agusto

I watched Vortragsabend der Waldorfschule Überlingen and it' s really bad. This man is badly informed and/or intentionally deceiving is audience. He argues against strawmen most of time and seems to have a love for inaccurate analogys and metaphores. In a nutshell, he says that the german government is conspiring with the mainstream media to control the people, that democracy doesnt work because it brings people to power who have an opinion different from his, that everybody is so evil and immoral, and in particular the US and Israel. On the german Wikipedia it says that he, in other media, claims that 9/11 was an inside job and that the world is controlled by a zionist conspiracy.
 
In german, there is a word for what i felt while i watched the video, it' s Fremdschämen. The english language lacks a compareable word, but the dictionary of my choice translates Fremdschämen as follows: The feeling of shame for someone else who has done something embarrassing.

You guys need avatars. Geez, womble. Almost 7k posts and no avatar?

I believe the point of putting suppressors on sniper rifles isn't to make them quiet or stealthy close-in, but to make them more difficult to locate at longer ranges.  Even the best suppressors won't make a rifle totally silent, and a high-power rifle round (like .300, .308, or .388 - even .223) will still make a "crack" as it passes, but they do reduce the muzzle report (as opposed to the sound of the bullet itself) and the muzzle flash.  Suppressors on sniper rifles therefore aren't so you can kill sentries or something close-in, it's so the guy across the valley can't tell exactly where you are by light and sound.
 
FWIW, my experience with sniper teams in-game is that the Tac AI has got pretty good about having the third man (in the US teams generally armed with an M4 ACOG) only open fire when enemies are close enough that I would want the whole team shooting anyways, or sometimes when given a direct target order.  Since the snipers' rifles aren't truly "silent" in the first place, this behavior makes perfect sense to me: everyone fires at targets closer in (where the enemy would likely detect the silenced rifle anyways) than further out (where the guy with the M4 doesn't have the accuracy to make any hits).  I find that it's still the case that snipers are most effective when left to their own devices, with at most a cover arc.

Huh, you have a natural right to force the Ukrainians to do what Russia wants? No wonder you have a hard time feeling this is one sided. Cause you are on the wrong side of history.

Anyway the point of this thread was to discuss a possible new offensive, not to spend time worrying about bruised Russian feelings about pursuing politics with the ham fisted tactics of the last century. I am afraid you won't find much sympathy here.

You dont need to acquire missiles from a vehicle with your units are within 2 action spots of the vehicle. Only if you want your units to take the missiles "for a walk" they have to acquire them.

The results are in, Schürzen does work.
 

 
The hit decal circled in red shows a complete penetration. The decal circled in green shows no penetration. The hit text records the fact the armor skirt took the impact. The shot was from a Bazooka at 80 meters. Schürzen is designed to protect against HEAT rounds, and it works as advertised.

I'm a little confused. Are you saying that one doesn't need to use the Acquire command to retrieve missiles from the BMP?

OK here are the pictures to show how this worked.  I forgot this was on the picture thread - good thing I have pictures then
 
The setup is I have an air defence platoon with two BMPs stripped out. They have one vehicle for resupply just to keep it simple (that one BMP has four extra missiles, each of the teams have one missile each to go with their launcher).  I set the launchers up in a long chain from the vehicle.  Also on the board were various other AFVs and tanks placed far away form these guys and the US side had to to FOs and five air assets that were ordered to target the other AFVs and tanks away from the air defence platoon's location.

 
It did not take long before they were chewing through their ammo...

 
And I even started to get nervous when I started seeing these noticed popup that there might not be any reason to use the spare ammo...

 
 

 
 
OK now that the teams have all fired off their missiles there are only four left in the vehicle.  Pretty quickly this is how things look.
 
Two left in the vehicle

 
The team nearest to the vehicle now has one missile and access to a total of three.  The vehicle has two and the team has one.  So access to three total (but actually that is a bit odd really because the next team over also has one missile so shouldn't this guy have access to four?).  

 
The next SAM team has one missile and access to two. This makes sense he has one and his neighbour has one so he could access two.

 
 
The thrid team in the chain does not have a missile but as access to one.  Again that works because the next further guy has nothing and the next closer guy (above) has one missile so this guy has access to one.

