panzersaurkrautwerfer

Oh lawrd. Where to start? Re: SURPRISE! Here's the deal. Look at how the US has reacted to virtually every possibly military crisis in the last few years. What is virtually the first thing to arrive in theater? Hint: It is not heavy armor formations. Which is to say, if we're seeing US heavy formations, even ones drawn from preposition yards, they're going to be arriving in theater well after fighter wings, and other aviation assets. In the event of total masterstroke super Soviet Russian Maskirvoka which leaves NATO with pants firmly on floor, there will simply be no ground forces to speak of located in theater. So again, if there was some bizzaro US 2S6 or similar platform, or the M6 was resurrected, it would be arriving well after there was significant air elements already in theater. Interestingly enough, I find it perplexing that someone believes ground based local air defense would do better protecting ground forces against a Russian surge o' aircraft than fixed wing fighters. It's a pretty easy matter to overwhelm local defenses and grind them into dust. Which is to say, if the USAF can't handle it, it's a pretty safe bet the Linebacker or 2S6 Ameirungksa wouldn't be much help either. Re: The Readiness Is All Training time: My company spent about 25% of a year in some sort of field exercise. The big stretches were two month long "gunnery complexes*" but we did at least three week-week 1.5 long FTXes I can distinctly recall. They all sort of blur together in some regards to be honest. We also held usually at least one monthly platoon level maneuver exercise for all platoons in the tank simulator, and there was sort of a near-constant flow through the gunnery simulator, tank driver's training, various technical instruction periods and other classroom blocks of instruction like AFVID. We also supported quite a few of the large Korea/Pacific-wide exercises, although that impacted the officers more than the enlisted. It's sort of hard to put a finger on the "training vs admin" breakdown, simply because while 2nd platoon is in the tank simulators, 3rd platoon might be doing the weekly sexual assault prevention classes, while 1st platoon is changing track. The field training is easiest simply because at that moment, the entire company was parked somewhere, doing a thing. Irregardless it seemed we spent a lot more time on our equipment doing soldier things than our ROK counterparts, and the ammunition throughputs alone seemed to be much higher than some of the NATO folks I've worked with. Part of it was simply because I loved tanks and pushed pretty hard to maximize time on the vehicles doing "mission" related activities. We were also in Korea which was largely immune from the ongoing budget issues until the end of my tenure. However having talked to my peers who were tank company commanders CONUS, it looks like we shot more often, but they got to do more maneuver (Fort Hood having more real estate than Dongduchon and all). Readiness levels: Split reply: NATO: There's a great degradation of many Western military forces. While I feel France is still capable of unilateral military action, or being a major player on its own, the British seem increasingly to be setting up to be purely a coalition member vs a real independent force. I am also uncertain if the Germans showed up to a major shooting war if anyone would notice simply given deplorable readiness standards, military funding, and generally just the shabby way the German Soldier** has been treated post 1992 or so. Suspect it might get some revision later. On the other hand Poland seems to be taking military preparedness quite seriously, and the Baltics look like they're taking a Russian threat seriously. On the other hand, NATO still contains the USA, which is a pretty big trump card to hold. Russia: One of the things that seems to affect perceptions of Russian capability is older analysts and armchair generals who grew up staring down the allmighty unstoppable Soviet Bear, and have difficulty seeing either the historical reality (powerful yes, but deeply flawed) or Russia (a shadow of what it once was). It is the same tendency that made the MIG-25 an unstoppable killsallplanes threat, that triple stacked ERA was a real thing, or had us concluding there was a Soviet stealth planes with lasers controlled by its pilot's thoughts somewhere. It is an old habit that doubtlessly will only die off with the folks who hold onto it for dear life. As the case is, the Russian military has had some pretty trying times and organizationally appears to be still suffering from the post 1991 neglect. While no means a non-threat, it is a weaker force by all reasonable assessments than the west, has very real strategic, economic, and political restraints on its courses of action. This includes being rather outclassed in the air, and unlikely to achieve sufficient air control to reliably accomplish CAS missions without them during into fiascoes (either in aborts or actual combat losses). *The winter one was live fire through crew level, then two or so weeks worth of field training. The summer one was live fire all the way through Company level live fires, with supporting combined arms, generally from our organic mortars, 155 MM and AH-64s or A-10s. ** I get the impression that they've got good pay, decent benefits, but not much else.

