HerrTom

Seems like US commanders do not share your opinion that Abrams does not need ERA.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/8144/u-s-army-m1-abrams-tanks-in-europe-are-getting-explosive-reactive-armor

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My understanding is by saying "infantry held AT weapons being fired from complex geometries" you meant ligher hand-held RPGs as an antithesis to heavier tripod-based ATGMs. No doubt Trophy provides protection against RPGs as well but I believe your statement that was the main intention of Trophy development is invalid. Here's an excerpt from "Hezbollah anti-amour tactics and weapons. Assessment of the Second Lebanon War By Col. David Eshel":
Realizing the capabilities of the Merkava 4 tank, Hezbollah allocated their most advanced weaponry to combat this advanced tank, engaging these tanks exclusively with the heavier, more capable missiles such as 9M133 AT-14 Kornet, 9M131 Metis M and RPG-29. RPG-29 and 9M113 Konkurs (AT-5) were employed mostly against Merkava 3 and 2 while non-tandem weapons, such as Tow, Fagot and improved RPG 7Vs were left to engage other armored vehicles such as AIFV My points:
In many interviews after 2006 Lebanon War Israeli said that they underestimated the threat posed by modern heavy ATGMs and Israli tanks sustained considerable losses. Second Lebanon War's battles was fought mostly in rural rather than urban settings. Israel dispatched a special diplomatic mission to Russia to compain s"pecifically about Syria's passing of its Russia's supplied Kornet heavy ATGM to Hezbollah. Israel sped up testing and system selection for APS right after the war. Since hard-kill APS poses a considerable danger to nearby infantry Israel changed their urban warfare doctrine after the Trophy was inducted into the armored force. Infantry now follows tanks at a distance. This difficulties in infantry-tank cooperation was actually one of the main criticism of the Trophy implementation. So I do believe your statement that "TROPHY is intended to protect tanks in urban environments from infantry held AT weapons" is misleading.
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Can you provide specific names/models for those "most modern and lethal ATGMs, which only exist in double digit numbers"?
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Kornet vs. American Abrams, 2003 Iraqi War: from 2 to 4 reported penetrations, tanks disabled. Iraqi military possessed limited number of Kornets as they have never been officially supplied, only few were smuggled from Syria. RPG-29 vs. American Abrams, 2003 Iraqi War: 3 reported penetrations, crews wounded/killed. RPG-29 vs. Challenger 2, 2003 Iraqi War: one known FRONTAL ERA penetration, crew wounded. RPG-29 has way less armor penetration than Kornet yet American military prohibited post-Saddam Iraqi Army from buying them http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/weekinreview/big-guns-for-iraq-not-so-fast.html.
"He [General Jassem of Iraqi Army] also complained that the United States wants to supply his troops with RPG-7's, the Soviet-era rocket-propelled grenade launcher. 'Why are they always giving us the oldest models?' he asked, saying he likes the more modern, larger caliber RPG-29, which penetrates armor better. But such weapons could raise a threat against the United States if they fell into the wrong hands ... "The RPG-7 is more versatile than other antitank weapons, which really only have one use -- destroying armor," the senior American officer said."
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Israel is well known for putting specific emphasis on tanks protection. If we put aside the argument that a way more modern Merkava-4 is less protected than American Abrams just by pure magic of it not being American then 2003 Lebanon War may be a good proxy for evaluating modern tanks protection level against current ATGMs.

While the Israeli's have long been an ally of the West, that does not mean they were given access to the same technology and equipment as NATO states were during the Cold War. This means that what the Israeli's designed was their own, and not a derivative of US, UK, and German tank designs. The reason I mention these 3 NATO nations specifically, is because these three nations worked together during the 1960s-70s to develop tanks that all shared similar traits. Chobham armor is one of these traits, along with other advances in armor technology. All of these advances were primarily aimed at increasing the survivability of tanks against ATGM threats, as during the 60s-70s ATGMs fielded by the Soviets were outmatching NATO armor capability. The new generation of tanks jointly developed by these three nations were all designed to defeat Soviet ATGMs. 
Just because the Israeli's had a hard time with ATGMs in 1973, does not mean they had the capability to design new tanks with armor that could effectively defeat ATGMs. As I said, this armor technology was not shared with the Israeli's when it was devised and put to use in the early 80's.
In the 2006 Lebanon war, the Israeli's were using the Merkava tank, which does incorporate some Israeli designed composite armor. During the conflict, a grand total of 50 Merkava tanks (primarily the Mark 2s and 3s) were hit by ATGMs. Only 6 of these were fully destroyed. The source I'll provide here is a wiki link, but there are many cited sources to back up the blurb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkava#2006_Lebanon_War
Its also important to note that this was irregular warfare in an urban environment. A base RPG-7 warhead is enough to punch through the top hatches on the M1A2 Abrams if fired from above or at other appropriate angles. This further reinforces what I said about TROPHY. TROPHY isn't meant to save tanks from frontally impacting ATGMs in a Fulda Gap style armored engagement, it is designed to protect the more vulnerable parts of tanks from complex geometry in urban warfare settings. Yes, it has an application in large scale conventional armored conflict, but its primary purpose is for urban settings. 
As an additional note, some analysts propose that the primary reason Israeli tanks were lost was due to bad tactics at the time, and not due to overly vulnerable tanks. 
All of this is to say, the M1A2 SEPv2 Abrams is extremely survivable against ATGMs in a conventional conflict. In dense urban warfare, tanks always have been and likely always will be extremely vulnerable to a multitude of both low and high tech threats, to include ATGMs, but this can be mitigated by employing proper tactics, and further bolstered by systems like TROPHY to pick up the slack where tactical lapses are made. 

