panzersaurkrautwerfer

It's been a while since I was in the same room as one, but at least some drones are that lovely boring lightish grey that anything that the military flies is colored. As far as small drones go, I'd contend the dangers are as follows: 1. Loss of connectivity. They're small platforms, usually controlled by fairly modest transmitters. Most have a return to launch point feature to keep them from being lost, but they're ineffective if they can't send back information/are just coming back to the launch point after 1-2 minutes. 2. Ground fire. They're fragile, fairly slow, and don't fly very high 3. Flying into things. They're not hyper agile, most of them fly fairly sedate patterns with sensors aimed at finding objects, not navigation....so an unexpected object is something they're not going to avoid very well.

Having seen the state of the art in military automation and modern equipment, I feel pretty comfortable that most of the fighting will still be done by humans of a certain age and type.

In regards to lethal fires, one of the more infamous combinations would be "shake and bake" which is when you drop WP prior to a HE mission. The thick smoke from the WP is intended to drive the enemy from cover or concealment and into the open for the HE. Which should indicate the actual lethal effects of WP leave something to be desired compared to HE or VT. It's got a use, just it's infamy gives it an outsized reputation.

What's with you and trying to find "The great equalizer" for the Russians? It's like every other post you've made is how some US thing isn't really as powerful as it seems, or some Russian thing will explode all the Americans. Re: Direct hits in general Artillery has been problematic historically simply because the concentration of fires to achieve effects has been prohibitive against armor. Or looking to what field artillery considers effective "destructive" effects, it's something like a 20% kill rate. Which is still unfortunate, but it provides a historical context to why artillery has a sort of "yes it kills/no it doesn't" dynamic, when artillery hits it certainly can be lethal. But again conventionally employed each conventional shell only carries a small percentage of a "kill." What's changed, and changed without a minor conflict ala 6 Days War/Persian Gulf 1991 to really illustrate how much it's really going to do is target acquisition is more precise, and the ability to drop rounds on top of targets has increased. While the capabilities to find targets with drones/drop guided rounds on targets has been demonstrated, it's been done in highly permissive environments (or Russia's artillery operating against the Ukraine has done so in virtual safety against an enemy with no real electronic warfare capabilities, US precision fires has been blowing up dudes with beards and AKs for the last 15 years). So in an environment in which drones are making it 200 meters from the launch point before having their receivers burned out, or pretty much anyone's signals from space are highly suspect, it might be very much the exception than the rule to put rounds on top of a target rapidly. Also more specifically to the Russians, as discussed elsewhere on this forum, only a fairly small part of the overall force is modern/especially well trained. It'd be interesting to see how much of what CMBS is the exception vs the rule for Russian performance. In any event I'd contend if artillery was more lethal in CMBS it'd encourage using the sort of shoot and scoot, multiple firing position tactics that tankers use anyway. One of the great advantages of armor is that it's not as adversely affected by being in the "kill" area for artillery, and displacing under fire is something quite doable (and indeed, why defensive positions are supposed to have alternate positions). As far as the actual effects of a direct hit from an artillery round on a tank, again, it's not an especially common historical event. I think a lot would depend on the fuzing, where the round hit, etc etc.

I think had the US military retained the various 8 inch guns past the end of the Cold War we'd have seen a few by now. Actually I would contend given 20-20 hindsight retaining those guns, or a newer version of same would have been very useful in our current operating environment. A. Precision 203 MM shell would be much cheaper than the ATACMs, GMLRS, or any air launched systems, with about 7 KM more range than a M109. On the other hand, again hindsight is 20-20, and people making the choice to retain the capability likely had the positive experience with the MRLS in the Persian Gulf, and the upcoming XM2001 program in mind weighed against the increasingly ancient and worn out M110 fleet.

