Probus

There exists no quantitative definition of what is and is not wanton or uncalled for destruction, e.g. "there has to be 2 enemy combatants in a one story, 50 square meter residential building to justify destroying it", so between that and the lack of independent research, it's hopeless trying to reach any serious conclusions at such an early stage.
The extensive destruction and refugee streams inside Gaza may be proof of wanton and uncalled for bombing, possibly with the ambition of causing (permanent) large scale migration out of Gaza. The extraordinarily low Israeli casualties on the other hand may also be indicative of the bombing being necessitated to deny Hamas the opportunity of drawing the IDF into costly, manpower intensive and slow moving urban combat as they have before.

We hopefully all agree that war is horrible and what is happening in West Bank is horrible.  But, HAMAS was elected by the citizens of the West Bank and... according to Google:  "A poll conducted after October 7 by a research organization known as the Arab World for Research and Development found that 62 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank have a “very positive” view of Hamas and 68 percent “extremely support” the attacks of October 7.Nov 29, 2023" 
It's easy to pontificate from the safety of our western lives.  But, we have to bear in mind how we would feel if our own spouses had been cut to pieces, raped and our children been burned alive in the Oct 7 attacks.  I certainly do not feel able to judge their extreme reactions.  
 
 

The IDF is trying its best to reduce IDF casualties.  If there is a sniper(s) in a building shooting at them, should they run in there and try to kill the sniper?  That could mean dozens of casualties for the IDF.  The Israelis are sick and tired of taking casualties.  Calling in an airstrike is the obvious thing to do.  Especially since it is a proven fact that Hamas is using tunnels.  Hamas doesn't care about civilian casualties.  The more the better as this will continue to sway world opinion against Israel.  And since when do you ever want to make combat in war a fair fight?  In WWII they didn't hesitate to flatten a building if it had German soldiers putting up a strong defense.  I doubt anyone even asked if there were civilians in the building. 
At least Israel is trying to persuade the Palestinians to evacuate N. Gaza until they can clear out Hamas.  I wouldn't be surprised if they then ask the Palestinians in S. Gaza to move back to the North (or maybe to the West Bank) so they can clear out Hamas in the South.  They will have to provide refugee camps at that point because there won't be much left standing in N. Gaza.  Hopefully this will provide construction jobs to the Palestinian refugees that will allow them to rebuild and bring back some prosperity to the region.  Something like Germany or Japan. But I'm prolly just dreaming here.
On a side note, some of these liberal colleges that have been having pro-Hamas rallies are starting to get a taste of what it is they are supporting:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/6/chabad-screening-oct-7-hamas-attacks/
or this one:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181
The world shouldn't forget what Hamas did to start all of this violence.  I think the IDF believe that using extreme force in the short term will save lives (Israeli and Palestinian) in the long run.
Anyways, Is there a way in SF2 to simulate civilians in a building with rebels, where you get points for not destroying the building?

The IDF is trying its best to reduce IDF casualties.  If there is a sniper(s) in a building shooting at them, should they run in there and try to kill the sniper?  That could mean dozens of casualties for the IDF.  The Israelis are sick and tired of taking casualties.  Calling in an airstrike is the obvious thing to do.  Especially since it is a proven fact that Hamas is using tunnels.  Hamas doesn't care about civilian casualties.  The more the better as this will continue to sway world opinion against Israel.  And since when do you ever want to make combat in war a fair fight?  In WWII they didn't hesitate to flatten a building if it had German soldiers putting up a strong defense.  I doubt anyone even asked if there were civilians in the building. 
At least Israel is trying to persuade the Palestinians to evacuate N. Gaza until they can clear out Hamas.  I wouldn't be surprised if they then ask the Palestinians in S. Gaza to move back to the North (or maybe to the West Bank) so they can clear out Hamas in the South.  They will have to provide refugee camps at that point because there won't be much left standing in N. Gaza.  Hopefully this will provide construction jobs to the Palestinian refugees that will allow them to rebuild and bring back some prosperity to the region.  Something like Germany or Japan. But I'm prolly just dreaming here.
On a side note, some of these liberal colleges that have been having pro-Hamas rallies are starting to get a taste of what it is they are supporting:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/6/chabad-screening-oct-7-hamas-attacks/
or this one:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67629181
The world shouldn't forget what Hamas did to start all of this violence.  I think the IDF believe that using extreme force in the short term will save lives (Israeli and Palestinian) in the long run.
Anyways, Is there a way in SF2 to simulate civilians in a building with rebels, where you get points for not destroying the building?

