panzersaurkrautwerfer

The new driver's night sight is thermal. It makes spotting a lot easier. The tables are a bit different, the "widowmaker" now generally refers to...if I remember right a tank-PC-PC on delay engagement. The one you're talking about is what we call the "simo" which is the TC's .50 cal on a PC, loader's truck target, and coax on troops. It's a bit easier with the CROW, although the CROW is sort of....special. Re: Dunnage looting It helps that Rod range is super-short and as a mountain as a backstop. Getting an aftcap now though is hard as heck. Your acceptable loss rate is something insane like 2 aftcaps for a company during crew gunnery, and 2 more if you're doing collective gunnery. Usually the ones that get disappeared are set aside for parting gifts for important people, like Company commanders, 1SGs, for real retiring NCOs etc. The way I was trained is that at gunnery we will do the full commands, but it was made clear the only non-optimal part of the fire command was "up" in combat. Even to the degree of the gunner yelling "TANK" and the loader just belting out UP and then shooting if something popped up at 300 meters or something. You and me both man. The only parts of my Army career I really cared for were Armor Officer's Basic Course (as that was lots of tanking), and then my time as a tank company commander. The rest was pretty much take it or leave it. M1A1 was beautiful by the way. A2 is a beast, but she feels sort of like something from science fiction, but the M1A1 made you feel like you were in a tank, and you felt just a little short of being superman hanging out of the TC's hatch on that.

Russian optics, and computing are all largely derivative of western designs, or if entirely Russian origin tend to be significantly less capable compared to peer systems. There's not much professional dispute of this reality. Re: Fire Control Systems Fire control systems are not optics. There's been fire control systems as long as there's been tanks. If we're going to argue how long a country has been building tanks equals ensured capability, we are all rightly and truly screwed because the Brits and the French have been doing it for almost a 100 years. The key failing of Russian FCS type systems is largely in the electronics/computing. Western tanks could take advantage of the various advances in computing, miniaturization, and somesuch to make FCSes that were far more robust, smaller, and more capable in terms of data input (see adjusting crosswind, gun tube temperature, and similar variables on Russian vs US tanks). To this end the Russian inferiority in this sort of system makes however long the Russians have been building FCSes irrelevant, they simply are not as modern in key areas. Additionally passive/active night vision is vastly inferior in terms of spotting targets at range. It's why the US has moved to composite thermal-night vision type optics for infantry, conventional night vision is better for something like walking through a building at night, while thermal is much better at finding targets at range, which is to say thermals are the relevant optics for tanks vs other vision enhancement tools. Nor am I underestimating it. It's got reasonable anti-armor capabilities, good surviability compared to peer tanks, and the only real threats it faces are high tier NATO equipment like the M1, Leo 2, Challenger, or the most advanced ATGMs available. It just isn't on the same level as much more advanced, much more expensive tanks. Only it's the 120 MM gun that is so terrible that it represents the overwhelming majority of NATO tank cannons these days. It's pretty handy. Russian optics on the other hand represent the step up from things offered for sale to the police department, but don't compare to more modern systems. This is certainly a factor. However the raw price is deceptive. Many countries recieve either sharp discounts or have some sort of weirdo-trade deal with the vehicles. The Australasian M1A1s came at a pretty sharp discount in exchange for other things (like increased basing rights for US troops, commitment to more joint training, several pallets of Fosters etc) I seem to recall the Finnish F-18 deal involved a US agreement to buy some amount of reindeer meat. You only really get into cash for tanks with the Russians. This is not intended as an offense mind you. Think of it more like, the only folks who really aren't able to use diplomacy to get discount tanks, are the sorts that could not possibly afford M1s or Challengers at sticker price. The increasing complexity of military equipment almost demands you have a very sophisticated logistics and maintenance unit. This is something professional armies are better able to leverage, as you retain a much higher number of these mechanics, and let me tell you, someone who's been fixing M1s/M2s for the last decade or so is a sight to behold (I had one diagnose an engine fault over the radio based on a crewman's description of the noise it was making). You're almost safer with conscript/inexperienced tankers vs conscript/inexperienced maintainers. It also has a lot to do with the changing priorities of the west. When the M1, Leo 2, and Challengers were all built, there was a distinct possibility of a large continental war in Europe within a few months of downward spiral relations. The Dutch could reasonably expect to be up to their eyebrows in communists, and having tanks was a reasonable choice. Now? It's debatable but the immediacy of the threat is gone, which makes it easier for politicians to make military cuts to make up for budget shortfalls/buy off the electorate with benefits. As the case is however, the M1, Leo 2, Challenger 2 all are still seeing current updates with a good chance that their respective services will be able to continue to upgrade them into the 2020's at the least. The reason the Armata is a big deal is the potential of the T-72/90 series was more or less tapped out in the early 2000s. The ability to upgrade them much further is limited (see the T-72B3's ambivilent reception, the T-90AM's still lagging pretty far behind expectations). Of course I'm still doubtful we'll see an Armata on time and in service. It's a heck of thing to be in the hands of Russian soldiers in 2016, and common service by 2017 with literally no idea of what it even looks like. I do have to wonder if it'll be like the various top shelf planes and rifles from the 90's, and we'll see two or three Armata battalions with the remainder operating the T-90/T-72 models. Seems more reasonable and the two tier thing is nothing new to the Russians.