 
 
The fourth team out has no missiles and no access to any either.  Again that works (none of the other teams further away have any missiles or any access either).

 

A little time has passed - do they pass missiles down the chain.  Well actually they do.  Pretty cool!
 
The BMP now has no missiles - they have been passed along.

 
Oops I messed up and took the next screen shots after one more missile was fired - rats.
 
The first team next to the BMP has a missile and access to three.  This actually works because you can see the third team away from the BMP was actually positioned too close to the second team out so he is actually in sharing distance for the first team too.  Hence access to three missiles.

 
 
The second team away from the BMP also has a missile and access to two.  Wait that's not right he has a missile and his neighbours on either side to do so shouldn't he have access to three then?

 
 
The third guy away from the BMP has the third missile and access to two - which again makes sense since his neighbour has one as well.  Well not quite because if I am right about why the first guy has access to three (due to being close to two other teams) then this guy should be in the same boat. 

 
I also forgot to take a screen shot of the next them but he's got nothing.  The four missiles from the BMP were passed down the chain and one got fired so now the three remaining missiles in the platoon are distributed one each to the first three teams nearest the BMP.
 
There does seem to be a bit of funny business in a couple of places but no missiles are unaccounted for.  It seems that count of what is close buy is not quite right.  Could even bee that I paused it as the items were in motion and the UI had not been updated yet.  Or it could be a bug - but since the actual missile count is correct I'm not going to fuss about it.
 
What I am not clear about is what happens when the guy on the end who has no actual missile but has access to the one next door sees a target.  Does he get the missile right out of the launcher from the guy next to him? I don't know because in this test the guy next to him pretty much spots the aircraft at the same time.  To test that some creative terrain would have to be created to give the guy without a missile in his launcher better sight lines but still have sharing access to this neighbour.  Sorry I'm not going that far.
 




 

Or perhaps you should read it again, flightradar24.com is not the US govt. it is a public website that you can access if you so choose. They claimed it was on and cited the transponder. If you are going to jump into this defending the MOD as a reliable source of info, it might help to read who is contradicting them. The site is actually a Swedish origin company. The article in being strictly objective is saying they can't verify 100% that it was on at the time. Good for them, it shows some objectivity. The MOD however has a proven track record of lying, your choice if you choose to accord them any level of validity. Maybe you can ask if those paras who got "lost" in Ukraine had their transponders on.

In 1983 the Soviets shot down Korea Air Flight 007 claiming, after initially denying it, that the civilian 747 was a spy plane. Everyone aboard was killed.
 
This is what can happen when the tactics that we are discussing get out of hand. This incident caused such a world wide stir that flight patterns from Alaska to Asia were changed, and the US allowed international access to its then top secret Global Navigation Satellite System, which is now called GPS.
 
We have already had an airliner shoot down over the Ukraine, it can easily happen again if someone makes a mistake or misinterprets a radar blip.
 
http://theweek.com/articles/445179/heres-last-time-russia-shot-down-passenger-plane

Footage from the new round of fighting in Maryinka
 
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=612_1433352920
 
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=7ea_1433378665
 
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6b3_1433373495
 
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=760_1433433099
 
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9a6_1433436254
 
 

Why would Russia be dishonest about anything?  It's not like they've ever concealed facts for their own benefit?  I imagine if that callsign or transponder code was not in service, Russia could easily show the US as lying sneakmen of green wearing nature.  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/two-days-of-russian-aircraft-intercepts/1422/
 
Please explain to me how Portugal, England etc are just right around the corner from Russia?
 
 
Apparently it was on, according to the very thing you posted.

Literacy?

 
 
I'm curious to what the Russian interest in maritime patrols carried out over Western Europe were.  The B-1 can also do a variety of other missions, I imagine if they were zipping up and down off Russia we'd be getting marginally more nuclear threats to Denmark than usual.
 
 
Again, picture if it was B-52s buzzing along, and the US DoD had just mentioned pointing more nuclear weapons at Russia because the US has secretly not invaded but actually invaded parts of Mexico to make the new US state of Baja.  It's a needlessly stupid penis waving moment that's on par with Russian foreign policy choices on a whole at this moment.
 
