panzersaurkrautwerfer

In terms of realism the lend-lease Abrams is the least likely. If we got into arming the Ukrainians in a serious way it'd be something like Polish T-72s with upgrades or someone's Leo 2A4s from storage. The not-export M1A1s still have armor that is a pretty closely held secret in terms of actual composition, we didn't even trust the Australians with it which is saying something.

It's entirely possible to live in a country and not have an especially good understanding of what's actually going on in that country. This is especially true in Russia given the state control of the media. As long as your end of the Russia is doing fine, you're entirely reliant on an agent who's only job is to tell you how great Russia is to really understand the rest of it. This is rather different than the UK perceptions of the US simply because of our wide availability and consumption of news sources. Further along those lines, "on the ground" observation of the economic situation is often fairly irrelevant. If I have 100 dollars, and I need 50 of those to keep my country running (strictly entitlement, salaries, and things I am 100% required to do or the people riot), but I can spend the rest on discretionary spending (hover tanks, robot ninjas etc), but then I suddenly am now only tanking in 65 dollars, the actual image on the ground for the common person isn't going to change much simply because the stuff that most affects them hasn't changed. But instead of having 50 dollars for hovertanks and ninja robots, I now only have 15. So to that end it's why there's a lot of questions about the Russian ability to afford the Armata. Indisputably there has been a marked downtick in the strength of the Russian economy (it's shrinking by 2% I believe), and a lot of the discretionary spending money has went away. And historically the most deadly enemy of all Russian modernization projects has been a lack of funding (which frankly goes all the way back to the Soviet days*). There's a lot of Russian defense modernization going on right now. The "needs" funding isn't getting any smaller, and there's a lot of decaying infrastructure too. And there's a ongoing under the table war with the Ukraine. This reduced ability to pay for things means something is going to go under the proverbial bus. We already saw the pie in the sky new bomber go away to be replaced by a modernized TU-160. On the other hand the Russian military is already pursuing a variety of modernization projects for cold war era tanks and APCs despite at least on paper the Armata coming along to replace them** It's not so much that the Armata is impossible, but there's a lot of reasons to hold doubt that the Armata will appear on time, in the numbers promised (or perhaps in the roles described). *Although in the USSR it was much less pronounced, it still very much came down to a fairly limited economy supporting a military that it could not sustain. So on this grossly inflated military budget, it still often had to choose if it was going to be new nukes/missiles, or a new tank, or new planes etc etc. **Which again opens interesting questions, the Russian military already supports a very diverse field of equipment operating in similar roles. While the selling point of the Armata as a series of vehicles was commonality of parts, if the Armata is not going to replace most/all vehicles of certain types, it's simply added another tank/apc/etc into the parts chain which is hardly achieving the end goal.

For me, in no particular order: 1. Fulda Gap: 1989 It's a big throw down fight between several fairly well known and understood military forces. All the advantages of a "historical" setting in that we don't need to make assumptions about what the equipment and forces are capable of doing....while all the ability to make some really fun scenarios. Also opens the door to a whole mess of modules. I prefer the 1989 setting simply because it'll give you all the tools you need to do 1980-1988 campaigns too, as it wasn't like anything that was in service in 1980 was entirely out of frontline use by 1989, while it still includes the later stuff for those of us who like that kind of thing. 2. Philippines 1944-45 It's basically the Pacific in a can. There's jungle fighting...but there's also some fairly open terrain and urban fights that are worth playing back through. Also of note it's one of the few places that the Japanese had significant tank forces, and there were legit actual paratrooper assaults. Also the very active Filipino guerrillas (augmented by US military stay-behinds) make for a worthwhile unconventional force add-on. 3. Korea 1950 There's a lot of material to work with. It's not as tank vs tank focused as other Combat Missions, but it wasn't strictly an infantryman's fight either. It'd also be a great release to showcase some improved infantry behavior and defensive fortifications too. 4. Korea 2019 While a bit outlandish given the current capabilities of the DPRK between the US forces in region (and the follow on forces to arrive), the ROK Army, the DPRK, and even the PLA, you've got a lot of fun toys. Also there's lots of places in Korea that'll facilitate good company and down level combined arms fights. On the other hand Combat Mission would need to make some major improvements in doing very dense urban terrain to really capture South Korea well.

