by defender's fires.
But the precursor to a successful amphibious assault is the isolation of the beachhead from its LOC, either by naval blockade for islands or by tactical and strategic air for larger assaults. Those are both unavailable in Ukraine, so even a high-tempo high-casualty assault doesn't produce meaningful operational effects (unless you chain them together over and over in a way anathema to modern western sensibility).
It'd be interesting to look at the ratio of troop density to weapon-denial-range. I think CM does a nice job of simulating that. Playing the CMBO beta Last Defense, I learned quickly that American bazooka armed infantry projected an armor denial zone about 75 meters in all directions. So if you want an impermeable defense, you need something like a squad every 150 meters of frontage in whatever depth you think you need. The first time I played CMBS Into the Breach I thought I was totally screwed because I was used to that sort of frontage. Then I discovered Javelins and had to reconsider. I'd say a modern infantry squad can project that denial zone hundreds of meters if not a kilometer or more. So has the troop density changed relative to the size of the denial zone it can project?
edit: Also, what the heck with all the videos of IFVs and tanks engaging trenches at ranges I'd describe as "pants on head"? Why does that work? Are there lots of videos I'm not seeing of IFV's getting destroyed by infantry light AT as they approach?

We should be clear about what's happening here...and note I am politically an opponent of and no fan personally of Mitch McConnell: 
 McConnell has been trying very hard to get a deal through that addresses the border 'crisis' and funds Ukraine. Trump has become the nominee in all but name and Trump is threatening Senators who make any deals with Biden that might hurt his chances in November. So, McConnell has realized his own caucus is weak at the knees and a linked deal might not get through. 
His solution is the delink the deals so that Senators can bow to Trump on the border but maybe get Ukraine money through...and he's done it in a way that makes it clear that the fault for all of it lies with Trump. In short, he's maneuvering to keep aid alive while making sure Trump pays a political price for his obstruction. 

Nothing to see here folks.

Two locked threads related to that topic attest to that.
This thread needs to stay open, as it is the damn source for following this war on the internet.

85% chance Haley loses by 15% or so in NH and will be out after she then loses in SC. 
14% chance she loses by single digits and then loses by double digits in SC. 
1% chance she loses by single digits/barely wins NH and then carries that momentum through SC. After that, who knows? 
It is very important to remember that Haley is middle ground...for the GOP. Her positions on abortion, spending, Social Security, etc is fairly far right relative to the general voting public. And her problem is that she's not in an election between her, Biden and Trump. She's in a GOP primary dominated by the 40% or so of its pro-authoritarian electorate. She's also not an elected official in any capacity. She has no ability to rally any votes in Congress and she has no political pull on any of them (as Trump does with that above mentioned 40%). 
In the end, politicians win by persuasion. Have we seen any evidence of Haley persuading anybody? Any fired up crowds? No and we haven't seen it for a while. Trump has his rallies that are mostly carnivals for the most hard core MAGA folks but you have to go back to early Obama to see a crowd being inspired in a positive way. That's what a game changer looks like. She ain't it.

I made this a few years ago, your screenshot brought it to mind

By the end of the war tank riding on American tanks was becoming more common. This was when  advancing forces were covering dozens of miles at a time being met mostly by surrender flags. Different circumstances than the Normandy hedgerows 9 months earlier. So not appropriate for that title, appropriate for this one.

It being the weekend, I thought I'd post another screenshot. This time of the much-requested Ram Kangaroo. This vehicle turned out to be a pleasant surprise in the game. Bullet-proof all-terrain troop transport and protected close infantry support with the mg subturret. The 14 man carrying capacity is a bit misleading, that number includes tank riders clinging to the engine deck too.

