panzersaurkrautwerfer

More first impressions: 1. Tanks really look nice. Having a lot of fun with the M4A3E8s and Jumbos, they make the US armor selection more interesting. 2. Snow is fun too. It makes navigating a bit trickier but looks very thematic. 3. Scenery on a whole is quite nice. One quirk: Turret point of aim doesn't reset after engagements. It's a really small thing, but if tanks engage a target from say, the hull down so the gun is at near max depression, the gun tube stays at max depression until there's another target. Small quirk, but as far as I can tell that's what's been happening with a few of my tanks. Looks odd with tank guns pointed to the dirt (snow really) or at weird angles while driving along.

The party approves. I've just done a few QBs but it's been pretty fun. Look and feel is great

Then I'd say it's no skin off anyone's nose at this point, but more discretion is something he should be mindful of. Especially as a 19D (BII thieving hobos that they are and all).

And roger on the delete. Mentioning your unit isn't too out there, but where it's going and what it's doing with dates is a bit far. In his defense there might have already been a Pentagon level press release that it was his Brigade going to Poland from x to x however. Not interested enough to look it up though.

So is anyone else having it just stay at 0.0/5.7 GB and going into the 12-15 hour range?

True, but that was the absolutely deplorable TF Smith incident and wasn't exactly the norm.

I'm going to certainly have to agree with the World of Tanks comment. The interest is great, but it's like Jurassic Park to actual paleontology.

Truly. I got sucked into a debate about Japanese armor on a whole. My brain hurt by the end of it simply because how something that was so historically irrelevant and really not at all that good could have such a die hard fan club. I have to wonder if the Axis and Soviet fan clubs benefit somewhat from how much of their "source" material is less than truthful while much of the Allies actions and equipment is seen through a much more starkly realist viewpoint.

Since we've wandered into that swamp, I did a lot of reading on the end of World War Two in the Pacific back in February. It's mind boggling how much the Japanese overstated their damage on Allied forces, and worse, based major strategic choices on those claims. What's funny now is when you deal with folks who take those estimates as historical reality showing up in places. I ran into someone claiming a whopping whole two Type 97 tanks held off an entire Marine Battalion and destroyed 40+ M3 Stuart tanks on Corregidor before being withdrawn to fight another day elsewhere in the Philippines circa 1945. They were not amused when I pointed out the lack of Marines, M3s, or Type 97s in the historical battle. My "European" sources were clearly incorrect.

Historically, military intelligence hasn't been much better at assessing if something was dead or not. It's less cut and dry that we'd think. Some organizations had political pressure to be VERY successful, or had training issues that made for very unreliable reporting, while others just didn't know any better. The output remains the same though, that virtually always will damage claimed greatly outpace damage inflicted.

I haven't actually played PBEM, so I've honestly got no idea how the setup works. I'd just assumed if you were playing QB style it'd have the same sort of "difficulty" or "electronic warfare" settings.

.50 cal just was not effective against armor. Full stop. Simply because I've got the book beside me: In the Korean War the USAF claimed the following: 1,256 NKPA tanks destroyed 1,298 Damaged The Navy/USMC claimed an additional 286 Destroyed 161 Damaged In reality there were a total of: 258 T-34/85s active in South Korea 80 SU-76s Of those: 256 T-34/85 wrecks 74 SU-76s wrecks Were recovered by November 1950. Of those tanks (I don't have ready numbers for the SU-76s) a whopping 27 were accounted for by aviation type weapons. Another 63 or so were destroyed by causes unknown (which encompasses napalm, other catastrophic fires, or the tank frankly is enough wreckage to confirm it used to be a T-34, but no firm cause). The majority were killed by US Armor, with aviation having only slightly better claims than artillery or bazookas. While it's Korea, the T-34 wasn't magically better or worse armored than the Panzer IV let alone Tigers. The weapons employed by US aviation in Korea were the same generally as Normandy minus napalm. It's also helpful as all but two NKPA tanks were located and surveyed (the remaining two might be anything from remaining as a training tank in the DPRK, or falling off a bridge into a deep river or something). For the claims made, the actual damage done to armor was minimal. Aircraft strafing, unguided rockets, or "dumb" bombs are simply not that effective per attack attempted. So yeah. .50 cal was not a significant tank killer, fixed wing aviation prior to guided weapons had a very low success rate against AFVs and why are we still talking about this?

Dunno. Maybe in the game setup vs the program setup, like where you'd usually set difficulty rules, "true" turning vs "precise" turning.

Speaking from experience, tanks do not like ice. The Germans ultimately built some cleats to augment traction on slippery surfaces, but from what little I know of them, they were not especially effective (or had very short service lives). I do totally understand the simplification of the movement though. In a perfect world it'd be a toggleable option though.

