panzersaurkrautwerfer

Yeah. That's going to be not that good in a complex environment. You can only see "dark" objects because they're in front of lighter ones, the concrete and the parked vehicles are showing up about the same (like, on the Abrams there's a clear difference if you're looking at a vehicle or pavement simply because they're absorbing heat differently. Is it "can't see a tank moving in an open field?" Probably not. But it might not be "find a target faster on a cluttered/very hot battlefield before it catches a sabot. Also given the level of magnification possible, and narrow FOV, there's a lot when looking through that level of optic that is "well heated rock" but at 10X or something might look like a tank halting to get off a shot at range. This will compound the further away the target is. It also doesn't help that the tanks themselves were parked in a treeline. Speaking from my happy tanking funtimes: 1. Hard ground is pretty much the one thing that'll effectively conceal you from Abrams type optics. The more you can get behind a hill, the better. 2. Foliage is actually detrimental in my opinion. It is possible to put enough "green" in front of a tank to make it hard to acquire. However all it takes is a thinner bunch of plants to still be seen....while the density of the concealment will usually block out most of the optics* I don't know if that's simulated, but just my two cents there. Either way presenting the earlier images as: Is dishonest, and a simply...it's not real. It's fake pictures of a fake tank on fake terrain. When speaking about systems this sort of mockup cannot be taken as a demonstration of any capabilities. *on a few occasions when playing OPFOR for my dudes, I parked the tank well behind some very dense ground cover. I sat on the roof of the turret basically watching for movement as with that much concealment, neither my or the attacking force's optics could see through it, day or thermals. Once it was apparent the attacking platoon had entered my engagement area, I hopped back in the tank, we gunned it through the thickets, exploding out on the flank of the attacking unit, where we basically did a one tank charge through the rear of their formation. I wasn't being a dick, as much as trying to teach the super important lesson about why the wing tanks look to the flanks rather than everyone getting fixated on the objective.

I've looked through a pretty wide range of thermal optics, and it's not really a good representation of what ANY thermal optic looks like. I suggest it's simply a symbology illustration to show how the information is arrayed within the gunner's optic...but it's not really a good demonstration of what current Russian optics can do.

Maybe with the maturity of the automotive engine in question, it would be best to return to the horsedrawn carriage. Sarcasm aside, perhaps there could be some system of terrain based formation changes, like if the terrain offers some small amount of cover and is fairly open, infantry would assume a wider spacing, while in urban or complex enviroments it would bunch up more. I'm loath to support squad formations as a button simply because it's getting a bit too into micro, I'd rather just have a slightly flawed, but mostly functional system that let me set my dudes on their way without too much baby sitting. Further maybe it'd be tied to movement speed/behavior. Examples: Move would be a column, with spacing maintained based on terrain (slightly abstracted, like it if entered a series of urban action squares it'd tighten up to maintain cohesion, while if it entered a light wood it'd spread out) Tactical move (new command), walking pace, same as above with formation broadly flexing to orient on assumed or known infantry positions* Quick: same as tactical move only at a fatiguing, but faster pace Fast: Run. No spacing or formation. Basically reserved for getting troops through an area as fast as possible Hunt: .75 tactical move speed, cohesion loose, formations on line/wedge oriented on line of travel** Assault: less spread out than hunt, bounding by sections. Sections basically run for short distances while the other fires. Lays down suppressive fire automatically at known or suspected enemy (so both enemy icons, and ? icons) regardless of chance to hit. Should exhaust troops and expend ammunition at a very high rate*** Just some thoughts. Likely more complex than needed, but would be cool to give a command and have a certain kind of output vs giving a command, then a spacing, and a formation instruction too. *The difference between move and tactical move being that "move" would exist chiefly to get dismounted infantry from place to place without tiring them out, while tactical move would be used for long distance movements to contact, or where possibility of enemy contact cannot be ruled out. **Hunt would basically be used for moving infantry into combat against likely or known enemy positions. They move in a deliberate, controlled manner, and have a narrower focus for spotting the enemy, but are much more likely to spot something in front of it. ***In contrast to hunt, assault is basically moving to finish an enemy that has been fixed in place. You're accepting some vulnerability by keeping troops close in order to get the most number of soldiers and firepower on the objective. Also as anyone who's done an attack in a STX type lane, you're going to be pretty spent, and 40-50% of your ammunition lighter after assaulting through the objective. Again you're basically sacrificing ammo and soldier fatigue to improve your chances of taking the ground at the end of the assault movement.

