Nerdwing

Ok, as a (Non US) lawyer I´ll try  :
 
In the case of Armata Vs. Skeptics the Court finds as follow:
 
- That given the complete lack of evidence to support anything resembling technical specs, the only thing we deem proven is that Armata exist...sort off
 
- In light of the preceding ruling, on the question of who will have custody until majority of age, the Court awards it to LockandLoad because he cares about it the most
 
- The previous decision notwhistanding Steve is allow visitation rights to check on it from time to time and keep it honest on the question of future module inclusion
 
- And finally, Panzer, while not very fond of it, is appointed tutor, to teach T-14 how to be a proper tank and not some hybrid nonsense that every other tank in the yard will mock and bully
 
- No damages are awarded to any party since the only things affected are egos and prides and the Court finds that those have no monetary value on the Internet
 
And if everybody is unhappy with the ruling, we´ll know I did a good job  , as any lawyer knows usually the worst settlement is better than the best ruling

I think we're having altogether too much fun hazing poor Armata. Every new weapons system has its teething problems.  Armata looks pretty much like a 'lessons learned' design exercise based on every U.S. DARPA and Pentagon technology project of the past 30 years. I recall reading of American crew-in-hull and overhead gun design studies in the 1980s. Then there were the integrated sensors studies, the active defense system studies, modular bolt-on armor studies. Its our own fault if our own studies so rarely bear fruit.

There was some earlier discussion on this subject in another thread ( http://community.battlefront.com/topic/119282-how-to-mark-mines/) and I thought that it might be a subject worthy of further discussion and hopefully we might get some feedback or response from the devs as well.
 
First of all I want to state that I'm by no means an expert in things related to mines or engineers and there are probably some vets here on this forum who have actually done EOD or regular mine disposal in real conflict zones. My perspective on this matter comes mainly from peacetime training during my military service in FDF (Finnish defence forces) and subsequent reservist training both voluntary and compulsory. As most have guessed by now I did my service in the FDF combat engineers service branch and I currently hold a rank of lieutenant first class in reserve so I think I got some things right during and after my service.
 
Now to the matter at hand!
I seriously think that mine warfare and combat engineering in combat mission series and especially in CMBS need some love in the future ("soonish" I hope) and indeed if I'm not mistaken something like this has been hinted by the devs and the recent entry of flail shermans to the normandy front certainly implicate that this is indeed considered a worthwhile (and doable) effort by the devs. Much kudos!
 
First of I will point the problems with the current state of mines and more specifically AT-Mines in CMBS.
 
-They are very effective. According to some old wiki entry a AT-mine square in CM has 2-3 AT-mines. They have on my subjective experience at least roughly a 50% chance to detonate and if you combine more mine squares (more depth) the probability ramps up quickly. Action square (or spot) is 8m in diameter and for example a t-72 has roughly a what.. 1m total? in track width that has to roll over a detonator usually size of your palm or even smaller. So the chance to miss is actually quite big! Naturally when mining a road it is easier to estimate the probable path of tracks to maximize hit probability. To put it other way, imagine tossing three 3-8cm diameter discs to a area 8mx8m and then imagine a tanks rolling through it.. This is why in real life you need lots of mines to have a decent probability to stop a tank. Now this problem is naturally for regular "dumb" AT-mines with mechanical fuzes. We have plenty of "smart" mines that need to "hit somewhere" in the width of a tank passing through the mined area. Smart mines are however far more uncommon and expensive in real life than the "dumb" ones and could deserve a separation from the "generic" CM AT-mines. Solution: Lower the QB cost and overall "hit probability" of regular AT-mines and introduce a new expensive type of smart AT-mines with high hit probability, fewer mines in square (harder to detect) and more devastating effect since many smart mines are Shaped Charge or EFP-types so they have a high probability of total kill.
 