If you had to rank the world's 10 most capable airforces, 1-4 or so would simply be the USAF, 5 would be the USN, then maybe France and the UK, followed by the USMC, then maybe Russia and then some of the lesser NATO countries. There's simply no reasonable challenge to the US military's air control abilities. Combined with IADS, and hostile fighters there's a chance to keep the various US aviation forces out of your backyard, but the possibility of getting a flight of SU-25s to the target is right up there with snowballs in sulfur lakes survival odds. This. From my end of things I tend to exclude red aviation, or strongly limit it because I think it's doubtful it'll get on station, or if Russia surges to attain situational air parity, it's going to be for targets more interesting than a tank company or two. Conversely the USAF in a three month sort of war against a near peer threat is going to focus on air superiority, SEAD, and what high value targets it can hit without going into Russia, before shuffling some of those strike assets to CAS. So the June fighting would see almost no CAS, July a fighter or two here or there, before August being CAS being fairly common.

I'm not sure! Usually if it's not listed or available it's either OPSEC or a system not offered for sale elsewhere. I try not to share anything I can't find in less than five minutes on google as then I assume it's not something I should default to sharing. Either way the Thales system would be a pretty solid system for 1999, or if you're building tanks on a budget. This is deceptive. The price of building something in America, by Americans, to American safety/union workplace standards etc would mean that if we built T-90s in the US, they would be much more expensive than the Russian T-90. It's also worth comparing the ability to buy more than the actual price-point. And to that end American has been able to afford several times as many M1A2s than Russia has been able to produce T-90s. Armored vehicles all by their own nature of complexity tend to be fairly hard to maintain. It's worth noting however the M1 is not especially hard to maintain, and the American system of maintenance has always allocated repair personnel to lower echelons (while still maintaining well fitted out rear repair areas). More details: a. The gas turbine engine while more fuel thirsty than most engines also has significantly less moving parts, and is actually fairly insensitive to lower quality fuels (basically if it'll burn and isn't too full of debris, the tank will run on it). b. The Abrams is very "plug and play" anything that cannot be readily fixed in the field can be pulled out as a module and replaced by field maintenance staff. So while there's dedicated electronics repair staff, the tank doesn't have to actually go to them, and the matter of replacing even fairly complex systems if the part is available (and the amount of "bench stock" repairs in a war-footing unit is crazy) is capable of being accomplished by Company level personnel. c. Each armored/mech infantry/armored cavalry type unit has a company level maintenance team of trained mechanics. A tank has to be exceedingly broken before it gets sent to the rear This question also ties back into the question of different capabilities. The American supply system is amazingly robust, and efficient. If there's one thing you can say about Americans, it's having more than enough fuel and supplies on hand is the norm by far. US tank design can be more supply intensive for more performance because the US military can support supply intensive. Historically the Russians have suffered in logistics, and their tanks are adjusted accordingly to be lower performing, but less supply intensive. So to really tie these two points together, it's not best to compare economics one for one, but more of how well the system is adapted to the country it serves. To that end the T-90 has proven expensive, and in many ways not enough of a tank for the money invested (see the focus on the T-72B3s, Armata programs over non-export T-90 upgrades). The US is quite happy with the M1 series. Depends on the area of operations. 1 KM isn't a bad estimate in Europe. If you're talking about someplace like, Korea then even shorter ranges may become the norm. You pick up the heat signature of whatever dust is kicked up. however thermal imaging still "sees" through dust and the like much better than the naked eye, you need a lot denser cloud of obscurantion before it effects the thermal image.