We didn't do it because by and large after Vietnam, we recognized the fidelity on sensors only targets was pretty limited. The utility of the sensors themselves was not discarded, however it moved from being sufficient for targeting, to a system the scouting community refers to as "queuing" which is simply the progression from wider coverage but lower fidelity sensors, to narrow focus high fidelity sensors. So think GSR>Sesmic/other unmanned sensor>airborne optics>ground optics>scout eyeballs>scout sneaking up, poking it with a stick before stealing whatever goodies the observed element has, because that's what scouts do. Given the strength of the observation fires or actions may occur at any part of the queuing process, however this is pretty asset dependent (so going cold war style, a Lance missile would likely be dumped on a Division sized GSR signal, while tube artillery will virtually never be employed without at least mechanically assisted human eyes on positively identified targets). As to the topic at hand, the sort of TRPs practiced in Afghanistan are likely just that, ones practiced, rehearsed and possibly even fired at to be registered. The kind of TRPs we see in CMBS are a lot closer to someone crunching the numbers 10-20 minutes before the battle kicks off, but not to the point where the battery has practiced firing at any/all/separate ones at the same time.

Those aren't the actual images of what the imager is capable of though. I mean I'm not doubting the capability "THIS IS IMPOSSIBRU!" or something, it's just the images appear to be something done up to show what a view through the imager might look like, but it looks like a Steel Beasts screenshot or something.

I think it'd be a firepower upgrade for the BM-30 would be to simply strap rockets to BMP3s and let fly.

Head? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS YOU SPEAK OF?

Eh. I wouldn't bet especially hard on it. I'd give it a chance to knock the thing out especially depending on where it hit, but in practice 120 MM mortars is about the smallest indirect fire weapon you want to use on armor (105 MM howitzers offering much the same performance on different trajectories. Something the size of a 152/155 MM should pretty much ruin any PC/IFV type target in a direct hit though.

Re: Topic I started up the scenerio, haven't gotten too far in yet (there's a reason I tend to play quick battles, it's usually what I've got the 30-40 minutes for). More results to follow, but just eyeing the terrain it's not the sort of stuff I'd want to fight an Abrams on. Re: Tanking I still technically am an Armor officer, although I've moved to the National Guard (which is its own odd Americanism). I was only really a "tank*" officer for my initial officer training and the last two years of my active service. As a new Lieutenant I trained on the M1A1HC, and the absolute baseline M3A2 (it had the armor upgrades to make it a A2, but did not have the LRF or any of the other Operation Desert Storm period upgrades), then spent a few years in an Cavalry squadron mostly doing Iraq focused counter-insurgency training/operations. I did wind up being the Executive Officer for the one Cav Troop in our Squadron that was still training on Bradleys for one of our deployments though, so while I didn't get to play with them, I'm fairly well acquainted with the feeding and care of them. Then I went off to some advanced training, and then spent some time in Korea working chiefly with M1A2 SEP V2s, including a stint as a company commander which frankly will likely be the "best" years of my military service. I'm still in an "armored" unit in the National Guard but I now work at the Brigade HQ level (which shouldn't be confused with my being especially important, I'm simply now senior enough to be the small fish in a big pond). *the various recon units in the US Army are part of the Armor branch. While the enlisted and NCO personnel are their own distinct MOS and are generally not interchangeable without being retrained, the officer level leadership bounces between the armor and cavalry organizations.

Yeah those are....pretty major changes. They're not "bad" changes, they're just things that are much more significant than stated.

