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I'd contend in certain times and places flamethrowers were invaluable, namely the Pacific Theater in World War Two. But there's nothing modern that invalidates your main statement.

And again, even in terrain that most of us imagine to be simply open flat parade ground, there's a crap ton of terrain both large and small. As to the rest, we've gone down this route and discussed how it to death. The odds of NATO crossing any boundaries into Russia proper, or Russia eviscerating itself trying to replicate a Tom Clancy novel are pretty nil.

Simply the Serbs did not have to actually fight a ground war. They could afford to hide everything and disperse units well beyond having any tactical value. In a ground war they'd have had to concentrate forces, and deploy them in a way that was much less concealed. The losses to aircraft would have likely gone through the roof had the Serbs chosen to continue the war long enough for NATO ground forces to invade. In regards to the steppe, again just because you can see the horizon, you shouldn't confuse it for being truly long LOS. If you're a yankee imperialist on training rotation, you'd have the 11 ACR to disabuse you of the concept of "open desert." However again, no terrain is really flat. You might see tanks far off, but seeing them long enough for an accurate engagement, or keeping them under fire once they've been alerted to the fact to see cover is going to be difficult. Also historically looking at where battles occur, you can draw some interesting conclusions about hinterlands.

Very long range engagements will always be the exception. You need to get that key overlap of sensor-weapon system-location, and then an enemy that opts to wander through your keyhole. They're simply not a statistically important type of engagement.

Do try to find some real life 4-5 KM sight lines. I'll be waiting. Or less sarcastically, even fairly flat land often holds a variety of terrain features that prevent unobstructed shooting out to max range. Outside of select parts of open deserts, and very large firing ranges, it's just not common, or reliable enough to expect reasonable very long engagement ranges. Not to mention the sensor fidelity works both ways. Either way 1999 is a poor analogy as it was the impetus for major sensor system overall. It also highlights how irrelevant ATGMs hiding in bushes are if they haven't seen food ina few days. Further the Serbian military could afford to take measures well beyond what the Russians could afford to accomplish (and still be mission-capable) to protect assets.

More realistically it's a common defense. Retaliatory hacking is iffy simply because is it the Russian state....or some Russian nationalist nerd in a basement in Donbass? What this really does for certain is give a much faster recourse for smaller, frequent Russian cyber attack targets in Eastern Europe, response from larger more sophisticated counter-cyber warfare assets from the larger member states. Basically what NATO was all along, a way to keep certain folks from eating Europe piecemeal.

In reading German accounts, each and every one of the authors was the only remaining voice of reason in the Third Reich. Japanese accounts are as bad in that each author was the only one with a solution to win the war, IF ONLY SOMEONE WHO IS DEAD NOW THAT CAN'T DEFEND THEMSELVES LISTENED!!!!. Soviet ones universally give the impression that the Soviets enjoyed a 1:120 Fascist Pigs kill ratio. Allied ones vary between being a boy scout outing with occasional dead Germans, or an unrelenting trip into a few layers of hell.

Right now cyber attacks exist outside of really being recognized as what they often are, state directed attacks. This adds deterrence value in the same way the US does not recognize different WMDs, they all merit nuclear response. It's not longer an attack without repercussions, and further, there's article V responses short of total invasion of the offending party (for instance, mobilizing counter-cyber assets, or even conducting retaliatory cyber attacks). Basically Russia and China have been waging a cyber war on a limited scale without any sort of response. This is intended to curb that.

ROE isn't as restrictive as you'd think, especially in a highly kinetic war. Doubly so in a fight that the local population strongly supports your part in (or take France in 1944 as a good example. Despite devastating the country, the Allies were still overwhelmingly welcomed by the French). Restrictive ROEs are much more pervasive in COIN, but even then, like a Mosque is a "protected" target, in that I couldn't occupy it or engage it....unless the bad guys were in it and then I could call in JDAMs until it was nothing but ruins. I think we've all gotten a pretty hollywood perspective on ROEs thanks to movies that like to use them as reasons why the heroes must clear a village with a butterknife in each hand. I've had my fair share of COIN, conventional, and even domestic operation ROEs. I can't recall one that did much more than require an additional level of authorization, or clear identification of enemy targets before I could have put a HEAT round through ancient and honored cultural relics.