This is where I understand you simply do not actually read my posts. For the benefit of anyone else who might be reading: I was stationed in South Korea for a couple of years in a Combine Arms Battalion. One of the considerations we had in the event of outbreak of war was that CAS would simply be largely unavailable for the first few days to a week. This was in spite of a fairly competent South Korean Air Force, a quite large USAF contingent in Korea and Japan, and the majority of the DPRK's assets being hopelessly obsolete. It was just a given fact that CAS missions were fairly risky to airframes and crew in anything but a permissive environment. While virtually without a doubt the majority of the DPRK Air Force would be destroyed in hours, and most of the major SAM threats knocked out shortly thereafter, there was still a basic assumption it would be a while before committing heavily loaded CAS planes would be reasonably safe, even in the face of mostly massed AA machine gun fire at worst. Now again, this is with a gross disparity in attacking air element to air defender. The DPRK as defender relies on MIG-21s, and a whole mess of 14.5 machine guns taped together and third rate knockoffs of 1970's Soviet MANPADs. The attacker has cutting edge stealth platforms, stand off precision munitions, and all sorts of advanced sensors. Mr Lucas here continues to assert that what the US cannot achieve on day one with North Korea is something that the Russian air force can, and will be able to accomplish against US military forces. In any sort of air campaign you realistically will not see CAS from either side until some level of air control is attained. CAS assets are just too vulnerable to operate in a high threat environment with large numbers of active enemy fighters and significant sensor coverage. What you will still likely see is interdiction or more directed strikes against infrastructure, simply because the exposure of a plane dashing in to hit a bridge or some other chokepoint is more limited (no need to loiter, targets are less dispersed, one or two good hits=mission successful), but that is well into the realm in which we use Avengers, dismounted MANPADs PATRIOTs etc for. In no way have I EVER argued a quick win, but that simply in an air war with the US vs a near peer state, it will be much too dangerous for anyone to fly CAS, but only the USAF/USN/USMC have the reasonable amount of assets and capability to potentially wind up with enough air control to run CAS missions. Which renders the need for a yankee ZSU-23 or 2S6 moot, and is why the M6 Linebacker was retired without replacement, because even without having air dominance, the air arms of the various US services, and the larger ground based systems can certainly deny the air control required to conduct CAS* to any opponent on earth (unless there's a USAF vs USN/USMC civil war). So to boldface reply: Pre-US Air Dominance will be too dangerous for any CAS platform blue or red to reliably strike targets. Planes conducting CAS operating in a contested environment might as well be babies smothered in steaksauce at a cannibal convention. It baffles me to no end that someone can be possibly dense enough to believe that contested air space equals anyone is especially safe to conduct strikes, and that the choice to move away from short range ground based air defense was anything but one done with no small amount of thought, by professionals in the air defense and maneuver community. *Or perhaps, CAS as conducted by a sane person. I'm fairly certain if the Russians simply did not want to have an airforce anymore they could brute force their way in and conduct some strikes, but at the sort of loss rate to preclude having a functional air force at the end of the day. However this is not 1944, and losing even fairly modest numbers conducting CAS fairly rapidly becomes well above and beyond what any country can sustain.

1. I think you have this persisting problem with understanding this basic concept: Lack of US Air Dominance is not a defacto permissive environment for Russian CAS. It is really as simple as that. There is not a window in which Russian forces do pretty much whatever they want at will with a gradually building NATO response, it's going to be pretty much a painfully lethal environment for all fixed or rotary wing assets for a while, where ANYONE struggles to accomplish strikes, let alone CAS, with through numbers and superior capability NATO eventually carving out some semblance of Air Superiority over Russian lines (not to be confused with Air Dominance). Even on day one, all Russian ADA fully mission capable, every Russian platform in theater available, flying near "blue" forces is going to be a supremely dangerous exercise in being illuminated by AWACS, dodging missiles fired from F-22s, F-15Cs etc, etc, while PATRIOTs try to reach out and gently caress their way through your airframe. The US generally still must establish some kind of air superiority before it commits CAS assets. I'm really curious how you think a much less capable force will magic its way through some of the most advanced anti-aircraft systems in numbers sufficient to be worth the heavy losses it will surely suffer. Which is to say I am really confused at how you apply all these restrictions to US airpower and how long it'll take to accomplish mission, while basically assuming Russian aviation will accomplish mission on day one. 2. Your French tank analogy is about on par for most amateurs. It's not a matter of technology strictly speaking, it's a matter of organization, logistics and training. The crippling problem with French armor was not that of numbers, or raw mechanical statistics, it was what existed was arrayed in a deeply ineffective way, operated by crews that had just left FT-17s, and supported by a logistical network entirely not up to the task. As the case is between US and Russian air combat literally meaningful category from airframes, to training, to support networks, to readiness and beyond is something in which the US commands some significant advantage. There's no parity in some places, or Russian superiority in others, simply put it's a second rate air force in largely obsolete planes flying into the face of the force that quite honestly invented and honed the cutting edge for much of what is being employed today. 3. The great advantage to the US air superiority doctrine is instead of relying largely on a ground mounted system, using our extensive fleet of airborne C3 nodes, we can mass fighters on threats as they're detected. Unlike someone using mostly a ground based network, assets can be massed where required, or rapidly moved around the battlefield at Mach 1.5+. Which is to say even if there was a leaking SU-24 or something, it's likely going to get maybe a run in before it is trying very hard not to die terribly in the face of F-22s. Which is why using Russian strike fighters in the CAS role is doubtful. If you're going to get one shot, something that's a larger, more high value target is more worthy of losing some planes over than trying to spot tactically deployed armor or infantry in the field. 4. If the largest air force in the world couldn't stop Russian CAS, all 2S6s attached to US formations will do is frankly die at the hands of the apparently unstoppable masses of frontal aviation super pilots in MIGs protected by force shields.