 
 
Said the person comparing P-3s to nuclear bombers, and who thinks Russia has a right to fly nuclear capable bombers through crowded airspace unannounced.
 
Who also doesn't apparently read his own articles posted.
 
Who thinks the UK is next door to Russia.
 
Does your village know where you are?

Would you care to idenfify the nuclear payloads carried by recon planes, or the P-3?  The P-3 is especially hilarious considering they're largely flying in that area so they can be aware of Russian submarine activity as they pass into Norwegian waters.
 
This is a stark contrast to nuclear bombers some hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from Russian airspace flying through some of the busiest commercial airspace with transponders off.  You can take issue with US/NATO recon assets bopping a little closer to Russia than you'd like, but that's different from Russian threats, and indeed plans to employ nuclear weapons against the west, and then waving said weapons systems around.
 
 
It's perfectly reasonable that you could see my car as it darted across six lanes of traffic so it is in no way reckless. So please stop complaining about my driving.  

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.

Are there any documents supporting your accusation that US military aircraft are flying in civillian air corridors with transponders turned off? If you cant provide any, in dubio pro reo.
 
 
 
A very valueable contribution to this discussion. The complete lack of interpunction and grammar elegantly underlines your sharp political analysis, while a smattering of swear words shows how highly qualified you are to make that judgement.
 
Seriously, you should stop typing from your phone and use a computer again. The quality of your posts has slackned in past few months. I am not trying to insult you here, it' s just my observation.

Thanks for the report. Can I have a source? 

More than 10 hours battle for Maryinka finished. Shortly about situation around:



1. Clashes in Maryinka area escalated in last two month. Terrain on this direction didn't allow to build solid line of defense. So, enemy made probes because thought that our lines is more weak in this area.

2. 31st of May enemy deversion group penetrated behind our checkpoints in this area and ambushed "Ural" truck with six soldiers of 28th brigade. Two were killed, two wounded, two missed with truck - possibly were captured.

3. Yesterday representative of Russia left negotiations in Minsk and hampered work of contact group. By words of our diplomats representatives of Russia and separatists demanded full revision of Minsk agreements, but Ukrainian side sharply refused all these demands. So, obviously, this demarche became signal that next step of Kremlin will lay in military plain.

4. Russian backed fighters in force of about two battalion tactical group with heavy MLRS and SP-guns support attacked our positions on line Krasnohorivka-Maryinka. Possibly enemy objectives were to seize both settlements, establish good conditions for next attack on Kurakhovo with their energy plant and take part of highway Zaporizhia-Donetsk. Also with success of operation to force Ukraine for revision of Minsk agreements and inflict panic and dissatisfaction inside of Ukraine society ("stupid generals", "Poroshenko give up Donbas", "All on Maidan 3.0 !")

5. Artillery and MLRS strike and continuously mortar fire caused many wounded among UKR forces, also Krasnohorivka was badly damaged - a part of clinic, garages, and several dozen houses were hit and burned. Enemy fighters conducted intensive shelling checkpoints in Maryinka with tanks, BMP and small arms, but main pressure they provided in Krasnohorivka area, seeking to outflank Maryinka garrison. Them succeed on several directions to pierce among our positions, but their massive advance was stopped here. Commander of 28th brigade call own SP-gun support - possibly they destroyed enemy base on territory of horse club "Equestrian"

6. Meantime, from Maryinka side intensive enemy fire forced Ukrainians stepped back from several forward checkpoints, enemy troops entered in Maryinka and Russian/DNR media hurry up claim about next "great victory".

7. Ukraine General staff assume a decision to use heavy artillery, which was drown off due to Minsk agreements. Approx in 14:00 artillery and MLRS arrived and deployed, but no order on opening fire. ATO press-service claimed they don't sure that this attack is a real offensive.

8. Clashes intensified, pressure on our troops became more strong. In 15:00 General Staff commenced fire. Artillery hit various targets between Maryinka and Donetsk. Also several strikes on industrial zones of the city.