Well, worth noting basically their charts (which are part of an advertisement mind you) are telling you that you'll have the ability to tell a T-90 from a M1 at 2 KM using the narrow field of view. This is well short of the Abrams by a significant margin. This is a reasonable assumption. Russian optics in general have never been well regarded, and if you look at after market upgrades for Russian systems, you'll find some of the most common upgrades are for the optics package. To clarify, the CATHERINE-FC provided to the Russians is an upgrade for Russians, but it's a poorer version of a commercially available French optic. Re: FCS Russia has a long time of developing FCSes, but historically they've lagged with the widening gap in both computing power, and historically poor integration (as an example I believe it's only recently that the FCS automatically accepted LRF returns, and until the mid-90's still required operator input of range).

It's a Thales designed CATHERINE-FC thermal camera, basically a downgrade from the standard western stocks, it has the sensitivity but from my understanding it lacks the processing power/something along those lines to maintain resolution when moving the camera. The Abrams has an excellent hit/kill ratio at range, something like in the 80% rate under tactical circumstances with targets that are trying not to die. That's pretty good by most measures. The ability to shoot very far in and of itself is not exceptional, it is the ability to shoot/hit, and acquire new targets that is more relevant. In that regard the T-90 is significantly worse in the target acquisition, and merely not as good in the shoot/hit rates. It's not really a bad tank, but it stacks up well below the various NATO MBTs of similar vintage.

From the french knockoff stuff I've seen, it's still very 1999 type optics. It doesn't have the resolution that western optics have, and it struggles when you're moving the turret/the tank to maintain a cohesive image. Could be something fancier coming along the way, but because something claims an ability to "see" you really need to qualify what that means. Abrams optics can acquire a man sized target at 30 KM (this number is fictional and provided only to sound outragous), but the thermal target is a little blobby thing that looks similar to other heat sources (to include rocks, bright spots on the ground, and badgers). I have no doubts the T-90 can see things out to 5 KM. I don't believe it has the resolution or discrimination to figure out the difference between blobs at 5 KM. What's it layered with? Simply layers are not really indicative of performance, and as discussed, most of the US weapons have if resistance, if not general purpose immunity in the case of the Javelin to the ERA package. I dare someone to find common engagement ranges at 5 KM. Additionally especially in frontal engagements it'll be a dicey shot with an ATGM against an Abrams, and with the state of Russian optics, you're aiming for "somewhere on the tank like blob" vs picking your targets at long range.

Panzer Crewman is pretty awesome too. In terms of the A1 vs A2, depends on your model, but the decrease in engagement times results from the fact you've basically got two sets of GPS (Gunner's Primary Sights) in action with the CITV running. Extra bonus at least in gunnery is the driver's thermal optics mean he can spot at least the obvious frontal targets (although if your driver is a lowspeed it's not much help). I snagged the penetrator because some of my Platoon Sergeants were going to go dunnage hunting on range maintenance day, and they asked if they could borrow the grill off of my HMMWV's fan to use as a sift. I told them they could, but jokingly "to bring me back something pretty" So yeah they brought back a full set of sabot petals, the penetrator, the "cup" from a canister round and about a half dozen pellets. Good guys. Re: Battlesight Battlesight for sabot is 1200 meters. Think HEAT is 850? Basically it's the max range at which no range input is required for the round to strike the target. Lead is also pretty minimal at that range. The 600 meters or so is, as someone pointed out a knife fight in a telephone booth. Re: Fire command This too. Technically you're always supposed to get an "up" from the loader, which lets you know he's clear of the gun and all safeties are off. Conversely if it's the first round of the engagement and you're leaving cover, it's likely the loader is clear anyway.

To be fair, the Maverick missile has a 126 lbs warhead for the shaped charge model. Your average ATGM has like, 5-6 lbs worth of warhead. I haven't seen the picture, but claiming penetration by a Maverick missile is a sign of anything but how massive the warhead is, is missing the point.

In addition to all of the above points too, I imagine the US might not have large stocks of APS cassettes given they're supposed to be the result of a torrid affair between a government credit card and the Israelis, likely the sort of thing where there's not enough for tanks to carry more than the ready ammo.

Looking at the performance across the board, almost seems reasonable there's something wrong with heavy machine guns/autocannons vs tanks. Stands to reason T-90A might just be most susceptible that issue because of armor values vs T-90 is broken itself.

