holoween
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Posts
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Days Won
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Posts posted by holoween
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3 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:
I have seen a fair number, but they were in black and white, motorcycles had sidecars with MG 34 and the soldiers had funny helmets.
On a more serious note: this bizarre throwback to 1940 got me thinking and I realised, that in all those films of both Russian and Ukrainian defensive positions I have not seen much of barbed wire. Since so much of this war is dismounted infantry assaults, theoretically it should be very helpful. What is going on? Is it not useful anymore? Too easy to destroy with modern artillery, or what?
It takes a lot of wire to close any length gap and it takes quite some time to set up.
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
The why do we still hear this mantra coming out of western militaries today? We had a MGen declare this exact statement at the opening of an Operational Symposium last month. I have heard this mantra as the primary reason to have tanks for years now.
I agree entirely that history - and this war in particular - clearly demonstrate that 100 years of worrying about tanks has created a world where tanks are being hunted into extinction by a multitude of systems. I also think we have a cultural block we cannot get past.
Because its true.
Sounds paradoxical but isnt. If youre thrown into a random combat situation and have to deal with a tank and get to choose one weapon system to deal with it youll always choose a tank. Because it can do the job at any distance in any weather condition any EW and air defense situation in very short time.
But tanks cant be everywhere and in a lot of specific circumstances other weapons are more effective and importantly widespread.
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5 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Except when it is strapped onto an FPV. The it appears to do the job so well that Russian tanks need to try to be turtles.
Id say a Nlos ATGM like spike does it even better (impossible to jam, far more reliable effects) but yea If you can avoid the front armour of a tank HEAT is great.
2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:I strongly suspect - even thought it is still quoted as a mantra - that this war is demonstrating that the best thing to kill a tank is not another tank. It would appear that artillery, ATGMs and FPVs are winning that particular argument quite well on their own.
Another tank has never been the best thing to kill another tank since their invention. at least if looked at from what actually killed tanks. Artillery, mines, Infantry with anti tank guns later atgms and hanndheld at have always been the primary killers.
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7 minutes ago, photon said:
Really appreciate your comments. So, here I'm thinking about HEAT and APFSDS rounds. Their time-energy curves look really different.
For APFSDS, the object that delivers the effect is the arrow, it receives all its kinetic energy as it leave the barrel. It gradually loses energy in flight - your note that much of that energy is waste energy is right on - until it transfers the kinetic energy to the armor of whatever you're shooting at.
Compare that to HEAT. the object that delivers the effect is the copper liner of the shell that's (at the last possible moment) formed into a penetrator. At firing, the shell can have much less kinetic energy because it's carrying with it a reserve of chemical energy that, at the last second, gets converted into kinetic energy in forming the penetrator.
So the energy for the same(ish) effect is distributed differently along the energy-time curve, and for the HEAT shell, much of the energy is provided to the actual penetrator when it is literally touching the target. Because of that, as you rightly note, you have much less waste energy, so less signature. And it's more controllable, so you can use fins and whatnot to steer it in the terminal phase (like the modern Javelin).
Does that make sense? I might need to draw some of what I mean.
And yet between the 2 HEAT shells are being phased out in favour of time fuzed HE while APFSDS is being retained.
Thats because HEAT doesnt have the required effect against MBTs and is significantly less accurate then APFSDS. -
5 minutes ago, photon said:
So, I'd suggest that naval artillery shells are the easiest weapon system to defend against (of those available to navies). We developed a great system for defending against them more or less as soon as they appeared: steer into the splashes. Because all of the energy is imparted to the shell at once (in the barrel), you can predict, with great certainty, where the shell will go and when it will arrive where. It's option space for where it delivers its effect totally collapses at the time of firing. You have some large number of seconds to be not-there. Now, if you're at a range where that number of seconds is way too small, you're boned. But the size of the lethality sphere for naval artillery is well understood, so don't be there.
Compare that to a SeaBaby, where the travel energy is imparted very gradually. It has a much larger option space much later in its travel. That makes is much harder to avoid and so far, to interdict; Could a current generation CIWS even see a Sea Baby at the speeds it's moving? How do you separate it from the background noise?
add a guidding kit to the naval shell and that suddenly doesnt work any more.