For those of you interested, there's an eight page thread in which this position gets more or less gets discredited, then wanders into a neat OT about 1990's era tank and helicopter simulators. But in a TLDR version: The US air defense scheme revolves around a very capable combination of frankly some of the best air to air systems, mounted to some of the best jets, flown by some of the best trained pilots, married to a wide ranging and powerful sensor network. It is then backed up by a SAM system so powerful it can shoot things falling from space down with a degree of accuracy that does not require a warhead (current PATRIOT missiles are simply very big KE type projectiles). To put it in perspective there are no peer air forces that even remotely approach the USAF alone in size or capability, let alone the combined might of the USAF, USN, and USMC air wings (the US Navy for instance, fields more F/A-18s than total frontline fixed wing fighters in the entire Russian Air Force). While Russian ADA will complicate NATO efforts to bomb Russian forces, the ability of Russian aviation to penetrate and conduct normal CAS missions would be very doubtful indeed (or likely more focused on strategic/operational targets which are more likely to be valuable in proportion to losses than trading MIGs for a tank or two). Which is why I again, firmly believe there needs to be something to simulate that kind of anti-air in the game, or Russian higher echelon SAM support, because frankly neither the US or Russia's ability to defend against air threats comes down to a few guys in a hole with a MANPAD or a few 2S6s parked somewhere.

I said this some months ago in reference to comparing NATO vs Russian air force assets: You will note, interestingly enough that the US Navy alone has more fighter than Russia, and even if literally every French plane was grounded it only plays into a small part of the overall force structure. Equally so in the Russian far east, the US can much more readily mass forces (along with the JSDF, ROKAF, and other regional allies not listed) in a degree that would not frankly undercut the ability to greatly outnumber Russian air forces elsewhere. In regards to TBMs, the PATRIOT PAC 3 is pretty well set to keep those somewhat under wraps, and dumping ballistic missiles into what would likely be Poland, Germany etc would rather cement Russia's pariah state for a very long time, and risk testing Russian deterrence options (as if you're dumping missiles into Warsaw, I doubt the Poles will be so willing to not return the favor, which then gives Russia the choice of losing all credibility of nuclear deterrence against conventional strikes, or starting the end of the world as we know it over some burned up MIGs). In regards to SAMs, they're neat, but subject to being overwhelmed, and only serve to prevent NATO from bombing as freely. It's a rational choice, and the Russian focus on surface based system is the only reasonable given the aviation imbalance. But it is limited to say the least. Re: 747s Yeah but if Russia is dropping missiles into Germany we're already looking at something entirely different. This isn't the Soviet Union, and we're not reasonably looking at World War Three unless the Russians start looking for a reason to be no longer a functional country at best, nuclear weapons release at worst. Re: Bad Days Which is why CMBS is still interesting to play. Just there's not a lot going for Russia in terms of a wider war.

Russia is not in a position to take all NATO on. Right now what Russia is likely to do is try to stave off other non-NATO former Soviet states (or client states) from becoming too western leaning. An overt attack on a NATO country basically is going to be a war the Russians hope not to lose vs are likely to win. This is not 1989. If Russian missiles start landing in Germany or Poland, whatever military advantage is gained in destroyed hardware will be offset by the inevitable third and fourth order effects. Also realistically the US plan isn't land waves of planes under fire as the war kicks off, but instead already have some, or all of the prepositioned stocks manned and in the field as part of whatever "we are f'ing serious about this" deterrence operation that hopefully would prevent anyone from shooting at anybody. That said it's a well known fact the USMC preposition stocks for Norway are actually pretty much Nazi gold level bunkers built into a literal mountainside. In terms of strategic missiles, yeah, the European ABM locations were not even designed to shoot down ICBMs coming out of Russia. In terms of tactical missiles or TBMs, the PATRIOT PAC 3 and similar sea based systems are up to the challenge. 1. The US has more than an edge. There's more F-16s in active USAF service than there are Russian fighter planes of all types in service. In simple terms (and I crunched the numbers some time ago for a different thread) there's something like a possible 3,300 US/Western European NATO fighters available (I didn't bother to count minor players like Denmark or marginal ones like Spain) vs something like 800 Russian fighters. Granted not every NATO plane will be on station, but nor will every Russian one. Russian air force would be playing hard to survive in what amounts to the finest jets of the 1980's vs vintage 2000-2015 airframes, with a positively gross imbalance in sensor and command and control platforms. It's going to be harder than Iraq/Serbia, but certainly not a close call. Also the Russians have been nice enough to leave S-300s about/sell them to people who do not pay their military forces enough. Which again, is not to say "cakewalk" but is to say it is more likely the Russian air force will not be playing especially aggressive. 2. The Serbians shot down one F-117. How many other times did the air frame entirely penetrate Serbian airspace and hit targets? Further how many F-117s are still in service? There's something to be said for dudes who know what to do when bullets are pinging off of things. Having seen some of the green men in action, and some of the reports coming out of the Ukraine seem to indicate a certain lack of battleworthiness. It's not really a question of "have we faced tanks?" but of "is there an institutional experience with doing military operations in the real world, with people shooting back at them?" There are some questions to if the Pacific pivot will be real. There's been some changes, or at least studies to how the USMC plans to fight, but the Army will still largely be called upon to deliver various Brigade Combat Teams to support US interests. There's a lot of ABCTs that are starting to send detachments to do training rotations in Europe though. Seems Pacific Pivot or no, there's still a European element to the overall picture that is growing. Re Tank Thermals True, but from my understanding of the French export models, the key downgrades are: Reduced processing power (resulting in the blurry images) Reduced sensor fidelity (resulting in reduced detection of hot on hot or cold on cold objects). Either way the Catherine FC sales pamphlet says it can start identifying AFVs by type at 2500m, and that doesn't seem to indicate we are dealing with present generation equipment. Re: Kettler You know what moves troops better and faster than cargo planes? Chartered airliners. Cargo planes would likely remain tasked with moving supplies into theater.

