Machor

Yes, and this is precisely the problem facing what is now left of the 'West' - which would be the EU, Canada, dunno are Australia and New Zealand still with us? Where will these millions of refugees go? I am very skeptical about them being able to go back to Syria. If Trump's election had been the outcome of such nefarious planning, then Clinton should have won and established a no-fly zone over northern Syria, followed by the partitioning of Syria (which would have kept Assad in power in Damascus and the Russians with their bases). The article that started this thread presented the Russian assets in the theater as certain doom without presenting a detailed analysis of how the US could counter them, and mind you the US does have some very shiny assets. I personally believe even the possibility of such a move by the US would have brought Assad/Putin to the table, because as I mentioned they did not have to lose what they already had.

It is well established that Assad has been targeting hospitals and civilian infrastructure deliberately and systematically, and Russia has already gone out of its way to assist him in this: "U.N. Reports Syria Uses Hospital Attacks as a ‘Weapon of War’" http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/world/middleeast/un-panel-accuses-syria-of-attacking-hospitals.html?_r=0 "Syrian government forces are systematically attacking hospitals and medical staff members and denying treatment to the sick and wounded from areas controlled or affiliated with the opposition, United Nations investigators said Friday in a new report that also detailed the use of hospitals as torture centers by military intelligence agencies. “The denial of medical care as a weapon of war is a distinct and chilling reality of the war in Syria,” the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, which is monitoring human rights in Syria, said in its report. The panel said pro-government forces carried out such attacks “as a matter of policy,” but it also documented instances of attacks on hospitals by opposition forces. ... The report cited a string of attacks on hospitals that were shelled by artillery or bombed by jets, often after aerial reconnaissance by helicopters. ... Patients, too, are among the targets. “In exploiting medical care to further strategic and military aims, government forces have engaged in agonizing cruelty against the sick and wounded,” the report said, identifying a number of government intelligence agencies that have used hospitals as torture chambers. Among these is Military Hospital No. 601 in Damascus, where “detainees, including children, have been beaten, burned with cigarettes and subjected to torture that exploits pre-existing injuries.” “Many patients have been tortured to death in this facility,” the panel said. ... It highlighted the targeting of medical workers as “one of the most insidious trends” in Syria’s civil war. “Government forces deliberately target medical personnel to gain military advantage by depriving the opposition and those perceived to support them of medical assistance for injuries sustained,” the panel said." "Syrian and Russian forces targeting hospitals as a strategy of war" https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/03/syrian-and-russian-forces-targeting-hospitals-as-a-strategy-of-war/ "Russian and Syrian government forces appear to have deliberately and systematically targeted hospitals and other medical facilities over the last three months to pave the way for ground forces to advance on northern Aleppo, an examination of airstrikes by Amnesty International has found. ... Several medical workers from Anadan and Hreitan, two towns north-west of Aleppo, told Amnesty International that the Syrian government’s strategy is to empty an entire town or village of residents by targeting hospitals and infrastructure to facilitate the ground invasion. A doctor from Anadan said: “Hospitals, water and electricity are always the first to be attacked. Once that happens people no longer have services to survive. This is what happened in Anadan. By mid-February most of the residents had fled the city after the field hospital and medical centre were attacked on 2 February. The field hospital is barely operating and the centre closed. The problem is that not everyone is able to leave the city. The ones who stayed behind are elderly people who are in desperate need of medical treatment.” “Hospitals in opposition-controlled areas around Aleppo became a primary target for the Russian and Syrian government forces. This eliminated a vital lifeline for the civilians living in those embattled areas, leaving them no choice but to flee,” said Tirana Hassan. All of the people interviewed by Amnesty International said that there were no military vehicles, checkpoints, fighters or front lines near the hospitals that were attacked and that the hospitals were exclusively serving their humanitarian function. Deliberate attacks on civilians not directly participating in hostilities and on civilian objects, including hospitals and other medical facilities, violate international humanitarian law (also known as the laws of war) and amount to war crimes."

Assad ran a de facto ethnic cleansing campaign that altered Syria's demographics in favour of his powerbase, the Alawites. Why should he want to reverse such an outcome? I haven't heard of any Alawites being among the refugees, and for several years now the refugees had the option of returning to areas under Assad's control where there was no fighting. The BBC article I linked to previously in the thread about the residents of east Aleppo (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37779478 ) shows that people don't trust Assad to honour his word even with humanitarian corridors. Returning to live under him would seem like (and quite probably equal) suicide.