-They are impossible to demine/clear/remove what ever word you want to use. Currently there is no way to effectively demine a AT-mine square in CMBS and this violates everything I have been taught about AT-mines and mine removal in general as well as the core principle and ethos of combat engineers everywhere: WE WILL GET THROUGH! There is a plethora of different AT-mines out there but compared to AP-mines they are generally a lot easier, faster and safer to demine. I will get back to this once we get to the actual engineers section but in a nutshell, even the most basic rifleman could in many cases simply remove the detonator or move the mines out of the way to clear a path for vehicles (unless it's trapped but we get back to that later...).
 
Then on mine warfare in general:
Mines (and IEDs) are a pivotal and important part on modern battlefield. They are dirt cheap when compared to all the high tech gadgetry that we currently have on the field as mainstay of modern armies. For a cost of a single MBT we can have thousands upon thousands AT-mines and in optimum situations this can lead to very very cost effective outcomes for the mine user. And while there are plenty of modern mechanized mine clearance vehicles and tanks out there, using them in the heat of battle will almost always puts them at risk of AT-weapons which will prioritize these special vehicles and tanks over anything else. So the mine is ideal weapon of a poor man. And I would dare to wager that given proper political will the Ukrainians facing a full scale land warfare with more modern Russian armed forces, would and should use all of their most likely plentiful stocks of cold war-era mines to even the odds. I can't say for the modern doctrinal approach of either side for certain but it is my understanding that WP-armed forces emphasized laying protective minefields whenever troops went  on defence, be it short stops in between attacks or after being forced to halt by determined resistance. So there should be know how.
 
At-mines are a crucial force multiplier in light infantry vs mechanized opponent type of scenario. And given the state of Ukrainian army I would once again wager that lot's of action would be between lightly armed volunteer and reservist formations against mechanized Russian forces. At-mines are the reason why tanks and especially IFV's should fear RPGs and other light infantry AT-weapons. Even APS equipped vehicles would be at a dire situation when immobilized or cornered in restrictive terrain with plenty of enemy infantry about. Right now in current state of CMBS light infantry has absolutely no staying power whatsoever which could be remedied to more realistic proportions by more abundant and realistic usage of mines. This in turn is not possible because of the two above mentioned flaws in current mine system in CMBS. Naturally the prospects of light infantry vs mechanized force are still, even with realistic mine fields, very slim and poor. But it would be far from the pushover that (ukrainian) infantry currently is in CMBS imho.
 
Just to give you a rough idea just how much a modern army can be expected to use mines:  Battalion of light infantry on a critical sector = ten thousand  AT-mines in the battalions AO. Thats 3333 CMBS AT-Mine squares. To do that now, even 10% would be utter madness and completely unplayable.
 
Now on to the engineers themselves:
 
We will have modern mine clearance vehicles. This I think is pretty clear since the appearance of flail shermans in CMBN. I know that US armor guys are itching to get their fancy toys and Russian and Ukrainians both should also have a plenty of tank based devices for quick "on the fly" breakthroughs through minefields. Mine plows and rollers should however not be 100% fool proof since there are plenty of engineer dirty tricks to wreck havoc on those vehicles. For example a simple delayed blast explosives made up of multiple mines stacked together, dug in deep enough and then triggered either mechanically by the plow or roller, or by remote control. Fancy plow and roller tanks will DIE when a stack of 100kg explosives goes up right under them. Trust me they do and even lot less should do the trick.
 
