This thread, methinks, very much needs to be put back on the track. Am not going to attempt to respond by individuals, so am going to address this by specific issues.
Yom Kippur War IADs effectiveness
IAF CAS losses were so severe vs Egypt for days that Israel terminated them altogether. They didn't resume until IDF tanks, which had crossed the Suez Canal, drove into the SAM zones and systematically shot up the SA-2/3/6 SAMs and dense AAA, of which the most notable AAA was the "airplane eater" ZSU-23/4. DEAD Israeli style. Against Syria, the story was much the same, but in both cases, Israeli CAS was effectively out of the war until the SAM problem was addressed, of which the pacing element (and eye waterer to defense types in the US and) was the lethality of the highly agile, mobile SA-6, a weapon against which the IAF had no ECM capability whatsoever. None. The SAMs were sufficiently deadly to force IAF planes to fly low, placing them in the deadly embrace of radar directed AAA, not to mention a plethora of SA-7s. The US provided Israel with as many as 40 F-4s and definitely 46 A-4s as replacements for terrible air losses. What's not generally known is that the US provided Israel with numerous complete tail end assemblies for A-4s. Why? The planes were eating SA-7s, but barely getting back home. Spare part planners never envisioned such a situation, so the IAF suffered major virtual attrition as a result. The IAF started the war with 440 combat planes and lost, depending on which numbers are used, 107-387, but I don't know offhand whether the US supplied additional planes over attrition during the resupply effort.
Given the above, I'm having real problems signing up for the "lessons of the Yom Kippur War." Likewise, I'm having similar problems with GW I. There were other factors at work other than those enumerated including: precision destruction of a key Iraqi air surveillance radar, the removal of which allowed the entry of the Stealth fighters and more visible friends. Inter alia, this resulted in the pinpoint destruction of the key Syrian AD HQ, spectacularly shown time and again on strike vid broadcast worldwide. Even in unbroken state, the IADS had very little capability vs Tomahawks which are, many don't realize, pretty stealthy in their own right, let alone when whizzing down the boulevard so low details on the weapons were clearly visible. This isn't the famous footage, but it gets the idea across.
The US went into GW I with not merely with superlative intel on Iraq's IADS, it went into battle with a direct conduit right into the IADS situation center, thanks to a physical hack into the fiber optic trunk line from the front, a hack put into place by a brilliant US SpecOps mission. Reportedly, the US was able to show, or not show, IADS HQ whatever it desired, but the hack is believed to have been used as a generator of enormous numbers of false targets. I firmly believe it's dangerous to draw sweeping conclusions without a fundamental understanding of what was going on to begin with. I recall the mighty MOD himself came out from Russia with his experts to figure exactly this out. One such insight was a demand for a weapon capable of downing a HARM attacking a defending SAM site. Pantsir, anyone? Tunguska itself has substantial capabilities vs things like GBU-15, LGBs, JDAM, JSOW and Tomahawks.
Now, let's look at the Vietnam War, shall we? It's fashionable to deride NVN's IADS as ineffective. This is based on another faulty premise. That premise is that the aggregate performance figures reflect how the national IADS performed historically throughout. Not the case. What you're seeing are the effects of a lot of really bad outcomes late in an otherwise impressive career. When the US first ran into the SA-2, the SA-2 was killing 0.5 planes per engagement. 0.5! Indeed, there were several cases of two planes downed in one shot. What broke the back of the NVN IADS was a masterful CIA op called HA/BRINK or HABRINK. What was that? The CIA slipped people into Indonesia's SA-2 warehouses and obtained the relevant guidance link frequencies, allowing the US to pretty effectively jam the SA-2. Why Indonesia? The Indonesian SA-2s were identical to the NVN's SA-2s! Sure, evasive maneuvering, Wild Weasel, Iron Hand played their part, but HA/BRINK was what undid the IADs as far as SAM coverage. By late in the war, Linebacker II, jamming, better tactics, SEAD and other means had so degraded and cowed the SAMs that they were blind launching (no radar at all, optical direction only) dozens of SAMs at once, and that's why the overall numbers look so bleak. That wasn't the case through much of the air war over NVN and the DMZ. We lost a family friend and his WSO to an SA-2 over the DMZ. It came out of the clouds below, so they had no chance to see the launch and evade. Boom! Two wall entries on the Vietnam Memorial.