Who will force Assad to 'adjust' or for that matter do anything? I agree, and that means 3+ million refugees on their way to Europe. Good luck!

I don't want Steve to lock this thread, so I'll keep myself from being forthcoming about the US election. Just wanted to share the most intelligent and thought-provoking article that I've read so far about it: "Was it Facebook 'wot won it'?" http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37936225 "A total of 156 million Americans are Facebook members and, according to recent research, two-thirds of them get news on the site. Now that news may often come from mainstream media outlets - perhaps from papers endorsing Mrs Clinton - but what you end up seeing will be determined by who your friends are and what they share. That's where the idea of a filter bubble comes into play - those inclined to vote for Mr Trump will only see stories that reflect their view of the world and the same will apply to those of a liberal mindset. Now you could say the same filtering has always applied - liberal people tended to read liberal newspapers, conservatives got their views reflected back in what they read. The difference was that most editors have tried to do two things - present at least some alternative views and make sure that the facts in any story stand up to scrutiny. Neither applies on Facebook. The News Feed algorithm serves you up whatever it thinks you and your friends want to believe and it certainly does not do any fact-checking."

@VladimirTarasov Thank you for the insight! This kind of first-hand confirmation was what everyone needed. Don't know about updates to the game, but at least we can now keep those commander seats occupied by someone without feeling guilty about being gamey.

I just wish to say that I would hate for BFC to give up on realism if the current situation with the BMPs/BTRs reflects an inherent doctrinal limitation. I checked out how the US does this irl from here: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-21-71/appa.htm The US has separate squad leaders and Bradley commanders, so there's never a dilemma of leaving the squad or the vehicle without a commander. The only guy who gets to choose whether to dismount or not is the platoon leader; should he dismount, his gunner becomes his Bradley's commander, and there's even an alternate gunner riding along to replace the platoon leader's gunner. I have lately been playing GTOS and getting frustrated at my Soviet border guards dismounting from their BTR-60PB whenever they encounter the Chinese, as in most cases staying buttoned up would expose them to less risk. However, this was indeed the doctrine we had when I was in - something about losing the odd soldier to bullets than an entire squad burning to death from an RPG. Therefore, if CMBS is representing real-life doctrine, I'd rather go with this.

Since Aleppo has come up in this thread before and we now know there are Russian mercenaries from Ukraine fighting there, I thought this was worth dropping here. The BBC has done a good job showing the faces of the 'terrorists' in east Aleppo: "Why are people still living in east Aleppo?" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37779478 "To be free is more precious than anything on earth." Every now and then I get so tempted to buy CMSF, but I have CMA and I know I wouldn't be able to make QBs work for me in CMSF. I still consider myself a learner of both CM and modern tactics, and need the flexibility of QB in the 3.0 engine to experiment and approach the beast analytically. I did try to use CMA's editor, but decided it wasn't worth the time investment for my modest personal purpose. If CMSF ever gets upgraded to 4.0, though, I'm a guaranteed sale at CMBS's price point.

Thank you for the insight and the article, Steve! If you happen to have time to read the article I linked to (but only if it won't take time away from CM development ), it is suggesting that there is now this large pool of Donbas veterans, including volunteers, who are fighting in Syria, as distinct from the types who are GRU/SVR operatives. The implications being that this will create a significant pool with much experience in MOUT (sort of like the Rhodesian Bush War did for creating bush war dogs), and that this pool will also be expendable, as illustrated by the failure in politics of one of the mercenaries who was killed. This in turn could translate into new capabilities for Russia in Ukraine.

@kinophile I'll pull you a 'hunter becomes the hunted.' What if Russia infiltrates these cadres with post-docs in MOUT from Syria into Kharkov and Odessa, in tandem with PSYOPS and hybrid warfare, and then sends in mechanized columns to liberate the valiant defenders besieged by government forces? The Separatists are laying claim to both cities in their maps: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37857658 For me, the first thing I can think of with these news about so many Russians fighting on the ground in Syria is how they can now realistically field crack/elite infantry in numbers for urban fights in CMBS in the summer of 2017.