Sorry dudes, my wife got me an xbox one, I've been mostly doing the less thinking kind of video games for a bit. Short answer: It depends! Long answer: Generally if there's a target lined up and ready to hit, shooting before/instead of popping smoke is optimal. If I don't see what's lasing me I'm going to pop smoke and back up/seek a protected position. Most tank on tank combat comes down to who fires first over any other factor. I will not likely do anything to prevent myself from taking that first shot and claiming the advantage of initiating contact, conversely I will do whatever I can do to deny the enemy a good clean first shot. The way it's done in CMBS is good, it's just a limitation of what can be done now. The sort of short decision cycle actions just happen too fast for most players to be there to make the choice to smoke/shoot/whatever.

It isn't. And I enjoy tweaking the noses of the sort of people who say crazy stuff because I'm a terrible person who kicks puppies because I just like a good argument sometimes, and part of me gets annoyed at really counter-factual stuff (the "France only lost because of politics" guy was especially irritating). It just happens on the wargames forums if I'd crapped all over the Dutch, Deutch, Americans and Russians (and I can give you quotes were I did indeed, mock all of those nationalities) I wouldn't have gotten banned, BUT GOD FORBID I MOCK THE FRENCH. You have to wonder how much of old RTS gameplay was not "gameplay" and more a reflection of the capabilities of the platforms back then. I gave one of my older RTSes a whirl a few weeks back, chocked full of nostalgia over how great it was back in 2005 or so, only to discover myself wondering how I ever enjoyed something with 4 foot tank main gun ranges, and where sufficiently large blobs of riflemen were threats to tanks.

Well really an hour of heavy rain is going to greatly modify the battlefield. So having it start off with small showers then go to downpour, with the terrain becoming less passable as time went on would be a cool dynamic, or having fog for the first 20 minutes of the battle that lifts as the day heats up would be neat. Better multiplayer functionality would be cool for sure. It does feel more like something that's a matter of resource allocation vs Eugen style in which artillery is your most effective anti-helicopter tool, or the M60A1 ERA looks like it was modeled by a handicapped small child. Act of Aggression looks like a 1999 era RTS, without any of the legitimate wackiness that made the C&C games fun. Maybe if they added in battle dolphins and the plot twist for SP is that the real bad guys are the Greeks or something (they cannot pay back the IMF because they're building battle robots under the acropolis!) it'd be better.

Yeah. Red Dragon was pretty much the pits. Like EE sold me on the series, ALB was broken in a few ways, but seemed to promise the third game being great...but then it was just ALB with new faults and a whole additional level of stupid. Not to brown nose too much but like, there's a lot that can be wonky with CM, but I'm willing to accept wonky because it's a small niche product. There's a lot I'd like to see done better, but again, it feels like it's on par for a super-small company, and when stuff is broken (vs "on a budget") I feel reasonably confident that even 5-6 years after release, Battlefront will still fix it. My experience with the Wargames series was of a slicker, better produced product that contained amazingly broken features, and dare I say pride in not fixing some of the terribad stuff, and sort of a "it is broken but we have your money" mentality. So yeah, better UI, more functional MP, a less arcane purchasing process, and better special effects would be sweet. Also maybe dynamic weather. But I'll still be flinging money at Battlefront as long as they keep letting me grind things into pulp with Shermans and Abrams (maybe M60A3s and Pershings too? Please?), while I am fairly certain I will not be purchasing another Eugen product.

