Probus

Yes. You are absolutely right! https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/after-u-s-navy-helicopters-sink-houthi-boats-are-strikes-next The Houthis are finally taking some fire. We are not just knocking down their missiles. This combat may be more appropriate in a game like Harpoon, but this is also happening: It also looks like the UK is getting ready to attack the Houthis

I'm sorry @Chudacabra. I was following you until you made this statement. You obviously didn't see any of the videos. This statement undermines the credibility of your arguments somewhat. October 7th was a nightmare not a crossfire or accident.

There is another CMBN and CMSF2 tourney starting shortly on The Few Good Men by SlySniper: https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/thefgmforum/threads/official-sign-up-thread-for-field-warriors-tournament-cmbn.36753/

So in your opinion @Chudacabra, what is the long term peaceful solution to the Palestinian/Israeli situation? How do you end the violence (on all levels)?

You are all missing the elephant in the room. With groups like Hamas in power within the Palestinians, there will be no peace until Israel no longer exists. I'm not sure if Hezbollah also has this view, but if the Palestinians want real peace they have to get rid of terror organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. I think (at least before Oct 7th) that Israel would be happy integrating with peaceful Palestinians.

This is probably a stupid question but here goes: Why aren't either side using vast amounts of smoke ammunition to fool these less expensive drones during operations? I've not seen (hardly) any action where smoke rounds/dischargers were used. They could even make a smoke round that hangs in the air just above the troops to bork drones.

If my opponent, Limit, is reading this thread, I just wanted to let you know one of our games is borked. I can only play the one where I am Germany. I have @BFCElvis and Slitherine support looking into it. Hopefully they can get it fixed ASAP. It seems like one of our turns got mixed up with someone else's turn in PBEM++. The name of the game has changed to "Myth of Invincibility" and therefore the password is different. Very strange.

Well dang @The_Capt! Neither of these organizations are trustworthy I guess. Who do you trust anymore. At least I checked the 972 website’s About page and what the NGO says is true. They are anti-occupation and pro Palestinian. I guess they are upfront about it.

The name of the magazine “is derived from the telephone area code that is shared by Israel and Palestine.” While the publication claims that it “does not represent any organization, political party or specific agenda,” the “About” section of website states: “we oppose the occupation.” In addition, the blog presents highly biased perspectives on the Arab-Israeli conflict and promotes the Durban strategy to demonize and delegitimize Israel. https://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/_magazine/

Other than its neighbors vowing to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. If they can just get them to take that line out of their “constitutions”, things might get better.

Merry Christmas everyone! Thanks for such a civil discussion.

Dang! I'm fighting in every direction at the same time! I can't tell if I'm surrounded or if I'm surrounding the enemy!

Yeah, I’m beginning to think having a vetted player tournament might not be such a bad idea. Dunno.

I read the report and it wasn't the worst footage. They left some out on purpose. But the footage was pretty bad I'm told. I've only seen a small fraction of it and those Hamas fighters acted like animals.

I did see those vehicles lower down when I was reading. They look like they were the ones tore up by a bulldozer. That's horrible and an attempted cover up makes it worse. I want to hear what the IDF has to say for itself. War is bad but attacking doctors on purpose... That's just horrible. Why??? And I just don't see the motive. What could possibly cause them to do that? That makes Israel look like Hamas, the ones they are supposed to be fighting against.

I'm not giving the IDF a pass on these situations, but the vehicles just look like white vans/cars. I don't see any markings on them that would indicate they are doctors. Did the 'red crosses' get burned off the vehicles maybe?

I agree with you Capt. I think what sometimes makes wars look cyclical is the fact that the previous war ended 'badly'. Like the end of WWI setup the conditions for WWII. The Gulf War 1991 end setup the 2003 war since Saddam was left in power with weird rules of engagement governing the forces over there after the war. I'm sure there are more examples, but those are a couple that come to mind.

@ALBY and I just played a really fun scenario he came up with that hones your skills at indirect fire and the use of spotters and drones in CMBS. We each had mechanized forces (which included only 1 tank) and 7 drones each. Reinforcements came in at each 5 minute mark that gave you more and more capability. It would really make a good training or tournament game.

Is there any way to see on the UI if your unit is in contact with an enemy or enemies? Something like a counter or an indicator. I don't think there is one, but I thought I'd ask.

Yes. I noticed that too. Well I tried to apply a metric to the invasion by the IDF. I still believe the numbers are telling, but we may have to agree to disagree. At least I may do some more research into those kind of numbers. (BTW, 7 buildings were destroyed in the 9/11 attack) Here is a bit of combat footage that appears to show the IDF clearing a building: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/s/EeXFfGO4zb Dangerous work.

Yeah. I agree with you 100% @Anthony P.. I was looking for numbers that most reflect what the Middle Eastern community claims. Even if you flip the numbers from worst case to best case or somewhere in between, it still shows that civilian deaths per building destroyed is relatively low.

I believe, and this is wholey a guess, is that Israel wants to evacuate all of Northern Gaza to the South. Kill off Hamas in the North. Then evacuate all of the Gazans, through a strict filtering system, back into Northern Gaza. Rinse and repeat. Painful but may be effective with minimal IDF and civilian casualties in the long term. Whether that is going to be considered a war crime or just the new way to deal with lawless genocidal terrorists, only time will tell. After doing the math (<2 civilian deaths per building destroyed), with Al Jazeera's own numbers mind you, I am having a hard time believing Israel is bombing Gaza as indiscriminately as the press would have you believe. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the numbers I'm seeing just don't lie. With the numbers @Holien supplied, it is only 1 civilian death per 5 buildings destroyed (18,000 civilian deaths divided by 96,000 destroyed or damaged buildings). Even though that seems to be a huge number of buildings destroyed or damaged, just imagine how many civilians would have been killed if Gaza was just indiscriminately carpet bombed with 2000 lb bombs dropped by something like B-52s. At least an order of magnitude more deaths I would say. I just feel very sorry for the Palestinians. They are the real losers in this conflict. But I guess that's true of all civilians in all wars.

You are making my point for me @Holien. The more buildings destroyed, the less civilians killed per building. But @The_Capt makes a good point. How many civilians/building is a war crime and an arbitrary number. And Israel is just one bomb away from a disaterous result. Now I don't think that before the end of WWII was quite the time to discuss how many billions of dollars the USA was going to spend rebuilding Germany and Japan. That would have been a political death sentence. Same applies here.

Being an engineer, something just doesn't settle right with me. As of yesterday Al Jazeera says that 18,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/12/12/know-their-names-palestinians-killed-by-israel-in-the-occupied-west-bank-2) @The_Capt, you mentioned that "My concern at this point is that is IDF appears to be taking out around 10-20 building per hour." If that's the case, that means that in the last 46 days of fighting, 11,000 to 22,000 buildings have been destroyed. That puts the number of civilians per building at somewhere between 0.8 to 1.6 per building. Unless I did the math wrong (which is very possible since I'm a government engineer ) that hardly seems to be war crime levels of destruction.

Unconventional warfare sure does bring up a lot of good questions.