You'd never see a single Abrams unless you're simulating someone who just suffered massive losses or something. In practice you always send two "like"* vehicles to enable self recovery (or if one tank is damaged, the other tank can drag it to a safer pickup location). In terms of organization, two is about the lowest you'll ever see committed, and in that format it's called a section. The section is generally used to support other units, like if you had a task organized infantry company (2X mech infantry platoons 1X tank) you might slice off two tanks to each of your mechanized platoons. If you've got more than a company sized element of US troops on the battlefield it's going to effectively be a whole platoon on hand. In terms of leaving small surviving elements, in theory once you're down to two it's going to be time to pull that platoon out just in terms of how much damage it's taken, but in reality if you needed the last tank standing from a platoon to stay you'd keep it as long as you could. With all of that said however the platoon is the preferred smallest unit to be committed to a fight. It allows for the two mutually supporting equally capable elements, which is quite handy for maneuver on the battlefield. The highest concentration of armor you'll likely see however will be the tank company, which is rarely committed organic and instead generally is task organized losing a tank platoon and replacing it with a platoon of mechanized infantry (so the 8 "line" tanks plus the Company HQ plus the mech platoon). It might still be committed "pure" however as a spreadhead/counter attack force, or pure with augmentation (so instead of taking one platoon and replacing it with mechanized infantry, all three tank platoons plus a platoon of mechanized infantry or something). *Or you might not send two exactly identical vehicles, but if you send two vehicles that can tow each other, you're good. As the case is it's tanks or dedicated recovery assets that can move Abrams though.

The imager is the important part, and the component that'll impact visual quality, acquisition range, and resolution while moving. It'll be interesting to see what the Armata has if it ever comes to be a common tank, but given the state of Russian electronics there's reason to doubt it compares to the current generation elsewhere. But yeah. I was on what is the current generation of M1A2 SEP v2s. The main difference between them and the in-game ones is the ERA is a theater-equipped kit vs standard issue (basically the one part of TUSK that the M1A2 SEP didn't pick up), the data-link for rounds isn't a installed system, and the ammunition family is still the M829A3/MPAT/Cannister/ORD family vs the M829A4/AMP mix. Re: Nerdwing Dunno. I'm off active duty now and in the National Guard, so even if I wasn't a staff toolbag now I'd be on an M1A1SA. If I had to conjecture it'd be better integration of the ERA racks, some sort of upgraded boat-hull armor upgrade and possibly might be someone figured out a new layer for the armor array or something (every now and then they'll crack the turrets/hulls and insert "something" that I have no idea what it's made of.

Especially true on random interlopers. I never did Afghanistan but there's more than a few accounts of US/NATO troops showing up and being taken for Soviet forces (as I have to wonder if some Soviet troops were seen as simply the English returned). The distinction between foreigners is pretty limited out in the tribal areas.

Just making an observation. If you're interested try Afghanistan: A short history of its People and Politics. The dudes I knew who did MITT team stuff swore by it as a short primer to Afghan history.

I'll fire up the scenario when I get a minute. It does sound more than a little like you're doing it wrong/trying to engage the Abrams frontally which tends to end poorly. Before I hop in though, T-90A or AMs? Additionally I was an M1A2 tanker until 9 months ago or so. The only time we reverted to day optics would have been with the CROW,* and this includes shooting and operating in weather far in excess of 30 c (38 c on one day at least). Further the amount of actual cooling you get from stopping the tank is overstated. The head reflecting off the metal surface of the tank will appear very distinct from the vegetation around it (hot metal, much less hot trees). You get some false positives off of rocks, metal objects (there was a broken down bulldozer in one of our training areas that threw folks off for like, ,5 seconds every time), but a tank parked in a treeline at 1.5 KM is not especially well disguised against the generation of thermals the M1A2 Sep v2 mounts, even if it's the dead of winter and the tank has been there for an hour+. On the other hand, you've already sampled the slightly better than Thales thermal optics so your points are entirely valid to why the T-90's couldn't see anything especially well. *It uses a progressive zoom vs a set of fixed zooms, which can lead to all sorts of absurdities in trying to get the focus to behave like you want to. In practice at least for the .50 cal engagements for qualification we'd use the tank's primary thermal optics to find the target while keeping the CROW broadly aligned against the lay of the main gun. Once we were in the neighborhood you'd have to futz with the CROW's optics less.