Time between weapons employment and effect seems to better predict defensibility
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Tbh i found it mostly annoying but not that difficult.
There simply isnt at aside from pzf and pzschreck. So battles consist of hiding your inf in reverse slopes or behind buildings while anihilating the american infantry with mortar and arty fire and then hoping to kill the tanks once they push up unsupported.
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4 minutes ago, kimbosbread said:
Maybe in 2024. I don’t think that’s an assumption we can make in 2025 and beyond. There’s a very real possibility spotting drones get distributed too, ie more of them, smaller, cheaper, passively watching vs an active emitter.
Sure the exact number may vary but the basic principle will stay the same for quite some time.
The reason is that drones have limited payload so if you invest it into a warhead you simply dont have the capacity to also get great range and great cameras.
Well unless you dont care about size and price. If you make it large enough you can have all you want but thats expensive.
So getting a bunch of drones with long flighttime and great optics to recon and then once targets are found direct the attack drones on them is going to allow for greatest effect.
If the attack drones have to find their own target they would end up with far shorter range because they would have to be able to make a return trip if they dont find anything or be lost entirely.
Also getting cued only from friendly units once in contact would be less effective since the enemy now cant be engaged before getting to engage himself.
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1 hour ago, The_Capt said:
It appears that you have not kept up on this war. We are not seeing a "few recon drones spotting" - which will still be a serious problem with this sort of SHORAD system because LOS (with camera magnification) is much father than these systems can likely reach. We are starting to see drones being employed en masse on the sorts of scales that these systems cannot deal with. They are not solely being used for recon, but now strike. Production is reaching massive scales (e.g. reports of 100k per month).
The typical drone attacks tend to be:
At least 1 (usually more like 3+-1) spotting drone to find targets in the first place and to allow coordinating
When a target has been found the fpv drones get send out to attack usually limited by operators. Depending on target and availability arty and drone bombers are also used.
Where SHORAD helps significantly here is in pushing back those spotting drones or shooting them down.
2 hours ago, The_Capt said:This is not "perfect so we shouldn't bother", it is "expensive and not useful for the environment." We have gone down this path before and wind up getting into trouble every time - let's send tanks to a COIN fight...anyone? Massed UAS are not a SHORAD problem, or at least one it can solve. But that wont stop big business from trying to convince us otherwise.
The tanks in COIN is funny to me because ive seen them or more exactly IFVs be highly useful and well worth their money.
2 hours ago, The_Capt said:Here is a scenario - 100 FPVs being driven by 10 crews with repeaters. These are not even fully autonomous, which we know is coming. They are EW hardened but we can even accept 50% attrition, so now 50 FPVs are coming in and attacking a position. These large SHORAD systems now need to track and engage small fast moving UAS capable of treetop and below. Assuming you have submunitions (which there is no evidence of), and each missile can engage 5 drones effectively - hell give them 100 percent; based on the photos, 5 Coyote systems needed to counter this one attack. Ok, doesn't sound too bad. Except for the fact that these FPVs are not working alone. They are linked into supporting fires. So as soon as those Coyotes start firing they are going to get lit up and engaged by PGM indirect fires. But these are trained crews and are scooting, so maybe you only lose half of them, lets say 2 out of 5.
So as per this scenario the SHORAD would be able to deal with an attack that otherwise has the potential to take out an entire battalion. So even taking your scenario at face value that seems like great value.
This also Throws up a dilema. If youre defending against an attack do you attempt to attrit the air defense first which means the attack might go through mostly unharmed by your supporting fires or do you focus on the attack itself which leaves the air defense free to do its job.