Re: Cost Think it's part of the game is trying to figure out how to make your stuff work against something that's bigger and angrier than you. I don't play much Russian stuff but seems like I couldn't afford to stack Shermans until infinity against Tigers and the like in CMBN. If you really want to stack it more in one direction there's always the force adjustment option rolling into a QB. Re: Angry French people. I used to think like you, but after: 1. Dealing with someone claiming France didn't really lose in 1940, but it was all political (then going onto a very delusional scenario in which France holds out in Southern France supported by the colonies/how massively effective the French Air Force and Navy was) 2. The a single Leclerc is capable of destroying 45 T-55 type tanks in 5 minutes. Also there should be lots of Leclercs in a game set in 1991. 3. The American infantry in the game being discussed is bad, but that's okay because that's realistic and believing otherwise is simply a result of watching too many movies from hollywood (note, this was the community liaison guy from the company that made the game). I sort of lost my desire to be rational. If I'm going to offend folks who are that wrong, I do not feel any sense of remorse. If it'd been an American pig-dog claiming similar stuff I'd have made fun of them just as hard. Just happened I mocked France on a frogeating surrender team owned forum.

The hardware is a big difference from the capability. The strong example would be Iraqis with M1 tanks, it was functionally irrelevant what equipment they had, as long as the men manning it were poorly trained, equipped, and somesuch. That said: If there's superiority in the American military, it is in the three following areas: 1. Size matters. While it's getting a lot smaller, the simple size and funding of the American military means a lot of capabilities that are simply too expensive for most other countries are a matter of course for the US (see the combined air fleet of the USAF, USMC, and USN and then compare it to the various other NATO countries, or things like having several carrier battle groups active at once) 2. Logistics/support/expeditionary warfare. When France went into Mali it was riding in USAF planes, and supported by logistics moved through the US log systems. Further in the operations over Libya while the "shooting" part of the operation was very well spread across the different NATO members, the AWACS/refueling/other support asset was overwhelmingly yankee imperialist. While it's easy to funnel a lot of this into "bigger is better" is worth noting this ability to not only deploy, but sustain forces, and equip them with potent enabler elements is something that is well into an art/skill all its own, and is finely honed in the regards that since 1890 or so, Americans have been doing most of their fighting well over the horizon on distant shores. No other force can do that to the degree the American military can, and again it's a skill and training that is well beyond simply having more planes or money to expend. 3. The average training tempo, and realism for the US military is quite a bit more elaborate than many peer countries. The number of rounds fired, and miles maneuvered by my tank company in a year was roughly equal to how much some battalion sized armor elements in western European military forces do in a similar time scale. Additionally every "combat" unit (to include National Guard units) goes to NTC on a regular basis to get its face peeled off by the OPFOR in training that is what could best be called "hyper realistic" (in that the enemy is significantly more capable than he should be) situations. It's hard, tough training, but what separates it from simply tossing troops in Siberia or marching several hundred KM through North Africa, is that the hardness has a focus, and there's a lot of post-action analysis. It's not just enough to successfully assault the fake town in the desert, but each step will be broken down, and looked at honestly (having sat through some other country's AARs, there's a lot of face-saving and hand waving when things go wrong. This is really not the case in an American type AAR in which even your random privates can speak up about what they saw/suggestions to do it better). You get a lot of anecdotal stuff, Legionaries roundhouse kicking Taliban, British bayonet charges, 100% objective success rate for Excercise Donbass Freedom or whatever, but there's a wide margin between what the American military is capable of, and what the rest of NATO and most potential threat nations can do* *Which is not to say it is unbeatable, but what gets tiring is the "well we have 300 Leo 2s and they're better than Abrams!" or "here's this link discussing how fast the French moved through Mali when it took the US ten years to sort of pacify Iraq!" There's certainly ways to beat the US in conventional warfare even...it's just not really in trying to meet it at a 1:1 ratio in terrain that doesn't highly favor you if you get my drift Of course, as a post script I'm not sure how much longer we'll be able to maintain a lot of those advantages. One of the great problems with being "the best" is that it engenders a perception that it is simply a state that will be maintained without further investment, when in reality we're seeing the miltiary budget get hacked and slashed to maintain other spending, while at the same time not seriously re-examining if a lot of what we invested in during "good" times is worth keeping (like the always lovely JSF).