I can see it going nuclear after a mass CBRN attack from the Warsaw Pact, however at the same time our stated policy was to treat ALL weapons of that sort as a nuclear attack and worthy of similar retalation, which puts using those weapons tactically rather off the tables as then pushing tanks about Western Germany matters pretty little when you've ended the world as we know it. Read up on the various hoops the Western Allies and the Soviets had to go through to keep rolling through similar terrain in 1945. Controlling logistics and planning for it has advanced, as has some technology (like palletized load systems etc), but the simple reality of pushing the sort of supplies you need to sustain something the size of what the Soviets needed to sustain through countryside that is some combination of: 1. Under indirect and aviation threat 2. Might still be chock full of chemical/nuclear hazards 3. Likely has some major holes knocked into the transport nodes and networks (either collateral damage, or intentional area denial measures) 4. Separate from simple indirect, hurray FASCAM! 5. Likely still has stragglers still active and armed (and lots of stay-behind elements) Complicating these measures: A. Looking at the munition and fuel expenditures of the various modern mechanized wars....it's going to be a violent suck of nearly every bullet or drop of gas available. Even fairly modest conflicts or limited actions still burned through supplies rapidly...and the Soviet reliance on massed artillery fires would have certainly put a stain on a fully functional and unmolested supply network. B. Soviet units on Afghanistan wanted for even very basic supplies, consumed at a fairly modest rate. While you can assume some wastage due to insurgents/corruption/whatever....those elements don't magic away in a conventional war, and then are further complicated by the other elements I mentioned. It's really not a simple matter, and as stated the very challenging situation of supporting the vast armies the Soviets fielded, while facing a doctrine designed to dismantle said logistics network is simply something the Soviet Army was not likely to be able to handle. Re: Womble Either way, if we're talking about pricing, cost or rarity the fact Russia is closer to the Ukraine should be irrelevant. We've already got the various forces to the battlefield, so while there may be an abject lack of M1A2s elsewhere in Ukraine, in the local in which the player is operating his tank company, the Abrams is going to be not at all uncommon. I'm not all about having 1:1 Abrams to T-90 rates or something, but it's going to be silly if the only way I can have a "balanced" game will be having two Abrams to face down the better part of a company or some nonsense.

Unobserved fire: Rarely, if ever a good idea.

A Soviet offensive through western Europe, especially one in the Air-Land battle area is going to have a lot of problems with logistics and going to suffer a lot of attritution. In many ways going back to my previous comment about supplies, Air-Land was less there to kill Russians faster than they could kill us, and more there to force the Soviets to expend their ability to continue an offensive via striking the logistical tail (and using the loss of momentum to launch local counter attacks to facemaul the Soviets). It's really functionally irrelevant at the strategic level if you're doing that with M60A3s, M1s, or M1A2 SEP V2s sent back via timetube. Looking at the ability of the Soviets to sustain even modest military operations literally next door to the USSR itself, it begs the question about how well that logistical network would survive a focused, targeted, and highly aggressive attack. And it's again irrelevant what the Soviet spearheads are made of if they're out of gas, bullets, and time. Reforger called for a lot of stuff to travel via sea....but there were still not insignificant in-theater stocks. Certainly not enough to keep the war rolling for terribly long, but certainly enough to make going west a dangerous a not-trivial exercise. I won't claim 100% for sure NATO massive victory in a shooting war...but NATO's end mission was to be too dangerous to attack and through that prevent Soviet aggression and military adventurism beyond the edge of the Iron Curtain, and it succeeded in that goal handily.