2 hours ago, The_Capt said:So how many Coyotes do we have in a Bde? Because the enemy has another 150 FPVs...for todays attack alone. You basically need to stick one or two in every platoon...fantastic, exactly what Raytheon wants. And here is the thing...it will not work. First problem will be clutter. The enemy will fill the sky with all sorts of junk to toss off detection. Fire control and coordination will be a nightmare. And now on a battlefield where everyone is whispering for fear of getting picked up by sound detection, we are going to have dozens of these missiles firing off all over the place. So we have solved the recon UAS problem by making ourselves visible from freakin space. And finally sustainment; the enemy is losing ammunition, we are losing platforms. We cannot keep that up over any period of time. Like other high end western equipment, we will run out and politicians will never sign off on massive "what if" production capacity.
So we bring FPV drones and SHORAD and our enemy brings just FPV drones. As per your example we lose a few vehicles while they lose a battalion. This seems like a reasonably sustainable attrition rate.
And as per your scenario you dont need 2 per platoon but more like a platoon per battalion so 15 vehicles per brigade.
This entire calculus also get a whole lot better once you actually enable your normal vehicles to engage drones aswell which isnt that much of a problem either.
It gets even better when you include your own drone operators hunting down enemy drone operators and fire support.
2 hours ago, The_Capt said:But let's put this all aside or the moment, this approach will not only be challenged by current reality, it will not solve for what is coming next. UAS are going to get cheaper and more distributed. They will combine with UGVs so you can lay them like mines and suddenly have them pop up a few meters away. Drone swarms will be in the hundreds with EFP and launchable sub-munitions of their own. So while we are investing billions in SHORAD as a solution, we are going to find out it was a half-measure, at best.
We are so addicted to big, few and expensive platforms, that our solution to their possible extinction on the battlefield is, more big expensive platforms.
UAS at the current capability will become cheaper. Those for military use will become more expensive.
Want them hardened against EW? Thats another hundred bucks for each.Want them with more than a few km range and still good payload? You just doubled the price.
And all that is only necessary because you introduce countermeasures.
2 hours ago, The_Capt said:So what is the solution? Cheap and many. I want a C-UAS weapon that fits under the barrel of a rifle like a GL but has a 1-2 km range and high Pk - so better than a shotgun. I want UAS, that hunt and kill other UAS. I want direct fire support on lighter unmanned platforms that do not drink a swimming pools worth of gas per km, and are big and hot. I want infantry that can carry more, move faster and go for days without resupply. What I do not want are more big, loud expensive platforms to protect my already big, loud and expensive platforms.
Your ideal counter uas weapon simply doesnt work with physics.
For ballistic weapons youre looking for a 30mm gun with a good fire control system so a few tons at least.
For directed energy weapons you need the emitter itself and a power supply to sustain it aswell and thats another few tons.
For infantry to carry more, move faster and go longer without resupply you need an external powersource. The most effective way to provide what you want is to give the infantry a vehicle. And if youre thinking exoskeletons then you might aswell forget about cheap in the first place.
And while im not trying to understate the effectiveness of drones and i absolutely see them as a vital part of combat there are ways to mitigate their effect.
Starting from low level simply having someone as a dedicated air observer to spot drones and getting them a shotgun or mg on an aa tripod gives a slight chance to deal with them.
Provide each vehicle with a weapon capable of shooting down drones. Already starting btw
Get some dedicated SHORAD vehicles for more effective fire and to protect vital points
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delete please accidentialy hit post
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38 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Looks like another bloated MID solution to my eyes. I count 2 tubes on the veh and 4 on the ground system, not sure how that is supposed to counter a “UAS swarm.” Do they break into sub munitions? If so, how many?
The problem with a lot of these C-UAS solutions is that they have been designed for the last war. iSIL was using small numbers of drones in Iraq so efforts were directed to defeat that threat. No one predicted UAS employment at the levels in this war. Even if each Coyote missile could track and down 5 FPVs, at the scales of employment we are seeing one would need hundreds of these systems to begin to provide coverage. Further, none of this solves for tracking and engaging a UAS flying through trees or a hybrid one that can do both air and ground.
It is a beginning of an arms race that will end up costing billions (if not trillions). And the MID will gladly spend that money on big expensive solutions…just like they have every other time.
This seems a really weird thought process form you.
Just because a system isnt perfect we shouldnt bother?