We should have engineers that can actually do something and not just be TOE curiosities. At the moment the engineers do have the "mark mines" ability which in most sense makes no sense at all since finding the mines is usually the hard part and disposal is a lot easier task. Marked AT-mines are just as lethal to vehicles as unmarked ones and when considering the "tossing three 8cm diameter plates on a 8mx8m area" example I mentioned earlier, it should be possible to move vehicles through marked AT-mine fields. It's still very risky but should be doable to at least some degree. More importantly engineers should have the ability of remove the mines all together in order to clear safe lanes through minefields. This should be possible even under immediate enemy threat if not "under fire". And there are plenty of real life methods for doing so:
-explosive removal: either by small man carried timed explosive charges (50g of TNT with simple time fuze). Just get the squad in, find the mines (mark mines) and then place the charges on top of each mine (as many as you got men) and simultaneously order to lit the fuzes and everybody runs like hell. Kaboom, you got yourself a cleared patch of minefield. Rinse and repeat until you get through. It's fast (as fast as you can find the mines) and leaves a terrible mess. You can't get wheeled vehicles through it unless they are ATV. Other methods of explosive removal include shooting the mines with heavy calibre rifles (visible AP-mines) and the all time "favorite" of all FDF engineers: the "putkiraivain" or more commonly known as the "bangalore torpedo" which is basically a tube packed with enough explosives to set off any mines within certain width (for infantry carried versions this is usually roughly 0.5m or so) in the mine field. It is very fast and very dangerous way to open up a path through a minefield. Squad of engineers will assemble the "torpedo" in situ from smaller individual sections and then runs up to the edge of the minefield and pushes the 20m-50m long bastardly (just try running for your life in woods while holding a 20m long pipe) device in to the field, everybody takes cover and kaboom! This path can then be widened by using smaller and heavier "torpedoes" spread evenly from the cleared path. All of this can be done in CMBS scale, takes anything from minutes to half hour but IT CAN BE DONE.
 
-Manual defusal/removal: Many mines, especially most common AT-mines have relatively simple fuzes that can be easily removed manually. However it is safe to assume that the opponent has been dirty enough trap the mines or has installed anti handling devices so that should you attempt to remove the mine you might get 5-10kg of tnt exploding on your face. That's why it is safer to pull the mines from their holes by using any sort of hook and rope. This way you can be at safe distance should the bastard explode when moved. Also most "smart" mines have anti handling systems built in so explosive removal is highly recommended! The key here is improvisation: Anything will do that gets the job done and not yourself or your mates killed/maimed.
 
So in summary: It could be reasonable easy to give engineers two sets of options after detecting a minefield:
-mark the mines and then have a possibility of manual removal. Both take more time but leave the roads and the area in general passable for wheeled vehicles.
-explosive "blast -like" command that either simulates the small charges = one tile at a time, or even better allows removal of multiple mine squares along a longer axis simulating the bangalore torpedos. Downside could be the extensive cratering which IIRC does already cause higher risk of bogging for wheeled vehicles. Naturally this is also faster than the manual removal but also tied to limited supply of explosives/torpedoes.
 
Now I'm going to end this wall of text here since it's already nearly 4am here in Finland at the time of writing. There probably was even more stuff I intended to write about but I think I got my concerns and wishes summed up in there somewhat nicely. Please do feel free to discuss the issue at hand and I would especially love to hear about other peoples experiences about combat engineering and/or mine removal both in real life as well as in the game.
 
 
Cheers!
-H1nd
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Agreed.  Doing this is the worst part of the game I'd dare say.  
 
When they throw up the white flag, you won mentally and physically.  Against an AI, granted... but yeah you know what I mean.

Hence the "apocryphal" comment. It is, as noted, a great story that should not allow the truth to get in the way.  

Lots of great stories never happened

Since you've picked up space theme analogy below in your post, I'll use it too.
 
 
And look at how it MADE today's USA. The nation that sent men to the Moon. Where would it be now if it didn't? Like I've already said, there's nothing wrong with being ambitious, if you call pull it off, theoretically. And there ARE gains visible if they can pull it off. Mastering advanced technology is good for Russians.
 
 
Being a big space nerd, I'm eager to squish this analogy The difference between going to the GEO and to the Moon is about 0.7km/s of delta-v. Going to stable LEO orbit takes 10 km/s. This deserves another legendary quotation:
 
 
This brings me up to a point where I say that IFV/APC-wise technological leap isn't that big. RWS is a world standard.
 
Tank with an unmanned turret? Yeah, that's way more advanced technology. But then again, Russians have been doing autoloaders for decades. What else in there is so technically difficult to master? I mean the transition from manual, mechanical control, to remote control?

Judging by past precedent Ukraine is probably going to be getting lots more Volkswagen Amaroks and radio equipment. And tents. And used British helmets.