9 Enemy troops catch heavy fire and stop advance. In pro-Russian publics of social network spread info how one their T-72BA was hit by Ukrainains and two other, which followed it just surrendered. Battle turned in position withstand with artillery and MLRS exchanges. Russian artillery hit own troops.

10. After short lull and regroup enemy tried attack again, but their attempt choked quickly.

11. OSCE and Cease fire contact group started negotiation about cease fire. (First day of) Battle is over.


Order of battle:

Ukraine: main forces - battalion tactical group of 28th mech. brigade, units of 57th motorized infantry brigade (34th and 43nd sep. motorized inf. battalions), units of 30th mech. brigade (possibly battalion), units of special police battalion "Kyiv-1", some National Guard unit.

DNR/Russia: "international brigade Piatnashka", units of brigade "Vostok", diversion-assault group "Riazan' "


Losses:

Ukraine on 19:45 - 3 KIA, 32 WIA (also unconfirmed info about 5 KIA), 1 GAZ-66, two UAZ-452

Separatists/Russia: ATO press-service claimed minimum 36 KIA, 2 tanks, BMP, several trucks, several batteries suppressed, insiders in Donetsk said only one hospital admit about 100 wounded. 

Michael isnt just someone. With 24,118 posts, he is the most active poster of all 36,989 Battlefront.com mebers. He even posted more than Steve aka Mr. Battlefront.com himself . But not only is he the most active poster who has ever been on this forum, he is also the 10th person that registered here.
 
http://community.battlefront.com/index.php?app=members&module=list&max_results=20&sort_key=posts&sort_order=desc&filter=ALL
 
http://community.battlefront.com/members/?sort_key=joined&sort_order=desc&max_results=20&st=30380
 
During the past 16 years, that man has devoted a significant amount of his lifetime to beeing part of this community and to playing the Combat Mission games. Battlefront should send him a medal to his hospital bed for his faithfulness. I am serious. At least some flowers. He deserved it.

It'd depend on the resolve of the rest of the nuclear powers...but there's no distinction between "tactical" and "strategic" nuclear weapons in terms of deterrance.  Official US policy is a weapon of mass destruction is a weapon of mass destruction and will be retaliated against in kind.  So perhaps it wouldn't be full on Dr Strangelove, but matching the Russians nuke for nuke seems likely.  

To get back to the OP's question, things do appear to be seeing some escalation. There are counterclaims from both sides, but the OSCE report for Monday says that of the 109 "explosions" they counted Monday, the vast majority were outgoing, in other words the OSCE is confirming what Kiev is saying in terms of some type of heavy probe or attack by Russian backed forces near Donetsk.

The peace talks are also apparently going poorly.

Not to mention alone of all countries on Earth, Russia is actively drilling to use manned bombers to deliver nuclear weapons on targets that would kill literally tens of thousands at best, and furthermore in recent wargames included launching nuclear strikes on Warsaw as an acceptable outcome for ensuring Russian interests were kept.
 
There's no justifying that, compliance with aviation agreements (Which there is not) be damned.  

Wow, what a lot of FUD and miss information or at least FUD and miss communication.

I live in Canada. During the cold war the Soviet air force used to test the US and Canadian air defence partnership with frequent flights were close to our air space. Similar flights were conducted near other counties air space. Once the cold war ended so did those provocative flights.

Putin started them again.

That is what we are talking about. All this justification over radar and transponders and misinformed reporters and baffle gab is just a distribution.

Putin's government has brought back an old provocation from a conflict that we thought was passed. He chose to do that. The only conclusion is that Putin's government is seeking additional conflict or at least trying to bully other counties.

That is obvious and clear. Just because some reporter screwed up the details and some people here used incorrect terminology or you misunderstood understood what they were talking about does not change that.

Quite frankly this is a common strategy when someone has no legitimate point on which to stand. Distract the other side with issues of details either real or made up in an attempt to avoid the basic issues.

Putin's government has been conducting deliberate provocative flights for the purpose of intimidation. Are you actually attempting to deny that? Do you feel it is some how justifiable? Let us stop being distracted by pointlessness.
 
Edited to remove odd phone auto correction involving piglets of all things ???

JESUS Reiter! This song must be on #1 in the Klingon charts?