panzersaurkrautwerfer

That's a pretty weak justification. Unless there's really solid proof they're all but in the hands of Russian troops, or the rockets are stored in crates marked "For use in war against America" I feel like you're a bit SOL.

On the other hand, a professional army with long time serving soldiers has either a fair number of people with some practical experience, or simply the "what next?" has been drilled in over the course of several years, vs being proud graduates of Conscript U. about three months ago. I've always viewed it as something like green reflects some knuckleheads they put in uniform on short notice, conscripts as short term mandatory service obligation fufilling soldiers, with regular representing the full time professionals....with crack/veteran/elite etc representing any of those forces given the proper experience (so a green formation after a few months in combat, conscripts that survived the "what was that?" phase of combat, or regular forces that finally established if NTC was really harder than combat). Regular forces with longer serving soldiers will command a qualitative edge, and will still react better in combat. My point wasn't so much that looking at folks suddenly being shocked and dispirited and hiding in the bottom of the tank was the wrong expected reaction from a hit, and it was a more useful model to think in terms of someone completing the OODA loop in response to being shot at. More experienced, more trained crews will always do the OODA cycle faster than less trained, less experienced crews. So again, a tank just illing out in the open because it got shot and everyone is super scared inside, and remaining out in the open for an extended time is a bit daft. A tank that did not get penetrated based on training and experience levels will take some variable amount of time to decide it doesn't want to give the guy shooting at it another go at finding the weaker spots on the armor.

The conscript thing is worth of note when it comes to units freezing though. It's not at all a question of morale, it's a question of training and the experience to be doing what needs to be done next .2 seconds vs 20 seconds after the event occurs. I think that's really a point worth making. The conscript who's been in country three days asks himself "was that a bullet?" when here's getting the snappy noises that come with bullets going close then hits the dirt after he's come to the conclusion "THOSE ARE BULLETS!" or when ****. The conscript who's been in country three weeks is hitting the dirt with sufficient vigor to make an impact trench about halfway through the first snaps (on the other hand, he's moving hunched over and moving with a purpose when it's "just" bullets whizzing by because those aren't the close ones). Same deal for tanks now that I think about it. A tank taking direct fire isn't going to just hang out and get shot if it can at all avoid it. If it cannot return fire, it's going to pop smoke and back up out of direct fire LOS. There should be a delay built into this based around the experience of the crew because a crack crew knows what an RPG sounds like hitting the tank, and knows it's a good idea to leave, while a green one is going to take a few seconds to debate if that was an RPG, or that was the neighboring tank. On the other hand, a more experienced crew might know that "well hell, that was just an RPG hitting the frontal slope. We're fine. Grease that building it came from" and stick it out and keep fighting while the regular crew knows they're in danger and backing up is a good idea. Just a thought. Either way popping smoke and reversing is the right answer, just a question of delay.

Re: Kettler Again though, is this any worse than a mild day in the 1980's? Russia will not collapse into anarchy if Ukraine suddenly retakes Donbass due to elite warrior skills from US paratroopers, the West has had Russian nuclear weapons pointed at it since the first Russian ICBM came online, and has been threatened with same off and on (see the Polish missile shield funtimes for similar threats). We're well short of hamming plowshares into swords. It's a bit nastier than the 1993-2008 years, but it's no worse than 1945-1990 in terms of being "on the edge"

The Avenger's real downside is it literally has no armor, like less than the LMTV cargo trucks in the game. The whole turret assembly maxes out the weight the HMMWV can handle and still meeting the ability to go offroad and handle terrain. In terms of actual ADA abilities it isn't too bad against certain flavors of threats. The Stinger is still quite potent against attack helicopters and certainly drones, and the .50 cal would be great at smoking the smaller types of drones (given the abject lack of survivabilty and low altitude of course). Also given the fact that in-game CAS missions insist on flying within MANPADS range it'd make life harder on SU-25s and somesuch. The real trick would be as I mentioned earlier that you literally cannot place it anywhere that stray bullets may pass through. Re: Duster I was always of the mind a platform like that, or a revised quad .50 would have been nice for Iraq/Afghanistan simply because of the amount of hurt it could dump out on ambushes. Not so much against actual planes though.

Members of the 173rd IBCT are there, the Brigade itself is something like 90% elsewhere. It's their way of blaming the US for the fighting Russia is largely in control of when it comes to intensity. IF YOU DIDN'T TALK SO MUCH ON THE PHONE I WOULDN'T BEAT OUR KID and somesuch.