On a semi-related note, it is really a great study in how history gets away from facts. The reality of what the various fighter-bomber efforts accomplished (and they did accomplish great effects), and what we've come to accept those results as (flaming Tigers scattered everywhere as a Tiffy or Thunderbolt does a leisurely barrel roll, assured of its success in winning against the Hun) is an interesting transition. I recall a lot of the eye rolling at P-51s being "tankbusters" related more to that they were P-51s, not P-47s or Typhoons which were "in reality" the tank busters. Which in no way denigrates the contribution of fighter bombers to victory in Europe. It's just that victory was namely keeping the skies devoid of anything with a swastika, and endless columns of burning trucks, or hours spent by German tactical units trying to reassemble on the road after having to go to ground for the third time in 1 KM of roadmarch.

We can be nice. However: 1. Massed MG fire was not a significant threat to tanks and tank-like targets. 2. Aviation in general in the 1940-1960 or so range did not account for an especially large amount of armor. 3. Aviation claims against armor are often astronomically higher than actual kills (mobility, firepower, or otherwise). 4. The ricochet thing is frankly urban legend.

It never fails to amaze what historical fictions carry on despite the existence of massive amounts of evidence to the contrary.

I for one fear the 1000 RHA ERA+hull armor mega armor T-90AMs that Russia totally has right now. I hear they also can fly and do not require fueling.

An interesting tendency across the Arab world is to mistake shooting large cannons at things for effective employment of weapons systems. You see it in both government and insurgent forces, lots of people getting on line, shooting a few hundred rounds, a couple RPGs at some suspected enemy position followed by a few million allah akbards because surely each of those hundred bullets found a target and great success. In that regard, the regime's employment of armor must be seen through the same perspective. It wasn't a rational plan, it was simply the idea that something with that much firepower and armor is surely immune to whatever feeble resistance it will encounter. This is of course somewhat of an exaggeration for comedic effect. However the Syrian government has had to learn some very hard lessons (that frankly it should have learned many years ago).

1. Unrelated, preteen/early teen targeted programming is frankly terrifying. 2. Abdolmartin gets to the point of it a lot faster than I did. There's things to be learned from the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. However it's much closer to learning what limited warfare looks like in the modern era. Russia is still unable to conduct an overt war against Eastern Europe, and it's still debatable if anyone, east, west or otherwise is capable of a major full spectrum conflict involving a near-peer threat*. *Or perhaps, initiating an offensive war against a near-peer threat. Russian/NATO forces are obviously more than adequate to preclude an effective invasion against their respective nations.

