HerrTom

That's awesome! Looks like fun. I might have to join you guys sometime... Do you have any plans for making other scenarios from Black Sea?

It's not that it costs more or is expensive in its own right. It's that it cost so much more than contracted. Admittedly, I work on a different type of government contract, but there is a ton of accountability even in the plan put forth in the contract. It's just surprising to me how badly the pooch got screwed here. As far as I know, pretty much every project on F-35 is way over budget and behind schedule. This may be a trend for big military contracts for shiny new toys, but doesn't that say that there's something wrong with the contract and procurement process?

Haha. I guess you don't really want to show your conscripts "hey so this artillery shell would have knocked a chunk out of the driver!" Interesting, too, that they say even the penetrations wouldn't harm the crew...

It's interesting to see how it compares to the US army tests from the artillery thread. I guess they had slightly different methodology here. And fewer shells.

Duchess, what about escort roles in SEAD? Do they stay with the SEAD aircraft or loiter out of the SAM envelope?

I don't think I was talking about warisboring, which I agree is far from technically accurate. If I was sburke et al, I apologize for the controversy. WRT specifically the F35 I don't really understand the whole row about it's capabilities. It may be falling short of its goalposts, but those are pretty damn lofty ones at that. What it can already do is pretty impressive. Budget over run is a different matter and probably should be the real focus on what is "wrong" with the aircraft, in giving out why the contracts went so far over, and that is more of a "Bradley" problem than a technical one.

I know what you're getting at but a person can be a good resource on some things and be unreliable in others. John has pretty unique experience in this area and disparaging that because of unrelated things isn't reasonable. For example, I may truly believe in the flying spaghetti monster but does that mean that anything I say about rocket engines is bupkis?

Ah, OK Rinaldi, I guess I misunderstood the argument on that point a little. But on missiles, WVR kills whether they are guns, IR homing, or radar guided, all still require maneuverability. I think John's point was along those lines and got lost in the guns/no guns argument. The root of that was that long range missiles were the beginning and end of aerial engagements. Admittedly, Vietnam's lessons are mitigated somewhat in that missiles are able to fire when you're pulling more than 2 gees or whatever, but it still is salient. The F4 was a brick with wings because it was meant to be a truck for missiles, carrying along that philosophy and lost out on the maneuvering front much to its detriment.

I would definitely recommend watching The Pentagon Wars. It's a comedy but feels all to real haha. (help me...) @shift8, what credentials do you have over John or anyone else? Responding specifically about the CAP, I imagine it was in place to deal with interceptors that are part of any good IADS? If they wave off, the ground pounders become pickings for GCI MiG 25s in John's example. On the purpose of an air force, wasn't one of the major lessons of WWII that you can't win a war from the air, no matter how hard LeMay tried? CAS was the lifeblood of combined arms in the Btitish, US, Soviet and German armies.

It's all PS. I'm not even playing Combat Mission! It's all a lie!!! Actually, I'm using Kieme's terrain and vehicle textures plus BTR'S Russian Army Regulation Standard. Then I'm running Reshade v3 on top with SSAO and some color correction mostly. Only PS I do on these screenshots is to trim the UI out and occasionally, if I feel like it, remove the ambient occlusion from showing through smoke.

See, mate, you're just being contrarian, aggressive and obstinate. You're not contributing to any discussion with these statements. -- IMHO, even your source about the seizing of the weapons includes an official UAF statement saying (excuse the bad grammar, Google Translate and I don't want to fix it up): "The message of the attack on the Armed Forces of Ukraine public organization" Asker "is nothing but a fake, and the next attempt to discredit the Armed Forces of Ukraine", - the report says. "Сообщение о нападении ВСУ на общественную организацию "Аскер" является ничем иным, как очередным фейком и попыткой очернить Вооруженные Силы Украины", - отмечается в сообщении. So it sounds like the official Ukrainian line is that they confiscated weapons and equipment, but no attack ever took place like you described. But I may be wrong, my Russian is very poor, and definitely augmented by machine translation.

Far side is. I should've put them IN the ford, but I wanted to be able to retreat across it. All-in-all I put too many forces forwards. A platoon each defending the bridge and ford, a platoon in the town, tanks distributed and perhaps recon on interdiction forward would have been a better layout. Oh yeah, I also forgot about the 2x Shturms I have further back. Hopefully they'll see some success (though I've never found them to be that useful in the past...).