I always worry about being a Pat Buchanan. Not in the political alignment sense nearly as much as continuing to exist and insisting on making noise long after I have passed from relevancy. Think we're pretty past the point of high possibility of war. Russia's hand has gone about as far as it can reasonably go, western interests are not threatened to the degree that more NATO exercises and modest military funding boosts won't smooth over. Something stupid could still happen, but it's not any worse than any given day in 1985 or something.

No, MARINE Space lobsters. They're way more hardcore, and fight dragons and stuff.

Nah. I'm now just a casual observer of military affairs, sometimes Guardsman and talker of crap not motivated enough to try to figure out Googusian. Assumed if you'd gone through it you had the breakdown at a glance. I wouldn't rule it out. I knew someone who's M1 took something like 19 RPG-7 strikes in a fire fight. With the older insurgent handy type warheads, it's not often the really good warheads* or fired at the right spots. Worse than that. You missed the fact the basic plan was stupid to put it mildly, a total lack of meaningful command and control, and a fundamental abject lack of understanding of what was inside Grozny. Also the whole isolation plan was really well designed to deal with a force of conventional peer type enemies but totally neglected many of the actual logistical trails used by the Chechens in the city. Further I think the annual training plans for the units involved had something like six total hours of urban combat worked in. While a lack of urban focus is not unexpected, it's a bit mind boggling considering many of the better lessons for operating in urban environment came from the Soviet army circa 1945 (which makes the resemblance of the Russian tactics in 1999-2000 to that earlier time somewhat darkly humorous). The Russian soldier may be brave, but historically his life has been sold cheaply for want of proper preparation, or due care for his well being. And bravery takes a distant place to logistics, training, and planning in war. That, and the Thunderrun was an unconventional, but fairly well planned out mission. It had proper recon, it was based on a known enemy, and used terrain that allowed for armored forces to mass fires and effects. Contrasted to the fighting in Fallujah (which the insurgents within indeed tried very hard to borrow from Grozny 1994), there was not much of a difference in forces, but there was an understanding of a much more determined opposition, and much less speed friendly terrain. It'd be a mistake to simply assume better trained Russian tankers would have mattered terribly much if the plan still boiled down to a show of force parade with a terribly executed cordon around the city. HEAT round close as we can get it, dump smoke, back the tank up. Or more practically in an urban fight, never ever lead with an AFV. Worked in Aachen 44, Berlin 45, Hue 68, and Fallujah 04. Baghdad 2003 was an exception simply because it was a fight on a highway+right of way, which was significantly more room and negated some of the problems with taking armor into a city. *As a tangent, one of my instructors at ABOLC had operated in an AO in Iraq in which the insurgents had gotten their mitts on a whole mess of the anti-personnel RPGs. Not being savvy to the reality that they were anything but odd looking AT rockets, many were expended against tanks. The total inefficiency of the rockets against anything with armor led to the belief that the US somehow had "force shields" on some tanks that stopped rockets in that particular corner of Iraq**. **As a tangent to the tangents, the Iraqis often believed we had capabilities that frankly were science fiction movie fodder, ranging from believing our dark glasses allowed us to see through clothes, to having dug an underground rail system to evacuate dead US soldiers from Baghdad to Turkey or something. They also had difficulty understanding many American action movies were fiction, so believing we had Terminator type robot soldiers and expecting SOF units to act like Rambo were not uncommon either.

I'm small surprised, but it's certainly no 2S6. I'd almost rather the difficulty of conducting CAS in contested air space be better modeled. Right now it's very much either no planes show up because the scenario writer decides CAP is especially strong, or the CAS shows up and bombs with impunity unless it gets MANPADed or something. The possibility of anyone's CAS bombing over and over against either NATO's massive air element, or Russia's still respectable defensive capabilities is pretty remote.

Do you have the breakdown for the other losses? Iraq/Kuwait is still filled with T-72 wrecks, and I'll be darned if I didn't see most of them entirely decapitated. Also even if it was a 25% chance of catastrophic explosion, that's still really high for what might be on other tanks merely a mission kill (RPG strikes especially).

Grozny is one of those moments in terms of being a history and culturally interested person in which you wish you could have all the details of the original event, just to better understand the mythology and semi-truths that occurred afterwards. It's pretty clear it went badly for the Russians, but not the "we killed the entire Russian Army!" that the Chechens push, and the Russian accounts make it seem like for want of more diesel fueled tanks, some more luck, and the Chechen's not at all real armored regiment it would have gone swimmingly (the comparisons to the 2003 Thunder Run, as if it was just a matter of luck it went well for the US Army always causes some terminal eyeroll on my part).

