panzersaurkrautwerfer

1. I think I made, and the last ten years, a major mechanized conflict, a pretty good argument that the Abrams has protection effective in all the normal tank arcs. There's no special holes in the array, no magic "Shoot here for s'plosion!" gap, your contention was there's a band that pretty much anything with armor piecing capability will slip through, and the Abrams has been 30 MMed, 25 MMed, hit with 100 MM, 115 MM, 125 MM, RPG-7, RPG-29, AT-4, 5 etc, etc, etc, and there's no apparent "weak" spots outside of the reality that like most tanks, it doesn't like getting shot in the side or rear. 2. The reluctance to use DU is somewhat funny, but the post penetration effects are superior to most European style rounds, and the longer barrel on later model Leo 2s is an interesting design choice (it makes for a more difficult traverse at the least). Basically the US family of sabot performs about the same, on a smaller, and soon to be lighter gun, while keeping a better traverse (again, gun tubes don't like trees or buildings), while having an equal chemical energy type round (and AMPS is very promising). 3. Actually no. Leo's optics are a little worse off, and the satellite communications/C3 (or is is C4I? they keep changing it) systems on the Abrams are superior. Has any tank been hit by a "qualified" threat? Actually the Abrams has been hit by a lot of hostile fire, ranging from tanks, to IFVs, to ATGMs, to RPGs, to idiots with AK-47s. If there's a tank with a fairly established capability for being robust, it's the Abrams. It was also developed by people who had decades of armor design experience, it's been upgraded by same people. It's seen dozens of protection upgrades to match ongoing threats. That there's a "big gap!" in the armor array, specifically the frontal armor array, speaks to some degree of madness. I mean just sitting here right now, putting an armored "windshield" to mask that gap on the frontal slope of the hull, or even some sort of "fins" for the lower portion of the turret's cheek armor would be very easy to execute. Or at that, making "bulges" on the front slope to mask the base of the turret, more expensive but not that much of a problem for a tank design that's had the entire front of the turret changed, had the composition of the armor revamped, ERA packages, things I cannot discuss (not an appeal to authority, simply a statement there), has had literally decades of service, and the idea that "well hell Bob, we've just got to leave this big gap in the armor in the front! Tank's gotsta have an Achilles heel or we'll upset the tank gods!" is frankly silly in the extreme. I think there's just this assumption that because it's an American product we're too stupid to see this glaringly obvious flaw. I mean it's not like we can't look at our own damn tanks, or read the internet forums to see this obvious tank weakspot! NO! We are just that stupid that we have a slit that an especially brave BMP-2 gunner will kill our very expensive tank with! Because we are that dumb! WHEEE! I will kill you and eat your eyeballs. The basic Bradley is pretty good. It's just now stupid levels of overload, and running out of space (and was built for infantry that wasn't wearing body armor). As far as weapons package, armor protection level, etc, it's really not that bad. So instead of making the landcruzer GCV or whatever, I think a "Super Brad" wouldn't be the worst idea as far as simply scaling up a little bit. Which given Mr Sparkle's hatred of the Bradley should be a pretty strong indicator of my inclinations. Abram's role in Iraq was a little more complex than that. It was one of the more capable sensor platforms we had, so it was often used to overwatch especially high activity routes. Also on many occasions when facing especially silly insurgents it was used to scoop them out with direct fire/protection capability that no other vehicle was capable of handling. It also had a "suppressive" effect in that most insurgents would stay home if tanks were around, so that could often be used to accomplish other effects. Tanks have a lot more complicated, and effective role in COIN that most folks seem to grasp, but in COIN, they're a lot closer to a very useful tool, than a unit of action if that makes any sense. The Abrams wasn't sent to Afghanistan because: Most of the US Army AO is in places that do not support vehicle movement. Like, not "Doesn't support Abrams!" like "anything bigger than a donkey isn't going up this road." Most of the fighting is also in places where getting in a tracked vehicle of any kind is problematic (you see a lot of dead T-62s in Afghanistan partly because of this effect). Down south it's a lot more tank friendly in the sense of maneuver, but it's also a lot less decisive engagements (the enemy leaves if he doesn't feel he's going to be effective, and comes back later). The Marines brought some because in the 2011 timeframe it had a lot to do with the fact the Taliban was starting to try to take and hold terrain, which put them in a position to get tanked.