Thank goodness no one was hurt.
Sad thing is forget the right procedure for clearing a weapon. Some people don't even know that ejecting a magazine is not enough to clear a semi-automatic pistol. I have heard stories of some people killing themselves because of this mistake.
I own a few firearms and I support civilian ownership of firearms, but this all reminds me of how important firearms education is.

Yeah, this smells like “Oh crap, our hope of Russia not losing too hard was stupid and wrong, we didn’t send Ukraine enough weapons, and we lost an election, and now we are trying to look like we are competent”.
Kimbo’s razor: Never attribute that to strategy that can be explained by a complete lack of strategy.

Watch out guys.  You may be starting to echo chamber yourselves into saying that the Oct 7 attacks were not terrorism when CLEARLY, CLEARLY they were.
If what Israel is doing now is considered a War Crime, just as Hamas knew it would be. Then I ask you this:
What, in your opinion should Israel do strategically to fix the situation in Gaza after being brutally attacked?
 

Watch out guys.  You may be starting to echo chamber yourselves into saying that the Oct 7 attacks were not terrorism when CLEARLY, CLEARLY they were.
If what Israel is doing now is considered a War Crime, just as Hamas knew it would be. Then I ask you this:
What, in your opinion should Israel do strategically to fix the situation in Gaza after being brutally attacked?
 

Yeah that hurts! Have some comfort in knowing its happened to all of us once in awhile.

No need to tuck tails.  It was a solid point/question.  This is a highly charged subject.
“What does Israel do now?”  Well an immediate response was required, no getting past that.  But CT/CVEO work when done with precision takes time and resources.  So the trick would have been a balancing act between overt high profile strikes to keep the public feeling safe.  And a rapid acceleration in a deliberate CT campaign to dig out Hamas from the Palestinian people.
Or if one is going to go all full conventional, then demonstrate restraint and precision wherever you can.  If terrorist go into a building…raid the building by hand, don’t drop a JDAMs on it.  There are munitions and systems that can kill with much less collateral.  It will be slower and you will take casualties but you may avoid the pitfalls of the situation they are stuck in.  One must have an air of righteousness even if the war itself is dirty.
Beyond that, I honestly think Israel was screwed the second the attack came off.  Arming everyone in the communities around the Gaza Strip (eg local militias).  Making each home a fortress Afghan style.  Redundant manning along the fence line with ready forces.  It all costs, but compared to where they are now it would have been a pittance.  I do not for a second blame Israel for the 7 Oct attacks - that is a narrative being picked up by some.  Nothing Israel had done with respect to Gaza deserved the horror stories coming out of that. 
There may have been a political solution to the Palestinian Problem but that is over now.  Israel is off the hook and losing control of the larger strategic narratives.  It is in effect risking doing more damage to itself than Hamas ever could.  The real answer would be to get the Palestinian people to reject Hamas itself - I am no expert on what that would look like.  But now that ship has sailed.  My sense is that Israel needs to define an endstate in this war that does not look like 2 million Palestinians being driven into the desert to die.

It is one of the most often misused words, but I still think this definition holds true:
Terrorism is violence directed against random civilians in order to promote a religious or political cause.

