Megalon Jones

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This got me to remembering.  Recall back in the good old days when the pro-Russian crowd called this all propaganda? Sigh, I wish they were right. They are all pretty much gone now, not sure if we will see them again.
I will miss the accusations of being pro-US and short changing the Russians/Soviets.  The arguments about crappy T-72 spotting…harkens to a kinder gentler time…January.

Ive said it before, youve agreed (I think?) and so its old ground, but I'll just say it again. Maybe this time the people on the TV will hear me. 
The west has never broken out of its WWII mentality. WWII (adding in of course a conventional WWIII ca 1989 or Desert Storm) is how we are told war should look. Big sweeping troop movements, hundreds of thousands on the march, big lines dashing across maps sweeping all in front of it. In 1945 it made a lot of sense. Even in the death throes of the Nazi empire this is basically how the war played out. In winter 1944 the Germans attacked a weak point in the allied line, swept all before them, right up until they were stopped first by the herringbone at Bastogne and second by US&UK troops in Belgium. Then it was the Americans turn to do the same. Ditto for Desert Storm. This is the 'normative war' in the western brain. And of course how did it end? Germany surrendered in a tent, signing a piece of paper saying they give up, while the remains of their armies were rooted out of bombed out cities. And in Japan, a US battleship sailed into the port at the enemy capital to receive the surrender, complete with band and photographers. 
We learned a couple times since then that war isn't as much like that as we think it is, but in each case it shows up like an aberration, a scar. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, these were not fun wars for the US. Not popular or easily understandable. Its easy to describe the tactics of the war, but to chart its progression on a map? I havn't even seen professional historians try to write operationally on either one. These wars, IMO, have always been treated like exceptions to the norm. The war we dont want to fight. The war we were tricked into, not just politically but militarily by an enemy too cowardly to just stand up and fight a pitched armored battle (except of course Vietnam had those and we in the US just conveniently forget that fact). The reporting on these wars helps to reinforce the idea that the 'Peer-to-peer' great power war is still more like the mid-20th century than the 21st.
What were seeing in Ukraine though is that war has changed since 1945, asymmetry isn't the 'dirty trick' of the man in the black pajamas. Its the ideal endstate of a decentralized, networked, and fluid form of warfare. I have a very low opinion of the kind of "analysts" and "historians" you see popping up on TV and hocking their right-to-best-seller books. Perhaps you all have gotten that sense from me before. But I genuinely think that the people in this thread have a much better head, and more importantly a much more open an honest manner, than those you see on TV. Someone like Max Boot, and his stupid ****ing hat, isn't writing honest history. Hes writing history to sell a very specific viewpoint to a very specific group of policymakers. If you really read into what hes writing, hes trying to become THE COUNTERINSURGENCY GUY. He has his magic tonic (will also regrow your hair, he totally just wears that hat to look cool) and hes thinks its perfect for you. We had that Fox News Col from a few hundred pages ago, that guy is just doing the same thing. The talking heads get booked because they say what the networks and papers want them to, they either will say the line or, if youre a lucky booker, actually believe it to be true. Then a million people watch that show, or read that article, and say 'hey this guy is onto something, and dont you know he has a cool hat!' So of course when it comes to something like this, their off the shelf solutions are unworkable. Because they dont understand the problem, or are even honest about what they do and do not know.  
WWII is great, because, we won! Unless youre Max Boot in which case 1960-1964 is your paradigm because we could have won if people had just bought the tonic hes now repackaged. But now we see something outside of that mold, which defies easy classification. If you were looking at the direction war has been going in the last few years you see things you recognize. Hell I wont call myself the most forward looking person, but I still see a lot of the 1970s and 80s in all this too. But if youre stuck in the 1960s, or worse the 1940s all this is quite surprising. One of the best examples of this was Reddit, where in the runup to the crisis people were asking genuinely if the US was going to have to start drafting people again. That should say a lot about where the public's head is in regards to warfare. And the mass media, especially the mass news media, put it there. 

At about the 25 second mark he stops mid rant, realises he can't say war and asks, "the... what's in called? What are we waging right now?"  Normally I'd be inclined to pity them for being blind fools but these people are complicit in the narrative so they don't get a pass.