It's hard to express simply because most of us know thermal optics from video games (which are hopelessly more clear than the real ones) or from a few static pictures. Basically imagine if for a moment everything is vaselined. Which should be no problem if you haven't seen an actual thermal because clearly, a tank will be hotter than the terrain.... Except for only sort of. There's a lot of objects that will at a glance look very tanklike, especially if you're in blur-o-vision. The human brain often sees what it expects to see vs what is actually presented (which is why pulling something out of your pockets when a police office shows up is the.dumbest.thing.ever because they've been drilled a million times to respond to those motions resulting in a gun appearing). If everything is a bunch of bright blobs, you generally have to wait to see if it's a rock, a junked car, or a tank. Also Russian thermals tend to have a much narrower thermal gradient, or in so many words they're good at "hot" or "cold" but less so "pretty hot" or "sort of cold." This becomes very acute when finding a hot tank on top of hot sand and the like. With more sensitive western systems you'll still clearly see something hotter than the surrounding sand, while with earlier generation/Russian stuff basically you'll have a sort of "ghost" in that it'll be a dark/light mass inside of another dark/light mass depending on if you're in black hot/white hot. Re: Economics I think the sanctions could lift and no one would notice in terms of Russian economic woes. Oil is going to get lower. It's going to come back, but we not have competing sources of oil that are still economically viable at below 50 dollars a barrel, which is not so good for Russia (or many other Oil reliant nations). Re: Trump Just for the benefit of our non-yankee folks: Trump the front runner for the Republican party in that he holds the most republican votes of a split field (34% of polled Republicans). There's still 66% or so of Republicans who want someone else, although that is split between several candidates. Trump has a very die-hard core of voters who support him who are generally upset with the Republican party as an institution. He's less a coherent political platform, and more of someone who's capitalizing on the collective rage of the anti-establishment right (but not the true ultra-right). There's still a large number of republicans who will never vote for Trump, because they (rightly in my opinion) view him as an embarrassment to the US on a whole/a buffoon/are less upset with the establishment republican party/are deeply offended by things he does. It is distinctly possible that he will ultimately be the republican with the most votes and thus the candidate....but it is doubtful he will command the loyalty of the whole of Republicans. Which makes him not at all the front runner for being the US president. Historically most US elections are moderately close, very low single digit percentage differences in votes. This is because at the end of the day both candidates can count on anyone who's firmly affiliated with their respective parties simply voting on party lines. The deciding element is generally a candidate who mobilizes more of traditionally low turn out groups (see Obama and the youth vote in 2008 as a good example) or has success in drawing off moderates from the other party (see Clinton 1996, success has a magnetic force). Trump doesn't have either of those, he has the folks who would have voted republican anyway, he's divisive enough to cause many moderate republicans to steer clear or worse, vote for anyone else. And he has virtually zero appeal to anyone who's on the left. Regardless the odds of any American president taking a softer stance towards Russia is somewhere around zero. The right thinks the present administration has been much too weak on Russia, and the left finds Putin simply abhorrent so until he's for real gone (and not hibernating ala Mevedev doesn't count) a more open policy is unlikely. The whole Ukraine-Crimea mess rather shot Russia in the foot in terms of any sort of soft power or diplomatic leverage.

They're good at stationary images, but all the ones I've seen don't seem to like it when the optic moves. Which is why often the demonstration images look pretty sweet, but on a tank turret, or scanning a sector they get special. They're homemade in regards to completed construction. A lot of the internals are still chipsets and the like from other sources. Further China still needs to get paid. If Russia has less capital, it is less able to buy Chinese components.