A mature person would not feel some level of schadenfreude at this. I am not that mature. After years of being told how Russia can build pretty much everything at will because we do not understand how special Russian economics and engineering works, this is amusing to say the least.

Surprisingly for a critical weakness, there have been remarkably a lack of penetrations in that region to the best of my ability to say. It's almost like there wasn't actually big thinly armored gap in the frontal armor array!!!! Or in practical terms, if you can kill a bear with a spoon so long as you get it at the right angle through the eyesocket, that's cool. The actual reality of getting the spoon in there however leaves some question to the reality of that weakness. Looking at 1991, a lot of M1s were stuck with a variety of the sort of rounds you were talking about, with zero kills. Like try this on for size: You really only get at the "unarmored" place with a straight gun tube/launcher 0 degrees to "weak" spot. If you're too elevated, it's not going to hit. You're too low, it's not going to hit. You basically need a battle that gives you; 1. That cannon straight level with the gap between the turret and hull. 2. Enough time to aim accurately while the Abrams is likely at least you're aware out there. 3. A weapons system capable of very high precision hits. Basically there's some absurdity to the idea that after existing since the late 70's, going to several major conflicts, and being at the forefront of the world's best funded military....that there's a true Achilles heel on the front of the fricking tank. So basically catastrophic eyeroll going on up in hizzhere. Re: The video It's what I like to call the M16 rule. The M16 is over 40 years old. There's no much out there that's 40 years old and doesn't need replacing. However the state of the art in assault rifles have not progressed to the point where the cost of a total M16 family replacement's cost aligns with the increased performance. At this moment the Abrams: 1. Has some of the most advanced passive armor in the world. 2. Has some of the best 120 MM munitions available 3. Is the cutting edge for sensors and communications. There's no "better" passive armor technology waiting out there. In terms of main gun, there's a lot of debate on if a 140 MM is practical, or required (or the "cost" in terms of other factors of the 140 MM do not clearly outweigh the benefits). The sensors/communications are world beaters right now. There are things that could be done better. Active defense is a must for the near future. Better ERA would be nice, thermal mitigation or a different drive train gets kicked around, as do lesser more boring upgrades (better integration of the existing upgrades to reduce replication of wiring and connectivity systems, consolidating several generations of onboard systems into unified solutions etc). But none of these are full stop, we need a new hull, new turret, etc, etc, etc. Bradley is getting close to that point simply because it started off intentionally somewhat lightweight to maintain the ability to "swim" then received major armor upgrades in the late 80's, then yet more systems, and armor, and etc, etc, so I would contend at least a "hull" upgrade is in order (like something on order to the "stretch" M113s, same basic principle, but up-sized to better carry more/new systems).

The US Tank situation was actually a lot straight forward. The M48 was maintained entirely by "legacy" stocks and located in the National Guard (which is to say, low mileage reserves), when the M1 came out the M60 received a basically "End of life" upgrade (M60A3 TTS) to keep it relevant during the switchover. The Soviets, and now the Russians are maintaining several "redundant" types of equipment in that they are broadly equally capable/filling the same role, while also upgrading and keep them as relevant as possible. It's really different in the sense of the US stuff was on basically a turnover (Active component /USAREUR->Lower priority Active->Guard->mothballs->target range), with only fairly modest effort put into the retiring platforms. Which rather gets into a sort of tailspin in that the cost of making a unitary, or selecting a primary platform and sticking with it is on paper highly expensive....but keeping several different platforms relevant because a money pit pretty quickly. The Russian economy is certainly a "real" economy, but it is tightly linked to exports of a very narrow spectrum of goods or raw materials. This is suffering in many ways, and much of the "wealth" of Russia is in someone else's country, currently locked away under sanctions. There's no magic money projector hiding in the Kremlin's basement to make that all better. It's telling that all these new toys that were paraded about were supposed to be in battalion service by now are lacking, and we're seeing more modest service life upgrades instead.

