Codename Duchess

$0.02 on the autoloader: 1) These incidents would have been from the 60s and 70s. Finding any sort of hard evidence online from what would have been random events (that wouldn't have generated much if any attention anyway) is going to be next to impossible. This leads to- 2) Having been around heavy machinery, the military, and "well-intentioned" junior enlisted, anything is possible, truly. The videos I found online showed the autoloader as being exposed to air within the crew compartment. It's a big piece of moving equipment in a small space. That's the classic recipe for injury. Do I think that every gunner lost his arm? Of course not. But I would bet that more than one suffered serious injury from that thing, especially if you factor in bouncing around in a moving vehicle cross-country. To illustrate "new guys do the darndest things" here's a photo of someone caught sleeping inside the intake of an F/A-18C

All of the numbers I obtained were by ordering the named sections in QB (be it from the artillery tab, specialist teams, or formations), and visually confirming in the 3D world. Those are the number of rounds you will have available for the given weapons. Note again that for all on map weapons besides the Strykers, ammo is shared between tubes if they're in close proximity. Again, these numbers were obtained by ordering units and then actually checking them in the 3D world. I didn't pull any of it out of any bodily cavity. And you can actually see ammo for on map mortars outside the support placard. It's listed where ammo is normally listed left of the command options. Same goes for their support trucks.

On-map mortars, which is what I presume you were looking at **I presume you didn't include the trucks, hence the low round counts which match your given values**: 2x60mm mortars (mortar section from a rifle company) - 48 HE rounds . No supply humvees that I found, so they're hoofing them all, hence the low count. Really at 6 rounds per man, a good amount. 93 points. 2x81mm mortars (from mortar platoon) - Includes 2x humvees for transportation and supply. If you leave them near the trucks = 140 HE rounds. 293 points 2x120mm mortars (from mortar platoon) - Includes 2x humvees for transportation and supply. If you leave them near the trucks = 84 HE rounds. 312 points 2x120mm mortars (Strykers) - 2 x M1129 Stryker Mortar Carriers. 50 HE rounds per vehicle (cannot transfer) = 100 HE rounds total. 360 points for the section (including an extra LMTV and section leader) **I presume you didn't include the trucks, hence the low round counts which match your given values** Off-map mortars 2x60mm mortars - 100 HE rounds, 61 points 2x81mm mortars - 100 HE rounds, 156 points 2x120mm mortars - 50 HE rounds, 166 points Off-map Artillery 3x105mm Towed Guns - 105 HE rounds, 350 points 3x155mm Towed Guns - 180 HE rounds, 1164 points 3x155mm Self-Propelled Guns - 117 HE rounds, 771 points. All point values were randomized "typical" values so there's some wiggle room. With off map support, you tend to save a little if you by 4 tubes vs 2 (i.e. 350 for 2 or 675 for 4). I imagine Russian and Ukrainian prices follow the same trend, if not the values. Looking at this, I can't from a point perspective see the value in on map mortars, especially with 60mm. I guess there's a slightly shorter time between the request and the fire mission, but I don't know if it's worth it.

Their effective range is much further than a single tile. The one live demo I saw had dozens of penetrations of targets at 100 meters.

It's working now after updating, great so far! (first contact in the first mission...)

This may be it, I see that 1.03 came out while I was on underway. I will patch it this afternoon and try again.

I used the link in the first post as well as the later "minus the mods" link. Neither worked. No idea what's up...

I put the .cam file in the Documents/Battlefront/Combat Mission/Black Sea/Game Files/Campaigns folder, but it's not showing up in the Campaign list ingame. I am seeing all of the splashes you've created for the campaign, but not the Campaign itself.

Actually last I heard the PAK FA is being limited to a dozen aircraft. I remember posting sources much earlier in this thread or a comparable one. I wonder how India feels about this. Last I heard they were immensely dissatisfied with the program.

Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg in an Oxford Analytica brief says that program costs have increased to 2.5 times the projection from the State Armaments Program for 2020. He also says that production capability from Uralvagonzavod will only allow about 300+ tanks by 2020, vice the thousands some have claimed. I haven't cross-checked these myselves, but given the nature of fancy acquisition projects, this doesn't surprise me at all.