If I had to guess at the likely NATO module countries it'd look something like the following, in descending order of likelihood: 1. Poland: Interesting kit, politically aligned to show up, and geographically close 2. Germany: Geographically close, interesting equipment, there's a devoted Deutch followers club that buys CM products. 3. UK: Some interesting kit, existing assets from CMSF, large Commonwealth audience for CM as far as I can tell (or at least large anglophile population) 4. France: Missed CMSF, good kit, likely contributor to whatever NATO fast reaction element shows up 5. Baltic NATO members: Kind of a tossup. Realistically their response to a war in the Ukraine would likely be going full mobilization/alert and preparing for possible Russian attack. On the other hand CMBS is a really good venue to portray them, and they're "small" enough to fluff up a larger module while being more relevant than below regionally. 6. Denmark/Norway/Netherlands/Belgium/Canada/ other "Northern" NATO members: Some of these have slipped far enough since even 2008, let alone 1990 to be really fairly marginal players in a large shooting war (or I'm sure Canada's task force would be a stalwart collection of well trained soldiers, just they'd likely be a Brigade minus at best assuming some sort of long build up time, with the remainder being increasingly less relevant given the general divestment in armor/mechanized forces). Which isn't to demean their part in collective defense, but to make the statement that some of them might show up as part of a larger module, but something like how the NATO module for CMSF looked seems like a good model (two or three smaller countries with a partial TOE bundled with a larger country's more complete TOE) 7. Spain/Italy: I certainly wouldn't rule them out. Have interesting equipment, however they have not been especially aggressive about NATO participation in Eastern Europe. 8. Turkey/Greece: Turkey especially would make for interesting hardware, but I feel they'd be hard to shoehorn into a Ukraine conflict for political and geography type reasons Also add in that there will almost certainly be a USMC centered module, and likely some US Army updates. Looking at how CMSF worked out, the various TUSK and BUSK makes showed up later, as did the IBCT TOE. I think a National Guard TOE would be pretty easy (M1A1SAs, M2A2 ODS, early model Strykers), as would a "come as you are" addition to include M1A2 SEP v2s and M2A3s as currently fielded without ERA, LWS, or AMPs for the Abrams. Also slim chance of throwing down some autocannon Strykers I imagine. .

If I was limited to only owning one module, it'd be the Polish one.

You'd be surprised how much we shamelessly stole from the Soviets both before, and after the fall of the wall, especially in regards to depth and operational-strategic thinking. The German lessons were largely tactical ones because that's arguably where the Germans were at their best, but even then I think it's part of the historical revisionism to see the Werhmacht reflected in more modern forces while ignoring how much of the German experience was seen as tacit examples of how to lose a war, Or like, case in point, my beloved Abrams. A lot of times it gets compared to the Tiger line of tanks because it's big and heavy, therein clearly it's adopting a more German line of thinking. However it's ignoring once you get farther from the simple weight of the vehicle, you get more into what the M1 emphasized tactical mobility, crew-equipment interface, and target detection....which are all much closer to things US tanks always leaned towards, with the ultra-heavy armor being a simple output of how you make tanks survive on a ATGM filled battlespace. As far as Soviets triumphing over the Germans, it's because on a wider spectrum, the Soviets were better able to cycle their OODA loops at the strategic-operational level*. Looking at German strategy or operational planning for the war with the Soviets is always interesting reading. As far as the Russian military in general: 1. It doesn't have the massed forces any more to accomplish the sort of operational-strategic initiative it used to rely on. It's just too small/less capable to the degree it can only mass at the expense of other theaters. 2. It doesn't yet have the small leader emphasis to be agile, and still relies significantly on a playbook, which will leave it less able to rapidly react to a chaotic environment against more agile enemies. The point isn't react to contact, any military is reasonably able to shoot back. The point is reacting to invalidation of the projected operational reality. 1st platoon attacks to destroy enemy located on hill 211. The enemy is not there. In the Russian system, 1st platoon waits for the Company to confer with Battalion to figure out what's next. In the western system 1st platoon reports negative enemy contact and tries to figure out where the enemy went. Company-Battalion build a better understanding of what's going on and make broader stroke plans for what's next instead of figuring out what 1st platoon should be doing now. *Or as far as Stalin learned he wasn't a great general pretty early on, and while still deeply involved in the war, still gave his military leaders enough latitude to hang themselves. Hitler kept himself so wedged in the process as to make any decision making cycle tortuous.