The 9th Infantry Division experiments basically showed; 1. Light rapidly mobile infantry could often out maneuver heavier forces and inflict disproportionate damage 2. Light motorized infantry allowed for a very flexible rapid strategic movement, but significantly more "maneuver" and respectably more firepower than Airborne or Air Assault troops offered. However 1. While able to often do damage out of proportion to it's size and equipment, they also struggled to inflict lasting damage on their heavier foes (trading a tank platoon for a dune buggy was not a way to win a war, but it was never inflicting losses on a scale to militarily destroy major maneuver units). 2. Motorized light infantry did not survive if decisively engaged. Once the mechanized-armored forces got a bite into the motorized infantry, it died in detail. 3. While the motorized infantry could often evade heavier forces, they usually experienced "gambler's ruin" in that every evasion had some chance of failing, and it was inevitable, even if the evasion was likely, that something would go wrong and the motorized light infantry would die in place. 4. Still reliant on logistics that are often heavily exposed The problems I would contend with motorized light infantry comes down to the following: a. It's "damage" focused. They're good at inflicting damage, but bad at decisive effects or taking/retaining key terrain (which often leaves the Light motor infantry increasingly penned in). b. Assumes risk by existing. All things do on the battlefield, but things that sacrifice protection (war fighting function protection), and security often exist on a razor's edge. c. It offers false saving, either requiring extensive augmentation to limit it's weakness, or basically offering a duality between "very low losses" and "total destruction." As sort of an Annex: The key differences with Stryker would be: 1. The Stryker unit is designed to rapidly move around the battlefield, but it is not reliant on speed to survive (it remains "boot" heavy enough to conduct traditional infantry missions, artillery/AT/direct fire is fairly heavy). 2. Increasingly the Stryker is being seen as sort of a Dragoon option, in that it uses the vehicle for mobility before fighting as conventional infantry (with heavy firepower augmentation), and further armor-cross attachments are proving to be more common for SBCT NTC rotations.

1. Tuna is a godsend. You know what tastes fine at room temperature? Tuna. You now what tastes good when you had the pouch in your cargo pocket on a ruck? Tuna. What's all right even when it's stupid cold? Tuna. Deployed, even with access to dining halls a lot of folks still stashed away those starkist tuna pouches because they were an awesome baseline nutritional item (if you worked on a FOB that had limited food options, it was a great fallback choice, or you just worked 36 hours, you need food before you go to bed sort of deal). I usually ate it straight from the pouch using a spoon, I often had other meal items squirreled away I used as sides (there were these little shelf stable cornbread squares that were amazing, also just saltines or sometimes tortilla chips), but I'll eat tuna for a week before I go straight MRE. 2. Which isn't to say MREs are bad, there's just the following basic math: MREs are actually pretty good if you sit down, heat them up and eat at a human pace. However if you have long enought to do those things, generally you will be given hot food. So as a result you're always eating an MRE at suboptimal conditions, either shoveling it down in 10 minutes before you move out, or as was often the case, eating it in little bits over the course of the next six hours of operations. This adjusts what you prioritize in terms of value/desireability. Example: The Spaghetti and meat chucks is actually pretty all right, it's on par with pretty much any canned pasta. However when it's air temperature you have zero time to cook it, and it's Twin Bridges Training Area ROK, circa January at 0345, it isn't appealing at all. The cobbler that comes with it though, that's totally fine because fruit goop with some sort of crustish stuff tastes fine cold, and goes down okay in a hurry. Stuff that can be eaten quickly, or nibbled on and stuffed away without making a mess is highly valued. Like you might get a bite out of the enchilada before you have to roll out, and there is zero way to keep that from becoming a mess in the turret if you've open the bag already, so you chuck it. Any of the crackers, spreads, cookies, or similar snacky items are awesome though because again, you can eat those off and on all mission, and they're not going to be a problem (the cheese spreads have an almost religious following, but a lot of people will just suck those straight from the tube because they're small, taste reasonable, and are some obscene amount of calories). If I had to name something I always ate, it was usually the crackers and spread, and I hardly touched the entrees just because I didn't have time, and there were enough calories in the rest of the meal to get by on our less than half marathon workload