I did a CPX (command post exercise, so all the commanders, none of the actual troops) with the French back in 2011. Good guys, seemed quite intelligent. There was an interesting sort of cultural difference, I wouldn't say theirs was better or worse, simply different. I'd work with them again in a heartbeat. With that said, on that forum I was speaking to French military fanboys, most of whom were insufferable and had little or no real understanding of the sort of things they were claiming. I eventually got frustrated because while the French military is certainly capable....the whole "well, we are zee french and french quality is 100X American quality and Americans are cowboys dumbys/Americans run hollywood which inflate American capabilities and we are superior" line of reasoning was enough for me to stoop to the fun, if immature comments about the French record when it comes to handling German infestations, or the colonies they've been kicked out of.

Protip: When re-infiltrating a forum you've been banned from, do try to make it less obvious that its you. Or wait a few weeks and then return a bit less belligerent. Unless it's a French run forum, and you were booted after pointing out once the French army finds a way to surrender to Penguins and Kangaroos* they'll have lost a war on every continent. Then you're pretty much hosed. *Of course if you count Austrialia as part of Oceania instead of as a stand alone, its down to just penguins.

It's like, the Ukrainian accounts should be taken with some suspicion but generally they're based on an event that happened on earth somewhere at least. The Russian stuff is just out and out fiction from the get-go and should be read with the understanding that the truth contained within is deeply buried and often accidentally included. As the case is Russian forces being massed on the Ukrainian border was something from several different sources including more than a few neutral observers. Their exact composition and agency might be suspect, but most certainly Russian forces were there.

Depends on urgency. However: 1. You always want to approach linear obstacles at a 90 degree angle. This generally results in the "cleanest" breach with the least likely to have crap getting caught up in the tracks. This applies to things like wire and fences, but also stuff like railroad tracks (the Marines "lost" a whole platoon to mobility kills in Fallujah when they went over the railway wrong and got the end connectors from their tracks hooked on the rails) 2. Slower is better (if possible). If you're going through a field with 203 MM artillery ranging in and swarms of AT-5s, yeah you're going to plow that fence under and pray to everything that you're okay. If you're just going over a fence because it's the most direct route and you've got a minute or two, you're going to go over it slow. Basically you're listening to hear if it sounds like you've got anything that's now caught up in the tracks. That slowness basically buys you the time to stop the tank if you need to and pull something out before it's fully bound up around the tracks and roadwheels. There's all sorts of horror stories from NTC of crews spending literally days extracting all the barbed wire from their suspension and tracks because they were going all out and hit some abandoned wire belt from four or five rotations ago. In terms of wooden fences: a. It might not be totally clear what's on the other side. Might be a irrigation ditch, might be some cleverly placed mines, b. Simple physics means there's going to be at least a bit of a jolt. Unless it's something short enough the tank will simply go over it, it's often best to push the obstruction over and then roll over the top. Of course again the giant caveat is all this care and caution will be balanced against mission requirements and danger (as I alluded to earlier).

They're goodish. In COIN: The big issue with any unattended type sensor is that they tended to get discovered pretty quick. The enemy knows the terrain well enough, and there were enough eyes on us that placing the things secretly usually did not happen, while the battle space was also well populated enough that the sort of data UGS delivered was not always that helpful (the same trails used by badguys to smuggle things we didn't want getting into sector were also the same trails used by folks smuggling things we didn't care about, kids taking a short cut, random goats, etc etc. They're more useful in high intensity type conflicts, as then it's meeting on ground generally less well known to all parties, and less full of neutral traffic. Still generally not considered enough information to fire on, but enough to trigger ISR or other observation type assets to check it out.

Radar is a LOS only system. It can see through environmental factors like fog and other weather, but something solid will reflect the radar waves (as that is effectively how radar "sees." The sensor itself can be directed in different directions, but unless the radar emitter itself (so if it was mounted on a mast, or otherwise elevated the rest of the vehicle could be masked) can draw an uninterrupted line to the target it can neither acquire or guide a missile to it.