Took me awhile to find the FO too. I thought, I could be a nice guy and point this out in the forums. Or be a overly competitive snarky bastard and not say anything. I made my choice! 😂 Hey Im in the lead after all, what do you expect, the gloves are off! 🍺

I think the Viet Cong probably provide a better counter-point.  Terrorism normally has political objectives, the disconnect occurs on the relative term of "realistic".  Terrorism can often be non-linear in nature - ends way, and means tend to blur until options emerge.  As such a whole lot of relative rationality is at play.  It is incorrect, and dangerous to label all terrorist as blood-thirsty revenge seeking monsters - that was a narrative from the GWOT days. It came about because "we do not negotiate" etc.
The reality is that terrorism, is a tactic of violent extremism and asymmetric warfare (among other labels) and almost always has some sort of political objectives, they can just be hard to see or understand from the outside:
- OBL - Caliphate 2.0 (with him at the top no doubt).  Terrorism was a way to get the US into a grinding ground war in Asia that would break it a la Vietnam.  It was an inductive action to garner a response.
- ISIL - Armageddon 2.0.  A real mish-mash in this crew but they were looking for some sort of decisive battle that would trigger the Second Coming.  Can't negotiate with that so we killed them.
- White Supremacy - Looking for the inverse John Brown moment that would spark a race-based civil war in the USA (the oldies never go out of style)
You can go through the long list back to the Zealots, thru Order of Assassins, Religion based, Anarchists, the -isms and now whatever the hell all this is.  All of it is about weaker opponents trying to induce a larger one to make mistakes, or somehow garner support to the point they can take it to the next level of Revolution.  Rarely works but we can't seem to shake the idea.
What should be bothering Hamas is that all of the terrorism wins had an external state backer(s) that provide safe haven and support.  History is not kind to terrorist/VOEs who are in relative isolation.

Nicely done @Hapless!

Aw, that makes me sad.  Ok, well I will come here then.  I have to be honest I have not kept up on the tactical developments of this one but let's get this thread back on track and give this conflict some love.

We have a whole thread dedicated to Ukraine in the Black Sea directory. 

You prove my point for me as you embrace your central premise.  So Ukraine, a second-hand Volvo military of corrupt Soviet era equipped and trained gaggle, held off the Russian military - which has higher defence spending than the UK even accepting corruption.  Held them off when facing 12:1 odds north of Kyiv and multiple enemy axis of advance, some penetrating over 200km into their nation...and that was before we started training them?  
So the sum total of your position is that "we are fine, nothing to see here" because Ukraine Sucks, but Russia really sucks?
Your statement about basic training essentially demonstrates your ignorance.  Basic training is likely the most critical and intensive training requirement for any force generation effort.  Taking that load off is 1) enormously important to sustaining the war effort and 2) set the foundations for follow on training.  Considering the incredibly shortened timelines to getting these soldiers to the front, basic training is likely THE most important training they will receive.
You also miss the fact that we have been training those poor simple Ukrainian officers in western staff colleges and schools for nearly a decade.  Their doctrine is our doctrine. 
  So wait a minute...we have a saying where I come from too, "sucking and blowing at the same time".  So the absolutely terrible "second hand Volvo" Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to field a layered IADs system to deny the airspace of all Ukraine pretty much from the start of this thing?  I mean, ok, I could buy the RA and RuAF, they invest billions and Ukraine had a pretty small Air Force to start with.  The failure of Russian airpower is now down to Russia Sucks, but somehow Ukraine Sucks at everything but creating a global class networked IADS in days?  They could do that but somehow the mystical dark art of combined arms manoeuvre eludes them? 
We can debate the future of AD and airpower all day, the blunt answer is "no one knows" but we need to figure it out.  My sense is that like other technologies the entry levels are lowering.  Creating an IAD system out of distributed lighter and cheaper but connected systems going to happen.  Why?  Because they can Deny air superiority.  They are much more difficult (and with MANPADS, basically impossible) to fully suppress....that is a their main feature and why people will invest in them.
And here we land on it.  They can spot the tank out at range...everyone can.  Here is the thing that most armchair generals completely miss, it is not about the platforms, it is how you pull them together.  The Ukrainian military is linked into the US and Western C4ISR, they can see everything. They have an integrated ISR system, from Tac UAS to satellites.  That is why nothing flies or drives or crawls without getting lit up.  Hell even the RA has enough ISR to deny Ukrainian mass we just saw that this summer.
That Ukrainian infantry platoon can see those tanks, after being cued by operational level, from 10kms away with their own UAS systems.  As to infantry support, I read a RUSI report that said a Bn would need to clear 25kms of linear frontage in order to "get between enemy infantry and tanks".  That is impractical and nearly impossible.
The enemy will see that F35 when it takes off.  It will get picked up by someone's cell phone.  That will cue other systems and voila, you get 20 UAS.
Conjecture on "tomorrow".  Another armchair general trope.  In Force Development there are levels of technological maturity used to determine how close these technologies are.  UAS are Tier 0 - they are already here en masse, in mass production and evolving fast.  UGVs are pretty much Tier 1 - into commercial production stages and already being fielded - there are social media feeds coming from Ukraine on how the UA has already fielded some.  Something like Nanotech is Tier 9, lot of conceptual but not even prototyped yet.  So that is not optimism, it is facing realities.
Here take a look: https://odin.tradoc.army.mil/WEG/List/ORIGIN_china--people-s-republic-of-d6ee02&DOM_land-53d795&DOM_infantry-vehicles-0a6516 
That is the US Army's TRADOC site, btw - before you go "pshaw" again. 
What he said.  If you really want to learn about where war is going head on over to the Black Sea thread and get an eyeful of where things are going.  Track it for a few weeks and then come back and we can discuss.   
Feel free to come on in and tell us all how it is....