Cool AAR. Think if you're playing with IFV heavy forces you really need to get them to ground fast, you will lose in a straight up maneuver fight against a tank-centric force (Bradley, BMP-2/3 irrelevant).

1. Thales optics are not that good, especially compared to US/non-export Western optics. 2. Fire control systems are entirely irrelevant if you cannot locate the target before being murderized. 3. Could all of your tanks get LOS on the Abrams, or were you instead only having a small number of your net total of tanks able to acquire a LOS to begin trying to spot? 4. The Abrams is well known for accuracy on the move, and why stop in an open field? 5. As alluded to, treelines are not that great for concealment if you're talking about thermal imaging. They're good if you're looking in the purely visual spectrum (green tank, green trees) but unless you have totally removed LOS to possible heat sources from the tank, you're going to stand out pretty good. On topic: The APS was included as a not too out of left field upgrade the US might pursue. There's precedent for large scale short notice purchases of foreign or low previously uncommon equipment purchases by the US military (see the M2A2 ODS and M1A1HA theater upgrades for 1991, the various C-IED and armor upgrades in 2003-2012), and Trophy is both mature, and already has most of the engineering work done to mount onto an Abrams/Bradley. It's properly very expensive to include in your force though, so I frequently forgo it (or equip a small portion of my force to initiate contact and allow the not-APS tanks to maneuver on the enemy).

It's the Cold War book to the Ambush Alley set of table top gaming rules. Numbers...don't matter so much. A lot of what the USSR could bring to bear was obsolete, or relied on much lower quality soldiers. There were serious organizational errors in Soviet thinking too that became evident post-cold war. Simple technological equipment matters a lot less than organization, training, and planning, which decidedly starts to swing into NATO's favor by the early to mid 80's. Re: Geography I think cost assumes less "this is the availability of the platforms in theater!" and more "how common is X piece of equipment within the organizations we've pitted against each other"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis Rarely will something so dramatically change the battlefied as to re-write the book (see the massive increase in firepower in the late 1890's leading into the First World War, mechanization, etc), but fairly often it's just the same tools, only upgraded to stay relevant against the tools made to break them.

The degree in which both countries inflated each other's military capabilities is also interesting to reflect upon, in the Soviet eyes NATO was a force that well and could offer a realistic threat of invasion, while we all know how radically different the reality of the Soviet military proved to be from the unstoppable redswarm it was in many media sources. There's a table top wargame (well system of rules) I futz with that goes as far in its cold war scenarios to divide them up into: 1. Cold War as imagined: basically the massive red hoard plowing into Germany ala Red Storm Rising/Team Yankee 2. Cold War as a reality: Warsaw Pact fragments, Soviet offensive stalls out with limited NATO counter-offensives (with the more interesting scenarios being an insertion of the 82nd Airborne into Poland to bolster the Polish exist from Warsaw Pact, and to hold long enough to link up with NATO elements driving across Germany). 3. Cold War as fiction: WOLVERINES!, and other implausible, but common in fictional portrayal cold war scenarios. It makes it interesting and I think it's the only way to really approach a Cold War gone hot sort of game while covering all the bases and themes people expect. Either way neither side realistically could sustain a long war. While there's a lot of talk from the Soviet end of things as far as replacing losses and somesuch, the Soviets would have had a hard time fueling and arming whatever weapons they made after the start of the war. NATO fully embraced the concept of exhaustion, basically planning and hoping to be able to be the less exhausted one after the few few days or weeks of war, and then turn that into a status ante bellum sort of gig.

Re: Sublime There was a limited conventional plan for the 70's, but it was generally limited to I guess the best way to describe it would making it harder to cross the boundaries that would lead to a nuclear exchange. During the 80's a nuclear exchange was not an unreasonable outcome given the sorts of things at stake, however it is the first era that NATO honestly had detailed plans to fight and win a largely conventional war against the USSR, and the first time it was reasonably equipped, trained, or focused to stand an okay chance at being more than something that kept the Russians from trying to pull a fait accompli sort of attack.