Hokay then: Re: Ratnik I think Battlefront is at least a little researched as far as infantry systems. One of the key holdups from my understanding in Russian night vision and thermal optics was the reliance on import components. I'm not sure for the more modern sets if there's the industrial element to back that up yet. The general danger of modeling anything in the future is frequently the stated, even reasonable goals of military forces right here right now entirely fall victim to all sorts of slings and arrows. Case in point for Battlefront products would be USMC squads with M32s as far as the eye could see in CMSF, but in other games: 1. RAH-66 Comanche 2. XM8 rifle 3. Land Warrior 4. SCAR 5. Black Eagle/T-95/T-99 etc are great examples of vaporwear that have made it entirely into otherwise realistic games. Then on the other end there's stuff that "dies" and comes right on back at a much later date (see KA-50, MV-22). I think Russian infantry as represented in terms of optics isn't too unreasonable. Night observation devices have not been a strong suit, and at least externally it looks like there's some sort of supply side problem with them, or at least a reasonable expectation there's not going to be as many as some folks would hope. As far as thermals, those especially have been reliant on French exports, and looking at the state of Russian vehicle thermals, I'd be interested to see their dismount optics. Re: Economics Russia relies a lot more on imports than you'd think for military hardware, especially for electronics (and you'll note that more license built Russian equipment rolls with someone else's electronics). If it is doing poorly, or as the case is, under sanctions, the ability to purchase this equipment makes large scale fielding much less likely. While internally there might not be a cut in funds, the purchasing power of the Russian state has taken a lot of hits. Re: Downsizing/Forces in Europe Right now there's one Stryker Brigade Combat team in Germany (2 CR) and one Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Italy (173rd Airborne). At this moment there are a number of preposition equipment depots for Armor type units. I don't know for sure how many, nor if I did know I'm fairly sure that's not fit for internet waving around. It's at least one Combined Arms Battalion, and there's been M109 and M3 spottings too which means a Recon Squadron and Artillery Battalion might not be out of reason. There's also several preposition ships with Brigade sized elements that could move to the region on short notice. The US concept for heavy forces appears to be moving back to the old REFORGER model, in which large numbers of heavy equipment is stored somewhere largely safe (historically, somewhere away from likely front lines in West Germany, although Poland and the Baltic states are likely candidates now), with the personnel flying in via charter plane/military airlift and meeting up on the front. So the amount on the ground right now is less relevant as much as the time spent between "This Ukrainian thing might below up" and shots fired. Scenario makes it sound like the first 1-2 ABCTs+2 CR+173rd is about what you're working with for the first month or so at least, with others inbound. As far as the actual cuts, the scheme is a bit different: The Brigade Combat Team system was designed to generate a large number of self supporting units in order to support rotational deployments to Iraq/Afghanistan (in effect, mating former division level assets to Brigades and aligning them on the same deployment rotation). Two things came out of recent budget cuts and the last ten years of operations: 1. We're not as likely to for reasons of budget, national will, or threat be facing several long term conflicts at once. We can't afford to have so many Brigade teams. 2. The 1 Cavalry Squadron, 2 "line" Battalion mix in most BCTs was inadequate. It's not enough "teeth" and usually forces the Cav into a more direct combat role than intended. As a result the cuts are mostly Brigade level HQs, Brigade level support organizations (Brigade Support Battalions and the like), while rolling the now orphaned Battalions into the surviving Brigades. So as an example, 1st Infantry Division used to have four BCTs (2 ABCTs, 2 IBCTs). The two IBCTs are closing up shop, but their infantry battalions are mostly winding up as part of other IBCTs. The 2 ABCTs are remaining as is, but they're going from 2 Combined Arms Battalions, to three Combined Arms Battalions plus a larger Artillery Battery, and nearly twice as many combat engineers. Basically where the cuts are hitting the worst in terms of personnel are the senior Captains/Junior Majors, and senior NCOs that would otherwise be filling out the HQs for these now closed Brigades. From that as far as junior folks there's going to be a much more constricted recruiting pool, and much slower promotion rates. But most of the "combat" units, and lower echelon support assets, and frankly the "teeth" stuff is simply going to be more concentrated. There's even some signs the Army is shifting to a smaller, but heavier organization, with some of the Stryker BCTs potentially moving from being regular army, to being National Guard formations. Which is really a long way of saying the US Army is getting less able to be everywhere, but if it shows up somewhere, the amount of tanks and troops will not be drastically smaller.

I was at the Imperial War Museum in London some years ago, and while doing my usual tourist thing a gentleman starting talking to me about the bofors gun we were in front of. He was exceedingly Welsh in accent however so I am uncertain if he was telling me about his time as an anti-aircraft gunner, or if he was asking for the bus schedule and for me to turn off my radishes. Still a neat experience though.

I think this is a pretty solid observation. That and it's easier to underwrite a base game with the US forces as the lead players to attract a larger audience to underwrite the base game and then building a follow on product that might be more niche. I'd be really happy with a Philippines 1944 game. It lacks the USMC outside of air support, but it captures the best range of assets for both US and Japanese forces and a wide variety of terrain. Early war is sort of entertaining in regards to armor combat, but frankly the only stuff I miss from CMAK was doing "cripple fights" with one of my friends back in college in which we purposefully picked the worse available equipment and forces and went at it (early war British vs Italian tanks is interesting to say the least).

