panzersaurkrautwerfer

A short defense of the dinosaur: I've got more dinosaur stories. And quite a few of them involved ideas of questionable merit. But in his defense, he served this country more or less honorably for years, on several occasions packed up his family and moved overseas, and basically answered his nation's call when 99.9% of Americans let it go right to voice mail. I interacted with him at the nadir of his career, long after his relevance had passed in many ways, or people had taken him seriously. He'd missed some key dates/events due to his time in the Guard and teaching in Saudi Arabia so he was already heading towards the chopping block even before the big batch o' Army personnel cuts, so he was sort of treated as a second class citizen. He honestly and legitimately continued to try to think of ways for the Army to better do it's job. Which is more than I can say for many who simply doubled down on what worked, pretended war with Russia would just be OEF/OIF with the bad guys in uniform (an exaggeration) or that Russia was still the Soviet Union (less common these days). He thought outside of the box, and was supremely well educated. Just it happened that sometimes, when you leave the box, you don't always get to a place that is terribly practical. Blimps as a means of moving cargo isn't that out there (indeed, the army has experimented with them for smaller loads), but I think the panzers from the sky was just a bit too far of a reach.

When I showed up to Korea, I was stashed in the BN S3 shop until a Company Command opened up. At the time, we had a short squad's worth of Captains there, which is well and truly more than anyone actually needs (in reality, it should have been two captains, the assistant operations officer and BN Planner, then the BN Fire Support Officer and Engineer Officer, instead we had six of us random 11/19 series Captains, then the engineering officer plus the FSO). Because of this, we actually had two offices for the maneuver guys, the "primary" one for the long term been in Korea 6+ month guys who were as a rule: a. Not eligible for command (either hadn't gone to school yet, or were far down enough in terms of seniority to make staying in Korea two years to take command unattractive) b. Overworked and underloved c. Pretty much the reason anything happened ever. The secondary one was for weirdos or for people like me who were weirdos, but also had command slots. Within this office there was: 1. Me. Fresh out of Captain's Career Course, angry to be in Korea, about to be selected for Company Command (but no one bothered to tell me this until months later), trying to dump all the Cav-isms I'd learned and remember how to tank. 2. The engineer, a smart, slightly unhinged man who I am fairly certain was recruited by offering him explosives (we got along smashingly) 3. The Dinosaur The Dinosaur needs more elaboration. He was in no uncertain terms, a dinosaur. While only a Captain, he'd served alongside our Brigade Commander as an M1IP tank platoon leader in 3 ID in 1986 on the IGB. He'd left active duty sometime in the mid 90's, done some civilian stuff while staying in the Guard, then gone off to be a instructor at the Saudi Military academy. Then when the Army needed literally every and any officer with a pulse in the mid 2000's he showed up and the Army took him back onto active duty, no questions asked. He was in many ways...one of those guys who exists outside of normal Army. I won't claim to have been a hard charger awesome guy, I'm too lazy for that, and get bored easily. But I can't remember this guy doing any actual work. As far as I could tell he'd found this weird eye of the storm inside one of the most insane organizations the Army ever fielded, and he simply rested comfortably in his little chair, emitting ideas. I forget how the conversation started. It likely occurred as I was avoiding the good idea fairy, or had been banished from the bitter Captain office for still having hope or something. The Dinosaur mentioned an article he'd published in the Armor branch magazine back in the day. I only knew the Dinosaur was old at this point, and harbored no special prejudices. He dug through the google, eventually finding the article, asked me to read it, and to tell me what I thought. Firstly, I recognized it'd been published when I was still harboring dreams of being an F-22 astronaut ninja pilot (circa 1995 or so). Secondly as time went on I realized something: He was advocating making armor units airmobile via blimps. Each blimp would carry a platoon or enough supplies to keep a Company in combat for a day. Swooping in at a blistering 25 MPH, massive helium filled bags would deposit the armored might of America on foreign shores. And it did have a logic of sorts: A. Blimps could land cargo anywhere, they don't need a runway or even much of a DZ B. In terms of cost per pound lifted, they were pretty inexpensive. C. The enemy would literally likely spend several hours just going "what the hell?" On the downside, it was a blimp, motoring along leisurely, and achieving frankly massive size to support 300+tons of cargo. I looked up from the article. Not sure what to say. I don't remember my exact reply, but it must have sounded enthusiastic enough to earn his trust for further voyages into madness. Ether way, every time I see a blimp, I can't help but hum a little ride of the Valkyries for the Dinosaur, and imagine America's airborne panzer legions.