Going to be "short" by my standards and thunderous because I'm at an awesome confluence of getting ready to start a job/my step daughter is visiting/I've got National Guard stuff all weekend so I'm a bit busier than usual. Re: Overestimating I'd contend it's not just overestimating and more that the author is inflating them to some degree to make his case. This is entirely common with all thinktanks everywhere because they're all competing for attention time and funding, and no one is going to care if you publish a report that says the US merely has parity with Russia, or Russia has a slight advantage. It needs to be total overwhelming doom and gloom or it's going to get filed away (see pretty much every report on the Soviet Union circa 1989). Broadly speaking: Russia is vastly inferior to NATO in terms of combined conventional warfighting abilities. It's equipment is less effective unit per unit, and economically Russia would not survive a war. Russia also suffers deeply in that it lacks a cohesive counter-narrative to the west. Not to wander too far into politics, but simply no one supports Russia's actions, and their reasoning for those actions is widely held as invalid. This will put them on the receiving end of diplomatic and political repercussions, and undercut their ability to dismantle eastern Europe piecemeal. We saw this with the Ukraine, a country that means very little to the rest of the world, triggered a pretty heavy backlash, and the fig leaf of "we're not really in the Ukraine!" did not carry at all. Russia is not weak, but there's a school of analysts that tend to view them through the lenses of the Soviet Union as we saw them, that the Armata exists in any state carries more weight that the state of the Russian petrochemical industry. And you can't remove warfighting from greater nation level strategy. Less Broadly speaking: Re: EW Electronic Warfare is interesting simply because we have not seen American EW flex on the conventional end of things. We do have the ability to mount jammers on virtually every AFV we have that'll shut down pretty much every signal emitting system that isn't yankee imperialist for a few hundred meters (at least), but we know them as counter-IED systems vs a "hey look a Russian drone, shame it just lost telemetry." Which isn't to get into the weeds of capabilities and counter-strokes. It's just Russia has shown what it's capable of, US EW has been somewhat focused on other targets, or has not been exercised in so full of a view of the world. Re: DPICM Think our getting rid of it was a mistake too. Not sure it's quite as world ending as stated though, especially when paired with home on jam seeker systems, or other precision tools. Also while Russia has a lot of artillery, it's still not especially nimble or integrated in the wider battlespace sense. It's really easy to be good at artillery-ing when you can park it in Russia and shoot with impunity. Re: DIVARTY Maybe. I think more HIMARs or MRLS would do the job well enough, or at least without a 15 year building cycle. Long term heavy artillery will be interesting. Have to wonder if that won't be the first US Army tactical rail gun though. Re: Heavy APCs By Russian-Ukrainian standards, the M2A3 IS a heavy APC. Light vehicles are certainly vulnerable on the battlefield. But they're also the only reasonable way to get forces in theater quickly. A two-tiered system of heavy (both prepo and longer deployment cycle) and lighter will be essential, and its important to ask how we give light forces more teeth vs simply stating that they're vulnerable. Some sort of light tank to give IBCTs and SBCTs a better direct fire platform would be nice though. Re: Rotary Wing This one was just silly. US rotary wing appears to fly high, because most of where it can be filmed there's some sort of minimum altitude for administrative purposes. Reality is much different, and the stand-off of late model hellfires plus the longbow radar is something that is well into the realm of tank ruining. Re: Anti-Tank Also silly. The only real modernization I'd argue for would be in the short term, a TOW-Javelin hybrid, basically the size/range of a TOW, the seeker and attack methods of a Javelin. Bam. Bradley and Stryker ATGMs just got super-scary. Tank muinitions and man portable systems are about spot on already. Long term might make sense to look into something like what the Germans did with their 120 MMs in regards to longer barrels, or reviving STAFF because that'll make some Russian engineer have a fit. Re: NATO is not prepared for losses It isn't, but it's not like Poland is going to fold and the Germans will withdraw after they've taken 20 KIA. In the event of a high intensity Russian invasion of an Eastern European country, it's not going to be a hair splitting moment of "well, Russian domination of Poland is okay!" The war will be traumatic and a terrible thing that leaves deep scars on Western Europe. But that won't stop NATO from showing up. This also gets back to what I said about lacking a counter-narrative. Russia can't present a reasonable justification for its actions to the greater non-Russian world. If it could, it might hope to split Western European opinions, but even in the fairly limited Ukrainian situation, Europe generally responded with increasing hostility and there's precious little support anywhere for being "nicer" to Russia. You can't split NATO if your actions unify it and give it purpose. So until Russia can articulate why it's really the victim, or Latvia really would welcome Russian overlords, it's going to be a hard sell for political disruption measures. Re: Special Forces Totally 100% agree with this one. My encounters with the SOF/SOF-like or even just light infantry community have been supremely frustrating in how little they seem to understand in regards to fighting a full spectrum conflict. IBCTs are starting to get mauled at JRTC and NTC though, so hopefully this leads to some sort of wakeup.

Errata: It's unsurprising that they're not showing the actual point of impact. We for instance, were forbidden from taking photos of any damage or even impact marks on our vehicles in Iraq simply because it could have been used by the insurgents to better understand what effects they were having on us. Basically if a spot was hardly scratched, the bad guys would know it's a poor place to shoot at, while if there was a lot of damage it'd let them know to repeat what might have only been a big dust cloud and an MRAP speeding off into the night. So in that regard the propaganda* value of the tank looking almost unscathed after being hit by a TOW is great. The original video showed the crew evacuating, and it was certainly left abandoned. In that context alone it's easy for the rebels to narrate the attack as having "Destroyed a T-90." Publishing a photo that makes it look broadly intact and saying "nuh-uh!" negates that narrative and can be used as sort of a "fear not, we have T-90s!" image. It does however leave a lot of stuff open as far as damage. In regards to "killed" it might be the entire FCS is gutted and the breach no longer aligns properly. So the tank drives, it's not a catastrophic kill, but if this was the battle of Kiev or something, this specific tank would be just as "killed" for the sake of the operation as one that was burned to the ground. Which gets into an interesting historical tangent about tank kills in general and propaganda resulting (for instance, most German kill total include every tank they disabled, while only counting their total losses at the scene of the battle. Tanks written off at the depot, lost when they couldn't be recovered in a timely manner, or when the collection point for damaged tanks was overrun are not counted). Often it's worth claiming a tank was not actually destroyed because German/Soviet/US/Canadian armor supreme....while ignoring that tank had to be shipped back to the home country and rebuilt from the trackpads up before re-entering service. It's a worthwhile discussion point in strategic terms, but in speaking if a tank is "killed" or not, it's worth asking how long was the tank out of the fight, and perhaps considering while tank 12345 returned to service five months later is not strictly "Destroyed" but for the intents and purpose of the conflict, it is killed, or that even if a weapons system merely short term disables a tank, it has a distinct anti-tank utility** *Propoganda doesn't mean "false" as much as it's the better understood term for information operations. Dropping pamphlets on Nazi troops circa March 1945 telling them how boned they are is strictly speaking propaganda, it's information arranged to drive a population towards an opinion they might not already hold to accomplish an objective. It can be 100% true, but it is still information prepared and packaged to an end. **It's just again, does it disable enough tanks long enough to give it utility. Like Japanese anti-tank weapons in world war two could often disable American armor, but rarely did they on a level to prevent the tanks from accomplishing their mission, or even making a repeat appearance a few hours/days later. This while better than nothing did not do enough damage to prevent the armor force from accomplishing its missions at the expense of the Japanese forces on the ground.

