holoween

Thats not how this works at least in english. The US or the UK seem to disagree with this idea for example.

Yet the us is investing significantly in missile defense possibly rendering the nuclear option void. Also a nuclear war would still mean the end of russia. Except the first thing he said was that it would be a problem. only later did he change that and id argue thats mostly because he cant make any credible threat to Finnland atm.

Youre not looking then. In international relations intentions cant be known and can change so you have to base decisions on capabilities. NATO massively outmatches russia in conventional military power so were they to decide to attack russia has little i could do except nuclear excalation. Having buffer states makes it harder for NATO offensive actions since no forward supply depos can be established early. Now you and i know that NATO has no intentions of ever attacking russia but as pointed out above that could change. Just like NATO was worried about the Warsaw pact because they did have the capability to possibly successfully invade europe even though they might never have wanted to.

If this plot is accurate then that would indicate incredibly inaccurate Ukrainian artillery and lends credibility to the idea a guided shell was used initially. For comparison ive seen a plot of PzH2000 with a 95%cep less than 200m long and less than 50m wide at 37km. If ukrainian arty was even at half the accuracy they could simply have a full battery strike the target and get multiple hits without guiding.

How does this in any way improve the russian position? Or what could they gain from it? Because i cant think of any upside not even in the short term and certainly not in the long term. And it would just be insanity to involve NATO directly

IIRC he was specifically describing a delaying action and in that case it could make sense. But more like -dismount infantry in a good defensive position and let them start to dig in. -move tanks and ifvs forward so they can start engaging early forcing the soviets to deploy then fall back -repeat until you reach the infantries positions for a proper defense timed well this could allow the attrition of the CRP and FSE of a soviet MRR and set them up attacking with the main body into your prepared defenses without much recon and preparation and then giving you time to withdraw during the night or prepare a counterattack. I have however never seen this discussed or put in practice outside of the article you mentioned and it would only be really usefull for this specific purpose. This seems to be the actual employment most of the time

No because neither the greens nor the FDP have a good enough incentive to switch to the union. Id expect them to simply keep pressuring Scholz with the help of the union in parliament and take the voter boost theyll get from it.

if it actually comes to a vote its practically guaranteed to succeed. A vote of no confidence has to simultaniously elect a new chancelor so by the time its launched the new coalition is usually already set up for it.

Scholz significantly lacks behind public opinion and is heavily criticised by all other major parties for it to the point a vote of no confidence has been brough up in the news. The only really defensible argument is that the german army doesnt have any more weapons to give out of its own stock.

Id say they are simply the most realist party around. Yes they have their ideology but when it matters they are willing to diverge and be prgagmatic.

Im not sure i fully agree with you. In that specific instance at least it would have ment almost certain death for whoever stays behind as the next round lands just a few seconds later. And at 2:35 you can see them draging a guy to safety until they get hit.

I think youre making an assumption without realizing. You assume its impossible to defend against fires. To go with your comparison to naval war why hasnt the surface fleet been made obsolete even though long range anti ship missile exist and why do they still move as formations rather than far dispersed over the entire ocean? Simply put because their ability to shoot down incoming munitions especially with layered mutually supporting defensive fires. 1 Surprise on the strategic level has been dead since before ww1 yet it continues to happen even if its just because decision makers dont want to see it. On the operational level it equally should be dead but it continues to not be because while you can track where a formation is you cant know what its intentions are (you can make assumtions but they can be wrong) and that is when youre not being fed wrong informations via decoys etc. and on the tactical level its not even an argument. Even in afghanistan and iraq ambushes kept happening while almost perfect drone cover was available. And thats against troops that arent trained to expect and equipped to deal with constant themal imaging hangin above looking for them. 3 Id argue the exact opposite. Mass will become far more important. A dispersed infantry unit is easy pickings for weapons like switchblade. Sure you might need one weapon per soldier but thats not too difficult. If youre talking about a platoon of ifvs with aps that can cover each other the effort required to take them out increases massively. Its also easyer to defend this with air defense to reduce an oponents recon asstes effectiveness. 2 Manouver warfare is even more important than before. Because with both sides being able to see where the oponent is roughly the one that is able to move faster can create strength vs weakness engagements or avoid being put into them on the defense. Again id say the exact opposite is true at least for terrain. Anyone moving in the open better have serious defensive capabilities or they will get quickly eliminated because they will be seen. Get into a city and suddenly not being seen from drones becomes trivial. For forests the drones have to come a whole lot closer and with proper camo it might still be impossible to detect stationary targets.