It is however, how the Russians plan to fight a war. The Russian squad level AT asset has been RPGs for sometime. It isn't really a bad idea, and frankly it is quite versatile given the variety of rounds and low cost of same. ATGMs are generally Company level assets and thus less common. On the other hand the US Army* has gone down the other rabbit hole and decided to go for squad level ATGMs at the expense of something better rounded for killing bunkers and light vehicles** It's not unreasonable to think that in a real world scenario we might see some in-field changes, extra AT-7s pulled out of storage, or an ATGM "squad" for each Russian platoon after the NATO armor makes an impact at the gates of Kiev, or US Army squads with Carl Gustavs and SMAWs stolen from storage and Marine units respectively become a common sight during the liberation of Donbass during hard urban fighting, but it is hard to guess which way those alterations might go, and they are not reflective of "real world" or even planned real world deployments. *The Marines for instance, still allocate Javelins as a specialty weapons team, and employ the SMAW for bunker/building type targets

Rather. My confusion has been somewhat of "why are we talking about small part of the Ardennes Campaign that was British?" because it is something that totally can come with the inevitable Commonwealth module that will cover Holland and other NW European campaigns in their entirety. So I've never doubted there would be a Commonwealth Module, I just don't think the little narrow part of the Bulge was something to hang the module on. I'd think in the final module should be a sort of "Combat Mission: Gotterdammerung" though, like it'd cover the final drives into Germany with all the associated odd ball last ditch German units and gear, and the very late war US and UK gear.

Please do not mistake my statements for a Anglo-American urination competition. I'm just simply saying that the Bulge was not exactly the showcase of the Commonwealth, that while British forces certainly played their part, it's hard to pick a more yankee imperialist focused battle on the western front. When discussing a future module, talking about the British part of the Bulge seems to be focusing on a very small corner of a much larger picture of the contribution of the Commonwealth forces to victory in Europe. So while yes indeed, there were British forces in the Bulge, there were a great deal of them elsewhere and I am certain there were be a module giving them both their full due, and possibly giving the British portion of the Bulge some airtime too.

Well that'd be a so-so Overlord game simply because of Overlord, especially in the early phases the US-Commonwealth balance was pretty even. If you split up by beaches or objectives though it's pretty possible to exclude one or the other (ala Close Combat 5 which basically covered Utah beach and inland). However in the battle narrative of the Ardennes fighting, the involved British components played a fairly modest point. It is worth noting that indeed, four or so divisions worth of Commonwealth troops were involved, but they fought along side 25 or so US divisions which bore the brunt of the fighting. Which again is not at all an argument that the British were not involved, indeed for about 200 of them they were very involved, but it is not at all unfair to say that, as I am arguing that spending time focusing on that particular corner of a battle overwhelmingly fought by Americans is misplaced, and it would be better served instead having the Commonwealth module that covers the post-Market Garden fighting through VE day (as certainly it seems FB will provide all the tools to accomplish this!) and then just building a Bulge through Tommy's eyes scenario or two. This also serves well in the counter-factual German breakthrough what-ifs. So in that regard, I am much more excited for a good Scheldt scenario, as now with amphibious vehicles it is very possible to do authentically (also Buffalos!). Or simply answering one of my favorite World War Two armor questions "what if Comets?*" in terms of armor on armor fighting. *It is a distant second to "What if Pershings?"

As kind of a split reply: 1. It's dangerous to use rotary wind in close proximity to air defense. As others have pointed out, CMBS seems to assume a close in attack run for all CAS, which ensures it will be exposed to MANPADs and ADA systems alike. This is something I think is a little haywire. Here's two solution type ideas: a. Aircraft with precision munitions gain a "precision strike" opition alongside the usual "heavy" and "light" choices. The strike would only involve a single smart weapon fired on a point target. If it's targeted on a vehicle in motion, only "seeking" weapons (like the Hellfire) will pursue. The aircraft would not select its own targets, and laser designated weapons would require illumination by a ground team. It would either be something that could not be shot down on approach, or would only have a remote chance of being engaged. This would simulate a platform flying at maximum standoff and using cover to engage. It would be much less useful in the narrow sense than an attack helicopter blasting things with cannon and rocket fire too, but it would be much lower risk. It would however place the various aviation coordination units (B-FIST, air control parties, HQs) in a lot more danger as they'd have to be the ones to spot and call for the strike. b. Decreased air defense lethality, addition of an "air defense state" option for scenerioes. I've suggested this before, so I'll keep it brief. Basically it'd be like the electronic warfare settings already in game, and be a semi-abstracted way to represent the danger presented by air defense and hostile CAP off map. If the 2S6 on map is simply part of a larger functional IADs with MIG-29s backing it up, it's going to be super scary. If it's the last 2S6 on the battlefield, fleeing the HATO juggernaut, then it is in a bad place. This also allows for more reasonable Blue air defense given the danger posed by fixed wing fighters. As the air defense level got more severe, there'd be a higher chance of losing/delaying/aborting the aviation asset on approach. The ADA on the battlefield would properly serve its real life role of being that last layer of protection after all the other ones fail vs the I would argue over-efficiency it represents now. 2. In "real world" terms, while it was strongly discouraged to get rotary aviation near air defense elements, it is not so much the "do not do anything until every MANPADS is dead" that CMBS seems to do now. While there was a reluctance to do gun/rocket runs, ideally the target area would be suppressed via artillery before the helicopters would unmask, release their missiles on the targets and then go back to ground. Even without the artillery stand-off missile strikes were generally expected to have some success, especially considering the helicopters would be occupying attack points more often than not over friendly terrain. It looked a lot less like it does now in CMBS though, and a lot more like the precision artillery (only with fairly murderous anti-tank effects I imagine).