Pfft. VLS isn't for the missiles. It's for the infantry squad. ROCKET ASSISTED DISMOUNT DEPLOY!

Hah. Tangentially: When I was in college, I had a National Defense Policy class, and the final exam was as a group, you and some of your friends had to construct a defense policy to meet a new president's needs and desires. You would be graded by the professor plus the new "president" that you had to present to (who were all other professors, ranging from an actually internationally well known writer on political psychology, one of our engineering profs who'd been an A-10 pilot and full bird Colonel in the USAF, and another who'd been a USN Commander and UN observer*). For my group, I took on basically restructuring the force for the various land components of the US military. I scrapped the Stryker, instead basically pushing for a LAV-25 based solution. Then I pushed for light armor to replace the Abrams in the USMC, and in some US Army formations (mostly there would have just been LAV-Light tank formations instead of Strykers, plus light tanks in Airborne units). I decided light tank was not a good phrase to use, and further more, I knew the military historically avoided it (see the Sheridan). So I did the classic military thing and made an acronym: High Mobility Protected Armored Support System. I figured high mobility encompassed that it was tracked vs wheeled, protected made the difference that it was resistant vs immune to enemy fire, armored referred to Armor as a tank/branch concept, and support was that in the formations it was assigned to, it was not the primary arm like in an armor formation, but instead there to give tank support to infantry forces. Then I realized what HMPASS sounded like when you pronounced it out loud. It when into the presentation as the High Mobility Direct Fire Weapons Platform instead. *I had that guy for a few classes. And he was amazing, great teacher, challenged our brains regularly. But he was: 1. A Naval Officer 2. First born in the US of Sicilian immigrants 3. From Manhattan So take all of the New Yorker accents, weird Navyisms (never close the door, always secure the hatch), and then random godfather interludes and it made for an interesting experience. The epic part though, was the group that presented to him advocated: 1. Largely cutting the USN as "no longer relevant" 2. Cutting ties with Israel and immediately recognizing Palestine as a legitimate state. Needless to say they endured a few terrible minutes before he fired them all, and they left with the grades to show it.

Yep. I never saw it was type classified our whatever, most of the documentation I have still calls it the XM8. When I was an absolutely brand new LT I got my hands on one of the tank platoon field manuals that had been published when the M8 seemed like a sure thing. I was briefly excited because I hadn't heard anything about it in years (keep in mind, I was in college when wikipedia was just starting, search engines still took a lot of finesse to find what you were looking for) and I thought it'd be cool to be a light tank PL. Then I found out it was pretty much ultra dead.

Stupid little story I used to tell my dudes: The Lunar Lander had 245 cubic feet of space. Your dining options were tang or something that used to be food in the distant past. You breathed in air full of bodily waste and funk, and pooped in a bag in front of another man. But you did so on the moon, looking back at literally everyone who ever existed. Sometimes it isn't so much about what you have accomplished, but instead what you've done in spite of obstacles or how far you've had to go to get there. So good on you for that much. Sort of tangentially on feeling safe: I actually felt pretty safe in Iraq. Like there's a higher chance of something bad happening on purpose, but you're covered in armor, you've got a weapon to return fire with, and there's like 20-50 dudes with you, heavy weapons, attack helicopters on call if you get into more trouble, and if you get hurt there's a MEDEVAC bird practically with your name on it. I never worked in an IED heavy place, and our opposing enemy mortar/rocket guys sucked though so there was never quite the "DANGER EVERYWHERE" feeling some people got into. Perhaps it's just a matter of being somewhere dangerous where controls to the danger are built in vs somewhere not inherently dangerous, but also not especially designed to manage danger.