I think the procurement goal for "Armata tanks" may be confused with new tracked AFVs in general.  I can find stated goals for "Armata tanks" and goals for Boomerang wheeled vehicles, but no numbers for other Armata-based vehicles or Kurganets-based vehicles. 

You can build a "fair" scenario very easily using objective beyond just capture and kill.  Make it recon against recon screen, use spot or damage objectives, use any type of point system that favors the "weaker" side.  War isn't fair and the objective system id built to create the balance.  This isn't Wargame..

Patch 1.0.69
 
Fixed Bug where Armata's turret is weaker than expected at key points along the frontal arc
 
Patch 1.0.7
 
Undid former bug where Armata's turret is weaker than expected at key points along the frontal arc due to recent information
 
Patch 1.0.71
 
Modified bug where Armata's turret was weaker than expected at key points along the frontal arc by covering it with a canvas tarp
 
Patch 1.0.72 
 
Fixed bug where Armata was ingame

Patch 1.0.69
 
Fixed Bug where Armata's turret is weaker than expected at key points along the frontal arc
 
Patch 1.0.7
 
Undid former bug where Armata's turret is weaker than expected at key points along the frontal arc due to recent information
 
Patch 1.0.71
 
Modified bug where Armata's turret was weaker than expected at key points along the frontal arc by covering it with a canvas tarp
 
Patch 1.0.72 
 
Fixed bug where Armata was ingame

The Abrams killer thing was a joke btw. A blatantly obvious attempt to wind up people that succeeded.

But yes I am convinced about the first part. Signs point toward many hats getting eaten in May.

I'm most familiar with the Global Defense Initiative's sweeping success to retake Europe from terrorist elements belonging to the Brotherhood of Nod, myself.  

I'm most familiar with the Global Defense Initiative's sweeping success to retake Europe from terrorist elements belonging to the Brotherhood of Nod, myself.  

Samoderzhets,
 
Welcome aboard!
 
You make the sweeping assertion that essentially  we westerners are besotted by pro-western bias and therefore aren't seeing Russian military technology correctly. I think your argument suffers from your own bias, starting with a fundamentally flawed understanding of the difference between intent regarding the High Low Mix for US fighter planes vs what actually happened. The plan was to build limited numbers of the expensive F-15, plus lots of F-16s, which were intended to be the US answer to the gigantic pain of a tiny plane called the MiG-21/FISHBED. Unfortunately, by the time the Air Force's "Fighter Mafia" got done with the F-16, it was anything but the plane it was planned to be. More and more capabilities were demanded of the plane, more black boxes were added, requiring more power, more cooling, etc. Weight soared, with price climbing even faster. Net result? The less capable (barely had a radar, shorter legged, single engined, fewer missiles) Low end of the mix wound up costing more than the High end! But the Air Force had made it nuclear capable. 
 
I can't speak to the original plans for the MiG-29/FULCRUM vs the Su-27/FLANKER, but in terms of roles, it was obvious to us it was the highly capable successor to the MiG-23, but possessed of true LD/SD capability and terrifying maneuverability. Equally, it was obvious the Su-27 was intended to deliberately do what the MiG-31/FOXHOUND was sort of thrown together to do. Provide the capability to locate and destroy cruise missile carrying bombers and cruise missiles already launched before they could reach the Motherland. Those planes had us worried sick, for the first two could do unheard of things, had radar (thanks in significant measure to Polish espionage against the F-18's at Hughes) rivaling ours, had missiles we had no equivalent to  (AA-11/ARCHER), horrifyingly accurate 30 mm cannon, IRST and more. I assure you, no one was putting down the Russians for being backwards. 
 