It's official - Syria is now fair game in the CMBS forum: "Ghost soldiers: the Russians secretly dying for the Kremlin in Syria" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-insight-idUSKBN12Y0M6 "The start of this year proved deadly for one unit of about 100 Russian fighters supporting President Bashar al-Assad's troops in northern Syria. ... They were in Syria as private contractors, a small part of an army of such people who are being deployed secretly by the Kremlin in Syria. ... Reuters was not able to determine the precise number of such Russian mercenaries fighting in Syria, nor the total number of casualties they have sustained, but three people familiar with the deployments said there were many units of a similar size to the one that included Kolganov and Morozov. ... Last year, Russia joined the war in Syria, its first conflict outside the borders of the former Soviet Union since the Cold War. Word got out among veterans of the Ukraine conflict that mercenaries were needed. According to three people who knew Morozov and Kolganov, both had fought in Ukraine as part of the same unit that would eventually take them to Syria. It was led by a man who goes by the nomme de guerre "Vagner", who has become a leader of Russian mercenary forces in Syria, one of the sources said. Little is known of his real identity. Two of Vagner's comrades say he had already traveled to Syria as a mercenary in 2013, before commanding his group of Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine. He then headed back to Syria, where Russia began its intervention in Sept. 2015. ... One Ukrainian rebel commander who was close to the Vagner group in eastern Ukraine said many of the fighters there were tempted to fight in Syria because they had found it difficult to return to civilian life. "I meet them now and see how much they have changed. I simply have nothing to discuss with them. They can't imagine any other life but war. That's why they go fight in Syria." ... According to Kapa, Russian veterans of the Ukraine fighting were recruited for ground combat in Syria when it became clear that Syrians would not be able to hold ground without help, despite Russian air support."

And now we get Nazi Japanese schoolgirls: "J-pop row: Sony apologises for Keyakizaka46's 'Nazi' outfits" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37843779 "Sony Music has apologised after one of its Japanese girl bands caused uproar by appearing at a concert wearing Nazi-themed Halloween costumes."

Don't know about Putin, but Kim Jong-un is hiring (http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37515254 ). You shouldn't let your talent go to waste.

What's interesting about that chart is that Russia, Mexico, and Norway were the only three net oil exporters pumping their oil like no tomorrow. Something like corruption and lack of strategic planning in the energy industry comes to mind, but then there's Norway...

It looks like they were also pumping their oil literally like no tomorrow - though they weren't the only ones doing so. The following chart is from 2010:

I can see how this will be difficult to approach taxonomically. Russia's sheer size gives it a freebie power projection capability. Out of curiosity, I did a comparison of GDPs. According to the World Bank, in 2015 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) ), Britain was in the 5th place and France in the 6th, while Russia lagged in the 13th place behind the likes of Italy and Canada (I wouldn't know). Contrast that with the GDPs of the US and Soviet Union in 1990 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpower ), which were the first and second, respectively.

I contend that this is the heart of the problem - they are no longer a world power, but trying to do business like one. Russia is a major regional power with certain political investments overseas, just like Britain and France. Can you picture one of those two trying to mess with the US? Now China is an up-and-coming world power. I would be worried about them as the US, but then I am not after seeing the Chinese students driving white Porsche Panamera and other white luxury cars [white, always WHITE] where I live, or reading about the Chinese flocking to give birth in the US: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/04/01/china-usa-birth-tourists-business-strong/24887837/

I looked into overflight fees and an interesting picture emerged. On one hand, Ukraine had self-interest in keeping its airspace open to collect overflight fees. On the other hand, Ukraine is an IASTA member, and one reason why its airspace would have been preferred over Russia for overflight is because Russia, not being an IASTA member, charges steep overflight fees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air "Countries that are not signatories of the IASTA charge overflight fees as well; among them, Russia, is known for charging high fees, especially on the transarctic routes between North America and Asia, which cross Siberia.[11] In 2008, Russia temporarily denied Lufthansa Cargo permission to overfly its airspace with cargo ostensibly due to "delayed payments for its flyover rights".[13] European airlines pay Russia €300 million a year for flyover permissions.[13]" And respecting @kinophile 's wishes: "Nato-Russia tensions move to Balkans with military drills" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37834388 "Nato is holding a civil emergency exercise in Montenegro while neighbouring Serbia prepares for joint training with 150 Russian paratroops."