Nailed. It.
I am starting to think that total destruction of Russian ground forces in Ukraine with televised commander surrenders, including full restoration of the Don river frontier, PLUS a threat to retake Crimea is pretty much the only thing that is going to sink in with these people at this point.
My money is on Russian media deciding that perfidious Yankee / British imperialists were the ones who sank the Moskva and then making more noises about escalation. That's all a lot more palatable to Russians that admitting those pig farmers did it, or that it was yet another blunder by your own forces.

these idiots are yelling about "now we'll have to go to war!".  It's an insane asylum!

Looks like regular, the testing scenario also incorrectly put the scenario at day time, clear weather condition. 
I did a testing myself. Even with correct parameter, night time, heavy rain , sea state 5, a novice Moskva can easily defeat a salvo of 16 subsonic Harpoonski.
An EMCON D Moskva can detect the ASM at 16nm away and begin the engagement at 12nm away.
An EMCON A Moskva first detect ASM at 10nm away , the ASM turn on the weapon seeker radar there, broadcast their presence to Moskva . With a 18 seconds OODA cool down SAM left the tube at 7nm away. Most of ASM will be intercepted.
 
But, there is one trick to make a two Harpoonski strike successfully penetrate a radar silence Moskva's defense. Don't use automatic fire. Use BoL fire.  First do a calculation to predict where the Moskva will be when the ASM reach that area. Mark a point on the map then make the ASM aim at that point , in BOL mode ASM will turn on their radar there. It is supposed to be somewhere very close to Moskva.    They will hit the Moskva before her OODA cool down.

Not yet, I'm still working on it. I should be able to finish it in the end of this month or next. (I'm working on both Russian and Ukrainian; plus improve details for vehicles.) 

that’s too bad. I’m not a programmer but it seems like it wouldn’t be too hard to assign an observer rating. A platoon leader would be a one and a dedicated observer could be 3 corresponding to the number of batteries they can’t control.

True. Though, if you prefer to play scenarios as I do, you are stuck with what the designer gives you. I am playing one of the Kriegsburg battles at the moment. 2 hrs duration, big map, lots of artillery assets and no TRP's. I would say that is more often the case than not.
Of course, scenario designers could add more TRP's, but a few extra options for time delay would be a more generic solution.
I was more just curious to know the 'why' of this limitation rather than expecting a fix.

Speaking of code legacy, if the Area Target command could be splitted in two:
Circular target (existing Area target)
Rectangular target (new!)
Perhaps something for Engine 5.

The Russians across all Combat Missions desperately need more complex pre planned bombardments.
How cool would it be to schedule a 15min bombardment at one place then switch to rolling bombardment in another spot immediately after. 
 
Also, it feels so bad only being able to adjust ALL artillery rather than moving individual batteries to different fires.
A man can dream…

I was just wondering what the official rationale for limiting pre-planned artillery to a maximum of 15 minutes after the start of the battle is.
Playing some of the longer missions in Cold War as the Soviets especially, I find that limitation really frustrating. Heavy artillery with its long lead times and requirement for LOS from the observer once the game has begun, usually means that either the advance has to stop for 20 minutes while the observer gets in position and corrects the spotting, or your advance has to do without that incredibly useful asset altogether. Given the guess work involved in using long delay, pre-planned artillery typically means the further ahead you plan the greater the risk that your fires will be ineffectual, I don't see a problem in allowing greater time delays.
What am I missing?

When playing solo QMB I tend to turn up the EW all the way up for both sides.  I just assume that the air would be filled with tons of electronic noise making communication difficult.

My poor bookshelf overfloweth!  Looks like I’m pre-ordering.  

It is exactly what happened at the back end of the Cold War - every exercise I did between 87 and 89 with the UK's 2nd Infantry Division had III (US) Corps "saving our limey @r$e$".  There's' a paper about Field Marshal Bagnall's  thinking and reforms which led to a rethink of how 1 (BR) Corps would fight its battle and, when he became Commander NORTHAG, enacted similar reforms on a wider scale.  This in turn led to a persuasive argument which would see some REFORGER assets being assigned to NORTHAG rather than CENTAG.
The paper is sat on my hard drive - it is called Deterrence and the defence of Central Europe : the British role from the early 1980s to the end of the Gulf War.  I've attached it below if you can't find it online - a good read once you've finished @Jim Storr's book.
 