Agree with all. That and including A-10s is such a low effort thing, it's not like there's a super-detailed A-10 model they have to include, and many of the distinctly "A-10" assets they have (namely noises) could be recycled from CMSF. Also agree. Simulators I found were best used as the preparation to go to the field. If you ironed out all the idiot 2LT/new guy/how do I turn this on? crap in the simulator, it meant that the first day or so of training went a lot smoother and you all got more out of the exercise.

Pretty much. at ranges like that, the first one to spot is going to be the one to walk away from it. One of the things that's tricky about CMBS is it's hard to know who's looking at what/where and how much sensor quality is degrading spotting Courtesy of my shelf of "I was once cool" (beer is provided for scale) That's what's left of a training sabot after being shot through something in the front center. It's not huge, but it's going to leave a mark on pretty much anything it touches (or picture something that sized going something like a few thousand meters a second touching anything mechanical). Now get an overhead drawing of anything that's not a tank, and start drawing straight lines through it from point of penetration to point of exit. Feel free to include non-military targets such as Yugos, large bears, SUVs or other things you might really not be a fan of. So in following those lines, try to find routes that: a. Do not do major and irreparable damage to the vehicle given something sabot sized passing through b. Lack anything that might might get excited by a sabot type round passing through it. It's pretty hard. On most IFVs you wind up intersecting the turret somehow which will always react poorly to a sabot sized chunk of metal going through it. On many IFVs, any hit on the frontal slope is going to pass through the engine (if not the engine itself, then required engine support equipment. A rear-flank shot might just kill most of the carried crew, but many IFVs store ammunition or have fuel cells in the rear of the vehicle, which will also react poorly to a sabot strike. The only vehicles that I feel legitimately might drive away from a sabot hit without being some manner of "kill" are trucks, simply because there's so much "not important' space that a round would just zip through.

Who was last an A-10 operator 25 years ago? I think some stuff has changed since then.

3-90.1 "Tank and Mechanized Infantry Company Team" is helpful too.

Re: "Good T-90s" Sort of mixed emotions. On one hand you've basically placed the tank in a position/posture that's beyond reasonable expectations. Also tank seemed to light off once the lower side was struck, and 20 MM from that close of a range isn't super-unreasonable. Which is to say I feel a bit like it's this: Basically we've placed a M2 in the most optimal position to knockout a tank. The .50 cal is not a reasonable anti-tank weapon because in all real life positioning, it's going to end poorly, but that doesn't mean that again, in optimal, not reality based positions, it shouldn't have some effect on parts of the T-90's armor array. I'm not bored enough to try this, but have we run similar tests with Ukrainian vehicles? Abrams is a bit of a wash given it's better armored to begin with, but there's at least anecdotal evidence that IRL a lucky shot did penetrate, but some sort of T-90 glitch might be in the works if T-64BVs are shrugging off .50 cal in a similar posture. Re: Screenshot Have to say, it looks about right in the screenshot for what close quarters .50 cal fire will do to a tank. Wounded driver is a bit out there, but the rest is at least conceivable given a machine gun firing from close range into the side like that. The T-90 is just not that well armored away from its ERA arrays. The autocannon upper side hits raise my eyebrows a little, but lower hull hits are going to be a problem.

Missed this. The "battle carry" round usually reflects the sort of threat environment, and is usually mixed across the platoon/company. Which is to say, it's Iraq 2004, we're all carrying HEAT rounds, while in a tank heavy environment something like a 2 sabot to 2 AMP rounds per platoon, or even having the spearhead platoon just roll all sabot is realistic. Sabot isn't a bad choice either way, it may not catastrophically kill BMP type targets as often, but it'll still ruin the vehicle pretty easily, and I'd rather kill a BMP with a suboptimal round, than ping an AMP off of a tank. Also worth remembering the Abrams doesn't lack for anti-troop MGs (and honestly anti-light armor with the CROWS), so the AMP isn't always the go-to round.

I'd like to see the systems damaged. The video is cool and all, but it's just showing where stuff is hitting. If you do it again on basic training, or the scenario testing difficulty I believe, it'll show you the systems status for the hostile targets. I've had luck messing up a lot of external hardware on tank with the .50 cal, but that's been from the 300 meter+ range. I can't seem to recall doing more than knocking out optics/MGs though.