Re: INS Again, I'm just a humble now part time armor officer and most of time construction manager. I know some of these systems from other places. In any event we're in a constant weapon-counter measure cycle so it's hard to imagine jamming/EW will reign supreme over precision fires now that it exists, nearly as much as someone more clever than I is building a way around it. We tend to refer to what you're talking about as "disruption" and it gets a whole "zone" when talking about areas of battle. From the Cavalry perspective, it's actually a big reason why you see tanks historically and Bradleys in US "recon" organizations, it's not because they're sneaky great hider vehicles, but they're awesome tools to force an enemy to mess up their whole plan, basically committing forces before the plan calls for it, inserting undesired requirements into an operational plan, and all and all taking a well rehearsed and practiced operation and turning into something new, not unknown, and poorly prepared for. It's incorrect to dismiss Boyd as simply aviation based. It's a systematic look at how organizations and systems react to unexpected consequences. Ultimately the organization that is best able to react to those events is the one that will win simply because it will have the initiative. Or to repose the question, how can you disrupt someone's actions if they're already gotten ahead of what you're trying to accomplish, and are now already executing actions well beyond the "reality" your orchestrated plan was built around? Which gets to looking at historical situations when the plan is forced through with great force and violence against a more agile threat, it usually ends poorly because it leaves you dancing steps behind. Even looking at historic Soviet "weakness" at OODA loops, they did not plan to not have agile organizations, they planned to be operationally agile by simplifying the tactical output (in effect, the maneuver unit didn't have to be "smart" it just had to do what it was supposed to do when told to go somewhere and do it). The problem with this is while it allows for an operational agility, it does break down if the tactical pieces are unable to accomplish their missions, and especially so if the enemy is then able to out agile the maneuver elements and change the operational-strategic picture to a large degree. Or I guess where I'm getting is it's irrelevant how hard the bull charges, so long as the matador is quick enough to step out of the way (or even if you change it to bulls plural).

That's a deep buried IED. The insurgents purposefully went to those for anti-armor operations because even fairly large conventional IEDs (like 152 MM or even aviation bombs) on the surface were not especially effective against heavy armor. The deep buried ones were intended to strike at the weaker under armor, but what you're actually seeing in the video is the road surface being forced upwards and the tank being lofted by that vs being "blown up" Artillery is tricky to gauge against armor. Explosions do rather like the path of least resistance though (which is why blast effects are so much more enhanced in enclosed spaces). I'd be more worried about whatever KE effects a rapidly traveling projectile has, but most PD fuzes are aggressively designed to go off on contact to avoid burying themselves so deeply (unless they're fuzed for a delay detonation). As far as the testing against Soviet type barrages, what we're seeing in CMBS is a much lower order attack, those tests were intended to basically measure assets firing saturation at a level well above what I think even our esteemed Forward Observer would bring to battle.

The US answer to EW environments has been the opposite. Vs having a plan that must and will be followed, we've fallen back on what historically has been a US strong suite: Small unit initiative. Instead of relying on a detailed plan demanding each part follow certain steps, it's much closer to each subordinate element is given key time/coordination pieces, and operational intent. There's still a overriding plan, but conceptually as things break down the idea is to empower Captains, Lieutenants and Sergeants to accomplish the mission or exploit changing conditions vs being bound to a plan. Basically it gets back to the old OODA loop dynamic, the faster, the more agile an organization is, the better able it is to succeed against a similar, but less agile organization. So case in point, like there might be an overriding plan to take and occupy Hill 346. But the intent and coordination piece is given that NLT 122330JUN17 enemy is unable to place direct fires on Battalion main effort (Able Team) from Hill 346. It might be Baker Team is totally unable to take Hill 346 because the enemy is dug in too deep and they can't get through to CAS. But what it might be able to do is conduct an attack by fire to decisively engage the enemy on Hill 346, preventing them from being able to put effective fires on Able Team's efforts, and still accomplish the mission intent. The Russian method lacks the "permission" or small unit leadership to be agile enough, or entrust its junior leaders to make those sort of choices, which makes it more cumbersome and less able to adapt to unforeseen consequences. It's also more easily disrupted and degraded given the reliance on a higher level command authority, and units are more easily isolated in time and space given the slowness of the Russian organization (or a smaller more agile force can destroy a larger Russian force by massing on it's smaller subordinate units while the Russian forces are still trying to mass combat power where the agile unit was an hour ago).