I think I'm with kinophile, as much as I've participated enthusiastically in this sort of discussion before. I don't fear Russia. I don't hate Russia. I just lack all respect for it after the last few years. The sheer stupid blind denials of realities that even violently anti-western groups accept from Russia is frankly galling. I have seen for real honest holocaust deniers who have better wired positions than what I've seen presented here as "the Truth" from Russian posters. The world isn't perfect. No government or nation is innocent. But broadly speaking we are all a community. Increasingly over the decades while we still have our friction and tension, we have actually grown closer together. The world is still scary, but it is less of a lonely place. The Russian state wants no part of this however. And is content to try to breath life back into the skeleton that was once its empire. Frankly I don't care what Russia does to Russians, (oh, excuse me, actual Russians, inside internationally recognized Russian. If Russians in Eastern Europe are so fond of Putin perhaps he can take them back to the motherland), I'd just like it if their BUKs, cluster bombs, mercenaries, terrorists, and the like all stayed on their side of the international border they agreed to recognize. There's nothing that has come out of Russia (or, at least, nothing the state did not try to suppress) that has made the world a genuinely better place in decades, and frankly I am no longer interested in hearing the baying of jackasses trying to convince me the Sudatenland cries for liberation again. I'll obviously be kicking around to make fun of the Armata or talk GI about things, but I have nothing but contempt for the current Russian government and its actions, and I will fully support any efforts to keep Eastern Europe free of Russian tyranny, Your country tried this before. It only brought you to your knees. Hopefully you and your countrymen catch on before your children eat the bitter fruit you are planting.

You know, maybe if you actually read what we were saying vs simply chalking it up to "bashing" Russia, you might learn something. Regardless I'm not terribly surprised. Russia isn't evil, but it certainly isn't a net positive for anyone.

I'm not trying to be too insulting, but frankly if you are worried about the ABM systems installed in Eastern Europe or even Alaska seriously degrading your nuclear strike ability, there's only two realistic reasons for this: 1. Russia is capable of only firing less than 10 ICBMs. 2. You are possibly scared of literally everything. There's small woodland animals you see a need to destroy via SSM and napalm strikes because THEY MIGHT GET YOU. Whatever remains of the Moscow ABM sites is more of a threat to MAD, and that alone should let you know how overblown your fears about our ABM systems is.

There was more or less only Polish and Baltic troops there until Russia invaded the Ukraine. There was occasional training exercises, but no additional large scale permanent non-Polish/Baltic NATO member presence. Of course Russia screwed that up pretty bad now. Russians only have Russia to blame for NATO being in Eastern Europe. Without your aggression, NATO was on the verge of becoming a historical organization vs an active one. Frankly folks who work at NATO HQ ought to bake Putin a cake for saving their jobs. In regards to the missile defense system, it's way too small, way too weak, and totally improperly placed to impact a nuclear exchange (again, look where the sensors and the launch systems are positioned, it'll do exactly nothing to stop your usual ICBM route). Unless you guys are down to the low single digit range for nuclear weapons and they're fired from the middle east, you've got nothing to fear. Which is more than I can say for folks who live next door to ya'll.

Looking at ultimately where he wound up, Yanukovich wasn't so much the president of the Ukraine, as much as the personal representative of Putin in the Ukraine. When his people called him on being a corrupt terrible leader, his choice was to try to violence away the fact he wasn't acting in their interest. I think that pretty much set things up for polite discussion being off the table. Yanukovich choose to ignore the wishes of his people to appease Putin, and he paid the price for it. The issue was not being pro-Russian. It was a continued unyielding preference for Russian interests over the interests of most Ukrainians. You don't elect someone supreme lord for life in most real functional democratic systems, you elect him to represent your interests. Re: NATO expansion Here's the silly thing. NATO doesn't expand itself. It's not actively recruiting folks, setting up bases in countries that otherwise are neutral, or secretly invading countries with "vacationers" driving Leo 2s. NATO is at its heart, a defensive alliance. It ensures that if one country is attacked, it does not stand alone against the aggressor. NATO is on Russia's doorstep because Russia's neighbors do not feel safe from Russian aggression. Full stop. That's why they've joined NATO. There's literally nothing else NATO offers to members beyond a defensive military alliance (or it's not like there's a free trade zone or something). Literally the only way NATO goes east is if Eastern Europe feels threatened by an exterior threat. Which Russia had enthusiastically given honestly. From nuclear saber rattling, to out and out invasion, there is virtually no reason to trust the Russian state to behave itself in Eastern Europe. And just like Russia relies on its nuclear weapons to deter invasion, the only really viable option for a country dealing with Russian aggression is to join NATO. So basically if you're really worried about NATO being next door, stop giving your neighbors reasons to join NATO. It really is as simple as that. The geopolitical stance thing is also funny simply because all NATO really does realistically is deny Russia the ability to threaten military action against its neighbors. That is literally it. The fact most countries in the world can get along with their neighbors without green men border crossing should be pretty indicative of how silly this "limitation" is. I won't even address the "defense" aspect. Russia's territorial integrity is under no realistic threat from external forces.