Bagnall Analysis.pdf

Shoot the action from multiple angles.  Shoot at ground level.  Use easily recognizable scenery to allow people to place the action.  Pay attention to continuity. Shoot more footage than you think you need.  Watch Peckinpah (editing), Romero (more editing), Fuller (how to do more with less) and Kubrick (framing) films for ideas.  Remember that some people get motion sick.  

The N Korean dictator(s) will never start a war. Just sabre rattle. They want to stay alive and in power, not end up like Sadam or Khadafi.
So your thoughts on a civil war seem a very realistic scenario in the future with China and 'the West' being drawn in. If Battlefront creates material for Korea it can reuse a wealth of assets. The assets created could be used for Taiwan (both Chinese and American forces) and the historical Korean conflict (American CMFB and Korean maps). Great idea so when do they start BFC? Wait a sec, they are strategy wargamers. They are prolly working it already right @BFCElvis?
But there are those who would say: "Quit distracting BFC from their real responsibility, a Sci Fi Combat Mission! 🤩 I mean an Early War DLC."

@Megalon Jones, dang you! I saw this and looked it up and saw it was 50% off and cha-ching $$$, out came the wallet and the credit card and down went my bank account balance. And it's your👆🏻fault!
Reminds me of a super advanced game of Harpoon.

Ok, again, if the PLA establishes a foothold on Taiwan with ground forces the war is over. So there is no need for a Combat Mission commercial product of the situation. The defense of Taiwan will be based on air and naval assets. Period. Combat Mission does not do air or naval. 

Agreed.  To only consider conventional military aspects as has existed for the past decades is akin to the 1939 thinking of war as a continuation of WW1 experiences.  I fear that a major conflict will be something we've never seen b4 with nations' infrastructures and society itself being targets.  And we need to be prepared for that shock.

GMT games has a boardgame game on this subject:  Next War Taiwan (there is also a Vassal module)... I am looking at it right now in our office bookcase where we keep our wargame collection.  As @The_Capt says though.. this is a very sensitive subject, fascinating, but sensitive.
Bil

Please no. BF have a habit of predicting locations of conflicts before they happen when they make a modern title and Taiwan is a little close to home.  

I disagree, the two are intimately related and the obvious solution is don't play low rarity games. I just don't see an issue, frankly.

A M2 costing about as much as a BMP means nothing if you can get 15 of the latter but only 4 of the former with standard rarity. 

Gary R Lukas,

Was a Soviet Threat Analyst in Military Aerospace for 11+ years (1978-89), during which the ZSU-23/4 was a very big deal indeed. We used to call it the airplane eater, which the Israeli Air Force learned the hard way during the Yom Kippur War in which SAMs forced IAF planes down into its firing envelope and it shot down planes in droves. From a real world perspective, the A-10 gun drill was to open fire on these deadly weapons from 4000' slant range, since the armor on it could be easily penetrated, whereas tanks couldn't be engaged until 2000' slant range max, preferably closer. Having the AGM-65 Maverick adds an extremely valuable standoff capability to kill the ZSU while staying outside of its engagement envelope. Would further observe the US Army learned to coordinate artillery with air strikes to suppress them or, better, kill them. DPICM would eat them alive, given one or more submunition hits.  

The game is entirely correct in modeling the ZSU-23/4 as a severe hard kill threat, but in reality, it would create a lot of virtual attrition, too, by severely degrading delivery accuracy (jinking and/or higher ordnance release altitudes) on the one hand and putting strike aircraft in the position of dumping stores (bombs and rockets), putting the pedal to the medal and getting out of Dodge forthwith--or dying.  Thus, though the plane came back, the mission was nullified, creating the exact same effect, in terms of mission success, as if the aircraft was shot down inbound on the target. Also, The ZSU-23/4 wasn't alone in the SHORADS role, for it worked intimately with the SA-9 and later SA-13 mobile SAMS. The message here is brutal and simple. If you can't or won't learn to deal with Soviet mobile air defenses, don't buy air support, buy fire support!

Regards,

John Kettler