We had some old timey folks who talked about zotting T-72s through the turret and getting the same going off like a firecracker effect. I think I've mentioned it elsewhere on this forum, but they described it as a brilliant blue spark on the outside of the tank, like a very short delay then BOOM. Dunno. Regardless of if the carousel survived the strike, the contents of the turret usually did not. As far as internal round storage, eh, fair enough, but that still rather gets to a major disadvantage of the whole system in terms of rounds carried. I've seen similar accounts. The tanks themselves did not fail that day nearly so much as the men who put them in the city. Of course it's easier to blame the turbine than the general so there you go.

I think in general: 1. In reference to T-72s, a lot gets handwaved as being a Iraqi monkey model, while ignoring the straight up standard as built by Poland to fight the HATO dogs T-72Ms and T-72M1s blew up equally well compared to the alleged "monkey" Iraqi models (there's also some strong evidence there might have never been anything more than knockdown kit assembly of Polish tanks with standard armor array vs some sort of mild steel Iraqi model). 2. A lot of the AARs from Grozny need to be viewed with some sense of skepticism. A lot of blame gets dumped on the T-80's gas turbine or performance vs the T-72 equipped units, but it has a lot less to do with the T-80 as a tank, and a lot more to do with not installing the ERA, and the amazingly moronic Russian battleplan. With that said, the majority of Russian tanks in Grozny were knocked out by basically getting blobbed on by RPG-7s. It's less "the vehicle is penetrated and destroyed!" and more "it is mobility killed, the turret jammed, and the crew bailed." Death by a thousand needle pricks vs from getting hit by a truck if you will.

Small bit of thread necrosis however relevant and interesting: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/u-s-army-tanks-show-off-their-big-guns-in-the-baltics-cd380b3a315e Apparently they're still tan for now.

I'm not sure how realistic this is. It pops up in a few Russian source documents but I have not found a lot of evidence the popgoestheweasel T-72s of the Iraqi Army had full loads, let alone extra ammo to spare inside the fighting compartment (indeed the internal space of the T-72 seems to beg the question where these rounds actually fit). Spalling from the turret stands a respectable chance of entering the opposite side of the carousel anyway, and the "loose" round caused by the loading cycle of the autoloader seems like a reasonable candidate for being the source of ignition anyway. Regardless the turret ejection usually happens fairly promptly indicating there's not much delay between penetration and initiation, and fact the whole mess goes up more or less at once indicates the fireproof box might not be good at its job.

Most of the stuff we've seen that's "modern" Russian stuff is pretty well mid to late 90's in terms of comparing to western equipment. Newest Russian hardware excluded because it hasn't been really well examined, but the T-90A and BMP-3 are both pretty much on par for a 1995 platform in terms of capabilities as equipped time now.

Re: HMMWV turret/M-ATVs That's the sort of turret that was used in Iraq/Afghanistan. It's generally not mounted on "regular" HMMWVs. Same deal with the M-ATV. There's no "MTOE" M-ATV units, M-ATVs are simply drawn from in theater stocks by deploying units. The various M-ATVs/MRAPS not being simply scrapped or sold off will likely be kept for possible future COIN operations, but for now the HMMWV remains the four wheeled truck thing of the US Army, and for likely so for the near future.

1) Yes, or at least it's not uncommon. 2) Most modern optics are mounted on top of the tank. The elevation/lead when induced does not change the gunner's view, it simply adjusts the guntube accordingly. The gunner's auxiliary optics which are located co-axially to the gun on the Abrams do no move independent of the gun. You will not lose sight of the target when manually inducing lead unless you're trying to shoot down a fighter jet or something.

I'm uncertain on it too. I have to wonder if it's been shelved in favor of something more cutting edge, with the mass trophy buy as the "if we go to war in 2017" plan.

Actually all of it is pretty modest. The mounting brackets are no big deal, there's already a variety of systems that just plug into the Abrams (like the MILES type stuff, or the hookups for the DUKE/JUKEBOX stuff) so piggy backing off of that isn't a problem. I'm not sure why the FCS needs to be integrated, I was under the impression Trophy did all of its sensor stuff internally, but even then the FCS is just a very specialized computer, it doesn't need a massive overhaul to cooperate with external devices. It's not rocket science. The main thing that keeps Trophy off of the tanks now is the US Defense industry, if there was a need for APS tomorrow, we could certainly have APS tomorrow.