It was certainly a war for a lot of people. I just expected a magic line I crossed and I'd become a seasoned warrior of battle, and that moment never came. There's a distinct separation from civilians in a lot of ways, but it has more to do with the "community" of being in the military and the shared cultural experience than that I've seen people reduced to people parts. If I'd had the chance I'm sure someone would have tried to drill me between the eyes, and I'd have splatted him if I had to. It's just again you expect Saving Private Ryan and you get Catch 22/Waiting for Gordot, Army edition. Fallujah was some bad mojo. For the majority of combat dues, let alone support guys it was a much different war. I'm not sure about the getting upset on the radio. Marines especially are pretty strongly into brevity. Might have happened, but I don't know many Marine pilots that would have said anything off the "I am giving you CAS" script. Conversations outside of what is needed are pretty hollywood outside of inter-platoon stuff (or there's usually a lot of people on a network. Also most pilots I've met are pretty okay with killing stuff. They're not monsters, just all the "this dude is a bad dude" remains untainted with seeing people parts up close and scattered. I watched 20+ people go dead all at once over thermal cameras. Outside of the emotional aspect of wondering if something is wrong with me for not feeling anything, it doesn't upset me too deeply. You're remote. They're not "real" because they're just images on a screen, and this is pretty consistent with most dudes doing wartime killing (the farther you are from the act, the more okay you are). The thing that bothers me most in terms of dead folks is I had to deliver the personal effects for a contractor who'd died in one of our convoys. Like not Blackwater contractor, he was some electrician who was working on our base to make it less of a deathtrap in the showers. He was super-dead in that he caught the full on force of an anti-tank grenade, I didn't see him, but we recovered his untouched personal bags from the HMMWV and I was tasked to deliver it to his coworkers back on the big base. The same day I helped pack up the personal effects of one of the guys who'd been wounded in the same attack and evacuated from theater. Personal effects are weird just because it's like, the outline around where a person used to be. The contractor packed up all his stuff nice and neat expecting to be back to the rear in time for dinner. When you expect death, or see death in a proper death-risk context it's not so disturbing. When it's presented as a truncation of life, then it's upsetting because it's a reminder than death isn't exactly waiting for you to find a spot in life to call it quits. Re: Steel Beasts I really don't like most tank simulators. A tank isn't controlled by a pilot, it's run by four human brains acting in concert. Commanding it isn't so much sitting behind your joystick and executing things, it's giving instructions to your crew and they use their brains to make things happen. Very different feel from Steel Beasts.

I feel sort of weird calling it war. It was more like a genuinely unpleasant experience in which there was a remote chance someone's attempt to kill me and my person may intersect for a fleeting period of time before returning to tedium. But I did indeed deploy to Iraq twice. Most of my tankerisms come actually from after that period during which I served in a Combined Arms Battalion stationed in Korea (and Armor Officer's Course naturally many moons ago), and the fact that like many of you, I am, was, and likely will be rather interested in military affairs. There's a lot more colorful veterans on here than I, but I do think I am the only M1A2 SEP v2 tanker that's passed through these parts. I never had to kill anyone (well, directly) but when things go sideways you usually don't have time to think about more than what to do next. Like the most scared I really felt was actually compiling my unit's history roll up for the deployment. We'd received intelligence that we were going to be targeted by an IRAM attack*, and one of those had done a number on one of our sister unit's FOBs. I wasn't so worried about the attack, as much as making sure I'd done literally everything I was supposed to do defeat the attack (as the history report was simply an extra duty, I was commander of the base defense at the time). You're really well trained to deal with situations that involve a lot of violence, or requiring hard sharp actions. I don't think much prepares you for the "sometime, in the next few weeks someone will really try to murder you where you sleep" sort of anxiety, as does the fact in that sort of role you only ever know if you failed (as the difference between "your defenses are too strong and the enemy finds a softer target" and "they're going to hit you next week because you're a bunch of chowderheads with no security" is not one announced to you). *An IRAM is basically a IED mated to a 122 mm rocket motor. It has very short range, but does a lot more damage than most indirect fire weapons. On the other hand it did require getting the thing set up right on front of the targeted base. Usually this was done with a large cargo or dump truck, although one really clever terrorist cell basically built its IRAMs inside of what just looked like a new house under construction. It was not usually a very successful tactic simply because of the complexity in getting the launch platform close enough, and the finicky nature of the IRAM itself but it was devastating when it worked right.