I differ largely because the cost-complexity slope works unfavorably to the amount of fires that can be placed on a target. With any sort of advanced defense system, they're often subject to "swarming" which is simply generating too many threats to effectively deal with, resulting in defensive system destruction. Basically you can shoot down as many shells as you can, but there will almost always be another shell. In the bigger picture the sea change hasn't been in weapons lethality, or even arguably precision fires, it's been in target acquisitions. Historically it took somehow getting your dudes with a line of sight and a good fix on where they were in order to get good effects. Now with UAVs, or other sensors, it's a lot easier to find a target, and kill it. Further the networking of fire assets make for a much more responsive network. If we're looking for the most-solvable part of the artillery equation, I would contend it's denying the targeting vs shooting down a never ending train of rounds. The counter-UAV systems are going to be a bigger deal and are likely a more feasible technical challenge to overcome. This is the reasoning for a lot of the current US military research into destructive lasers, burning down drones is a lot easier, and a laser offers a tool that deals with swarms a lot better than conventional weapons. I think we're going to see electronic warfare get a lot more attention too, in that if sensors can be degraded, artillery goes back to World War Two rules of spotting. I might even argue in many ways we might see a regression as far as tactics because many of our ultra modern tools will be challenged to the degree to require going back to simpler, tighter networks, and less precision fires (or imagine instead of using a GPS guided shell, using a very advanced INS type package that the round doesn't need to know where it is, it just needs to correct itself back to where it's firing math said it needed to be independent of transmissions or emissions from anywhere).

1. It's a game that is a system of numbers and variables being run are attempting to simulate realistic outcomes. Undoubtedly there's still enough of an allowance for mobility issues on dry dirt roads that rarely the dice will roll and come up snakeeyes for the player. 2. If you want a narrative reason why it might happen: Moving fast on all tanks can be tricky, as the centrifugal force of the track links going around places excessive force on the track pins, and can cause the pins to break/warp to the degree the tank throws a track and is immobilized.

I don't think there's an official word, but I know US Army side before it was put on the chopping block, there was a strong reluctance to use it on targets that might be later occupied by friendly forces. The failure rate for a "good" submunition is still into the double digits, and thus impact areas could easily be turned into an adhoc minefield from the significant UXO. I think that might be the logic that went into the game that ICMs would be deployed, just not at the danger close sub-2 KM from each other type fights. Same deal with FASCAM.

As a forum it's pretty quiet, but looking at CMSF and other "legacy" platforms, I know they're getting played a lot from when we all start chatting about it, just I'd contend only a few of us "play" forums often.

100% no feces anyone in the Forward Observer section at the Company level is called a "fister" with a straight face. The only one that might not get away with it is the Fire Support Officer himself. re: Tank Rounds In passing, the AMP round isn't yet in service, but I'd be interested to see how the fire command works for them. MPAT was called for as "MPAT" if in ground mode, but MPAT Air if in proximity fuzed mode. The fuze also needed to be set prior to loading so the fuzing was called out at the end of the previous fire command (if you're switching rounds mid-engagement, you add a "fire <newround>" after the first fire, so "fire, fire HEAT" to switch to HEAT for the next engagement). AMP can be set on the fly as it's done via the gunner's station controls with one of a few options, so it's really a different beast. If we're going strictly by how fire commands have always been done from Shermans on forward it might be somewhat cumbersome ("gunner AMP airburst troops"), but going off of the "fire and adjust*" command from the M1A2 generation, it might simply be the gunner gets fed a target to engage as needed with AMP, while the TC focuses strictly on finding more targets. *On the M1A1 the command was just "fire" and the commander would adjust fires as he observed the engagement. On the M1A2, you'd give the command "fire and adjust" which basically handed the engagement off to the gunner to let the commander scan with the CITV.

We didn't fire MPATs during training until right before I left active duty so I tend to default to HEAT when selecting non-tank type targets.