Beautiful! 0813 The T-64 at the ford knocks out not one, but two BMP-3s brave enough to attempt the crossing. Meanwhile, the remains of my infantry on the bank are retreating into the town. The platoon is now roughly squad strength. It was a real meat grinder. The BMP-2 at the crossing has a close encounter of the deadly kind with a Russian T-72 across the canal. I think at this point, it's time to stop counting losses and count what I actually have left. 1.Company has taken pretty brutal losses, and the remains of it are all getting rattled. But that T-64 keeps blazing away. At the end of the minute, it's engaging two more BMP-3s it encountered across the canal. Some of my troops surviving the Russian advance have reconstituted in Malooleksandrivka. They're going to bravely find their way back to my lines, probably unsuccessfully. The Russians are making an effort to cross the ford (I should have expected that!) and I'm beginning to doubt my ability to hold it. I can only hope that they delay the Russians enough that 2. Company can at least occupy Pryvitne before it falls to the enemy onslaught. The majority of my forces are in the town, the rest are routed or casualties. I have, as I recall: 2x T-64 2x BMP-2 1x Company HQ 1x Forward Observer 1x Artillery observation vehicle 1x Konkurs ~3x squads of infantry 6x 152mm artillery pieces 2x Su-24 on the way Not a whole lot to stand against, at this point, likely two companies of Russian motor rifles... Good news is that my artillery is going to start pounding an emergency fire mission on the canal crossing any minute now, hopefully catching any Russian vehicles queuing for their crossing unawares with ground bursts.

Yup, I'm not very creative and couldn't remember any other birds!

Okay, I'm using one of Kieme's texture mods, but his also have the white stripes on the Ukrainian vehicles. If the model was pointing to the wrong texture, it'd still be apparent: Left to right: Russian BMP-2K, BMP-2, BMP-2M. And besides some weird lighting on the BMP-2M (since the screenshot key selected it for some reason), looks normal to me. Have you tried repairing the game installation?

I think that is a bug. Unless its super sneaky Russian false flag camouflage? I'll check to see if I have it too when I get home.

For what it's worth, no self respecting Russian watches Russia Today. Well, at least the ones I know, who all emigrated. Many still have dreams of returning, though they are pretty entrenched in their lives here by this point.

Indeed, saw that much to my surprise in the artillery thread. Total convert on the vulnerability of armour. I see now that no one could be hurt by the shell if no one was in the vehicle when it was hit! @kino, I think DMS' question might be fairly reasonable here, even though I very much agree with your sentiment and frustration.

Sometimes I wonder though... He'll get it to me (eventually). While we wait, some totally from CM:BS screenshots. The Ukrainian Su-24 flight Grach was cleared for takeoff in the last couple of minutes and taxi'd its way to the runway. Grach flight, lead callsign 010 and wingman 011 taxi from their parking spots. 010 punches his engines, kicking his heavy aircraft down the runway. The pavement sections are barely absorbed by the suspension on the aircraft's wheels. Bump..... bump.... bump... bump.. bump, bump bump. The bumps suddenly stop as the aircraft lurches into the air. The airfield roars as his afterburner belches hot air into the still morning countryside. (I assure you, I absolutely didn't Photoshop the terrain for fun . I wish it looked that good!) The aircraft separate in the air, each taking its own approach. They fly low to avoid the ever searching Russian fighters that are already crawling over Ukrainian airspace. The safety umbrella of Ukraine's air defense network has so far kept them at bay, but one wonders how for how long it will last... The situation on the ground near Malooleksandrivka is getting critical. 1st Company is in dire straights under an intense Russian attack. The fate of Odessa, and indeed Southern Ukraine, all rests on the brave soldiers of (the non-existent) 26. Mechanized Brigade. DCS got me thinking that I hope future versions of Combat Mission will eventually render aircraft on the attack. I know they don't fit on the map, but seeing aircraft scream in and drop payloads would be pretty satisfying. And before people yell at me saying that they'd be dropping bombs from 30,000 feet, my hunch is a contested airspace is fairer to low and fast. In my DAR, I call the shots, so I'm going to imagine these Su-24s (if they ever reach their targets) will blast over the battlefield to drop their ordnance on their targets, leaving behind 2,000 kg of bombs and a loud sonic boom.

Wow, glad and amazed no one was hurt!