Yeah but I think a legitimate authentic World War Two tanker movie would be like 160 minutes of boredom and tedium, 50 minutes of anxiety, and then like 10 minutes of pure unmitigated pants destroying terrible. A war movie, or at least a good one should be a drama. My main gripe with Fury is the ending was terribly un-tank (a last stand could have still been okay, just with the tank on the move and then getting mobility killed maybe) and way over the top, and it does pretty much repeat the whole Belton Cooper nonsense verbatim. On the other hand, just the interactions between the various characters was one of the closest portrayals of soldiers I've ever seen, the portrayal of the war as an apocalyptic event was was more true to life than most any other film, and the whole sequence from rescuing the infantry platoon through the town assault was frankly the best World War Two battle scene I've seen in a long time.

Uh. You know I wasn't being serious right? It's going to be phased plasma backed up by psywave emitters.

Normally it's whatever is oldest in the depots. Like many "new" early run M1A2 SEPs were actually M1IPs of 1980's vintage that had been turned in when the M1A1 became common (you can actually see some of the earlier model ones with M1IP style odds and ends if you look hard enough). Generally these older depot vehicles get the overhaul, then the old tanks get turned in, and basically it's sort of like a treadmill (with the M1A2 SEP v2s likely coming out of storage to become M1A6E1s when the first tank mounted railguns enter service I suppose). It's done this way from my understanding so that if tanks are lost in number, there's enough of the "almost as good" last generation tanks still in storage, instead of simply upgrading the newest and best tanks over and over again, ensuring that when they're gone and you're going into depots, it's all straight out of 1984 hardware or something.

Here's the thing though. War is fought by "systems" if you get down to it. The individual skill of a combatant really is pretty negligible in the overall picture of combat relative to how "good" or "bad" the organization he is placed in performs. As alluded to by Krater I believe, this battlefield experience has translated well into personal survival or low level tactical success. It has not leveraged into more capable military forces, or overcome other major issues with any of the factions currently in the Ukraine. Combat veterans will certainly help somewhat at the lower level, but I would contend the war would be going a lot better if the Ukrainians had experienced and skilled higher staffs, or well qualified (and not corrupt!) logistics.more than more combat veteran soldiers.

Weeeeeow. That's really all I have to say. I'm pretty done with military movies for the most part. Or at least they either seem tone deaf "WAR IS HELL" as written by someone who never wore a uniform, or jingoistic piles of garbage. I've given Fury a pass for a variety of reasons, but I don't think I've watched a "war" movie in a very long time.

Nope. Good observation. We're already pretty far off topic too so I can't imagine anyone is too worked up about it. Well firstly you are an aviator and thus wrong. I think the difference is that ships aren't just weapons, but their closest analog in terms of manpower and "presence" on the land battlefield is things like Battalions, or even the more distant history Regiments and so forth. As Army peoples it wasn't relevant what tank we were on*, it was that we were in a battalion of the 9th Infantry regiment, and its glorious history goes all the way back to 1798 to be prepared to deal with French aggression blah blah blah, both world wars blah blah, fighting the Chinese a few times etc etc, Manchu to you too. So given that I think the history and symbolism is there, it's just the ship is both weapon and unit if that makes any sense. As far as tank measuring contests, it is a big strong heavy thing. Unlike a rifle or artillery piece, it's much more contained and straight forward (if you're a casual observer) what it does and it's supposed to be unstoppable, and of course your country has the best one because your country is the best. It's inevitable if something challenges that people lose their collective minds, which is why it gets hard to have an intelligent conversation about relative "goodness" of different armor (BECAUSE RUSSIA STRONK SUPREME FIGHT FACIST WIN WITH GREAT T-34 MEAN RUSSIAN TANK GOOD NOW, or Leo 2 fans disregarding so many countries use them because they were cheap as free after 1991 rather than being the ur-tank to stop all other thanks, or Abrams folks absolutely positive the Abrams took a direct hit from an Iraqi ICBM and kept going because 'murica, it was on the history channel look it up) It's really a lot more complicated and frankly comes down to how does the tank as a weapons system fit your nation's military forces. This feeds back into the Armata thing because frankly it does not seem to mesh well with what Russia is capable of at this time or in the near future.