1. Just to throw it out there, I can't name a good Korean scenario based on reality. If you went pretty straight up crazy fiction, and warped geography it'd be fun, but there's not a lot of big mobility corridors, and just the NKPA isn't really in a position to be a conventional threat for very long. 2. I'd like CM: National Training Center. Like the base game would be US ABCT/SBCT, the current OPFOR template (which is an interesting vehicle mix), in a desert enviroment(bonus points if you can have both "real" buildings and the classic connex training structures) but then modules could be added to throw in different terrain types, or different threat/friendly MTOEs. If someone wanted to write a Syria scenario there'd basically be all the parts for it. Same for Ukraine when the "Green" comes out. There's just not a lot of likely Full Spectrum ground conflicts out there the US/major NATO powers are going to wander into. There's a lot of contingency stuff that might still kick off, but I'm not sure you could hang a game on that as well.

The Heavy Weapons Company is not a "real" company. The idea behind it is to provide heavy weapons support to other units within the Battalion. The doctrinal employment isn't as set in stone last I read, but normal allocation is one platoon per rifle company (although in the event a rifle company needed additional augmentation, it might receive more). They're in a company by themselves though for "peacetime" purposes of keeping all the similar equipment, and training requirements attached to it under one roof (it's easier to send all of D Co to the range to do TOW gunnery, than sync A, B, C co's TOW gunners across the battalion given the normal tasking cycle*), and if all the "guntruck" type HMMWVs are in one Company it keeps the maintenance footprint for the otherwise "light" companies narrow. In practice, the HMMWVs may be used as support by fire assets, firing from the vehicle. From running missions in the simulators (which is as close as I got to an IBCT) it was often more practical to treat the vehicles as a prime mover/ammo dump for the weapons system, dismounting it to a better firing position. When using the truck it was generally best to keep it "behind the lines" in as far as never leading with it, and allowing the infantry it was supporting to make contact first (thus engaging the enemy forces and keeping them from getting easy AT weapon shots). Basically have a route to go from firing position to firing position that is concealed from direct observation for best results. I tend not to play to much with light forces in CMBS, but if I was forced to at gun point, I would put my infantry forward with Javelins if available, then the TOW HMMWVs concealed at standoff. Basically the infantry disrupts/degrades the attacking enemy forces, then once the enemy commits forces to the assault, you start putting TOWs into the fight. Same deal with MK-19s and to a lesser degree .50 cals, I'd want the enemy to engage my smallest possible element to encourage him to underbid for the objective, then force him to adjust once his forces on the assault become engaged by heavy weapons (it is more effect to maul one of his elements, and force him to adjust than it is to have to chew through his main effort). If you've chopped up his one attack enough, then you displace to focus on another objective again using movement out of direct line of observation (this is the real advantage to the vehicles). It might even be best with the TOWs especially to bug out once you've put a missile into something (Tank or dirt) just to avoid it getting massed on. Dunno. Prefer playing with tanks. *Companies are normally on "red, amber, green" stance, which determines which Company is tasked with assignments like supporting other unit's training exercises, or non-training taskings like a large scale motorpool cleaning/filling the formation out at a Division CoC. Red meant you were the go-to company for all things, amber meant you could be tasked if the red company was buried, and green meant you were free to do whatever you needed to do (generally this corresponded to field training, or other major events). Your miliage varies, infantry companies usually could still train pretty okay during Amber and even some Red cycles because they had a ton of people, and a lot of individual training events (like it's still beneficial to send 40-50 of your 150 dude infantry company to land nav or the rifle range, even if the other 100 are busy scrubbing the motorpool or something), but Red for us tank companies basically meant full stop for anything but slow pace maintenance (again, you take 70 people out of a rifle company you've still got 80 dudes to train or do work, you take 70 people out of a tank company, you've left behind like 15-20 dudes).

