panzersaurkrautwerfer

Only against large multiengined targets though! Re: Ukrainian SU-25 Not really the same deal. The A-10C is also a more capable platform, also given how spotters work in this game, I'm not sure I could run it through a US JTAC if I was doing a scenario that was supposed to be largely Americans. It just doesn't make sense to me in a practical sense. The A-10 is more likely to be able to do it's job over the Ukraine (which is to say it'll struggle and only be really terribly good in very permissive environments) than either of the SU-25s. It's not like there's an ultra detailed flight model that needs to be put in right?

True, but it holds by far more value contested to the Ukrainians, than it does contested to the Russians. It's asymmetrical objectives, the Russians need the airport captured and somewhat functional to help establish legitimacy, the Ukrainians just need the Russians to not control the airport to deny that legitimacy, and present a viable face of resistance. If there was just one rambolike Ukrainian Soldier that defied killing and shot up stuff regularly as to make the airport appear not entirely under control, the UA short term objectives would still be met. The Russians need to clear the airport and demonstrate the airport is clear before they'll "win."

As an armor guy we never stayed in one place for more than a day or so, even it if was just moving a few KMs down the road. Starvation in training events is pretty rare in the US military. You might be living on MREs but usually you get fed at least twice a day even when things are "hard." Ranger school is the exception, but I never felt so inclined to attend as I'd signed up for tanks, not for light stuff.

Beatings are pretty uncommon. I can only recall one Soldier who'd clearly had the crap kicked out of him, but it was the same kid that had just been caught at an airport wearing a uniform with sergeant's stripes (he was a private first class), and special forces unit markings (he was definitely not one of those). Came in one morning with a broken arm. Fell down a flight of stairs, yet lived on the first floor of the barracks. In terms of difficulty sort of two things: 1. The end training event for Armor Officer's course went I went through was a 10 day field exercise. You only got to sleep between the hours of 0000-0300 with 33% security (so one in three guys had to be up). You were also still preparing missions, orders, briefings and executing missions on this amount of sleep. If you failed a mission you could have to restart the whole four month course all over, or even be booted from the armor branch. By the end of it people were starting to hallucinate levels of fatigue. And the scenerios were all built specifically to go haywire from the start. Like my mission went from going to a friendly village to question an informant, to seizing a terrorist, then the locals rioted, we got ambushed, and then once we dropped off the prisoner they hit us again and had us go secure a pipeline. We got held up on the way because one of the other platoon's hallucinated some opposing force roleplayers and got in a firefight with some trees before we could get around them. Was crazy. Fun at times, but making your brain still work when you've been up effectively for almost a week was hard. 2. When you're actually downrange how little what power you may have means. Like you've got your 30-40 dudes, you've got rocket launchers, grenades, machine guns, demolition, on your trucks you've got .HMGs, AGLs, etc, etc, and all of it will do precisely nothing to unkill the dead children from the last suicide bomber, and no matter how smart, clever or motivated you are, the Iraqis that "mission accomplished" relies on are not smart, not clever, and certainly not motivated, and they'd like you to stop bothering them so you can go win the war on their behalf.