It totally varies even within Platoons. Like with my Company for the "first" wave of PLs from the real life*: 1st Platoon would have been at best a very shaky regular or even green. It had a terrible platoon leader, one of the wing tanks was a totally new crew 2nd would be around regular, the platoon leader was experienced, but not especially inspirational or technically skilled (again, solid, reliable, diligent, but not like tanking flowed in his blood). His platoon sergeant was a experienced NCO but very by the book. His two wing tanks were well seasoned though and much more independent than other wing tanks. 3rd was hot. PL was new but smart, a hard charger with a head for tactics. Platoon Sergeant was your standard crusty tanker, knew all the tricks, totally unflappable. Wing tanks were both experienced with prior tank commander experience before coming to the unit. Easily a "veteran" platoon But even within that, taking first platoon: D11 would have been green. Bad Platoon leader, who was also a bad tank commander. Likely low leadership values. D12 would have been regular. Good tank in a bad platoon. D13 green, brand new commander, with a new gunner. They became regular later on in my opinion, but starting off was rough. D14 crack. The platoon sergeant was the only thing that kept the platoon from totally failing, and he was a highly experienced old school tanker. Eventually turned the whole mess around with a new PL some months down the road. If you're going to homogenize unit ratings, I'd contend "veteran" "regular" or "green" are really the best. Units that are universally conscripts are usually bad to play as, while rarely will a unit achieve a consistant level of crack/elite (or not without taking enough losses to ensure the surviving elements may be battle hardened and tested crack warriors.....but the replacements to bring the unit back up to strength would not be). *This really a Koreaism. The average soldier only stayed there a year, so while more senior NCOs and officers might be around for a while, there was constant flux in the tank crews. A US based unit would likely be closer to purely regular across the board with 1-2 "green" new crews at worst for a company, with a handful of veteran crews that have been together for years, lead by highly experienced NCOs.

What made it even more epic was it was in response to the photo of a M1 running over an Iraqi MIG (which is why I came across it, I was looking for something to spice up a powerpoint). Dude was acting like the most logical course of action was to totally restore it and use it as America's only way to defend against MIG-25s. Small exaggeration, but the reaction was certainly SOMETHING should have been done to save a totally obsolete fighter that had been buried deep in sand because just destroying it was totally wasteful. In the event I did offend, it's certainly not an Indian only phenomena. There's the Mike Sparks "Gavin" fracas which never fails to amuse, and I've run into folks who insisted the M60 was a vastly superior tank to the Abrams, and only with a few modest upgrades would it be totally up to modern standards. Hell, when the Abrams goes to the scrapyard I'm going to have a hard time accepting it's really truly obsolete and gone myself. But people tend to hold onto weapons as more than just a capability, but as an icon. And it's hard often to accept it is just a machine vs the literal strength of the nation or something.

I'm really not sure how I feel about those screens. Like conceptually they're neat, but they look like the kind of thing that's going to get utterly destroyed the first time someone hops in the tank in a hurry, or PV2 Snuffy is cleaning out the turret after an FTX. Other random errrta: The V2 photo only shows the Gunner's station. The Commander's station is visible in the second photo. I never took a really good photo of the v2's station so you'll have to bear with me there. The screen sort of thing in front of the commander's position is present on the v2 too, but it's larger and much thicker. It was also two seperate displays, one CITV, and a MFD that could do your CROWs, BFT, and systems status displays. There was also a second joystick on the right closer to the turret wall, and behind the one present in the photo that operated the CROW, along with a control box mounted sort of center right (basically above where your arm would rest in for the Commander's override control) that handled some CROW functions. On a whole the v3 one just looks more incomplete, like clearly some of the missing controls are supposed to go to the displays now, but the screens almost look placeholder-y vs something robust enough to operate, and the lack of CROWs controls either points to: a. The CROWS is now somehow integrated with the CITV controls. b. The CROWS is not installed on this tank/the equipment layout is not finalized. Whatever. Still feels weird. I have to imagine this is how the M1IP guys who left the military in the 80's felt like when the M1A1 hit primetime.