Most of what you described is all stuff that has a home. Pens ride in the pen holder on the sleeve of the coveralls, and if they fall out, they go into the subturret where they are lost forever. Maps usually get stuck in the TC's curtain, but the chaos wrought by a well folded piece of paper and laminate is pretty limited when they're out. Worse for mapboards but then it's usually securely gripped. Binos, TC's curtain again, or strapped to the TC, MREs when not in use ride outside the tank. There's not much room inside a tank for anything that is not required for tanking. This virtual hurricane of stuff you seem to think exists just isn't common. Which is why infantry should occasionally cry out that they are the "lizard king" and devour local wildlife to regain morale. Because people do the weirdest things. I was once a tanker, and young and dumb. Backing up out of contact, or moving forward into cover is pretty much drilled into your head when taking fire. It's like the infantry version of getting down. An angry SFC will chuck a clipboard at you while screaming at you for getting your whole crew killed because you were an idiot and stopped out in the open at OBC (key word is "at" but it went close enough to qualify me for imminent danger pay I'm certain). For Russians I imagine the process is much the same. We don't expect infantry to stand fully erect in a field after being shot at to no effect, so panicked/assured of god's love for them that they can do nothing else. They get down and assume protective posture. Tanks are manned by men, and if something struck a tank enough to turn a map into apparently an effective projectile, they will seek cover. I could have sworn CMSF tanks when hit and not destroyed popped smoke and backed up. This is almost 100% right by any estimation of what reasonable US/RU/UKR tankers should do if they got shot by something loud enough to leave an impression but no penetration. It means tanks can be reasonably suppressed from the front. The only caveat I would add is making it a rule that gets ignored with "fast" move commands, because that best reflects someone making the choice that we stop for no one, or allows me to tell my tank to no matter what, make it to that next turret down depression (and allows for me to use bounding overwatch without it turning into an utter mess of reversing tanks). Regardless there certainly needs to be a threshold, an errant 30 MM round or two isn't going to cause a tank to do much outside of try to find the shooter and smoke it. A healthy burst of 30 MM clipping the CROWS off however would very much lead to a driver move back moment.

Yes. In 2008 we had them for every dismounted M240 type weapon in the Troop, in 2011 we had them for the M240s, M2s, and for M14s (but we did not receive the M14s until it was really too late to bother with them). They're certainly not uncommon and for something happening 20 years in the future, think it's pretty reasonable to assume they'd be pretty common should someone decide they were needed.

Generally the response when things go haywire is action. The greater problem in training is getting it drilled that sometimes no action is the preferred action. However when exposed to murderous stimuli and the ability to respond, the inaction is rarely the action. Most of your "frozen" soldiers are ones that are under fire or exposed to things to which they have no reasonable response. They're in hour three of a four hour bombardment. They're under fire from a distant MG etc, etc. Also generally the freezing is rarely standing up silhouetted ready to receive lead injection, but simply inability to leave even fairly marginal safety. A "stressed" response that leads to variable results would be reasonable in my opinion, to deal with someone is a little more nervous than usual, but that can either mean SGT Snuffy is now in full on "fight" mode, or he's worried about loud noises and is distracted by them. Either way, the normal response is "something" vs "I WILL NOW REMAIN STATIONARY" when under direct fire. For a non-penetrating hit, you're not going to get those effects. The gunner's browpad, and the fact that M1A2's GPS has a screen to allow the gunner to sit back for one, but also the inside of the tank doesn't suddenly turn into a sandstorm when struck. Not to mention we secure all them loose objects exactly for the reason that it coming loose would be a bad event (why do you think the inside of US AFVs are filled with labels indicating where literally everything should be strapped down? Even in something simple like a rapid traverse, a loose ammo can making its way through the turret could knock someone out. It might be unpleasant, but it's a tank. Someone designed it based upon the expeirence of decades of tankers beforehand, to include keeping it from being unable to effectively operate after getting struck by something unable to actually kill the tank. A lot of the training is not so much focused on the task and its complexity, it's on making the task and the ability to accomplish it second nature. You don't have to think about doing A-B-C, it's just a natural flow to do B after C, and when condition 1 occurs, skip to D. It's all about speed in action, or being able to continue to act despite things being fubar. Backing up out of LOS is really the best option for a response to a non-catastrophic hit. If someone is hitting you, and you're not engaging them you're just giving them another go at making up for the first shot whiffing.

Actually if you really want "fair" games, playing Ukraine vs Russia or US vs US (or RU vs RU etc) is a much better bet than expecting something to be toned down to better make the game equal.