I'm not sure if this is hyperbole or a snipe at something, but while the British played a part in the battle, you could easily do a Bulge game without a single Commonwealth unit and have covered all the high points. Just like Africa is largely a British fight with Americans showing up for the last few chapters (and thus, having a Africa campaign game that ends before the Americans show up would be entirely possible too), so too the Bulge was a very American fight with some tea for flavor. Which is to say I'd be happiest getting a "Beyond the Rhine" module that covers the UK/Canada/Free Polish from the end of Market Garden through VE day (with some of the neater late war goodies, like I dunno, Comets?) that has some Bulge era scenarios than trying to shoe horn them into the initial release. All the same looking forward to getting back into the finer points of why I have an irrational love for Churchill tanks and derivatives.

Much like the electronic warfare settings in CMBS I do wish there was a setting to allow for counter-battery and counter-air operations. What I do not like now is that you either have totally unmolested support assets, or they do not exist at all. Having some player or scenario designer designated chance for support asset failure/delay would allow for realistic situations in which forlorn hope CAS wings its way through heavy CAPs, or you're hoarding your artillery because its first mission could be the only mission it fires. I suggested something similar for CAS in CMBS simply because it's hard to model air defense for forces that rely heavily on very capable fighters over ground mounted defenses, and the outcome of an inferior air force bombing a military with a vastly superior air element just smelled off, while excluding the inferior air force entirely seemed like an imperfect solution. On the other hand with both forces operating fighter bombers practically on top of each other it seems equally odd they grant each other the professional courtesy to bomb in peace. The same logic could most certainly apply to counter-battery fires. Having something along the lines of the following for CAS or artillery could be interesting: Asset parity: Both parties have a moderate chance of asset delay with a small chance of asset destruction (both sides have CAP and CAS in the air, or are able to effectively counter-battery each other's fires. Simulates inconclusively contested airspace and artillery operations) Asset superiority: One of the parties has a marked advantage. The advantage having side has a small chance of asset delay with a minute chance of asset destruction, while the inferior side has a high chance of asset delay and a notable chance of asset loss. This simulates the average US-German artillery imbalance, German artillery missions were totally possible, but they did have an increased risk relative to their opponents. Asset Dominance: One side has a massive advantage. The advantage side has a small chance of asset delay, and virtually no chance of destruction. The disadvantage side has a virtual certainty of delay and a moderate chance of destruction. This well simulates German CAS on most days over Western Europe circa 1944-1945, there's a remote chance it shows up, but odds are not at all good. Possible caveat: Different assets have different "weights" by the previous criteria. A JU-87 asset in US air dominance just isn't going to show up. AR 234 is much less likely to be affected. Same deal with artillery, big corps level guns are likely well outside the common danger area for counter-battery, while smaller guns closer to the front are much more at risk.