We have a whole thread dedicated to Ukraine in the Black Sea directory. 

You got a point, just like I said , I would recommend not to peek into that scenario to avoid spoilers.   And yes, to have a fair play is important, sorry to hear your story.
 
This 3rd round scenario has been sit in my hard drive since 2017. I opened it several times , purposed a deployment plan but never hit the red GO button. But I am pretty sure some of the tournament players have played this scenario before.  

Again about sanctions and bypassing...
 

It was discussed here:
 

Someone rang?  Oh good a tank argument.  The problem with tanks as we are observing in Ukraine is 1) not all about tanks - get over to yourselves tank lovers.  The issue is much larger than a single platform regardless how much you might love the thing.  Mechanized mass is currently in the wind.  2) It isn’t that tanks are dying.  It is that tanks are dying before they can deliver the effects we want the tank to do. They cannot mass. They cannot break in, through or out.  We are seeing sniping and indirect fires (seriously wtf?) as their primary roles on the ground right now.  And 3) those who come out defending the tank really do not fully understand just how fundamental the shifts are appearing.  Mass as we knew it is failing.  Force ratios are out the window.  Denial appears to have battlefield primacy.  The tank, along with a lot of other things are being dislocated from their ability to deliver results.
Now could a massive NATO mech force still roll over a smaller less capable force?  Sure.  But the cost is likely going to go up significantly.  To the point operational and strategic calculus will need to change.  If we run into a force empowered by a supporting great power’s C4ISR and the levels of precision and autonomous systems we are only seeing hints of on the modern battlefield, we are going to be in serious trouble.  We do not have effective counters.  The other thing the tank lusters also tend to gloss over is that the current wars we are seeing are last-Gen technology.  The more modern stuff has not even appeared on the battlefield.  The trend for mechanized mass is not good overall.
Yes, people have been predicting the end of the tank since the 60’s….what if they were right?  We have never seen modern armor tested in an environment like Ukraine.  We talked and “exercised” a lot of threat reality away back in the 90s and leapt headlong into confirmation bias as we crushed Iraq (freakin Iraq?!).  I am strongly suspecting that the tank was in trouble back in the 80s.  As of 2023, the entire mechanized edifice is in trouble.  
Lastly, narrowing this back down to tanks.  The other reality that is getting sidestepped (conveniently) is that a tank is part of a much larger system extending back to the factory.  We can wrap tanks in APS and bubble wrap but the fuel trucks, ammo resupply, maintenance and spare parts are strung out on highly visible and vulnerable supply chains.  Even if the tank manages to pull off what it is supposed to deliver, we likely cannot sustain it.
First video I saw out of this Israeli conflict was a tank getting nailed by a UAS…the idea has gone viral.  Normally I really would not care if the tank, or IFV or whatever was going obsolete but given that we are likely going to looking at billions in investment in the old fleets to keep them “competitive” I think it is a damned important conversation to have.  Personally I would double down on C4ISR, UAS/UGV, PGM and light fast highly empowered infantry because it has pretty much been definitively proven that on the current battlefield that is what works on the defence at least.  Solving for offence is likely going to be the challenge of the next decade.
But hey, we will always have CM.