It's fire and forget in the regards that it does not require additional input, but the missile is still reliant on the radar on the vehicle itself. It's different than normal SACLOS in the regards the gunner does not have to do anything, but if the radar explodes/the vehicle catches fire the missile downrange will lose track and go wild. It also means from my understanding that the radar itself on the launcher is limited in how many targets it can illuminate, which again gets away from "fire and forget" and into "novel SACLOS" in terms of gameplay Real fire and forget means the missile once pointed at the target carries all the tools it needs to find the target post launch without assistance from the launcher unit. This is not the case as far as I can tell with the Khrizantema. What is confusing here is the "virtually" fire and forget which is to say "it behaves in a way we'd like you to think is fire and forget but is not strictly speaking fire and forget"

Re: Sharing It's no problem. There's parts of being a soldier full time I do not miss for a second (in fact I'd argue a majority of it was pretty crap), but the clanking around on a tank, and the time spent with the overwhelming majority of my soldiers is still something I get all nostalgic about. I enjoy rambling about this sort of stuff because it's sort of an outlet for all the "army" stuff still piled up in my brain that's well past practical use to my day to day life. Re: Thermals in games Most of them tend to be a lot like the gunnery simulators in that the image is just too clean/targets pop out too much. Like there's some artifacts and terrain that's well illuminated...but usually the vehicles just leap out at you in terms of being different from the terrain. In reality there's a lot more false positives, on really hot days, or with bad targets on the range often it feels like you're trying to peer into muddy water to find a fish (especially so on the M1A1HC/early model M2A2 generation optics). It's light years better than just using your eyeballs, but it's very much operating a sensor system over the automatic badguy finder it tends to be in games and even the real simulators* Which is why I keep harping on the difference between sensors. The russian stuff can find thermal sources out a reasonable difference, but historically has lacked the definition or sensitivity to do good target ID on if a tank surrounded by well heated rocks, or tell the difference between cold tank and cold ground. And the longer you need to stare at whatever blobular thermal image you're getting, the less terrain you're scanning effectively, and the longer from "see something" to "shoot something" it takes. Re: Borg Spotting Yeah pretty much. The map should be populated by a lot of ? regardless of LOS to area. On the other hand, LOS still very much applies so there's a long distance between "I know there's a tank in that thicket!" and "I see enough of that tank to shoot!" *I think in part it's more the trick of the eyes, like even daylight sights in games work better than real life. The target always seems to pop out more and fit in less effectively, while a real tank blends in a lot better.

Re: BTR Yep, as far as I can tell at least. Mine is from max magnification anyway so it'll look pretty crap, but it's still a useful tool given how much you can blow up a series of blobs to try to get some more definition on what sort of blobs you're looking at (like if the blobby movey thing is a deer or it's a man) Re: Blue Force Tracker It's a C3 system that does a variety of things. One of its functions is displaying the present location of friendly forces within a high margin of accuracy. It also allows for information sharing across a wide spectrum of units, and for radio-less communications. It's a satellite system so you get a little lag, but since it is entirely non-line of sight it is a great tool for keeping in touch with folks that are far away, or behind terrain that would impede a radio broadcast. Also talking to someone is as simple as clicking on their icon on the map and you can send a text message to them* Additionally on newer AFVs, the BFT will automatically populate contact reports if you start engaging someone with your weapons system. So once you break triggers, everyone sees the enemy contact report on the map, and where it is within a meter or so. Then details can be added as needed (so if the platoon in contact destroys the enemy, they can fairly quickly update the contact to a battle damage assessment that everyone can see, or if it's a longer fight the guys at the command post can fill in all the information they're getting via voice from the element in contact). This is also a neat trick from the AFV crew perspective, because you can get the BFT to feed you 10 digit grid coordinates which will let you do calls for fire pretty effectively** The capabilities are unclassified, but the physical output onto the map and other details are classified. *With associated priority and separate inboxes for each. The flash traffic priority more or less makes sure you look at it or else, while the routine box is a good thing for reporting that it's 0200 everyone is still here, all their gear is accounted for and all is well. **In practice we usually sent the information for a fire mission through the FIST because translating BFT call for fires stuff to the fires systems took longer than the FIST plugging the information received over FM into the fires network stuff. At least that's how I remember it.