They're capable of locating some targets sometimes at range. In the larger sense they do give a significant amount of SA when conditions are conducive to employing a ground mounted radar. However during my time with the reconnaissance community and then at the Cavalry Leader's Course (which is in so many words, a course to help Troop and Squadron* level leaders plan reconnaissance/security** missions), we rarely discussed them in terms of anything but serving as a cue to move more precise assets, and indeed they seemed to live in the same realm of fidelity as acoustic and seismic sensors. Again useful, but in say, confirming an enemy AoA they'd be used to confirm that something is out on COA 2's approach, which would then cue other events (waking up the scouts located on COA 2, sending UAVs, bringing in JSTARs from the next AO, or sending rotary wing to confirm). Neither us Yankee imperialists in the class, our Australian exchange officer instructor, or our other foreign exchange officers seemed to be putting much faith in ground search radar as a primary means of detection. Which is to say I'm sure it works to some degree, but players parking a BRM and expecting it to illuminate the battlefield, showing where each HATO dog lies cowering before the might of mother Russia's electronic eyes might be disappointed***. It's an asset that is part of a larger collection plan, but it will generally lose out to advanced optical type sensors at most direct fire weapons system ranges (especially in on the uneven complex terrain that makes up most battlefields in CMBS). Even a fairly flat and rolling map will present some major LOS issues unless the radar is literally parked on the highest ground, and the enemy only stays on the highground. *For the benefit of Commonwealth folks, the US Army designates Company level organizations Troops, and Battalion level organizations Squadrons in Cavalry units, while platoons level remains simply platoon. **Cavalry organizations play two roles: reconnaissance which broadly speaking is gathering information on the offense, and security which is mostly serving as the first point of contact between the enemy and friendly forces (either on the offensive or defensive) in increasing levels of response (so a "screen" mission generally is similar to "report any enemy targets, shoot their recon assets if encountered, call artillery as long as you can then fall back" while "cover" looks more like a mobile defense if done to the 9's). ***Which is not to imply the radar is useless at all. Its range of vision and ability to cover wide tracts of land, albeit imperfectly is very useful in rapidly narrowing down where you should look at the 6-12 KM range. But again in CMBS we as the folks more or less starting well within the effective ranges of virtually every not-BMP-1 vehicle mounted weapon are already well past where any GSR is especially useful. Russians are not dumb. Just often we receive tools in wargames and simulations that then appear less functional when removed from the "system" they're designed to operate in and support.

I'll leave the AT teams behind with US units if I'm assaulting to secure an objective. Keeps them fresh to help stave off armor counter-attacks and keeps the assault element fast.

I'd be excited to see NATO forces. The RU end of things is pretty well realized and any country that might show up and help Russia is just going to look a lot like the lower capability Russian forces anyway. But the Polish especially offer a lot of hardware I've never seen in a realistic game, and the prospect of both France and Germany and their new hardware (although likely represented at an optimistic levels of readiness) are exciting. Also makes for more diverse high capability options (as right now it's either straight up blue on blue, or the still "eh" of M1s on T-90AMs).

GSR performance should always be taken with a massive grain of salt. The advantage to things like JSTARS or airborne ground scanning radars is the LOS factors are less pronounced...but when you mount the platform at ground level (or even mast-level elevated) you're still factoring in a lot of things that'll block radar signals, or scatter/disrupt them. It's also a less intuitive system to judge sensor data on. While visual feedback (like thermals) can be confusing sometimes, it also presents data in a format our brains understand. The problem with radars is often it requires some special experience or training to really turn from blip to confirmation. False returns, or bad returns often greatly complicate understanding the battlefield via radar. The US Army at least still uses GSR but it uses it in the same way you might be guided by the ? icons during CMBS. It is not a targetable thing, but it certainly cues attention and other sensors to the location. At the ranges that CMBS typically takes place and conditions involved thermals/visual contact is arguably superior.

We were issued various kinds of earplugs but their actual use varied, I rarely wore mine simply because as an officer-type I had my radio handset glued to the side of my head when I was not-tanking, or trading off being able to hear something out of place for possible hearing damage. In regards to tanking, if you're inside the tank it's not a big deal. You're behind the shockwave, and the headset-helmet rig you wear* is designed to provide a degree of acoustic protection. If you're outside the tank and not behind it though, it's like, you less "hear" it and more "feel" it which is impressive. On the other hand after eight years of active service my hearing is certainly degraded, and every now and then I hear what sounds like distant ringing noises. I do think what was likely worse for my hearing than the tanking, radios at full volume or gunfire was likely all the living next to generators and the like. *Commonly called a CVC which is short for Combat Vehicle Crewman. It refers to the kind of uniform (CVC helmet, CVC coveralls, etc) but contextually usually only the acronym is used ("Hey grab my CVC from the turret" almost certainly means the helmet, while "your CVC is filthy" is likely the coveralls).

I loath the PT belt with a special passion. If you'd worked a 18-19 hour day, having not had the chance to go retrieve your PT belt from your housing unit, it simply ensured that a Command Sergeant Major with no other apparent work function would locate you to explain that you are personally losing the war on terror and practically turning the junior enlisted into terrorists by your example. The Vietnam era had Hueys and Hendrix as touchstones of their time in the suck. We had T-walls and shiny belts. Somehow I think we were cheated. I would have survived too if my hands were not in my pockets, and my mustache wasn't policed. But instead, I fell victim to the only real threats in Baghdad, complacency and defiance of FOB policy. I was pretty much Rambo special forces. I knew no laws or regulations. As a young Captain I was pretty much god and did as I pleased. (and in my defense, I'm pretty much wearing the minimum of what was mandated at that point minus gloves, helmet, and my rifle. I think to be full geardo you need the cool guy stuff from tactical tailor vs just what CIF and RFI threw at you)

So I guess we're all showing our back when we were cool photos? Anyway. Those are the sweet clear versions of the ballistic lenses and the eyeglass insert on my face circa 2010. They are a nearly inescapable part of being a soldier so long as there's a Sergeant Major somewhere in the AO. Although there is a criminal lack of PT belts around these parts.