Re: M6 Linebacker Actually before they even refurbed them back to M2A2 status they were already being used in Iraq as otherwise normal Bradleys (as it wasn't like ADA troops sat the war out, and if you're not shooting TOWs or Stingers the platforms are more or less the same). I'm of the mind retiring them was still a mistake. The Avenger isn't armored at all, so it's not like it is going to follow just behind the armor or something and snipe helicopters. It's just not survivable at all. Of course the bigger mistake was opting out of BRADATS or similar platforms back in 1993. Re: A-10 Here's the thing. Both it and the SU-25 have about equal odds of completing a strike in the sort of CMBS scenario (while both do things better than the other one, neither commands some amazing advantage that makes it more likely to slip past fighters or heavy SAM presence). To that end if neither were in, I'd be okay as it's just excluding planes that would either be aborting because they've been locked up, or simply not deployed to the AO. However if the SU-25 is in, and able to complete strikes in scenarios, then it's equally valid to stick the A-10 in, because if anything it is more likely the US would be able to achieve the sort of air control to employ strike fighters in the long run, while the SU-25 just wouldn't be long for the air war. So again, neither of them? Okay! Makes sense. One but not the other? Que? Re: USAF The bigger issue I feel with the A-10 is it is one of the few assets the USAF employs that is actually customer friendly. When it comes down to getting fixed wing support, the USAF is often very user unfriendly because their priorities are usually: 1. Shooting down enemy planes. 2.Proving air power can win a war by bombing things in the enemy capital city because that'll show em' 3. Shooting down enemy planes. 4. Killing ADA assets because they're super annoying and they keep triggering that damn alarm in the cockpit 5. Killing enemy aviation (planes) 6. Bombing things that might or might not be logistical assets for the enemy 7. Killing enemy aviation (drones and helicopters) 8. Crew rest 9. Routine Maintenance 10. Wishing the USAF would put out a movie that made them look as cool as Top Gun made Navy pilots look 11. Complaining about the food 12. Complaining about lack of enemy aviation to kill 13. Returning the Army's phone calls to find out what it wanted. So to that end, the A-10 was something that wasn't going to be borrowed to go do CAP missions, bomb a palace, or conduct DEAD missions. It was all the time, every day going to be doing either CAS, or battlefield interdiction, both of which get thumbs up from the Army and USMC. And the A-10 was built from the ground up to liaison and fly CLOSE to the troops it was supporting. The F-35 in contrast flies tens of thousands of feet above the battlefield, isn't really designed to talk with, or coordinate with someone in the mud, and drops two bombs and returns to an air conditioned hanger some hundreds of miles away. To make matters worse the USAF refers to the B-1 as a CAS capable plane, which is to say I have a brain surgery capable leaf blower. More than the airframes involved the A-10 was that commitment to support the dude fighting and winning the war. The F-35 represents a reduction in that customer service, and removing it as an emphasis and instead shuffling it to the lowest priority. Which is to make a really good argument for US Army fixed wing units, because by god the USAF doesn't want the job, might as well do it ourselves.

I think the only part of the US military, government, and population at large that wants to see the A-10 go away is the USAF at this point.

SEAD is actually the broader umbrella of suppressing enemy air defenses. So in that concept, yes. Yes there are SEAD missions, they're just the suppressing suspected MANPAD positions using artillery vs a HARM missile to someone's face.

The most monstrous thing the Army ever did with the Combined Arms Battalion was trapping tankers in any unit with 9th Infantry Regiment lineage. I AM A TANKER WHY AM I WALKING THIS IS TERRIBLE. Speaking as former wrangler of Soldiers, not exactly untrue. Every sad story about why you're picking someone up from the MP station starts with "well sir, me and my buddies were bored and....." My dudes were pretty good (just your usual underage drinking and infrequent barracks fights), but the robotripping duo that was in the neighboring mech infantry company, and the FSC sex ring were both good for a chuckle.

The Naval stuff is pretty irrelevant. If the Russian stuff left port it'd become the sole focus of the USN efforts until it sank, which the USN would be well and capable of doing with aviation only. In terms of resupply for both amphibious ops, or Russia/NATO operations, again it's a restrictive waterway with safer overland routes. Seems like a great way to lose a lot of shipping taking it through the gauntlet to no great benefit.

It does in the sense that CM is, as Sgt Joch pointed out, pretty sandbox. CMSF wound up covering a host of conflicts that was pretty much anywhere with sand. There's a base narrative to the official scenario but it is there to provide a broad frame to hang scenarios on and give a place to base everything on that is more interesting than green-map vs the old brown map. If you want to make a scenrio with a detailed deep background in which the only NATO country that shows up is Canada (assuming they're in a later module) then you're pretty well set. You could even go the reverse Red Dawn with American tank bowling through the streets of greater Russia or something. CMSF's reasoning for war in Syria was simple as terrorists based in Syria blow up a few dirty bombs in some cities. It didn't list cities, a road to war, it really left things in the hand of the scenario designer, and that's not exactly a bad thing. Now sitting in here and talking about scenarios or realities on the ground in the Ukraine might help out with people building missions and settings for future missions. If you really need a reason for all of NATO to show up, you can just invent it yourself.

I think I differ in that they might gain air superiority for a short window if they surged assets, but would be unable to maintain it, and the damage done to the Russian military would be yielding air superiority to NATO if not for the duration of hostilities, at least for an uncomfortable few days while the surged assets regenerate and assets are brought in to make good losses and expended equipment. Of course I'm not an air guy by training, but it does seem within reason.