Sigh. Yes. I think it is more accurate to say Hersh got it right once though and has ridden that event the rest of his career.

Totally. We went with full JLIST kits because we were coming in on the tail end of that tactic. It just works out that blowing up a truck filled with chlorine isn't much more effective than just blowing up the truck.

1. Seymour Hersh's relevance is about zero. I remember when he had "serious high placed unnamed sources" that put US combat forces already in Iran, ready to kick off the invasion circa 2007 or something. I think he's pretty much the consummate Texas sharpshooter. 2. Iraqi T-72s The Iraqi T-72 fleet was: Soviet provided T-72As Polish built T-72M, T-72M1s They were as standard for their place of manufacture, the T-72Ms and M1s especially were as good as anything fielded by the non-Soviet Warsaw pact forces in a technical sense, Which is why the Soviets still dropped a brick, the T-72s of the Poles and Czechs were supposed to be adequate tanks that literally were annihilated with little effort, AND much of the category B and C Soviet units were equipped with equal to worse hardware. The various "Iraqi" T-72s increasingly appear to have been an urban legend and some propaganda. Simply put Iraq did not have the industrial capabilities to crank out complete tanks from roadwheels to turrets. What the Iraqis did have was a major depot in Taji that could do some work, but mostly it assembled T-72Ms provided in knock-down kits (basically 1:1 scale models, all components provided, most of it plug and play) by the Poles. It served as a FOB actually, and again, it had a lot of cranes, repair equipment, but it was a place to assemble kits, and conduct overhauls (largely with foreign contractors). The Iraqis claimed to have made the tanks themselves, but simply put no one has ever found the factory in Iraq that could have made them, and it's believed to have been an expression of Saddam's ego vs Iraqi capabilities. There were some indigenous upgrades, or non-standard equipment (Chinese provided EO jammers, exhaust diverters etc), but the idea there was some vastly inferior Iraqi built T-72 was pure fiction. They were earlier Soviet T-72s, or then-"modern" Polish T-72s. 3. Chemical weapons during OIF: Some were found used as IEDs. The problem is they were only in small amounts, and of uncertain providence. They were largely smaller mortar type rounds, and they were stupid levels of old. The unclass consensus is they were weapons that were not properly accounted for vs deliberate omissions, and their employment was more someone mistook them for conventional HE mortar rounds and wired them accordingly.

1. There's plenty of homosexuals in literally every Army. Especially the ones that freak out about homosexuals. 2. Having served in combat with women, there was a distinct lack of any of what you described. The only relevant gender difference I noticed was the classic issue of lower female to bathroom ratios (or the women's bathroom type facilities might have had 10-20 folks "serviced" by that facility, while the male bathrooms would have 40-50 per bathroom), and what I'm about to discuss next. 3. Women are biologically a little smaller and a little weaker. That said I had no problem with the thought of female tankers/infantrymen (person?) etc, so long as the standards were the same. There's not a lot of gals who have the upper body strength to sling 120 MM rounds. But if one of the ones that could wanted to be a tanker, it'd be stupid to send her away because she's capable of carrying a fetus.* *As sort of an additional element to that, I also support having the PT test scaled by job, so likely raising the standard gender irregardless for combat arms, while likely lowering the passing score for some non-combat jobs. Basically I feel in the interest of equality if we're willing to accept weaker people for jobs that are less intensive because of their gender, we really should just accept that it's okay that all admin clerks only have to do 20 pushups or something, while the infantry folks better be able to crank out their at least 50, and be able to "hang" for the entire 12 mile road march, regardless of gender.