It's still a valid mission statement, we're just struggling to find an answer to it. I've always really liked the XM8 myself. Seemed like a reasonable solution, and I'm not really buying the "WE RECREATED AN ABRAMS TURRET!" argument. Like having similar gunner's controls/commonality in interface would be good, but it only took us a little while to make former MGS tankers get back to standard tanks. As far as the XM8, the modular armor seemed like a great idea (especially in regards to keeping it air drop capable), the 105 MM is a very solid gun outside of fighting literal top of the line modern MBTs, and it had less of a weirdo profile. Think with an updated autoloader it'd be pretty well on part for what we're looking for (although something might be said for using a 120 MM breachloader mortar instead of a 105 MM gun).

Just to chip in: I don't think Kettler always operates in the same reality we do, and I think it could be a mental health issue. It doesn't matter either way. From my understanding there's some weirdo bargain in which Kettler keeps his posting based in our reality and understanding of the world as much as he can, and there's some acceptance that he's a little all over the place on an official level. I understand it must be a struggle for him to not blast us all with "the truth" and keeping that all locked up must be difficult, even if we all really appreciate it because again, I've seen some off forums Kettler stuff, and I've consumed some woo stuff because it amuses me* and his stuff is out there. My first job post being on active duty was working in the mental health end of things on the care side of things (the military to civilian transition sucks yo). I can't make a diagnosis because haha not even sort of able to do that. But when we dealt with people who legitimately believed the space aliens were going to get them, or their boobs had names and told them to do things (true story), the best practice was to engage them in reality based conversation. This helps them stay connected to the world at large, and focused on what's happening vs trying to tell them what is 100% real to them is totally wrong and they need to get smart. I get that it's troublesome when we're dealing with fringy Kettler vs sort of on topic Kettler. But looking at what he says elsewhere, it's apparent he's putting effort into not being totally cray cray loco here. But let's just give him his space to post stuff that's at least remotely on topic, address it if it is actually on topic, and otherwise just let it go. It's what I've been doing and I feel like it's turned out pretty okay. *I have a thing for conspiracy theories, paranormal stuff, cyptozoology etc. I believe absolutely none of it, but as fiction goes it's often fun as long as it doesn't get too in the weeds. Like as even more of a tangent, I'm less interested in the "proof" as assembled from random references and partly redacted out of context documents, and more interested in the "story" that the UFO below Roswell's** hanger 29.4 is used to fight crime and evil ghosts by a team of ESP using hyper intelligent hedgehogs. **Even further off tangent, the wife is actually from Roswell. I am fairly sure she is only from Venus in the figurative sense vs the literal though.

We actually used civilian GPS pretty extensively because the various civilian models were a lot handier for dismounted work. The US Army models generally were kept mounted to vehicles as they interfaced with all those onboard systems. It's still worth asking why Russian's frontline high readiness planes are relying on US civilian model GPS units to figure out where they're at. The only "smart" reason I could think of is if they're using it to line up with grid coordinates given from a ground observer (who might be a Syrian with a commercial set) but the published Glonass accuracy shouldn't be off to the degree that the two systems don't get you to the same spot on earth. And Russian bombing isn't exactly precision. And even then the level of precision required for aircraft navigation is pretty broad from my understanding. So again, interesting questions that require answers. The short answer is yes. Also C-RAMs and other counter-missile systems would be fun times. There's some longer term solutions, but again looking at the rate of success for cruise missiles, attacking a defended location is going to be moderately long odds (especially when bolstered by various airborne sensor platforms).