"Air operators belatedly avoid Ukraine war zone" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10974823/Air-operators-belatedly-avoid-Ukraine-war-zone.html "... aviation safety authorities in the United States and Europe warned pilots in April about potential risks flying in or near Ukraine airspace. ... Aviation experts last night said operators continued to fly across the zone because it was the quickest and therefore cheapest route for some flights. A former head of group security at airports group BAA claimed last night suggested that cost was a factor in the decision to use Ukranian airspace. Norman Shanks, who is also a professor of aviation security at Coventry University, said: "Malaysia Airlines, like a number of other carriers, have been continuing to use it because it is a shorter route, which means less fuel and therefore less money. ... The Malaysian Airliner was reportedly travelling at an altitude of 33,000 feet – a height considered by those within the industry to be completely safe. Military jets typically fly at much lower altitudes, meaning it would be hard to misinterpret an airliner at such height for a threat, while many ground-based weapons would not reach such an altitude. ... An industry source told The Telegraph: “The belief was that a plane could not be shot down at that altitude, which is why aircraft continue to fly over zones that have wars going on.”"

I got curious about this and looked it up. Ones that are named in the following article are: BA, Air France, KLM, Korean Air Lines, and Asiana (Koreans are once bitten in this). The article also mentions how MH17 was flying barely above the altitude that Ukrainian authorities had closed to civilian flights: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28356745

Poor civvies! I'm sure Russia targeted the population because they are innocent! Which is not the case. Russia has not signed the treaty where cluster bombing is not permitted same as the U.S. And obviously terrorist locations were targeted in this video and it was not a random strike. But of course you will ignore two very important facts. First being that "rebels" hold the city as hostage, and inevitably when they are targeted for the low light Jihadi scum they are it is likely to result in collateral damage. Erm, we've been here before. Why can't we just agree that Russia is using excessive force? This, in itself, doesn't mean the rebels are any better. Sorry to bring this up again, but the point of my post, which apparently got lost, was that Vlad was giving a 180 degree different reaction to the same information based on whether it was being presented by an F-18 pilot or another forum member. Which speaks mountains about how he cognitively processes information, namely that he considers the authority [I'm not using 'authority' as a synonym of trustworthiness here.] of the source first. And the point behind this isn't primarily to go after Vlad (though that, too), but to hark back to the BBC article I had linked to previously (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37766688 ) and its discussion of the Eurasianist hogwash with the relativity of truth. It is simply impossible to argue with a viewpoint that has willingly thrown truth-value out the window. Sorry but Assad's use of chemical weapons is a confirmed fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_chemical_weapons_in_the_Syrian_civil_war I do believe the collateral casualties in Gaza were at a criminal level and won't stick my head up for Israel, but to be fair to them they were using WP to mark a target right before bombing so that civilians could have a chance to escape. And according to Wikipedia WP isn't banned categorically.

Just to clarify my previous post, of course I meant agreeing that Russia is using excessive force and should stop doing so.

Poor civvies! I'm sure Russia targeted the population because they are innocent! Which is not the case. Russia has not signed the treaty where cluster bombing is not permitted same as the U.S. And obviously terrorist locations were targeted in this video and it was not a random strike. But of course you will ignore two very important facts. First being that "rebels" hold the city as hostage, and inevitably when they are targeted for the low light Jihadi scum they are it is likely to result in collateral damage. Erm, we've been here before. Why can't we just agree that Russia is using excessive force? This, in itself, doesn't mean the rebels are any better.

You suggest he is playing 1P hotseat in Syria right now? For much of the Cold War, Syria had de facto control over the Beqaa Valley, which was the Harvard, Yale, and Stanford combined of world terrorism. Did you see my link from BBC?

Just dropping this here as evidence that evil Western news do report stuff against the rebels: "Aleppo siege: UN envoy Mistura 'appalled' by rebel attacks" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37816938 "The UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, says he is "appalled and shocked" that rebels in Aleppo are targeting civilians in the city. The "relentless and indiscriminate" rocket attacks had killed scores of civilians in western Aleppo in the past 48 hours, Mr de Mistura said. ... More than 40 civilians are reported to have been killed in western Aleppo since the rebel attacks began, activists say. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 16 were children. It added that 55 soldiers had also died - as well as 64 rebels."