And Israeli armour isn't? I would imagine they'd pay attention to ATGMs after their experience in 1973... What do you have to back this up? Why is their armour not capable of defeating ATGMs by virtue of not being British, American or German? (Obviously superior Kruppstahl notwithstanding! )
I agree with the sentiment on LWRs though, it definitely seems much too fast. Even with thermal optics there is a lot of stuff to look at in a 30 degree arc to survey before you can dial in that team of two or three guys hiding in a bush!

And Israeli armour isn't? I would imagine they'd pay attention to ATGMs after their experience in 1973... What do you have to back this up? Why is their armour not capable of defeating ATGMs by virtue of not being British, American or German? (Obviously superior Kruppstahl notwithstanding! )
I agree with the sentiment on LWRs though, it definitely seems much too fast. Even with thermal optics there is a lot of stuff to look at in a 30 degree arc to survey before you can dial in that team of two or three guys hiding in a bush!

Don't worry John. Rep points are for for pubescent girls As someone once said "Don't let the Buggers get you down!"

You misunderstand, I believe - he's talking about unrealistically fast situational awareness giving unrealistic response times, accuracy and return fire rate to ATGM launches.
Generally, we want to Reduce the hyper fast awareness and turret traverse to more realistic timimgs 
 

Agree with this.....Exported versions of the Abrams are not even close to the spec of the M1A2 SEPv2, let alone the SEPv3.  Saudi versions are alleged to be more capable than the Iraqi versions (probably why the Iraqis want T-90), but they've displayed their usual tactical genius and managed to lose quite a few. 
But I also agree with this.....Modern ATGMs are just plain mean. 
However the issue that is most pertinent is this:
 

Not quite right... Ehhh... CMBS' LWR-equipped tanks (like M1) acquire ATGM-launchers almost instanteniously. What is the basis for such a behaviour when real life LWRs (Thales, Leonardo) give you 30/45 degrees sector??? Instant target acquisition in a 30/45 degrees sector at a distance of 2-4km??? Why not have an Abrams with an ion-gun then?
And it has profound impact on the gameplay. In real life (Yemen, Syria) we see tanks being burned every time they are careless enough while facing an ATGM-armed opposition. In CMBS a platoon of Abramses can simply drive through the whole map blasting everyone around.

Their posters were fun too, but that's probably for another thread. 

It's hard to read at that angle, but I'll give it my best (RTL - Russian as a Third Language) shot.
I was confused deeply by the layout at first, but I think the entire front of the M3 says:
"Beneath the Banner of Lenin - Forward to Victory!"
Под
знаменем ленина
вперед
к победе!
And (with comic juxtaposition, in my opinion) the side says "For Stalin!"
Edit for explanation:
Oh, it appears to have been a relatively common phrase on propaganda posters:

Although, it is wonderfully modified in some to include Mister Iron himself.

"Under the Banner of Lenin, under the leadership of stalin - forward to the victory of communism!"

Disable Depth of Field.  I only use it for screenshots so I apologise if it's not 100% gameplay compatible!

@HerrTom  Okay.  On map US 81mm mortars in CMFB v2.0 Engine 4.  After the spotter was KIA the mortar continued to fire until empty.  Of course for on map mortars you can hit Clear Target in the mortar's command panel and they will cease fire.  An advantage of on map mortars. 

Beautiful!  That's a big boom and I love the framing of the AAVs in the foreground.  Hope to see more! 
Works fine for me.

Seems it worked this time.  Less narration than I would've liked, but I've had both little time to record and am still a little horse, as you can probably tell.  There is a minor editing bug at 4:26, but ignore that!

Yup I agree it definitely does.  Since making video compared to screenshots I've really noticed how wonky infantry movement still is, even after BF's patch.
In other news, I got a new microphone.  Be sure to tell me if you miss the fishbowl effect! 
Why 7 minutes?  I thought I found a nice breaking point compared to the 5/10 minute points I had before.

Beautiful!  That's a big boom and I love the framing of the AAVs in the foreground.  Hope to see more! 
Works fine for me.

don't worry we can wait patiently for some more screenshots.

You tease.
Here's one I think I can get away with sharing

Cool eh ?
P
 

Seems it worked this time.  Less narration than I would've liked, but I've had both little time to record and am still a little horse, as you can probably tell.  There is a minor editing bug at 4:26, but ignore that!

Seems it worked this time.  Less narration than I would've liked, but I've had both little time to record and am still a little horse, as you can probably tell.  There is a minor editing bug at 4:26, but ignore that!

So what happened? Did they tell you to mind your own business?

Seems it worked this time.  Less narration than I would've liked, but I've had both little time to record and am still a little horse, as you can probably tell.  There is a minor editing bug at 4:26, but ignore that!

I'm working on two scenarios, one at NTC with Bil NTC map and the other one is the 3ABCT/4ID arriving at the battle field in Ukraine. They picked up their vehicles at the European Activity Set at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base, Romania. The vehicles were still painted sand color. Need to finish up on the rest of the vehicles.

Now, THAT‘s a nice one. I am surprised, that you remember this ancient movie. 😎

Great pic.  That should be enuff to get everyone hooked on becoming mod sluts! 
Then join "Mod Sluts Anonymous".