I won't even delve into the deeper parts of the woo, but: 1. The USS Ward basically did what any sentry would have done. An unidentified thing with clearly hostile intent was engaged and destroyed (as there's not exactly a fleet of commercial submarines in 1941). 2. The US embargo was in reaction to Japanese bad acts. It might have been unpleasant for the Japanese, but ascribing it as a means to pressure Japan into war is frankly silly 3. The sending US ships through Japanese claimed waters 100% is a thing we've always done to everyone who's claimed some sort of magic exclusion zone that goes well into international waters. We're likely doing it somewhere right now as I type. 4. The Japanese carriers likely positioned themselves in the same spot as the wargames less so because conspiracy, but more so because it was an good spot in terms of geography to launch and recover an airstrike and then beat a hasty retreat. 5. By virtually all accounts Japanese codes were not broken to the degree you imply. The whole water desalination plant trick at midway existed not because we were reading every letter, but because of the small percentage we got, it certainly implied something and we needed a lot more. If we were reading Japanese codes to the degree to predict Pearl Harbor, it makes many of the other surprises Japan did accomplish in the 1941-1943 timeframe frankly inexcusable incompetence. Basically if you cherry pick enough of anything, you'll paint the picture you're looking for. If you step back and remove those points of data from your narrative, I think you'll find they're a lot weaker than stated.

It isn't. I'm not going to scour the web for them, but there's a few cockpit shots where you can see the garmin chilling out. This opens interesting questions about how effective Glonass actually is. Re: Role specificity Multirole isn't the be all end all. If you're going strictly for recon, whatever the redressed U-2/drones will do it 100X better than a F-16 with a recon pod. If you're going air to air, the F-15C will leave the F-16 crying. If you're doing CAS, again fast movers go home, A-10 is here to save the day. But the F-16 is a good enough fighter for most occasions. An F-15E isn't as good as an A-10 for gas, but it'll do okay, etc, etc. So while you might maintain some dedicated bombers, in a practical terms if you need more bombers than fighters, you can shift your multiroles over and make for one heck of a strike fleet. You might have some planes that really only do air to air well. But if your bombers can step up and join the air superiority campaign effectively, then that's just awesome instead of having them wait for clear skies. Or if your country is a smaller airforce, it might be having a dedicated recon platform is just too expensive, while a recon pod is less so. Multirole fighters are also closely linked to technology. A plane with powerful engines and advanced avionics is better able to lug a few tons of bombs AND do air to air operations, while a plane with less advanced those things might be forced to make compromise one capability for the other (lighter airframe to allow for more agility, or heavier airframe to carry more bombs, something like that). This is why Russia has lagged in multiroles, in that by most measures it's still far enough behind that building a plane that's really quite good at everything isn't happening, so they're building sort of semi-multiroles (planes that are good fighters, but can bomb if they must, or good bombers than are not totally hopeless A2A).

Sigh. The Russian stuff hardly exists outside of claims. I think if the program was transparent, the PAK-FA would give the F-35 a run for it's money in terms of glitches, the fact the Indians are off buying French planes even though they're supposed to get some of the first PAK-FAs should be indicative of a troubled program that's still many years from being a real plane. There's a lot of this sort of thinking that came out of the cold war, hinted capabilities, shadowy pictures, massive research facilities, all with an implied equal or better capability to produce high tech stuff. Then the curtain came down and it turns out Russian scientists are not any smarter than American scientists. In a nutshell, there's a lot of claims being made well in excess of what the state of the art is for the rest of the world, only on a lesser budget, from a father back starting point, often using equipment that is just the Soviet kit with some new paint. In the skies above Syria SU-34s have Garmin civilian GPS devices in the cockpit because it's more functional than the Russian counterpart. There's always a lot of hope in Russian planning, and sometimes it results on a very good dozen or so platforms, but looking back, the last time Russia fielded a really new major piece of equipment, and fully fielded it vs simply fielded a dozen and called it quits was a long, long time ago.

What you're citing is quite possibly one of the best examples of the sort of fiction that passes for military reporting on Russia fairly often. Russia achieving parity with capabilities and numbers in any reasonable amount of time requires effectively a large scale collapse of US aviation, and a massive step forward for Russian everything. In a nutshell it's trash. Pure and utter trash.