Generally most "AA Machine Guns" were not especially effective. The idea was more or less than every tank in a company or something started shooting skyward that they might accomplish some hits, or at the least Strongly Encourage enemy aircraft to go elsewhere. In practice, again, just not that effective. Reasons follow: 1. LMG rounds were increasingly less effective against all aircraft regardless of mounts. There's a reason you start to see less .303, .30 cal, 7.7 mm etc on aircraft is simply they weren't that effective at killing airplanes, even on platforms well designed for putting lead into airplanes. .50 caliber arguably was the lowest end of reasonable anti-aircraft, and even that generally required a quad mount to be reasonably effective. 2. Most tank crews simply had limited to no experience shooting at airplanes. Odds of even getting rounds off were very limited, let alone rounds off into the enemy airplanes. 3. While virtually all aircraft were subject to the "golden BB" effect, most of the airframe could take more than a few rifle caliber hits and simply continue on mission. If you're spraying rifle caliber bullets in the course of a fighter, your odds of putting holes in nothing especially harmful are a lot higher than otherwise.

The only complaint I have is that it's hard to play CMBS well without a very obsessive level of detail to what each vehicle/team does. In real life, you command a platoon to set up a defensive position, you've pretty much given it a place you want it, and what you want it to shoot into, but the platoon will sort out where exactly it needs to park, build sectors of fire etc. You as the commander will need to adjust those things to make them better tie in with the other platoons in the company, but even then it's fairly straight forward ("LT I need your 3# tank so it can see the belltower at grids 12345678, that's now your right limit"). So in that regard, I see any scenario with more than a company+ of equipment for me to command (so like, 14-20 AFVs) I'm not really as interested because I hate having to juggle all those pieces (and it's not realistic in many ways, because between the player battalion commander and the squad on the ground, there's a chain of at least two other commissioned officers, and a 2-3 NCOs with something like 50 years combined experience of Army running that part of the show). And that's really my one complaint for my end of things, that I feel Combat Mission is a lot of fun for Platoon and Company level games, but it's painful for Battalion level (and I'd contend once you've got 2+ maneuver units* you're into the realm where traditional hex based games have an advantage in abstracting that you do have a functioning Company Commander, Platoon Leader etc etc in the loop). *I'm sure I'm walking into an ambush on this one with someone who's more current on doctrinal terms. However maneuver units broadly are the echelon at which a unit becomes more or less independent, like reasonably could accomplish missions without much support. For the US Army this is generally the Company. Old style Soviet was the Battalion, and this appears to be in places still the case with Russian forces, although they've certainly made some strides in making more agile units. If you're fighting old school with massed Russian companies, I don't think they're as hard to control, and generally the force balances in CMBS allows you to burn through Russian equipment in a way that would be war losing as a blue player.

1. The BMP-2M is another fantasy piece of hardware (kind of, in that it exists but has not been selected by the Russian Army last time I checked). 2. The 30 MM is the correct weapon for IFV/APC type targets. It's why IFVs mount autocannons instead of HMGs, to effectively allow them to fight like vehicles. It is a more dicey shot against a BFV with ERA etc, it's not a behavior I'd see as totally unrealistic. 3. On the other hand, virtually NEVER should a tank type target be engaged by an autocannon. There's a few cases where I'm incorrect (flank shots on T-55s, the tank literally just turned a corner and there you are etc), but the missile is the only system that gives a reasonable chance of killing a tank, or disabling it fast enough. It's almost always the correct answer to hold fire until you can unleash your most lethal weapons system for that target type. In that regard, some sort of AI fix would be a good idea. Having a toggle to help the player mandate missile behavior wouldn't be the worst thing ever if the AI still proves non-compliant. In that regard, many of the ATGM systems in game require some preparations (halting the vehicle, deploying a launcher, etc) so having a command telling the vehicle that it is now time for missile engagement wouldn't be too out there.