From what ive seen the vast majority of drones are used for scouting to then call in fires either from arty or fpv drones. If that system can shut down the recon drones it already does an invaluable job. Suddenly an attack cloumn doenst get hit several km away from the first defender but only once they are in direct los to them.
And if it forces all drones to hug the treelines to stay alive they suddenly see far less and become far more vulnerable to other weapons.
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I dont think this has found its way here yet.
https://en.zona.media/article/2024/02/24/75k
This is an article primarily trying to estimate russian losses but does a comarison with ukraine aswell.
Its a russian news org so take with a grain of salt but from a read through and a quick glance at their other work it at least isnt an obvious propaganda site.
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One thing that isnt modeled at all is safety distance. With a morthar you can fire far closer to friendly infantry before getting danger close. So IRL the last prep fires on a position before infantry assaults would usually be morthars.
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27 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
What will change if Ukraine joins NATO?
How about actual troops. There has never been a question on weather NATO territory would be defended or not.
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3 minutes ago, Grigb said:
So, for Germany US is not truly ally. Good that we are all on the same page.
NATO is a defensive alliance. Which is why when the US triggered Article 5 after 911 all of NATO joined while it didnt participate in the 2003 Iraq invasion.
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12 minutes ago, A Canadian Cat - was IanL said:
You don't just start driving on the highway if you expected significant resistance.
Yea but also the ground conditions didnt really allow for anything else.
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2 hours ago, danfrodo said:
I never could hit anything w these in CMSF2. My guys would fire at ~400m and it would miss by 100m, up, left right, down. I hope they are better in real life.
But they look damn cool.
They are awefully modeled in SF2.
The muzzle velocity is far too slow and they are less accurate than at4s somehow even though they have proper optics for aiming and rangefinding rather than just iron sights.
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8 hours ago, Flibby said:
You're right that it was a very arbitrary paint illustration, but interesting points.
I'd be worried about not tying down eny position 1. In a static exercise they might be out of the fight, but in reality they've retained freedom of manoeuvre. They might make nothing of it, or they could flank your attacking force.
The findings I've had with the broad approach let's me orientate my main effort as I go. This approach is more prescriptive and if the enemy setup is not what you expect, it's harder to change on the fly imo.
The tropps from position 1 are not in a position to threaten my flank. They can reinforce the other positions, move to the objective or stay put. If they tey to flank they run right into my fire support. If they reinforce the other positions they fight where i want to fight and so can concentrate my fire and that is if they arrive in time. If they move to the objective ivcan defeat tem in detail. if they stay put i dont even need to fight them.
Now this approach requires good terrain analysis or it will become difficult.
If the enemy deploys vastly different he isnt conforming to the terrain and simply wont be much of a challenge to defeat.
Id also challenge the idea that there is less freedom to manouver with my approach. I have an uncomitted platoon so i can react while broad front approach may find itself engaged everywhere at the same time. That might work in its favour if you have a massive firepower advantedge but id rather not count on that.
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2 hours ago, Flibby said:
I don't know whether this might help anyone, or may be an interesting discussion point or not, but anyway...
I consistently used to look at a map and decide upon an avenue of attack based upon terrain alone. "That looks like a nice foresty side of the map, let's go that way.."
The issues I found were either:
1) The enemy was more concentrated on my avenue of attack, was as it was clear to me was also clear to them;
2) As I had overly committed to the attack on a narrow axis, my flanks were wide open and I was unable to maximise my frontage when my guys were so grouped up.
Having read through a number of WW2 era tactical manuals, my new approach is to attack over a fairly wide frontage overall, but to use narrower frontages on certain routes. Obviously this can be changed if the circumstances require it.
You might think that this spreads your forces too widely, but remember, not all combat power is the guys on the ground. In-fact, most of your force multipliers are artillery, mortars, HMGs, tanks etc. If you focus these on the 'main effort' platoons then it doesn't matter that roughly the same number of rifle squads are spread over the front:
Edit - if this was really fking obvious, I apologise for everyone's time
TBH thats not at all how i think about it.