Ok i see where the communications issue was. I apologize for not being clear and for not quoting well. I was commenting more on the currently and near future use of UAVs and counters. But to generalize for the future i dont think the mass drones armies are going to materialize. All promo ideas ive ever seen posted basically ignore countermeasures and assume ideal circumstances but ill have to write up a far larger post to cover that and im too tired atm so ill do that tomorrow.

Where am i loosing you? I think the distinction between munitions and carrier systems is quite warranted as they have quite different characteristics in dealing with them. Since even the US army considers the Switchblade a munition rather than a drone i dont see myself beeing way off on this either.

Id define it as a drone if its supposed to survive and as a munition if its supposed to explode on a target.

well lets compare to a us build drone so we dont need to do currency conversions etc to reach a comparable price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#Variants somewhere around 25m so not actually that much cheaper. For the drone vs apache comparison i mostly agree except the profile part. the drone doesnt have much lower wingspan but more importantly the apache can fly below treetop level masking it entirely from enemy observation while the drones will have to fly quite a bit higher making it easier to observe. And still for pure combat performance the apache is miles ahead which is quite important for a weapon intended to be used at the point of main effort. But thats not an manned vs unmanned equal system comparison. for that wed have to compare drones with something similar but manned like:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano#Specifications_(EMB_314_Super_Tucano) It practically costs the same and brings the same capabilities. With the big difference of endurance and having a crew. So less time spend circling overhead but able to operate in an ew environment. This brings me back to a poin that i think everyone keeps ignoring. These drones are at best as difficult to shoot down as a ww2 attack aircraft and at worst actually quite a bit easier as they are a lot slower. Now dont get me wrong i dont think that drones wont make a difference. They do require an adjustment of tactics and a buildup of short range air defense but the drones that most affect combat are not the medium to large sized drones carrying weapons. These can be neutralized with good tactics and equipment. The small and tiny drones used to recon and guide artillery are making a far bigger impact and ar far more difficult to counter.

I think itw quite indicative that the massive supply collumn north west of kiev never got attacked with drones even though it should have been an easy target. So at least the ukrainians are still keeping out of aa coverage with their drones and i dont see why this should be any different for any other nation. Also drones only really have a capability advantedge over manned systems in staying power. An apache can do everything an attack drone can except stay over the battlefield for 24 hours. A drone can also be risked more but a drone shot down is still a weapons system out of action even if it doesnt cost a soldiers life.

A tank can hold more aps charges than an entire infantry platoon can carry at weapons.

It certainly could be jammed if you get a large enough emitter close enough but thats a stationary soft target advertising itself to everyone so its going to get artied quite early on. And you could possibly get radar homing missiles against aps that constantly transmitt but theyre already starting to get "sleepmodes" where the radar is cued by passive sensors and only then activated to intercept the threat. And yes its expensive but youre making afvs practically immune to infantry at fire so thats quite a bit of value

I dont buy the cant shoot down drones argument. Autocannons with airburst rounds are quite capable in dealing with small drones. And short/medium range anti air missile are very easily capable of dealing with medium drones. The core of this threat is exactly the same as light ground attack aircraft during the cold war. Yes their weapons are more accurate but for aa they are a far easier target because the weapons carrying ones are big enough to easily spot with radar and unlike manned aircraft are far slower and less manouverable.

Heard of the Spike ATGM? You can simply fire it from behind a hill when told there are targets and then guide them onto the target. And the swingfire has basically the same idea. The big issue with atgms is that while they currently dominate active protection systems are starting to be fielded and once they arrive in numbers it will make current atgms largely obsolete at least against vehicle targets.