For a more informed view of Russian SAM operational effectiveness than what I've seen in this thread, please see Carlo Kopp's analysis here. Kopp has some scathing things to say about how the Arabs not only fundamentally disregarded a throughly thought out Russian doctrine, but did some things which would've been comedic had they not been so hurtful to the using force! Suggest interested parties also look at what specific threats the newer generation SAMs were designed to defeat, what their tactical-technical characteristics are and how that applies to the ability to detect, localize, engage and kill them. Makes rather sobering reading. A Serbian captain with his ancient SA-6 unit not only survived a major SEAD/DEAD campaign, but also cost the US the stunning loss of an F-117, damage to a second one and an F-16.
As a longtime student of military history and a former defense professional, I deem it folly to expect the USAF to be able to so thoroughly control the skies that Russian CAS and similar can't operate. US AAA threat is risible, so there's no real dense AAG penalty for operating in the weeds to make it really hard vs both fighters and Patriot to engage it, and SU-25s have survived hits by things much worse than MANPADS. Russia's not going to sit idly by and let the US/NATO gin up its air power before striking, so the force ratios, for a time, at least, are not going to be pretty. Contrary to popular opinion, the AWACS supply is quite limited, and people need to remember that these vital birds can stay aloft only so long before they have to be replaced to keep a given area in coverage. The harder they're flown, the less reliable they become, and the worse the even more critical highly trained control crews perform. Tired radar operators miss things. That. of course, presumes the plane ever gets airborne to begin with, A single Russian sniper armed with, say, an OSV 12.7 mm rifle, could ruin NATO's day at places like Geilenkirchen, which when last seen, had a whole 5 E-3As. It's even worse with JSTARS, where there are but a handful of planes in total.
And this discussion is without taking into account Russian missile hard kill systems or jamming. Put it this way, for every long range sensor we deployed, the Russians deployed countermeasures. Jammers vs the E-3A, the TR-1's SAR, JSTARs. I used to have some SECRET diagrams of the E-3A radar display under jamming. Thanks to steerable antenna nulls, the system performed very well in the face of one or two jammers, but after that things progressively fell apart. It was entirely possible to jam the E-3A so effectively that entire (pizza slice wide) sectors were blind. Additionally, the more jamming energy received, the shorter detection range becomes, totally compromising the vast volumetric region a Sentry ordinarily controls. This allows even crude Stealth weapons a veritable free ride through the defenses.
If memory serves, the wartime scenario over West Germany envisioned only two E-3As up, covering the entire region. What happens if one doesn't show up, is shot down or is jammed so effectively it can't do its job? How many would likely be available to support ops in Ukraine, and how much coverage, even best case, would be lost just to keep things like S-300PMU and S-400 from simply devouring them? The Russians also have the Il-76 MAINSTAY, their Gen 2 AWACS. Nor, as a look at page 3, #46 in that thread will show, is that by any means the limits of what's going to be faced. The Russians are building a combined function aircraft able to handle everything but undersea warfare from an AWACS perspective. I'd argue that Russian force effectiveness will be greatly enhanced by even the vanilla MAINSTAY of the Cold War period, never mind what it's evolved into since. Patriot will assuredly be a key Spetsnaz target, and if it goes down, there's no way the Air Force can handle the flood which would ensue. SAMs are 24/7 systems, but planes, even with in-flight refueling, have to go home sooner or later. There is no in-flight replenishment of munitions, LRUs or crews. And who's to say that the planes keeping the Russians away in one place won't suddenly be retasked elsewhere, leaving the poor ground force commander in the denuded zone in a Heinz factory sized pickle?!
What are the MCRs (Mission Capable Rates) for the F-22A under high sortie conditions? We already know the F-35 is compromised practically across the board when it comes to just about every combat metric, so why should MCR or sortie generation rate be any better? It'll probably break a lot, not least because it'll be anything but a mature system. We know how those tend to be. As a mature system, the F-14 Tomcat was running ~65% MCR. This meant a two-carrier CVBG could use only one CVN on a given day for strike--because the other could do nothing but conduct FAD to keep both alive! Doubtless the numbers these days are better, bit I think they nicely illustrate the main issue. Complex things, and the F-35 is super complex and broken to start, are iffy at best to depend upon. The more you stress a complicated system, the faster it breaks, not necessarily in ways anticipated, either. Given this incredibly important issue, does it really make sense to make campaign success dependent on breaking the Russian Air Force via aerial combat, as seems to be the general expectation?
I don't have the latest numbers and all the tech specs for what I fervently hope are upgrades from what I knew of US capabilities, but I do know the overall situation should give serious pause to US/NATO planners, operations and combat personnel. There is a strong case to be made for a real integrated US tactical air defense a la Russe or similar. I close with a cautionary tale from my Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix days.