When all you have is a light platoon then yeah, they're support assets. Just like an M240 or AGS team is a support asset. This one is more mobile. I'm not expecting to survive every engagement, or long ones. But if I have my vehicle positioned well 250m behind my guys and Ukrainians still shoot the gunner in the first burst every time, something is suspect.

Agreed, light vehicles aren't worth using because of this. Gunners always die in the first 20 seconds of even the lightest fire. The second Russian mission in particular suffers from this site. Even though those vehicles sfo not have the armor, it still feels unrealistic for the gunner to die so fast and severely gimps your only real fire support assets.

Wonder why there's no Armata? And my god, the gun on that SPH is longer than that tank ahead of it.

That made my day. Thank you Personal favorite: https://youtu.be/rCrG6TzG-nw Edit: The embed game is weak in this one

That's still almost 25%, not odds I'd be super comfortable with if I were a tanker.

I feel like this ground has been thoroughly hashed out and summarily beaten to death in the 37 page Armata thread. As for Western optics, I recall hearing that the biggest prize for Iran, Pakistan, Russian, and China when the RQ-170 went down in Iran wasn't the stealth technology, but the optics onboard. Your mileage may vary on whether you believe that, but it makes sense to me even if it was surprising when I first heard it.

No one means special forces won't have a role in the hypothetical conflict in game. In fact they'd be very busy on both sides. The thing is though that the CM system isn't meant to handle those types of missions. You'd need to make a totally different game in the background, which isn't feasible.

It's about time we reconsidered the old Landkreuzer Ratte anyway.

Check post #619

Samodherzets, I'm not an economist but even I can see that pretty much nothing you said would lend itself to an economic advantage, militarily, to Russia. By your logic, immediate-post WW1 Germany should have been the strongest country ever given how little the Mark was worth. Especially in regards to the ability to hire 4-5 times the amount of scientists. The problem is both countries don't work with anything even close to the same budget, negating that (According to the IMF, the American GDP is 8 times that of Russia's). Edit: Ninja'd and better explained by Steve. I also direct you to the Balancing Readiness, Capability, and Capacity section of the US DOD FY2015 budget request. Compare that to any available figure of the Russian military. I did some "back of the envelope" calculations, dividing the given day to day budget of the US Military amongst the 1.3 million active personnel compared to the entire Russian budget of $81billion for the 700,000 Active Russians that I found from Moscow Times. The US spends 2.24 times per servicemen as Russia ($259k/US and $116k/RU). Russia still spends a respectable amount and has a very capable military, but common sense should dictate that that difference is going to show itself somewhere.

And if you don't have the option to retreat from combat and your hydraulics go down, then what? Obviously in a split second situation you're doomed, but if you have the range or time to stay in the fight in a reduced role, you're still contributing. Hence why they're still in modern tanks. Optics can be more easily accommodated in the digital age, but can't see turret traverse mechanisms enjoying the same benefit. I'm just saying you have more options in a manned turret by design. That said, we know nothing about the turret design so maybe they'be worked around this. As for the kongsberg turret, I know nothing about it. But an IFV isn't meant to take the same abuse that a MBT is and keep fighting, so redundancy is less of an issue. Although I'm willing to bet you can still crank a (manned) Bradley turret.

The Super Hornet I fly is fly by wire with six levels of redundancy, so we trust the flight computers to work in the event of a fault/failure. But if they don't then the thing will fall out of the sky, as will most other modern aircraft. I'm not talking about that though. I'm talking if a round hits and penetrates (or otherwise damages) to take out the hydraulic system to rotate the turret, you can still hand crank the damn thing. Maybe there's a redundant hydraulic system as well but those aren't nearly as compact as the control systems in a fly by wire plane so I couldn't imagine more than two. So if those systems go out in an unmanned turret, can you still crank it? If the primary optics go down, how will you use the good old fashion periscope along the barrel? (I forget what its called but I know the Abrams has one) It seems like panzersauerkraut said, you have people inside working to keep the thing operational. It doesn't sound like you have that luxury in an unmanned an unaccessible turret. Maybe the Russians have designed around this in which case well done, or maybe they just expect to never get damaged enough to have to worry about those types of faults. The first is a challenge, and the second is ignorant.

Target Light, maybe?

Are spare turrets something Russian tank formations are likely to keep lying around?

What the actual f**k is going on.