Except you cant do a proper berm drill because your tank wont see the target so you have to pop up and down hoping the tank will spot and shoot in time.

I havent noticed Soviet tanks to be particularly blind though somewhat less attentive. However the randomness of CM spotting is far more noticable so id say most issues being brought up is people expecting far more than reasonable.

Are we talking about the same Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr? Because the Wehrmacht i know was quite enthusiastically giving out panzerfaust and panzerschreck to its units. The Bundeswehr following it did the same with the Carl Gustav and Pzf44 so them not expecting it would require some incredible institutional blindness. Being a stopgap and not as good as wanted doesnt prevent it from being seen and employed as an IFV and drawing conclusions from its use. The wehrmacht proved quite capable of invading Poland and France with stopgap tanks. In 1956 te Bundeswehr had barely started to exist, in 1967 it had IFVs in use for 7 years and in 1973 it was on its second generation IFV. That BMPs werent following the tanks says more about the combined arms coordination than the vehicle used. It actually shows a quite bleak picture for Syrian officers competence and therefore calls taking the lessons lerned by Israel at face value into question. During the second gulf war the initial Iraqi positions were well prepared but mostly destroyed by artillery. The 2008 and 2014 wars saw russian troops mostly counterattacking units on the offensive. I find the assertion that fighting into a well-prepared and well-defended position is a flawed metric for judging an IFVs value. They enable highly mobile operations which are far more effective in winning fights. No matter how well prepared and defended your positions are they can be broken as evidenced during WW2. Also some interesting loss statistics from those middle eastern wars: Second gulf war 1,487 tanks, 1,384 infantry fighting vehicles Employed by US troops resulting in 31 tanks destroyed/disabled and 28 Bradley IFVs destroyed/damaged indicating an equal chance of being knocked out. For the 1982 Lebanon war For Israel its 1,240 tanks and 1,500 armoured personnel carriers employed 130 tanks destroyed/damaged and 175 APCs destroyed/damaged. This suggests that on a large scale tanks arent much more survivable than IFVs. Primary threat are IEDs, light anti tank weapons, far heavier and less mobile than their immediate laternative, used primarily in very rough ground or cities against oponents that reach at best western light infantry standards. Biggest difference is that the Namer weighs 60tons and is supposed to also be usable in conventional war. Also my initial statement was somewhat exagerated so this isnt the hill ill die on. Here is my main problem though and where i wonder why you didnt adress my first post at all. I pointed out issues i have with your method of reaching your conclusion specifically possible weaknesses in the ruleset you used based on your description of what happened. I dont know the ruleset but when my irl experience clashes with my wargaming experience i first question if my wargaming experience has any possible flaws causing the results. You take the results as is without examining the ruleset for possible issues. Your conclusion might very well be correct but it contradicts practically all modern armies with all their combined experience so the burden of proof is on your end to show youre right and everyone else is wrong and you present very little hard evidence. What you present is wargaming under one specific ruleset modified by yourself against the same oponent and to validate you use one military not using IFVs where there might be other reasons involved as i pointed out. At least for me that is not enough so id be quite happy if you could actually clarify. Thank you for the replies so far. Its highly unusual to be able to discuss a book like this with its author so its much apreciated.

This is 100% true and the right thing to do... in 1944 Normandies bocage. In simple terms this is an infantry centric aproach. The infantry carries the battle supported by artillery and tanks. Its a low casualtie high munitions aproach that takes a lot of time. If youre the Soviets in an attack through germany or any Nato country counterattacking you dont have that time. By the time you scouted a hill across the enemy has broken through and is rampaging in your backfield destroying your arty and supplies. The cold war gone hot is a tank war. The tank forms the centerpiece of the battle. All other arms exist to maximise the tanks effect. Your recon is motorized to not slow the tank down. If that means the recon is recon by death then so be it as long as it shows where the enemy is (obviously its preferable to not die but its acceptable in the grand sceme). The Infantry is driving in AFVs to cover the areas tanks arent great in. Clear small villages, patches of forrest, etc. Artillery fire denies positions where ATGMs could be employed to disrupt the attack. Any strong resistance is simply bypassed and only cleared out by followon forces.