Perhaps my verbiage could use some work! You're definitely right, it would be utterly catastrophic. Cancer and birth defect rates especially in the Midwest and east coast would quadruple or more. It would be terrible! Millions would die outright and many more over the next decades. My point moreover was that life goes on, and the states live on. We're past the days of 20 megaton soviet missiles landing on San Francisco and massive countervalue strikes meant to collapse the government and civil infrastructure. Though I think I'm a little far from my original point in that even with the reduced damage assessments, actors still consider it unacceptable. Though it brings the thought of brinkmanship to play, are we ailing to risk it for Latvia or Ukraine? Is France? Germany? NATO has a good record of cooperation, but is it still as strong when the existential risk to the strongest members isn't really there anymore? Edit: Erm... Guys? I know we're mad at each other and all, but is this really necessary? Steve's probably already at the locksmith making a special padlock for this thread...

The flow quickly transitions from laminar to turbulent somewhere on the forward section of the hood, but flow separation is the biggest problem. You can see it in the car picture as the low-velocity wake behind the vehicle. This causes vortex shedding which is a source of even more drag. But you have a good point. Further research tells me this sensor is on the roof, and has been since the 80s. This particular one is on the M1A2, so I guess it's always been there? http://j-tecassociates.com/military-tank-crosswind-sensor/ So mountains out of molehills indeed. I guess I expected it to be more conformal to the tank body to reduce the chances of it getting damaged.

A good point, though my biggest concern especially regarding movement is that the flowfield around moving objects is generally very chaotic. I wonder whether you'd even be able to measure something akin to the wind in this: And that's a car, which is aerodynamically shaped. Nothing compared to a big fat tank! (I think this picture is colored according to velocity). John, thanks for the information. I guess it really doesn't cause significant enough problems if the Russians have been doing it for so long. I've been trained on a modified Murphy's law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible time, and the worst possible way! I mean, I see cold weather and a little rubber ring and think: that killed six people, but I guess military hardware operates in a different realm than I'm used to!

Wasn't Massive Retaliation the US doctrine before AirLand Battle - any military action against me or my allies means I hit you with everything in my arsenal? I agree WRT to the USSR, though. Nuclear weapons under their doctrine were just another military means against a peer opponent. I think they recognised that they couldn't win a war without their use, so planned accordingly. Perhaps I've been reading too much Herman Kahn, but while the use of nuclear weapons would no doubt be devestating, the equation changed somewhat with the advent of more accurate targeting and nuclear disarmament. Accurate targeting means smaller warheads, most of which are targeted counterforce rather than countervalue due to the second point. Fewer warheads means more are reserved for hitting military installations and especially enemy nuclear assets. After all, what is the objective of any first strike? To destroy your opponent's ability to counter strike. This means destroying warheads in-place and disrupting command and control. Urban centers aren't targets anymore (and as far as I know haven't really been targets since the 50's), instead replaced by actual military installations (some of which may be near cities). The first strike needs to send your opponent reeling so badly that they have no option but to sue for peace with you so you can dictate your terms. Yes, their use certainly means a change for the worse with millions dead and economic disaster worse than the Great Depression, but it's not the end of governance, civilization, or the start of a nuclear winter. It's recoverable, though less so than before due to the lack of focus on civil defence nowadays. I agree with Russia as we know it going the way of the dodo, though. The pressure from oligarchs and governors post-attack likely means the Russian state fracturing under the pressure put on and around Putin for bringing it upon them.

Actually Ashez has a very interesting point and if I recall correctly one of the major points of contention within NATO. A conventional attack on a member state is of course an attack on all other members. We've seen this article called into action before. But nuclear war is another question. I'm not familiar with current nuclear doctrine, but I do remember some blind studies done in the Cold War that found an alarming number of USAF officers wouldn't follow through with orders to conduct a nuclear attack. It begs the question whether US or any other NATO leadership is willing to put tens of millions of their citizens and a couple of decades of economic progress at risk to respond. With the Soviet Union, there was the perceived threat against all of Europe and even the USA. That held the alliance together fairly firmly. Does that same threat exist now? Probably not. With the study I mentioned before, combined with a reluctance to respond from a lack of existential threat it begs the question if the alliance would hold together. Now, the same principles apply to Russia, and I think they stand much more to lose from such an aggressive and brazen action. I don't peg Mr. Putin as a Nixon analogue to play the Madman Strategy to the point of such a tipping point. Also brings the idea of limited nuclear war into mind, with both sides being reluctant to escalate, or even a straight conventional war. Think of the French promise to go nuclear when the Soviets reached the Rhine - when their integrity is threatened, but not before.