Being a tanker is without a doubt the best job in the Army. Anyone who differs just clearly is wrong and mistaken. Osan is nice. I was up farther North, so cannot tell you much in detail, but Korea in no way (unless you're up north, then I'd call it a strong nuisance tour) is a hardship tour. Locals are generally friendly, food is great (I'm not a kimchi fan, but the bulgoggi/most of the meat dishes are excellent), weather isn't any worse than DC is I imagine. Seoul is a blast, I hear the DMZ is worth a visit too (I saw the DMZ in the sense of "there's that line we cannot cross" sense, not the visiting the cool places as a tourist sense). About the only issue you'll run into down south is there's a country-wide command instituted curfew for US servicemen. It gets old having to be out of sight, out of mind by 0100 (at least I think that's what it was, I'm boring and rarely stayed out late enough to risk it). That said if you take in-country leave or pass, and your CoC signs off on it, you can get an exception to curfew, which usually is no big deal (just expect the MPs to bother you at least once if you're still out on the town).

I've always gone with it's a battle that both sides know are coming, large a large offensive, the attackers know what's up, the defenders know an attack is coming, and it will play out accordingly. Also tends to best describe battles with all the trimmings (artillery, aviation, electronic warfare, etc, etc).

In retrospect it was a lot like being at a Mafia wedding. You were surrounded by questionable people (mostly because a large number of the SOI were former Sunni insurgents), but this was not the time or place for violence. We actually had less problems with the SOI misbehaving than the Iraqi National Police (they changed their names at least once, I forget if it was National Police to Federal Police or the other way around). I wouldn't choose to go again to Iraq or the middle east. Like you do more for the military, but the overall "I'm helping the Iraqis make a better future" thing was always a Sisyphus moment. Push rock goes up hill, rock goes back down hill, push rock uphill etc etc etc. I loved being in Korea. Some of the best times I had were hanging with the ROK or when we both got to go out and do field problems together. Helps too most of the COIN stuff went out the window and it was pretty much "16 KM north there's the DPRK" focused. Got to roll around in tanks, crunch stuff, shoot canister at targets, all the stuff they show to you in the recruiting videos for armor branch.

PATRIOT may not be as fast to deploy from a march to shooting as some Russian systems, but its air transportable and operational in a matter of minutes depending on the nature of the site (so it could take "days" if you were talking about establishing it with dug in locations and the whatnot, but if it was just driving into a field and establishing the ability to engage targets it doesn't take that long). The Bush era PATRIOT is long since gone and just as relevant to this discussion as 80's vintage SA-6s and somesuch. The PAC-3 models have a demonstrated ability to shoot down TBMs with a high degree of success. At the least it is not something to sneeze at. This paired with the sort of air superiority and battle management stuff the USAF brings to the field makes it doubtful that much CAS would get to the Russian forces on the ground. On the other hand it's reasonable to assume the air space would be exceedingly hostile over Russian lines. What is more reasonable in terms of both scenario and theory crafting is "air parity" in which neither party is really in control of the sky, while "air superiority" only for small windows (which is to say most of the time the air is contested, but if the USAF puts everything it has in the air it can control the airspace for a period of time, and potentially the Russians might be able to do the same). Also in terms of building scenarios it keeps from having to justify why the player has one air strike instead of the Iraq/Afghanistan dynamic where it's twenty planes stacked up to bomb a mud hut or something.

On Liberty at least you were supposed to have a weapon and one magazine on you at all times. Going for a run they did not seem to enforce it, and the shower trailer was okay too, but anywhere else you needed it. I took to calling my M9 my "hall pass" because it made life much easier when I was back on VBC than wandering around with my M4 and stuff. Iraqi sides of compounds are fun. I did a payday event with the Sons of Iraq once on a JSS we'd turned over to the Iraqi Army a few weeks prior. There were like three of us, two rifles because CPT I'm not saying his name was too cool for one between us, and the nearest US forces were 20-30 minutes away if anything went bad. That must have been the one time I drank chai in full battle rattle. I took off my gloves at least.

I would like you to indicate where I have made an anything but contributing post on this forum, and if you are unable to do so, I would request you either address my points, or chose not to address me at all.

Oh god. You ever go down to the Liberty side of VBC? We used to sneak over from there to raid your guy's Green Bean.

Not even bravest Hero Of Soviet Union SU-25 pilot will keep trucking with a missile inbound. Even if it's a total miss he's going to go evasive, drop weapons, and likely abort. You get the low BVR hit to kill ratio because of the high evasive nature of fixed wing aviation, but it's not highly evasive loaded for bear with weapons. Also the ability of Russian aviation to influence the US CAP is pretty limited assuming PATRIOT coverage. Also given the state of US sensor systems it's pretty unlikely significant CAS will just sneak on in without some significant intercept possibility. Beyond that the point of tomahawk strikes isn't so much the destruction of the missile site itself beyond dealing with idiots with SA-3s and only the finest in untrained personnel. However it does present the dilemma of unmasking and exposing SAM sights to higher capability SEAD/DEAD systems, or letting the missiles truck on and destroy their targets. Also there's a practical limit to how many missiles one SAM site can engage and destroy in a set window. There is not a practical limit to how many missiles can mass on the SAM site though.