I don't think it's stowage, low on the hull like that is how you lose your kit. It's an interesting layout though, it looks like it's strapped on vs bolted (see the angle of the bottom piece, straps appear to be at least in part to hold the contents of the bag in place). Containers look like they're fairly easy to access with asks interesting questions about the contents (or looking at the weight of say, a complete set of SAPI plates, that's not something I would strap to the outside of a tank, let alone any sort of passive armor on a tank scale). The straps and bags don't seem under a lot of tension too though. I wonder if it's not just a kit version of the various cardboard or wood bundles we've seen as adhoc standoff armor? Coverage is also so-so, although it does do that thing T-72 skirts do not do if it is armor. Too big for ERA though, unless it's a series of cells in one bag, but that configuration doesn't make a lot of sense. Conjecture A: It's some sort of fairly light stand-off material, Counter-argument is that it's not very comprehensive and it's not a lot of standoff. Conjecture B: It's some sort of passive armor array that has been bolted to the skirt, but has bags over the top to conceal it's actual nature. The counter-argument to that would be it's a lot of work to cover up something that isn't earth shattering, especially if it's not something that couldn't just be tarped/netted over. Conjecture C: It's like that triple stacked ERA we saw back in the 80's, less so actual armor, more so something to make military intelligence gears spin for a while.

The Abrams is something else. It sounds like someone is operating a vacuum cleaner somewhere. At AOBC I was in a dismounted OP, we had our helmets off, radio turned real low overwatching one of the main roads through the training area. We knew a platoon was coming our way simply because we were at where the road forked to either go into the open mud flats that 70+ years of tankers had town out of the Kentucky wilderness, or to go west if I recall to take advantage of a maintenance road that would canalize their movement, but put them outside of our main defensive position's engagement area. We could hear every damned HMMWV in the area, the M88 somewhere doing recovery options, helicopters, but no contact, just occasionally a sort of distant whine. Then the whole platoon of Abrams rounded the bend at rifle range, and it was just that sort of vacuum cleaner a few houses over noise, with the chatter of the tracks. If our PL for that iteration had seen fit to give us the few remaining AT rounds we had (our ability to kill tanks was reliant on having the AT rocket simulator pyro charges for our MILEs rocket launcher, this was the last day in the field so we were down to maybe four for the platoon, which went to people cooler than us) we might have made things messy, but just the shock of 280 tons worth of tank appearing at whisper quiet was something else. We got off our contact report and then were left alone with the distant roar of the M88 and the fading heat of the exhaust in a matter of seconds.

Re: Lutefisk 1. My other question was "when you work along side tankers, does it ever make you physically ill to know you're just a pale imitation of their greatness?" (OBVIOUSLY JOKING) 2. I'd imagined there being an armored bin with an option to project the lutefisk at unwary enemy infantry. 3. Context; A significant portion of the fishing industry in my hometown was once Swedish or Norwegian. While a lot of the cultural aspects have faded as their children and grandchildren have adopted more American habits, there's still occasional pockets of suddenly Scandinavian behaviors that'll sneak up on you. Like lutefisk.

Does the vehicle come with the proper arrangements to safely transport lutefisk?

I'd like a trip back to CMSF or a similar setting. It felt like you had a great spectrum of capability, ranging from the dinosaur T-62 models and BMP-1s to the ultra modern NATO/US stuff. If you wanted a semi-fair fight it was totally possible, but it was also equipment that felt a lot closer to the state of the art vs near future (or like, the hardware of CMSF wasn't much of a jump if it was a jump at all, while APS, T-90AMs and the like all are pretty central to the CMBS dynamic). Doesn't CMBS bad, just CMSF was a lot of fun.