When it came to armored warfare, I've written many times and at length of how dire the armor/antiarmor imbalance was in the 1970s (which we didn't realize) and the 1980s (when we did and were freaking out) between the US and Russia. Simply put, they could penetrate us, but we couldn't penetrate them. That the Abrams of today and to come is such a terror is a direct tribute to the genius of Russian tank designers, for it was they who fielded so credible a threat the US had to spend a fortune (and then some) to regain lost lethality and survivability. I worked at Hughes Missile Systems Group in the time period in question, and in the mid 1980s there was practically palpable panic in the hallways in that, the home of the mighty TOW. The US fielded a handful of Copperhead LG shells; the Russians mass fielded LG shells to the tune of hundred of rounds per battery. Before the US could field SFW, the Russians were already testing theirs (Bazalt), and they had an overall 3:1 tank advantage over us already. SFW was the deep strike technology supposed to redress the numerical disparity. Oops. The Russians fielded DU a year before the US  did. And when there were but a hundred or so 105 mm gunned XM1 Abrams in Europe, with the rest of the force being M60s of several types, the Russians had thousands of T-72s. Each capable of frontal kill against anything we had. I might add that the US armor specialists went practically insane when long obsolete in the Red Army 76 mm HEAT captured by the Israelis during the Yom Kippur War and not provided to the US until 1984 was found to be capable of an XM1 Abrams frontal kill. A PT-76 recon tank could wipe out the great hope of the US Army! That's how bad things were.
 
Obviously, the Russian tank equipage problem wasn't and isn't the same as the US's. The fleet size disparities were huge, likewise the wildly disparate cost, logistics, R&M and more for the two nations. The US had one failed tank program after another before it finally sorted things out. Using a much more conservative design approach, Russia fielded one scary tank after another, though it overreached on the T-64 and suffered accordingly. Our own Jim Warford wrote his thesis on the dual track Russian tank procurement system, and he called the high end tank the Premium Tank, of which the T-64 was a notably failed example. Even so, it was still a scary tank, problems and all. But high tech, a la the T-64, wasn't a good fit for Russian armor production, for it required exactly the things Russia lacked: highly skilled workers and precision manufacturing, resulting in the well-known T-64 autoloader debacle. Nor was it the greatest decision to copy the 5-cylinder abortion that was the Chieftain engine, even if the GRU had obtained one. Something similiar happened with the T-80, where the desire to adopt the gas turbine ran smack into the lack of ability to mass produce a rugged gas turbine, field it and maintain it, not to mention keep it fueled.
 
Russian tanks are designed specifically and directly to operate on the steppes, get through Russian railroad tunnels and across relatively low load capacity Russian bridges. Consequently, compared to the Abrams from the beginning, every last one has been tens of tons lighter, but nothing in engineering is free. Lightness meant giving up armor protection to a significant degree, and when the US understood that Russian ERA could not only stop HEAT but break long rod penetrators, then eventually came the thicker slower ones which could get through it. But in 1985, when hundreds of threat analysts from dozens of US defense contractors were first briefed on it in a CLASSIFIED Soviet Threat Technology Conference at the CIA, Russian ERA would've nullified our best tank cannon. Meanwhile, the US went to DU armor, rolling it out for battle in ODS after crash replacing every 105 mm gunned M1 with the then new M1A1 HA taken straight from V Corps war stocks in Europe. The Abrams and the DU XM829 "silver bullet" became legendary, but the combo wasn't used against frontline Russian armor and faced no ERA either. Outside of firing trials, there's been no real Abrams vs T-72/T-80/T-90 clash ever.  
 
Let's go back to engineering. Just as surely as the small turret ring imposed a hard limit on the ability to up arm British cruiser tanks and the Panzer III, so too does the current autoloader impose a hard limit on the ammunition Russian tanks can use. This is part of why the shoe is now on the other foot, with Russia lagging badly in the armor/antiarmor race when it comes to Direct fire KE attack and defense. And that's without factoring in the considerable advantages the Abrams has on the sensor end of things. The Abrams is analogous, if you will, to the Sherman and the Panzer IV in that it has the space, power and other factors in which to drastically expand its capabilities on all levels. 
 