The FAD (Fleet Air Defense) Section Head vs His Boss, the Operations Analysis Department Manager.
My section head, Bill Knight, ran OPFOR--Tu-22M BACKFIRE & SOJs (Stand Off Jammers); his boss, Dave Spencer, had the FAD for a BLUFOR CVBG (carrier battle group). Site of battle? Navy tactical simulator in Monterey, California. Each side had its own war room, and there was a separate Control room where all was known. The stakes? A good bottle of wine and gloating rights on Monday. Event was part of a threat conference the weekend immediately before Monday.
OPFOR objective:
Penetrate FAD screen and launch long range Mach 3+ AS-4 KITCHEN ASCMs to hit and destroy CVNs (in the days before AEGIS was deployed)
BLUFOR objective
Use CAP and DLI (Deck Launched Interceptors) to destroy OPFOR before it can reach the missile release line.
Execution: BLUFOR
BLUFOR radar detects jam strobes on expected threat axis and gleefully commits both CAP and available DLI to attack OPFOR. Once in range, and operating in HOJ (Home ON Jam) mode, salvos of Tomcat launched Phoenix missiles kill the jammers, clearing the radar scopes. Dave Spencer exults, thinking he has destroyed the attackers and won a crushing victory.
Execution: OPFOR
Bill Knight fully anticipates BLUFOR commander's battle plan and uses it to destroy him. OPFOR demonstrates with SOJs, getting exactly the response he anticipated, but sends the actual striking force, without SOJs, around to the back door, conducting completely unhindered AS-4 missile attacks. The SOJs and crews blown to bits? Regrettable losses necessary to fulfill OPFOR commander, Bill Knight's, operational intent.
Battle Resolution
About the time Dave Spencer was celebrating his great victory, Control informed him his triumphant Tomcats would begin ditching shortly. Seems both of his carriers had been sunk by Bill Knight, and no fixed airfield, or even another carrier, was anywhere to be had. This was the end. I have no idea what the wine was, how expensive and delectable, but the wine of victory was thoroughly savored by my section head, for he had wiped the floor with Dave, who possessed an awe inspiring Ph.D. in Military Operations Research, from Harvard, no less. Come Monday, though, his customary arrogance and aura of superiority were gone. He walked about head down, visibly depressed and like a man in a daze. He couldn't believe what had happened to him; so catastrophically at the (perceived) moment of victory.
Summing up, I believe the expectation that the US would almost immediately own the skies over Ukraine to be on the scale somewhere from delusional clear up to clinically insane. Such expectations seem to be predicated on a largely incompetent opponent who hasn't a prayer of prevailing vs western military might and training. Additionally, this seems to be predicated on the notion that Russian pilots are no better than Arab pilots and would be flying planes just about as capable relative to US combat aircraft. Does the US have some nice toys? Absolutely. But how many will actually be usable--and stay usable--over the course of the envisioned campaign? Is it reasonable to assume that other US foes are going to lie doggo so the US/NATO can fight Russia absent other military crises? I think not. And has anyone here bothered to look at the Russian approach to BVR aerial warfare in a very heavy jamming and rapidly maneuvering target environment? Once you have, consider this notional engagement, but with as many as 4 x AAMs targeted on each Raptor. This engagement presumes, too, that AWACS isn't attacked and downed or badly crippled. Nor does it recognize the existence of a technology called forward pass, in which missile shooters simply salvo missiles on command of aircraft whose far superior sensors allows guidance of those weapons even though the shooters can't see the target. All of a sudden those numerous not Stealth planes become a real threat, making the already enormous missile loads of Russian Stealth fighters many times larger than can be carried.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I wonder if this would be deemed reasonable on the M1200. I have set up a second hull with this attached:
could be used as a variation to the original mod.
It replaces Russian infantry with some rag-tag irregular forces. I make no claims to accuracy. I just wanted them to look different to the conventional Russian forces.
The files are not tagged, but can be by modders wanting to use in their own scenarios.
Credit to
Aris for his brilliant CMRT faces which I used as the base and then modded, clumsily.
Kieme for his muddy black boots and Ukraine vest.
Anyone else I may have borrowed camo textures from.
I at least did not think it was disrespect, and Dildo is totally something a tank crew might try to name their track, I'm just saying CPT D Co commander type would have rejected it.