I'm not panzrldr, but I was a Panzer Leader. That's totally legit, especially if you're talking about "short" fire commands vs the full cycle. Also speaking as a tanker type person, hostile armor at 650ish meters is a major emotional event, as strong as modern armor is, something shooting from sub 1 KM has a good chance of making a righteous mess of your day. Also worth noting that the M1A2 especially can do very short engagement. If the gunner spotted it in the frontal arch, short engagement. If the TC spotted it via CITV, he can literally drop the gunner crosshairs on target with a button press. Also likely not simulated, but at 650 meters, the M829 family of rounds has virtually no deviation if properly boresighted. So the range/lasing aspect could have been ommitted with a good crew. (which is to say in terms of fire commands "TANK! IDENTIFIED! UP! FIRE! TARGET!" vs "Gunner sabot tank. Identified 654 meters. Up. Fire. On the way. Target cease fire")

IRL: Tanks are one of your most powerful optics systems at range. Regardless of nationality, you can rest assured the best optics that country has are mounted on their MBTs. At close range though the FOV problems of tank optics start to become problematic, and having someone looking outside the tank for stuff within 100-200 meter type ranges can be helpful, if also very risky. That said, fighting tank on tank in training, halfway out of the hatch is awesome (on the M1A1 at least) CMBS: Modern CM in general, it's usually not worth it. CMSF had some western tanks than benefitted from having someone outside of the hatch for shooting up infantry, but in CMBS there's just way too much out there that's supremely lethal to behave in that manner. Also APS/ERA makes the close infantry threats less profound (still dangerous though). On the other hand, by god the player shouldn't stick tanks in complex terrain without friendly infantry to keep hostiles away, or without using dismounted forces to clear out possible enemy ambush locations. Best to get the tank within LOS, but still a few hundred meters back, then push dismounts in. Reverse procedure in open terrain.

Totally a massive pet peeve of mine. I had a BMP2 wind up inside a house, I'd assumed it was a glitch, I did not see it arrive, and it was struck by 125 MM and exploded before I could interact with it.

I wasn't even sure they came back after empty/landed. IRL, it's a rapid turnaround on helicopters because they might be doing a touch and go at a FARP something within artillery range of the front line. Fixed wing, they're likely flying all the way back to base and it'll be a hot minute before they get turned around (like even a quick turnaround from my understanding might be 20-30 minutes if there's a spare pilot+flight time) From my limited experience, the plane will still use missiles on the tanks, bombs on not tanks. If you're going into a quick battle, they're under the fortifications menu. If you're going into someone's scenario, look for defensive position icons, the TRP will be a little red circle with an X in it. Place them where the enemy is expected, and within a certain distance of the TRP artillery will be super-quick. Artillery is useful in suppressing suspected MANPADs positions, as they're not really helpful in cover. That said, I feel like the air defense should result in much less kills, and more aborted target runs. In practice most SAM/AAA systems make the approach too dangerous to complete, vs simply murdering anything with wings within LOS.

The T-90 seems to explode less violently, so the ERA is clearly having an effect. I haven't seen any of the especially egregious T-90 losses you all have run into. Autocannon fire vs most things has been somewhat reasonable, I've taken some pretty bad damage to M1s and T-84s too, although no out and out kills (to be fair, I haven't had a BMP shooting into the side of most of my tanks). I wouldn't rule out flank shots at 90 degrees especially when talking about some of the 25 MM family of rounds though, a small DU penetrator going into the crew compartment of a T-90/T-72 is going to end pretty badly (especially given the ammo stowage on those lines of tanks). I'd suggest the T-90s are performing pretty close to what Battlefront expects them to. The T-90S in CMSF wasn't exactly a towering pillar of unstoppable, and it'd hard to imagine the T-90 made it through beta which has a few subject matter experts, with no one raising an eyebrow at them exploding when struck by ATGMs/AT rounds etc. The autocannon tank kills, as much as I did defend the possibility of a DU based burn down, are a bit....exceptional. The T-84 I just got done being very mad at, that had nearly everything useful stripped off its turret by 30 MM sounds about right for all tanks getting plastered by autocannons (it was engaged from a semi-hull down position, fully frontal to the offending BTR-82, I imagine if it's been flanking shots it have ended more poorly). I'd believe the autocannons are over-performing before I believed the T-90 was given an incorrect armor value.

That's entirely unfair. You're forgetting burying your 1990's opposition in literal waves of the finest 1960's equipment, and shooting Corps level artillery at bushes that might be full of candy.

I'm pretty sure it could, I think the only real defense the Raven has is how small/non-threatening it is. It's got some tricks, but broadly speaking it's a somewhat nice commercial leve remote control plane with a camera in it.