This sort of touches on the fact that given how much is going on in the US electorate right now that: 1. The Russian stuff likely really won't make a difference. There's enough strong movements in every direction that as Sublime said, short of it being revealed Trump is a literal Russian agent it's not going to change many people's positions. 2. There's enough going on though that it would be hard to tell regardless. Like right now stuff rises and falls based upon if Clinton has the sniffles, or which group of Americans Trump offended recently. It's more plastic, but it's also more dynamic. Things are constantly changing and I think any attempt to seriously influence the election is crippled by abject lack of understanding Americans (as the Russian government has demonstrated), and then the fact the "reality" changes too fast for most decision making cycles (or I'd contend anything short of Hillary Clinton admitting to eating babies in her emails is not enough to change how people have fallen on that issue, as it's increasingly last week's issue, so releasing more isn't changing that political situation).

He is not dead. He lives on the hearts of the people of True Korea and only slumbers until the time is right for His coming to come purge the land of the unbeliever. The evidence that various cyber attacks originated from Russia is not exactly minor. Unless someone has hacked and gained control of your government's computers and offices, and is attacking things that are generally opponents of Russia. Basically we can't prove it was you that broke our window, but a rock from your garden is now resting in our living room. Occam seems to indicate you guys have been doing some silly things.

The first thing isn't shocking. It'll be interesting if the branch ever swings back their way. The second is....eh. The analysis is that it's doubtful. Cuba is currently seeking to get close to the US because we are pretty much their best chance for economic prosperity through tourism and trade. Russia is offering a military base. Vietnam already has strong US ties, and fears Chinese expansion....while Russia offers a military base and will totally 100% not help with Chinese aggression. Pretty unlikely it'll go anywhere, and if it does it's yet more stuff of no real utility that will cost Russia real money to have.

Well crap I'll have to take a look again, but I own most of those games. You don't want for T-80/T-64s for sure, but I'm not sure which modules have which forces, and some of the modules happen at the same time, while others take place later in a fictional third world war. I've really been meaning to actually play them, but I have a hard enough time getting people to play my less esoteric stuff. Also screw it, this whole thread is OT. If it turns into the collection point for all wayward not yet CM game stuff, I think it's not the worst thing to happen to a thread.

Okay. Short as I'm annoyed because the forum ate my reply somehow: 1. There's no better AA to have. There's the Avenger which is just stingers on HMMWV, and that's it. SHORAD is already way more effective in game that it should be and it feels counter-productive to use a broken thing as a means of settling up air defense. 2. For the US, air defense really is 100% the fact that the US Army/Marines are covered by the premier Air Force, with it's slightly smaller Navy Air Force, and it's larger than most NATO country Marine Air Force. Like that's really worth emphasizing, which is why I kept saying Air Force. The USN, and USMC air wings alone would be potent air forces if the USAF all had to take crew rest and sit this war out. There's no reason why air based interception should not be able to handle the largely aging Russian strike craft, as flown by what by most standards are second rate flight crews (again talking in terms of training hours), especially when the interceptors likely in practical terms outnumber the strike packages. 3. Here's what I proposed for a strategic air defense layer in a different thread: " Same deal as the EW settings, given that they're both strategic level impacts on your battlespace. I've put this forward before, but you'd basically have four conditions (loosely based on how the US defines airspace conditions). Off: As is, unless there's an anti-aircraft system on the map, aircraft are totally safeAir Parity: The airspace is dangerous to everyone's airplanes. Both players face a small to moderate chance of losing air assets committed (either through an off map shoot down, or the air asset has had to go evasive to the degree it is not returning). This well simulates an environment in which both sides have functional air defense networks, and access to fighter cover.Air Superiority: The player with air superiority has a much reduced chance of losing his air assets, while the player without has a much higher chance of losing that asset. This simulates an environment in which one side has started to suffer enough losses to air defense or fighter assets to grant the other side a distinct advantage.Air Dominance: One player's air assets are virtually safe (still a very small chance of loss), while the other would be silly to commit air assets. Think of this like if the NATO air campaign goes stunningly well, and Russian air defense is effectively out of commission outside of isolated pockets. " It doesn't seem much farther off than the EW layer that's already in-game, and meets the reality that strategic level air defense is pretty abstract for the ground forces commander (or it's not like LTC player is commanding a section of F-15Cs to protect his troops, they belong to sixteen layers of USAF/NATO dudes who's primary focus in life is making dead Russian planes, and not much else). It also well simulates that most Russian air defense is actually echelons above SHORAD. This new system could then be paired with a weakening of on map assets to get closer to what air defense actually looks like instead of 2S6s being the reason no planes ever fly anywhere ever.