They haven't started using the Abrams yet as far as I know (at least none have shown up on Oryx yet), so no information on them just yet. But they should perform similarly to the Leopard 2s. What I've heard about the Bradleys and Leopard 2s so far has been glowing, emphasizing crew survivability. Overall my impression is that the usefulness of these vehicles is severely limited by the small numbers that they have been provided in. After nearly two years of war Ukraine just doesn't have enough tanks and IFVs left to be able to accept any further significant losses, and the small numbers of western tanks and IFVs being provided isn't enough to give them confidence that any losses taken now will be replaced. Regardless of how good a piece of equipment is on a one for one basis, numbers still matter. That's mainly why I really don't think that the 31 Abrams that have been provided are going to make any difference. The M1A1 Abrams that have been provided are good tanks, but no 31 of any tank will ever be enough to move the needle. I was hopeful back when the delivery of Abrams was first announced that the 31 reported merely represented the first batch, not the total number to be sent. But I have yet to hear of any further batches.
I seriously doubt that we are witnessing the end of the tank. Drones do represent a significant change in warfare. The battlefield is significantly more transparent now than it used to be. Drones have significantly changed how battles are viewed and coordinated by the leaders involved (company commanders in Ukraine now coordinate their engagements from a command post in the rear, from which they can see the drone feeds from each of their platoons (company commanders are relatively low ranking as officers go (only around 100-200 men under their command), and in earlier wars they would have been in the frontline with their men)). They have significantly enhanced the capabilities of artillery. They have increased the emphasis on overhead concealment and made tactical surprise far more difficult to achieve. But they don't really impact the relevance of tanks. They are an additional threat that tanks need to worry about. Drones can direct precision artillery onto tanks that remain stationary for too long in inadequately concealed positions. Loitering munitions are one more asset that can be used to damage or destroy tanks. But none of this has increased tank losses out of proportion to what we've seen in past wars, nor have they replaced the tank's ability to provide responsive and accurate flat-trajectory fire.
People who argue for the obsolescence of tanks point to the large numbers of tanks that we can see being knocked out in the abundance of available combat footage, and to the sparing use of tanks by the Ukrainians. I think people who bring up the first point have a poor understanding of military history. Tanks have always been lost in large numbers in every single war in which they have played a significant role. The anti-tank gun repeatedly proved its superiority over tanks in head to head engagements as early as 1941 in North Africa. The British lost huge numbers of tanks in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 because the Germans had figured out they could be easily knocked out by artillery firing in the direct-fire role. Pointing to heavy tank losses alone can't prove the obsolescence of tanks in modern warfare, since such heavy losses do not set a modern war apart from any other war in history.
The second point, that the Ukrainians have been very sparing in their use of tanks, preferring to use small groups of infantry in most of their attacks, is much more valid. But I think it is easily explained by the fact that the Ukrainians cannot count on timely and substantial replacements for any tanks they lose. Heavy tank losses in earlier wars were acceptable because the armies involved could count on those losses being replaced. The Russians have also started switching to less mechanized, and more infantry heavy attacks. And I think it is for the same reason. They don't have the industrial might of the old Soviet Union, so can't produce new tanks at the rate they are being lost in the war. They've been counting on their large stockpile of stored tanks to replace losses. But a large portion of their stored tanks have already been used up, and it doesn't look like the war is going to end anytime soon. If they are going to make their finite reserves of tanks last as long as they probably need to, they need to be much more sparing in their use of tanks. If the US found itself in a major war today I doubt we'd have the same problem. Like the Russians, we also have thousands of tanks in storage (though not as many thousands), and unlike the Russians we have considerably more industrial potential. We probably couldn't scale up tank production to the tens of thousands per year that was achieved in WW2 (Abrams are a tad more complicated than Shermans), but I'd bet that we could probably scale up into the thousands per year. Not that anyone really knows for sure. No one in US industry in 1940 had the slightest idea of what US industry would be capable of in 1942 either, so we might be able to manage more than we think.
Frankly the line that the tank is obsolete is pretty tired at this point. People heralded the death of the tank after WW1, WW2, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In each case they turned out to be wrong. I think there is a long running assumption that tanks are the modern cavalry, and therefore must eventually suffer the same fate as cavalry. I wish I didn't need to point out how absurdly over simplistic that point of view is. Tanks and motorized infantry may have finalized the obsolescence of cavalry, but they are not cavalry.
To get things back on topic for this thread, I think the Israelis probably can afford tank losses on the scale we've seen so far. Even if the footage we've seen in Gaza so far really does represent actual knocked out Merkavas (which remains unclear, since none of the footage lasts long enough to show whether or not the hits actually destroyed the tanks (or even whether they were genuine hits, and not intercepted by the APS just short of the tank)). They have fewer tanks than the Ukrainians (I heard around 400 tanks at the beginning of the war, though I'm not sure if that was prewar active-duty tanks or total tank in their inventory). But they are fighting a smaller war, and they can count on their own domestic industry to replace losses without having to count on donations from allies.