I was an Armored Cavalry Platoon leader, Troop XO, for two deployments to Iraq, and then I was a tank company commander in Korea. In between all of those jobs I was also a variety of plans and operations type jobs. I'm on my way out because I got to the point where I could stay or go, and I decided it was time to go. Was fun while it lasted, but never really considered it as a career I'd do longer than I did.

It's the best kind of vaporware though. Usually strongly implied to have a scary sounding thing that will destroy all other things, the prototype's only known photo is by the same man who takes pictures of the loch ness monster, the weapons system will enter service sometime next year starting FY 97, and will be only 2% of the cost of an M16A2.

I think you have to split from reality to what would be good for the game in terms of naval operations. Operating in the Black Sea isn't that great of an idea. It removes much of the mobility that makes a Navy powerful, while also giving the dilemma of either striking undisputed Russian soil and risking a provocation, or allowing a large number of anti-ship systems to operate in "no fire" areas. In a realistic sense, giving the impression the US was potentially committed to launching significant operations into the Black Sea, knocking out targets in non-sensitive areas, parking some LHDs near Turkey and strongly implying the USMC was going in "somewhere" could tie down significant resources that would be out of proportion to those committed to the deception. Further if the Russians simply shrugged it off as posturing, stuff like the Osprey can reach pretty far, a raid against some lightly defended Russian rear area could be enough to trigger full on paranoid mode deployments of troops away from the front. All it would really take is a few platoons knocking out an anti-shipping missile sight, kicking down a Russian flag and zip cuffing the locals to cause full on AMERICA INVADE MOTHERLAND mode, which may increase Russian popular support for the war, but again anyone near the sea would likely be screaming for troops because Americans are everywhere and going to use their gayrays on babies or something (not intended as a slight against Russians specifically, nearly as much as the common civilian reaction to even modest implication of danger of attack). In terms of the game it's a virtual certainty there will be some manner of from the sea campaign because we need to get our USMC/Naval Troops Module in somehow.

Concur entirely. The USAF and other fast mover agencies greatly overestimate how much damage they actually do. When it comes to killing the enemy forces on the ground are much more decisive. The only time aviation will effect large losses tends to be in the same manner that the ill fated 52nd Brigade discovered. However this adds another layer to the reality of air to ground, simply the act of moving made that Brigade very vulnerable to aviation. Restricting the ability of the enemy to move freely, or forcing him to dedicate significant time to evasive or deceptive measures greatly impacts the ability of an enemy military to operate. Sure airstrikes only killed a tank or two. But the same air strikes forced the attacked force to stop, employ decoys, not move so as to not make it obvious who the decoys are, disperse vulnerable assets, etc, etc, etc. Which lines up well with the crappy analogy of machine guns. The lethality of the machine gun is not that it will strike 100 targets with 100 rounds, it is that it controls the enemy's movements, forces him into unfavorable postures, or fixes him in place to allow for other assets to kill the suppressed target. Decoys and camouflage are important, don't get me wrong. But you can't hide your way to victory exclusively. And if someone keeps you hiding, he keeps you out of the fight.

This is pretty accurate. Aviation has one of the hardest times picking out decoy vs real targets, once you're at direct fire range usually your fidelity is pretty good in terms of things being too bright/too obvious etc. I'd downgrade how effective the Iraqi measures were just because "90%" is their magic number of success (it's always 90% better than x, 90% less of something bad, etc etc), but the Serbs certainly did a number as far as hiding tactical forces in the field (conversely it did impact their actual combat power by forcing them to commit to hiding their heavy forces).

The most likely Korean War scenario these days is the ROK going North after a collapse versus the DPRK on the outskirts of Seoul. However a more limited DPRK attack focused on taking part, or all of Seoul to create the world's biggest hostage crisis is within reason. A grand scenario that was this limited DPRK attack, followed by the ROK-USFK counterattack across the DMZ would be good. Having a module that was Chinese forces would allow for scenerio writers to make both the more likely "China attacks DPRK to contain the crisis" and the more amusing, but less likely "China joins with the DPRK." In the DPRK stands alone type scenario they're pretty much just as able to be the Syrians from CMSF, and we got plenty of mileage out of them.