In mine it's referenced as the T-90*. From what little I know about the Twilight 2000 game's lifespan, it had a re-write for the setting (or at least a major adjustment) to account for the late 80's ultra early 90's, and I think my books are all of that generation (I've got the US/USSR/NATO vehicle books, the 2000's era reprint of the base book with a few of the Polish modules attached, then a mixed bag of other modules I picked up for cheaps). For the confused: Twilight 2000 was a 80's era table top role playing game that took place in a world that experienced the hypothetical NATO-USSR clash where the conventional war was not decisive, and the nuclear war was absolutely devastating, but not total. The war slogs on, but it's at this weird sort of broken state in which a "armored" division might have 10 tanks and 20% of it's real world strength, and much of Europe is basically back in the middle ages. The base module had the players as survivors of the last US offensive into Poland, which basically breaks the ability of both NATO and the USSR to really accomplish anything above small local operations, and again leaves the players stranded hundreds of miles in a confusing post-nuclear, post-global conflict Poland. Future modules covered adventures in that wasteland, hitching a ride back to the US (or alternately, the middle east where the availability of oil keeps the war going at a low simmer) then dealing with a US that's basically in the middle of a slow civil war, occupied in places by the Soviets/Mexicans etc, etc. The rules and systems are aggravatingly complicated making it a game well above my desire to actually sit down and play, but it makes for interesting reading/inspiration for other things (the "basic" combat tutorial is like 5 pages of text, and doesn't get into things like keeping track of wear and tear on individual vehicle parts, or how radiation affects different characters, or rolling to not catch typhus) As someone who likes post apocalyptic and cold war stuff, I thought it was pretty neato, but woefully complex (heresy, but I rely on luring slightly nerdy friends in to play my board games vs having a nerdpack, so super-complex means it's not getting played). On T-90s As an example of Twilight 2000, a lot of stuff included was basically the "height" of cold war technology. Things that eventually would come to fruition in the 90's makes appearances (the Javelin shows up under it's very old program name of "Tank breaker," M1A1s show up under their experimental designation of M1E1s), while other stuff was a bit of scifi (laser based, Abrams mounted ADA platforms), stuff that was canceled (US Army LAV-25s, LAV-75 light tanks), or straight up fevered dreams. The Twilight 2000 T-90 was one of those fevered dreams, with a unmanned turret, large bore main gun with binary propellant. If I remember right, the page it sits across from in the Soviet AFV guide has the T-86, which was a T-72 with western style composites for the turret (like the Abrams and T-72 had a baby, an ugly commie baby.)

Nah, I just got a library card in John Kettler's name some time ago and haven't looked back. Kidding. I bought the book used, I also have a collection of "The Modern US Military" books that are all quite obsolete I use as references when painting stuff from the late 70's-90's, and that book is part of that.

NEERRRRRRRDS

I don't think it's really being "tidy" or even good, it's just knowing the scale modeling version of Vaseline on the lenses of various washes and filters. Like the BDUs in the photo are fairly few lines/blobs, but just add umber wash and it all blends to look pretty okay. I don't even paint details on faces, it's just a heavy reddish brown wash. It looks pretty okay for my eh pretty okay tier of models. Re: unused games I've got a small library of Twilight 2000 products I'll never use, I just thought the setting and ideas were cool to read.

She's real nice, the tow cable is a great touch especially at that scale! I've mostly done M4A3s because they're my favorite (M4A3E8s especially). I too have a M4A2 that'll be a Tarawa vintage tank, I've got some era proper figures to go with her too. Here's a few of mine: (Sorry for complete thread hijack, but I loves me some scale models)

I've got a pile of FoW stuff that I keep telling myself I'll paint, but increasingly eyeing it as a means of cash to buy air brush stuff. Have thought about how attached I am to some of the stash too (or like, if I'm going to do a T-62, is this later model with ERA the one I want sort of discussions with myself). Basically I have infinite room for Sherman's and Abrams because they're close to my heart, but the DAK Panzer III I'm planning might be the only Panzer III I do for the next 10 years vs all the variants.

I do about a model every month. Ish. I did some training rotations with the Guard so I'm a bit behind. The M4 on the table is getting decal touch up tonight, then after washes and pigments ought to be good to go. After that it's likely a Panzer III.

Well then! My stash is smaller but I'd like to build some more of it before I plus up again. At the least finally get an airbrush.