Gunner HEAT sauropod!

Totally. Like the Bastogne comment, if Division decided you were the decisive operation, then congrats, welcome to steel rain town. .

Hey now, the break through to Bastogne was like three battalions of artillery firing in support of what was basically a improvised combined arms battalion. But yeah little weird.

Well, organized crime is pretty much a wing of the Russian government as is, so it's not shocking it's included as part of their military-political operations. Iraq was pretty heavy on the insurgent-criminal crossover. You basically had two flavors of insurgent in my opinion: 1. Ideological anti-westerners. Tactically, they were less common outside of suicide attackers, but they comprised most of the leadership/organizational folks at what I'd consider company-battalion level (or, imagine a cell, which runs 4-8 people as a platoon, so anyone directing cells generally had it out for the west, either in a Baathist rejectionist scheme or some sort of Islamist focus). 2. Hoodlums. They didn't shoot RPGs at you because they didn't like you (they didn't like you though), they did it because one of the guys from category 1 gave them a launcher, and 50 bucks up front to shoot it at Americans, 50 afterwards if they followed through, and 25 to put the video on youtube. As the insurgency circa 2007-2008 started to fall apart (surge/awakening/etc), a lot of these guys just went from being criminal-merc types, to being just straight criminals. One of the worst "attacks" we had circa 2011 was when a "protection" scheme went terribly haywire. Some former IED dudes, lacking external funding any more would build small nuisance type IEDs (think like, large grenades) and unless you paid them a fee, one of these bombs would find their way to your business. On the way to distribute these devices, one of the bombs decided NOW was it's time to shine, and it caught fire. Truck stops, Iraqis/bystanders do what Iraqis/bystanders do (SOMETHING DANGEROUS?!?!?! I BETTER STAND BY IT!) , and just in time for the Iraqi police to show up, the whole thing sympathetic detonates killing 40 or so people. Which gets back to why working with criminals is funtimes. a. They're in it for their own purposes, and not responsive to ideological pressure. Once you can't pay them, or offer them things, they tend to go off in their own direction which often as we've already seen in the Ukraine can be counter-mission. b. They predate on the local populace extensively. Cliche from the Mao, but the insurgent is a fish in the ocean of the populace. The criminal is actively exploiting that populace, and as we would discover in Iraq, the populace often felt no compunction to protect these criminals (we arrested a lot of these folks on tips from the population, or found a few of them dead and dumped in the streets). The insurgent generally still leaches off the population/inflicts collateral damage, but he has an ideological message that can influence the population and in certain circles carry currency. The criminal can do this do, and the boundary between the two groups is narrow indeed sometimes (see FARC, and Columbia in general, the ongoing Mexican troubles), but it is much weaker/pragmatic (if the criminal group is sufficiently degraded, it has very little support as it's appeal to the populace is basically paying them off, the insurgent and other ideas-based forces can still rely on aging communists in former East Germany to send them money or something). Long term solution would require a Ukrainian force on the ground that would understand the culture/local dynamics to man the checkpoints, do patrols and resolve low level problems. Logically the best use of NATO forces would be: 1. Training/advisory missions. 2. Accountability operations (basically helping keep the Ukrainians "honest" which would be a key part of winning an insurgency type fight) 3. HVT elimination, either non-lethal (snatch and grabs) or lethal fires (as NATO has a much better precision fires component) 4. Peace Keeping in the classical sense (keeping the Ukrainian and Russian forces from having at each other again) 5. Regional QRF Really while it's harder in some ways with a Russian presence, it has a much more capable host nation force, a largely discredited external support network for the insurgents/criminals (in Iraq, the insurgents had a magic islamic utopia to pretend they could deliver, Russia has had it's time in the Eastern Ukraine and there's not much to show for it), and a much narrower cultural divide (it is a markedly different culture, but NATO troops passing through a Ukrainian church isn't going to cause someone to go all Jesus is greatest and explode in a market somewhere).