But the more modern Ukrainian tanks are terrible at spotting. I'd like to at least see a justification of why they're so bad compared to some of the Russian tanks that have the same generation of optics. Re: No LWR Abrams I would like very much to see: 1. Baseline M1A2 SEP v2 Basically the "real world" Abrams that does not mount ERA as standard (I mean it can, but it's not mounted constantly), still uses MPAT instead of AMP, and lacks the LWR. It'd be much like the T-90A as far as no frills exactly how it exists right now in a motorpool somewhere. 2. M1A1SA The model of Abrams used by the National Guard. Sort of a "why not?" slight step down in Abrams, and giving some more choice in tanks for QB.

<insert eyeroll> Of course, using this logic there should simply be no Russian CAS at all in the game, as getting an SU-24/25 (which is overwhelmingly the majority of your air to ground element) past Patriot, E3s and all the various F whatevers is not an especially realistic situation. Which again gets back to why we need to have the larger air control situation modeled somehow in the game. Reasonably when Russian air defense is at its strongest, it's going to be too dangerous for anyone to do much CAS. As the battle goes on though it's going to get to the point where it's just SHORAD platforms getting plinked from 30-40 miles out. In a nutshell: 1. The simulation did not model units becoming combat ineffective. If the 324rd Shock Guards Tank Plane Squadron took 75% losses earlier in the day, the remaining 25% was fully mission capable after an hour or two. 2. The Russian Air Force was able to sustain losses at a rate that would have made the 8th Air Force and Bomber Command both feel a little queasy....while still somehow scrounging up enough planes to continue to overwhelm NATO despite having less forces on hand. Basically at three separate times at my recollection the Russian Air Force was operationally sacrificed to the point of being destroyed (in the military sense, not the absolute sense) in order to accomplish strategic level objectives. Then each time like a phoenix it emerged fully able to mass never ending waves of planes to attack NATO. 3. As Kinophile discusses, it also placed restrictions on NATO that basically tied both hands behind it's back and agreed not to kick, or bite, while assuming Russia pretty much do everything to the Red Storm Rising level of military commitment

I think it'd just be scarier if US aircraft fired from standoff like they would for a real strike mission. There'd be a lot of sadface people wondering why their 2S6s keep exploding.

It seems doubtful. Basically NATO and the USSR crammed all of it's high tier all the cool stuff equipment into Germany. For Soviet purposes, it appears they rotated out old A tier equipment (T-62, BMP-1, etc) for new A Tier (T-64/80, BMP-2) vs putting in the stuff they reserved for lower readiness units even if it was an improvement (so they seemed to favor the transition to the best or bust, vs interim steps). It's really weird just because it's such a fluke of Soviet design policy to have not one, not two, but three complete lines of MBT in service and seeing "first tier" type upgrades (while lesser older MBTs still saw improvements)* As to politics, it plays a massive part but it's a huge rabbithole I don't recall well enough to recite accurately, or desire to read up on tonight. *Or putting it in perspective, the US only really operated with the M60/M1 as stablemates for a fairly short time, it was always intended to one day go to zero M60s and all M1s, just it was going to take a while so the M60A3 received service life extension upgrades and some modern kit like the TTS. You can see the same with Leo 1 and 2, Chieftain to Challenger. The Soviet model was simply going to have all three "modern" MBTs going along, then likely no T-64s sometime eventually after the 1999 party congress, and then T-72s and T-80 variants until whatever bipedal AI driven doom tank with quad 150 MM chain guns came along.