Only thing I couldn't have shown you on a tank is the BFT display in operation. I can't let you walk away with pieces of it, or pop open some boxes on it, but there's plenty of school children and exchange officers who've seen what I just posted.

Re: Stagler If it makes you feel better I hold US hardware to the same standard. I was forced to go to the 2012 Maneuver Conference and had nothing but eyerolls for half the hardware displayed. Re:M32 Good old Marine revolutionary piece of equipment massively improve Marine Squad performance firepower dominance over all threats hey never mind we're not buying it. This is what a crappy photo of what a M1A2 SEP V2's CITV looks like: Maginfication was kicked up to a lot (50X I think?), I forget the range (the indicated 1200 meters is because that's what the range input is if you haven't lased anything and the round selector is on Sabot). Greater than a few hundred meters, shorter than 1.5 KM. The white blob is from moisture between the protective outer screen and the inner screen frosting over because the tank itself was in South Korea in the dead of winter. This is not a common fault, and once the tank warmed up the image cleared. Camera was my iphone. So that's a lot of the crappy image quality too. You'll note the difference between optics however especially in sensitivity. The vehicle on the right is a K200 that had been parked for some time (note that the tracks are the same temperature as the rest of the vehicle, if it'd been driven the tracks would be much lighter from friction). Also worth nothing is the clear difference in "high" points that have been slightly more heated than the rest of the vehicle due to sun exposure. The big black space is basically flat snow cover, with the various other points being a mix of exposed grass or small crests catching more thermal energy. The only real heat source in this photo would be dismounted personnel (guy in foreground, dude who's head is clearing the small mass in the background). Contrast this to the Russian thermals which have well illuminated the heated cab and wheels on the truck and such, but everything else is shades of dark. Also shows you what a "real" thermal optic looks like vs the computer game type thermal images. Talking about cameras and stuff, and the human eye is neat, but there's a clear difference in performance in what heat is being detected. The Russian stuff looks very on par for 95-97 or so. The more modern stuff might be more capable, but that the Catherine FC represented an improvement in functionality, opens questions to the maturity and viability of the various Russian purely domestic systems.

Also worth noting the pictured armor thickness is for the baseline M2 circa 1987 or so. It lacks the armor that came in the A2 model which added a lot of protection at significant weight penalty. Also the numbers losted.... They look wrong even for the early model brads. Still genuinely doubtful anything would react well to a direct 120 mm mortar hit. The react to incoming drill was generally to boogie out of the impact zone precisely because driving off after getting hit by anything from the sky was good luck vs expected.

Dear god I need to proofread more. I meant to say Again, it'll be interesting to see what actually comes down the pipeline. But the lack of information, and some historic official and unofficial optimistic estimates gives me reason to adopt a much more conservative stance on capabilities.

Because they make a certain kind of games that I rather enjoy, and generally I have had a pleasant experience in dealing with their customer service. While it is not essential I "defend" them, it is important to have the other side of the discussion in this case. Also it is part of my long lasting plan to become a highly paid consultant for BF being paid the money they're not spending on trying to code a "follow roads" command.

I think a new engine wouldn't hurt, and with the Bulge+Bulge and CMBS and CMRT modules it might be a good time to sort of start laying the groundwork. On the other hand if after CM: Bulge: Gotterdamrung, CMBS: Denmark, and CMRT: Tea Break at the Gates of Warsaw, CMSF redone on the current engine shows up, and there's an early world war two (or dare I hope Korea 1950 OR 2018) CM, I'm really not feeling like I'll be terribly put out.

Resolution isn't the only factor at play. The sensitivity of the camera is a pretty big deal, and maintaining resolution "on the move" is something that historically has not been a strong point on Russian optics. As far as the images shown earlier, not really. It looks typical for a computer game/simulator, but even under highly optimal circumstance in the field, the image is just much too clean. It reminds me lots of the gunnery trainer graphics actually, which is not really a good standard to measure much by. Again, it'll be interesting to see what actually comes down the pipeline. But the lack of information, and some historic official and unofficial optimistic estimates make it hard to give me some reason to adopt a much more conservative stance on capabilities.