The colder it is, the more clear "hot" targets are. So on a cold clear day, the contrast between manmade object and the ground around it is pretty pronounced. The more stuff there is in the air, the harder it is for the thermal to penetrate. Which isn't to say it won't, but having operated a thermal optic in a monsoon, heavy snowfall, and lots of fog, there is some degradation. I think the best example is that gunnery in the deep winter of Korea on clear days was awesome, because the target was literally the only hot thing on the range, and spotting other AFVs was really quite clear. On the heavy rain/foggy days, some stuff would be hard to acquire, like there's some calibration panels with a heat lamp bulb, those would take a little doing, and the targets are just plywood warmed on a headed concrete pad before being elevated, so if the pad was practically underwater, it'd be a lot less effective at heating and then somewhat screened by the rain, However generally AFVs and real humans remained pretty easy to spot out to the 1-2 KM range (which was about as long of a LOS as you get in Korea. Hot days were always harder for me because it fills the optic full of "junk," rocks, scrap, pretty much anything that you don't want to touch on a hot day glows pretty well on a bright sunny day. You have to slow down your "scan" (basically moving the optic back and forth to find targets) to better figure out what all the spots are, vs on a cold day, when ANY hot spot is something alive/with internal combustion going on.

1. Military vessels and aircraft belong to their service of origin by international law. It gets weird when you talk about defunct countries, and it is often disregarded by third parties (see illegal scrap operations on more shallow water wrecks). How that country chooses to handle the wreck after that is open to discussion (the USAF for instance tends to consider the plane abandoned if it doesn't have weapons/human remains on board and claims no special control once it's written off. The USN is a lot more zealous and you'd better ask for permission before looking at that wrecked Wildcat for more than a few minutes). 2. Russian Naval Aviation is fascinating if only for it's on going quest for a reason to exist. 3. The Indian Air Force would be comical at times if it didn't involve real people falling from the sky in big metal things into populated areas.

Interesting caveat: Trump is already dialing back from campaign trail silliness, and has abandoned some more radical positions. Possible conclusion: Within the NATO construct, there has been a lot of grumbling about where the burden is falling. Historically the European reaction has been some noises before cutting another few battalions to free up money to spend on ensuring their college students can keep going to college for forever or something. We've had fairly limited leverage historically because not-defending Europe hasn't even been a US foreign policy plank. However if the US threatened to walk off, and suddenly started getting all high-five hand holding with Russia, I imagine that might change some opinions and actions. If Russia offered something to the US, I would think it might be an honest pivot, but it doesn't. There's literally nothing Russia makes, or extracts we can't get somewhere else cheaper. Russia is a pariah state in many ways so it doesn't get us leverage with anyone else. Dunno. I'm not Trump. But his adherence to walls, deportations, banning Muslims, entirely disposing of Obamacare have all been less than concrete. Why would ties with Russia be anything different?

1. When you build any sort of game that attempts to simulate reality, you wind up using unrealistic systems to simulate realistic outcomes, or you place a management burden on the player. Sometimes this burden is unavoidable, BF's AI isn't too shabby, but it can't do berm drills unattended. Other times, do we really want to set sectors of observation for each optic on the tank? Basically the spotting system will have some level of abstraction based upon how a tank should work that will generate unrealistic outcomes sometimes. Or at least that's my guess 2. It's not surprise launch spotting, it's that when you're working with infantry close it's difficult for an AT team to operate at close range because they'll get shot/suppressed by the tank's infantry support. I don't really need to go into the employment of armor in urban terrain, but Syrian/Iraqi forces do not integrate their armor/infantry operations to the degree that protects either especially well, generally resorting to firing at likely enemy positions with the armor somewhat indiscriminately, and then infantry attacking more or less on its own once it looks safe enough. As far as lack of reaction, do think about this, who's filming the attack? Is it a neutral observer? Or is it part of the ISIS propaganda wing that has no interest in showing failed attacks? Re: Return fire I'd like to see immediate suppression return fire become a thing against tentative contacts one of these days. I don't feel ATGM teams are especially vulnerable though, it's more of a sequencing thing. What happens now is launch spotted/tank engages/ATGM team gets killed. What I'm advocating is launch spotted/team suppressed/team gets killed by follow on shots.