Dracul (Dracula would have been sort of lame, but Dracul just looks like a typo, and after Twilight, vampires are lame)
Dragon's Breath (NERD ALERT. Also our sister Battalion had a Dragon on its unit crest, so I generally shot down Dragon related names to avoid the confusion)
Daddy (just weird)
I can't remember the rest too well, this is a conversation I had nearly a year ago. One of my PLs was rather attached to the game "Bioshock" and I remember having to tell him "dude, just no" over some name related to that game, but I can't recall the name now. I also rejected anything that was just "Da' XXXX" on principle.
On the other hand I did allow an appeal if the entire crew wanted a name I considered dumb. I just did not want the crew to be stuck with a stupid name their LT dreamed up. I made sure my dudes were okay with it when I renamed my tank just because at the end of the day, they're the one doing most of the work on it.
Here's some markings that sometimes occur:
1. Driver's and vehicle commander's names on the front window (this is common on all trucks, but it's done in black so it's not super-obvious. Honestly think it's more of a way for the Battalions CSM to know who to yell at if the truck is parked poorly)
2. Bumper number and Battalion number on the front/back. Also worth skipping unless you're making a mod to spectically put C Company 1-72 Armor into the game though.
3. Sometimes a "VS-17" Panel will be displayed on the "trunk" lid. It's a two sided canvas deal that's got an orange side or a pink side, and is a very common recognition symbol, usually mounted on the top of a vehicle to ensure the USAF doesn't shoot you.
I have not seen a named HMMWVV.
I am also zero help on Strykers. I spent my entire career in the armor type recon units, or combined arms battalions.
Yep. Dildo is already out, but it had more to do with I had a QB with an entire platoon of Dildos. I'm just contributing what I know in the hopes it's useful.
I invite you to download the final version of HQS
HQS 2.2 is a huge modification for Combat Mission Black Sea / Shock Force / Afghanistan - adds or replaces almost all the sounds in the game. That's more than 2,400 sounds and more than 1GB of data, a lot of improvements and modifications really improve immersion in the game.
Changelog 2.2
380 additional sounds
- Improved infantry Ukrainian sounds
- More sounds for Americans
- More sounds for the Russian infantry
- New sounds for MTB / BTR / LAV / amphibious / damaged engines
- More ricochets / penetration / impacts / explosions / zips
- Improved ambient sounds
- More sounds for jet
- A new sound for fire
- New sounds PKP / M240 COAX / AIR ROCKET / 25MM Bushmaster / M2 / MORTAR 80-120MM
and of course lots of other fixes and improvements
http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/5471/details
of course, as usual, I will be grateful for any comments and suggestions;)
This is just an option.
This mod adds some ERA blocks of a different color (desert yellow). These blocks will be shown on each Bradley in a random fashion, thus making each vehicle different.
The texture for desert blocks has been imported from the old CMSF.
If you like the concept, it creates sort of a camouflage.
This is another option for the Bradley.
This mod will add a funny hand-written graffiti on the back ramp of each vehicle. There are 23 different short phrases of various kind that will show up randomly on Bradleys in game.
I set this up with each part being in its own separate folder to make it easy to use all, or whatever parts you like, and to make it easy to combine parts with other UI mods to make your own custom UI. To combine parts with other UI mods just add a few "Zs" to the beginning of a folders name.
FEATURES:
COLOR BAR MODIFIERS: Changes +1 and -1 to one green or red easy to see bar. Changes +2 and -2 to two easy to see green or red bars.
RIGHT FACING PORTRAITS: Better orientates the visual composition of the UI so the facing of the portraits leads your eye toward the information rather than away from it
.
CALL SIGN SOLDIER NAMES: Changes hard to pronounce, or remember names to catchier call sign, nick names, and some historical names. Of course there are some Vin, Vinman, Vinnie Baga Donuts in there, but at the very least it gives you easy access to the file to put whatever names you like. HINT if you want to make changes to the name files make a copy, change, test first in case you erase a >.
CLASSIC C2 FULL COLOR/DETAIL ICONS: Changes to classics from CMSF.
RIGHT FACING WEAPON SILHOUETTES: Flips them to better accommodate text.
COMMAND GROUP SELECTOR: Changes to clearer, easy to see red border when selected.
EASY VIS COMMAND BUTTONS: Changes to use corresponding colored border when selected to make it easier to see what is selected. Especially useful for seeing Open, Hiding, Deploy Weapon.
Hi, I made a guide so you can easily identify the right flavor object your want to use for your map.
It is made with game v1.00 in mind, so there might be changes at some point.
Format: PDF file
Size: About 4 mb.
Can be found at:
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=95489368985052445724
Kraft reacted to John Kettler in US Anti Aircraft defences
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