So, after I learned more about how Soviet tactics are actually supposed to work from watching @domfluff's collaboration with Free Whisky, and giving FM 100-2-1 a full reread*, I found that Soviet doctrine actually works really well. I was even able to use it to good effect in CMBS, even against American forces.
One of the most important things to remember is that it's not about just lining up and charging forward (in fact I rather got the impression that the founding principle of Cold War Soviet doctrine was "let's not do things the way we did them in WW2" (more emphasis on maneuver and avoiding frontal attacks, and more emphasis on artillery)). The most important part of the Soviet army isn't the tanks, it's the artillery. The tanks come in 2nd place in importance after the artillery, and the infantry come in 3rd place (though the infantry are still important, they understood completely that tanks need infantry support**). It's true that the Soviet army is less flexible than NATO armies at lower levels. It's true that lower ranked leaders (platoon and company commanders) were not supposed to exercise the kind of initiative that lower level NATO leaders were expected to exercise. So from the battalion level down it was a very battle-drill focused army. But from the regimental commanders up there is considerably more flexibility to come up with detailed plans, which should account for multiple contingencies. The lack of emphasis on lower level initiative (in fact outright discouragement of lower level initiative) isn't about stifling flexibility, it's about ensuring the will of the commander is carried out. So how well a given Soviet force performs will depend very heavily on the quality of their regimental and division commanders.
Again, the battalions and companies fight according to battle drills. But the regimental commander had a lot of flexibility in how and where to employ his battalions. Assuming the regimental commander is competent (granted, a big assumption, based on what we've seen from Russian commanders), he would try not to just use his battalions as blunt instruments. He would come up with a detailed plan, using deception, maneuver, and overwhelming firepower. In Combat Mission terms, since you rarely have full regiments, you'll be wanting to do this detailed planning with whatever sized force you have available, even if it's only a battalion or company.
When it comes time for the main attack you should go all in with everything you've got. But you shouldn't send the main attack in until you're ready. You'll want to spend a large chunk of the scenario just preparing things for your main attack. Think hard about the avenue of approach you want to use for your main attack. The Soviets would try to attack from an unexpected direction (for example: they absolutely will attack through forests if they think their vehicles can get through and it might allow them to emerge on the flank or rear of enemy defenses). So if you think you see an approach that the scenario designer wouldn't have thought to defend, and which you can get your forces through, then that approach is in line with Soviet thinking. A key element of the main attack, when it is finally time to send it in, is overwhelming firepower. The artillery fire plan is one of the most important elements of the overall plan. The Soviets were an artillery army first and foremost. Every attack would be supported by mass concentrations of artillery. You'll want to time your main attack to coincide with a full barrage consisting of all of your guns (the main attack is not the time to save ammunition), hitting both known and suspected enemy positions that might interfere with your advance. And don't just leave it up to the artillery either. Don't wait for your tanks to spot targets, but give them a large number of target briefly commands to hit every potential enemy position you can think of, even if you don't know for certain that it's really an enemy position (my rule of thumb as the Soviets/Russians is that my infantry never storm a town until every floor of every building has been hit by at least two HE rounds, regardless of whether enemy troops have actually been spotted in that building). Again, the main attack is not the time to try to save ammunition. I'll generally chain up multiple target briefly commands for each tank to execute each turn by targeting them from waypoints, sometimes with a 15 second pause order at each waypoint for better control (though firing on the move is probably more in line with how the Soviets wanted to fight). Whether I intend to bypass a position or storm it with infantry, I want to make sure no point in the position remains unhit with HE. And I always endeavor to have my infantry, coming up in their vehicles just behind the tanks, enter the enemy positions mere seconds after the last HE round has hit them (the timing on this can be tricky, but it is possible). Mass is an important component of Soviet doctrine. But it's really about massing firepower, not massing platforms. Massing platforms is merely a means to massing firepower.
In a meeting engagement (or any attack that does not start with Soviet forces already in contact with the enemy), they would have an advance guard ahead of the main body, itself broken up into three parts. The first part is the Combat Reconnaissance Patrol (CRP), consisting of one platoon. Their job is to find the enemy. Ideally by spotting them, but if necessary by dying to them. The second part is the Forward Security Element (FSE), consisting of a company minus the platoon that was split off to form the CRP. Their job is to brush aside a weak enemy, or fix a strong enemy in place for the third part. The third part is the advance guard main body, consisting of the regiment's lead battalion, minus the company that was split off to form the FSE. Depending on the conditions set by the CRP and FSE they may try to flank the force that was fixed in place by the FSE, or pursue some other objective that the fixed force can't stop them from taking. In this sort of battalion-sized advance to contact the battalion commander has more of the flexibility and initiative normally reserved for the regimental commander. Technically the Advance Guard main body is still setting conditions for the regiment's main body to do whatever it intends to do (larger flank attack, breakthrough, exploitation). But in Combat Mission terms I think it's good enough to just think in terms of your CRP, FSE, and your main body (the regimental main body behind the advance guard main body is probably out of scope for a single Combat Mission scenario anyway). You may want to have an FO with your CRP or FSE to start calling in the barrage that will support your main attack. Or you will want to preplan your artillery (you can certainly have a more complex fire plan if it's preplanned), with your main attack timed to go in at the 15-minute mark, and the CRP and FSE expected to have done their jobs before the 15-minute mark.
When an attack starts in contact with the enemy (they aren't moving to contact, and they already know what's in front of them), the Soviets wouldn't have an advance guard. The attack would go in more according to the 'deliberate attack' training scenarios. Whether you choose to employ a CRP and/or FSE in advance of your main attack, the important thing is that you have a good idea of what you are facing so that you can decide how, where, and when you want your main body to spring the main attack. Again, you are trying to avoid a frontal attack (hit their positions from the flank or rear if such an approach is available), and go in firepower-heavy with everything you've got, when (not before) you are ready to spring the main attack. Do everything you can to prepare the way for the main attack before springing it (recon, fix any forces that need to be fixed, start calling in fire-missions timed to support the main attack).
*I had read parts of FM 100-2-1 before. But I had skipped to the parts about platoon, company, and battalion formations and battle drills. But those are just the building blocks of Soviet doctrine, not the actual substance of Soviet doctrine.
**In fact they apparently decided that they were a bit too tank-heavy at some point in the 80s. One of their late 80s organizational reforms (which I don't think they ever actually completed before the Cold War ended (the 1991 edition of FM 100-2-3 suggested they were still early in the process of implementing this reform)) was to replace one of the tank regiments in each division with another motor rifle regiment. So tank divisions were to go from three tank regiments and a motor rifle regiment to two tank regiments and two motor rifle regiments. And motor rifle divisions were to go from three motor rifle regiments and a tank regiment to four motor rifle regiments, with the only tank support being the tank battalions organic to each motor rifle regiment. One can imagine how this would have resulted in a much more sensible ratio of tanks to infantry.