Errata: Re: T-80s T-80s more or less only wound up in the Russian and Ukrainian successor states. While the T-72 was always intended to be an export/Rest of Warsaw Pact tank, the T-80 was always a close hold piece of equipment. By the time it was no longer something the Russians wanted, most possible T-80 customers had T-72s, and there never was he "aftermarket" upgrades or repair packages that occurred for the T-72 making the T-80 an unattractive choice...unless you're the Ukraine and happen to have T-80 factories. As a result it's a much less common piece of hardware, and the poor showing of Russian forces in Chechnya found a scapegoat in the T-80 (which was likely doomed for other reasons anyway). Re: T-72 Here's the problem the Soviets had: The T-64 (and later T-80) was lightyears better than the mainstays of Soviet/Warsaw Pact tank forces in terms of possible performance, and NATO tanks were rapidly increasing in capability. The more advanced Soviet tanks though were expensive, and difficult to produce. There needed to be a cheaper option to arm people less important than the Soviets, and to round out lesser formations. Some thought was also given to a simpler tank that would be easier to produce during wartime. The answer was to take things that were super important in a new tank (larger gun, better armor, autoloader), while omitting things that were nice, but not critical (more advanced optics/FCS, simpler automotive designs). The T-72 is much better than the T-55s and T-62s it replaced in many Soviet and allied military forces. It does omit a lot of the things that made the other late model Soviet tanks so hard to make in bulk. As a result it became a very popular item for people looking to finally ditch their T-55s (Poland, East Germany, etc) and a good answer to improving many non-"frontline" Soviet units that otherwise rode in increasingly outdated equipment. As a result it was the cutting edge awesome tank of Warsaw Pact countries (as there were T-72s in Germany, they were just full of Germans), but rounded out lower readiness formations back in the USSR proper for Soviet forces. It endured largely because it hadn't quite suffered the reputation hits the T-80 had from Grozny, and it was a more economical choice.

Period Western writings on the Soviet tank force are fascinating simply because they're a mix of: 1. Usually wild over estimation of whatever was really going on. We have smart weapons? Soviets have genius weapons. We have advanced composite armor? Soviet armor is made from dark matter. There's an increasing amount of M1A1s in Europe? Well too bad, there's 80,000 T-80Us. 2. There was a lot of confusion on what was what. The various marks of T-64/T-72/T-80 all got jumbled, and there were a lot of versions that weren't even "real" or were based on poor photos. There's even the semi-fictional T-74 which was basically the later model T-72s with the assumption it was being treated as a new tank vs a continued line of T-72s. 3. More realistic estimates existed, and certainly were used at times, but as a rule the popular perception of the Soviet Union was a hyper-efficient, high tech, superior foe of virtually unstoppable force. The reality of course, was not so much.

Re: Cross Loading In game, there's some really mild cheating to give you the squads you're supposed to have come out of the Bradley plus the HQ that also somehow manifest. IRL it gets more fluid. A lot more fluid depending on manning (which is rarely totally 100% top to bottom), mission need, or even split platoon operations. I've also seen non-doctrinal solutions that accepted smaller squads (so three six man elements, with an HQ and gun team), or went heavy on support weapons (two full squads, two heavy weapons teams). I haven't seen, but heard of smaller teams being used in urban fights to basically allow a smaller stack/assault team to roll straight out of the PC to the target building. But this fluidity is about impossible to really model as is in game, so you get a solution that generates generally what comes out of the back of a Bradley once it's fully dismounted. Re: Seats They are not especially comfortable, and the suspension is not that great. On the other hand, this is not a Bradley specific problem, and most mechanized infantrymen are in my opinion, only aggressive on the assault so as to put themselves as far away as possible from the troop bay on their carriers.