Very interesting. Unfortunately, as always, none of the footage clearly shows whether or not any of the vehicles were actually knocked out.
I'm surprised that I haven't yet seen any footage of Hamas fighters firing salvos of two or more rockets at the same time at an Israeli tank. It's one of the obvious adaptations to APS. Theoretically the APS shouldn't be able to reset in time to intercept the second rocket of such a salvo. Possible explanations that I can think of at short notice include:
1. The APS is less effective or less common than I'd assumed. Making such tactics unnecessary.
2. The APS is more effective than I'd assumed. Making such tactics ineffective.
3. Hamas fighters just haven't thought of it. Hamas my lack enough of a centralized system for disseminating lessons learned to implement such a tactic on a wide scale.
4. They may not have enough RPGs to implement such a tactic. Obviously firing a salvo of two or more rockets at a tank at the same time requires that you have two or more RPGs in the same place at the same time.
5. Other tactics may be effective enough to limit the value of implementing this particular tactic. We've seen Hamas fighters running up to place warheads directly on Israeli tanks, which would get the warhead past the APS. And APS have a limited number of charges, so it may be enough to simply saturate the APS with one rocket at a time until one finally gets through.

Should I bore you with my Israel story? Skip over it if you want.
I am not an army guy. I was a navy guy. Diving & Salvage, ship repair, dry-docking. I had the job as 6th Fleet Salvage Officer in Naples and in late 2000 my old Nokia banana phone rings in the middle of the night. Long story short. An FFG ran aground off of Alexandria. yada yada yada. Israel Shipyard In Haifa got the contract to do repairs. Sonar Dome gone. Rudder and single screw all effed up. Towed to Haifa. I was there 6 weeks to do the drydocking (floating drydock). What a great time. Haifa reminded me of Carmel, California. I was lucky to be there during a peaceful timeframe. I drove all over Israel with shipyard buddies. Went bowling in Israel? Yep. As usual, I learned a little of some language. Hebrew? Yiddish? Maybe both. Alcol beseder! I saw all the young soldiers walking around with their weapons slung. Almost all the guys at the same shipyard had been in the IDF. Moshe was a paratrooper. He got sent to Ghana to guard the embassy after Yom Kippur 73 and banged some local girls. Love the local food. 
Sonuvabidge but I was right back there a few months later when a big amphib ran aground in the Great Bitter Lake. Like a reunion back at the same shipyard. I visited the Golan Heights and saw some cool stuff. I was a tourist I guess but we fixed those ships. When I was in my hotel room I always talked out loud and said hello in case "they" were listening to me. At the airport when I left the 2nd time I rattled off a bunch of answers to the very pretty female questioner. I had already heard all their questions of why I was there, etc. She said "I will ask the questions!" 
I never have met any Palestinians or Hamas guys. But I love the Israelis I met. SHALOM! 🇮🇱