Get the whole FI package when you do. There's a LOT of variety in forces and equipment in, especially in the DLCs, and some great scenarios all around. It's a very different experience from the hedgerows and the steppes!
Dave

As a graphics programmer for a major studio who's worked on some AAA titles (Yes! This is my moment to be a grognard about something on here!), I think particle collisions like this are actually one of a handful of graphical effects that has actually gotten a lot more difficult to do over time.

To my mind, the best implementation of this was the original Halo, which came out over twenty years ago. Spark particles from bullet impacts on world geometry would actually correctly deflect off of other world geometry in their path. It was subtle, but really cool. I've obviously never seen their rendering code (I don't work for Bungie), but I think the combination of very simple geometry (by today's standards) and the fact that they still processed their world geometry into BSP trees for culling let them do accurate particle collisions for relatively low cost.

Interestingly, the remastered Anniversary Edition, which came out a decade ago and has much more detailed world geometry and a modern (at the time) game engine, doesn't do particle collisions. Sparks and stuff just pass right through geometry like they do in pretty much every other modern game.

This has potential to be huge: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/26885
Ukranians reaching leningrad by drone means they can strike ust-luga and primorsk, two out of three big oil export terminals on the western side of russia. Third being novorossisk, which, well ...
Ukraine might decide to go sanctions schmanctions at some point and truly bork russian exports for good.
At the very least russia needs to dedicate some resources to guard against careless smoking at the oil terminals, which is away from other uses ...

My background is Korean Peninsula analysis and I speak the language but I haven't really focused on North Korea professionally for a few years. That being said, I do try and keep up on news even if not to the level I used to. 
The timing seems off. If he waits a year it is possible that he may have his buddy Donny Trump back in the White House. Trump has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the entire notion of USFK and I suspect he would try to withdraw all our forces from there if he wins the election. 
Additionally, South Korea is going through a truly unprecedented demographic crisis. Their birth-rate is something like 0.78 kids per woman. That is existentially bad for society in general but also catastrophic for a nation that relies on universal conscription for its national security. If Kim waits even five years before making a move the ROKA will have a massive problem fielding enough soldiers to effectively fight the KPA. 
KJU is a relatively young (if unhealthy) man and he has time if he is truly dead set on re-uniting Korea by force. I think trying something now would be extremely foolish. 

Release next week
 

You bring up some good points.  I think it may come down to which shade of grey one chooses to view the conflict through.  I am going to pick on this one though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_following_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/08/23/russians-have-emigrated-in-huge-numbers-since-the-war-in-ukraine
For a nation not physically being invaded…this is “not nothing”.  If mass exodus of a million people - most well educated and well off from what we can tell - is not a sign of a freakin sick duck I don’t know what is.  Now Google “immigration to Russia” and tell me what you see.
This is like sanctions - if one wants to see that nothing is happening…well then that is what they will see.  Russian isolation benefiting Ukraine…well isolation economically means no one is going to loan Russia money and that is what actually makes the world go around.  Russia has managed to keep its military afloat…barely - I would not be surprised at all this winter is we saw more mutinies and the like.  Just because the RA can sit in water filled holes and cover minefields does not mean they are a credible military force.  Until I see a real operational offensive from the RA that goes anywhere, I am not jumping in the “Russian military is still fine” camp.
The UA has engineered three successful operational offensives in this entire war so far.  Russia has had zero.  Closest Russia came was Priggy, who made the single longest advance  the war…towards Moscow.  Yet we are pointing to Ukraine like all is lost and Russia is waiting to unleash like a coiled spring.  
The reality is that things are bad for Russia.  Ukraine may not be able to break this deadlock but frankly I don’t know of a modern military that may be able to for some time.  So What?  Well Ukraine is free and moving west.  Even if the US balks - and that is a big leap btw.  Europe will have to step up and keep Ukraine in the game.
 

An older model of Bradley besting the Russians’ most modern MBT. Let that be another nail in the coffin for the myth of Russian technical superiority.
Also… Steve, is there a chance we’ll see a patch in the future where you can damage a tank in such a way that the turret will be locked in a non-stop spin?