The Armata MBT obviously has a bigger gun, concerning which quite a bit is known, and will have a bigger and better designed autoloader, permitting the firing of considerably more powerful ammunition, also known, than any other Russian MBT. I'm not going to discuss its armor. I am going to say that, from a historical perspective, Russia is taking a great and critical reach if the Armata is as advertised. It has a string of complex technologies throughout its vetronics, optronics, FCS, ammunition handling, gun controls and more--all of which must work flawlessly under the worst conditions and somehow be maintained by fewer men tank for tank than the US, men whose society and knowledge base is at nothing like our overall tech level. I think the general expectation here is that the Armata will be a good tank, but it runs the risk of being a cripple to a disaster if any number of things occur or don't, starting at the component level on the various production lines, through the tank production line and continuing from there. Since T-90 production for the Russian Army has been shut down, and the near term approach is to upgrade T-72s to the latest models (while putting on a happy face), the Russians are effectively betting the future of their tank force on the success of the Armata MBT. It will be the only tank theoretically able to challenge the Abrams and similar head on and at long range.
 
This tank was supposed to go into service this year and has now been postponed for three more years. Expect the buy to be cut dramatically, the costs to skyrocket, and for there to be lots of problems with the tank. If you don't believe me, just look at the troubled history of the Abrams before and after it came into service. And that was for a country renowned for high tech and not notorious for corruption. At least, not officially. For all its innovations, the Abrams was a typical tank. Turreted. No autoloader. Instantly recognizable by anyone who served on a WW II tank as a tank. The Armata MBT won't be. Indeed, practically everything on the tank will be unlike the Russian tanks which preceded it. Turretless, new gun, new armor, new powerplant, new autoloader, new ammo, new vetronics and optronics, to name but some. What could possibly go wrong?! I freely grant that some of what we're seeing is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, and that relative to what Russia wanted to build, the T-95, the design is detuned, but no matter how you slice it, it's still a huge reach. It'd be a huge reach for the US, and the US has an awful lot more to draw upon, in practically every area, than does Russia. Frankly, barring an entire mass formation of miracles, I believe the Armata MBT is facing a long ugly road to FOC and might ultimately wind up being like the T-80 or, even worse, the T-64. Modern day Russia is operating under drastically different objective conditions than was Cold War Russia. Consequently, Armata must deliver, for there will be no way to hide it, as was done for the T-64. This is a prestige project, one to which Putin has tied himself and his regime as part of his intended vast rearmament program. 
 
I have enormous respect, as I've shown above,  for Russian weapon designers, but weapon design must be driven by actual capabilities to build, maintain and fight with what's created. To my mind, and clearly of many others here, Russia is not playing to its strengths. It is planning to build and deploy a tank which is, in many ways, the antithesis of Russia's typical approach to tank design. The Armata MBT may be a success, but a wealth of bitterly won data very much support the opposite view. 
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

While the comparison is not precise it does illustrate a point.

Thanks to Crueldwarf for translating this and allowing to cross-post it:
 
Part 1:



 
 
Part 2:



 
Part 3:



 
Part 4:



 
Part 5:

I think I know less about this topic, if that's possible, after reading that last post.

Yeah, worded it ****tily, my fault.
 
Alot of the supposed "claims" regarding plans and capabilities of most things Russian come from sources that are inadvertently given too much credit, and their over-the-top boasts are often mistakenly claimed as what Russia is itself trying to do.  Like the Armata having a ton of 30mm's etc. But in truth, the source given are just themselves utter trash.
 
Some of its intentional by Russia strongk trolls, some is mistranslated but well-intended, but a not-insignificant bit of us are guilty of just intentionally reading into the over-the-top claims and ignoring the actual ones, and using the former as a basis for an opinion.  
 
It boils down to information sources and their credibility, and their nature and quality being inherently very very very different in regards to the intention of information presented.  And then the fact that they're in a totally different language that Google translate loves to butcher into nearly-unreadable format that'd make ME jealous

Gonna have to settle for John Kettler, Im afraid!

Gonna have to settle for John Kettler, Im afraid!

Gonna have to settle for John Kettler, Im afraid!

The hell is wrong with you?  

The hell is wrong with you?