I know this image is just supposed to be an illustration but if i look at it with this plan overlayed it looks to me like a failed attack. Specifically 3rd pln will be unable to advance due to flanking fire while 1st and 2nd pln will both get pulled into the same forest and get artied.This is what id expect the defensive setup to be. assuming the brown line marks a hill and the green area is forest.
Id also expect position 2 to be lightly defended but have a trp on it to destroy attacking units there and then run a counterattack from position 3 hugging the north west side of the hill.
So for a plan id go with something like this
1st platoon attacks position 3 with 2nd platoon following behind and supported with all arty. 3rd platoon runs a supporting attack on position 2 to tie it down.
this automatically takes all troops on position 1 out of the fight, hits the likely highest troop concentration with arty, clears the way to the objective and cuts the fallback path from position 1 and 2. -
I "played" only in the RT one if one can call that played. My first 2 oponents never showed up and my third one left after a few turns when i started to get my t34s into his backfield while his attack bogged down at the starting line.
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37 minutes ago, MikeyD said:
In modern modern war scoped infantry weapons have proliferated to the point where if you pop your head out someone's going to shoot you. CMCW? The US doesn't even have a scoped rifle in its inventory! If you're unbuttoned you're likely to be shot at but not necessarily shot.
even without the bug making tcs more easily targetable cm has essentially a parade unbutton. IRL you poke your heaad out just far enough for your eyes to clear the turret roof so good luck to any infantry man trying to snipe at that.
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In CM commanders who have thermals available should be buttoned up so they use them.
IRL its unbuttoned all the way. The extra situational awareness makes it easily the default option. Especially given that at least for the Leopard 2 a6 and a7v its still possible for the commander to look at the display of the periscope so it isnt a choice between the optics. Also loader is always unbuttoned to aid spotting unless actively firing.
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43 minutes ago, Sojourner said:
It's just unfortunate that bureaucracy is a necessary evil for an open, rule-of-law democracy.
bureaucracy is essential for any large organisation to function coherently.
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Just now, Battlefront.com said:
I don't think there is much disagreement on this point. But it only matters if the autocracy can achieve what it wants before the democracies clobber them long term.
Steve
Absolutely.
Deocraty is by far the best societal organisation over long timeframes.
They keep educated people, have the easiest time to deal with korruption, make best use of their population and as a result have the best economies.
But short term autocracies can absolutely outperform them. Which is why democracies turned autocracies are incredibly dangerous.
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25 minutes ago, sburke said:
are you asking because you don't think they have one now? and umm, they did win ww2 and pretty much obliterated the axis powers and frankly their economic advantage in ww2 was pretty massive. I mean hell look at the comparison in carrier fleets between Japan and the US and that was the secondary theater as far as the democracies were concerned.
let's not even begin to talk tank production etc.
yea te point is judging efficiency by overall outcome doesnt work. Speed and efficiency of resource allocation only gets you so far. And early ww2 so germany + italy vs france and britain does somewhat illustrate that.
10 minutes ago, JonS said:Do you think that was mere coincidence?
Also, so what? War isn't like competitive ballroom dancing - you dont get extra points for style and panache.
Democracies having bigger economies isnt really a coincidence but also not inherent to democracies.
9 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:Can't compare that. The democracies weren't on a wartime footing. Japan understood this and that's why it attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler didn't understand this at all and was dumb enough to declare war on the US.
The frustrating thing for many of us here is that we see the need for the West to switch into at least 1st gear on wartime production, but all we do is hear the engine revving with the clutch pushed down.
I have thought for some time now that I think I know the feeling of the people that kept screaming in the late 1990s about al Qaeda.
Steve
But thats the point. Autocracies can make decisions and allocate resources faster than democracies can.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
It doesnt sound like much but youre looking at a full truck worth of wire for a platoon position and depending on how its delivered quite some time to set up. In an environment where trenches are quite often not even reinforced it seems to me to simply be too far down the priority list.
Also my rl experience is were usually putting wire obstacles to channel the enemy to particular places by blocking paths in areas where there is not much freedom of movement like paths through a forest.