Centurian52

We've seen battle rifles in Combat Mission before (FG-42s in the hands of Fallschirmjaeger, and FALs and G3s in the hands of Mujahedeen). But we've never seen full squads completely equipped with battle rifles before, making it difficult to visualize how they will perform when used en-masse. The closest thing we have to squads fully equipped with battle rifles are squads fully equipped with semi-automatic rifles in the form of US WW2 infantry. The biggest difference between a battle rifle and a semi-automatic rifle is that battle rifles have twice the magazine capacity (and some battle rifles can fire in full auto, but that won't matter until we get West German forces), so looking at squads equipped with semi-automatic rifles should give us a pretty good impression of what sections equipped with battle rifles should be like. I figure a Normandy-era US infantry squad with two BARs should have approximately the same firepower as a Canadian Cold War-era infantry section (semi-auto rifles backed up by two automatic rifles). And I figure a Normandy-era US airborne infantry squad should have approximately the same firepower as a British Cold War-era infantry section (semi-auto rifles backed up by a belt-fed MG). I have gone back to the WW2 titles while I wait for the BAOR module, since I want to be mentally comparing the Cold War equipment to WW2 equipment, not to modern equipment, when I get back to CMCW. So I have been seeing a lot of how US WW2 infantry firepower compares with US Cold War infantry firepower (CMCW was the game I was playing the most before backtracking to WW2, so Cold War US infantry firepower is still fresh in my head). And it became apparent pretty quickly that US WW2 infantry have a lot less firepower than US Cold War infantry. On the one hand, I should hope so (otherwise the M16 wouldn't have been much of a step up from the Garand). On the other hand, that probably doesn't bode well for British and Canadian Cold War infantry. But I should add the caveat that I have been seeing Sicily-era US infantry in action, not Normandy-era US infantry. I am playing my CM2 games in chronological order, starting with Sicily, so I still have another year to go until I get to Normandy (I was playing CM1 as well, but I got antsy for the more visually spectacular CM2 games). So none of my regular US squads have picked up a second BAR, like some of them will have done by Normandy, and my US airborne infantry are still making do with the tripod-mounted M1919 (none of my airborne squads have a bipod-mounted M1919 yet). Before the last year or so it had been several years since I was able to play Combat Mission on a regular basis. And since I started playing regularly again I spent most of my time in CMBS, CMA, and CMCW. So as far as recent WW2 experience I only have the 30 or so scenarios that I've played in the last month or so. I want to get a few dozen more WW2 scenarios under my belt before I try to draw too many inferences about the tactical consequences of having semi-automatic rifles instead of assault rifles (despite the reduced firepower, infantry vs infantry combat in WW2 seems to be mostly the same as modern infantry combat, at least from the perspective of tactics, with most of the differences having to do with supporting or opposing armored vehicles). But there is one tactical consequence that I have already noticed with a pretty high degree of confidence. In the Cold War and modern titles the tac-AI's decision to stop and shoot if caught out by the enemy while in the middle of a movement order often seemed like the right move. Their assault rifles provided each man with enough firepower to have a realistic chance of killing or suppressing the enemy, allowing them to then finish their movement order in relative safety. In WW2, the tac-AI's same decision to stop and shoot when it sees the enemy in the middle of a movement order usually seems like the wrong move. While their Garands provide a lot of firepower by the standards of a WW2 rifle, it isn't quite enough firepower to have a realistic chance of killing or suppressing the enemy. It usually seems like it would be much safer for them to just complete the movement order as quickly as possible, rather than stopping in the middle of a kill zone to shoot. The other end of that coin is that the enemy infantry also have less firepower in WW2. So while I think it's a mistake for my infantry to stop in the open to shoot back, the enemy's ability to punish that mistake is limited. The British and Canadian infantry in the Cold War may end up with the worst of both of those worlds. Their SLRs won't provide them with enough firepower to make stopping in the open to shoot a good idea, while the Soviets will have enough firepower to heavily punish that mistake.

Well, my first two opponents never sent back so much as a single turn (and I checked pretty diligently every morning for the first month and a half). I suppose I should probably check if my third opponent is any better, but at this point I really can't be bothered. This total dependence on the reliability of another human is why I've never really gotten into multiplayer for any game (humans are notoriously unreliable). I'd really rather just have a more challenging and human-like AI than have to deal with multiplayer.

One could argue that, I but think they'd be wrong. We called everyone who fought against us in Iraq and Afghanistan terrorists because it was fashionable at the time to call everyone we didn't like terrorists. Not because it actually made any sense to characterize their actions as terrorism. For the most part, when they were targeting US or coalition forces, I think it would be far more accurate, and far more consistent with how we treat pre-21st century wars, to characterize them as guerrilla fighters.

Like I said. Communicating with people is exhausting. Modern technology eliminates the time delay in communicating with people over a wide geographic area. But it doesn't make that communication any less exhausting. If anything, it makes it worse.

It looks like the Leopard 1s are finally going into action. I just refreshed my Oryx tab for Ukrainian equipment losses and I see that they've lost one Leopard 1A5.

Communicating with people can be pretty exhausting. Companies with resources can afford to hire people whos only job is to communicate with the community. What would you expect to see in monthly status updates anyway besides "no, we aren't there yet"? Trying to boil progress down into some sort of tangible percentage is a pretty rough exercise, and more likely than not to be misleading anyway. I think Lethaface put it pretty well over on the 'Annual look at the year to come - 2023' thread.

Not in the history of warfare, no. At least not that I can think of on short notice. But if you look at more minor forms of human on human killing, there is an example that actually fits pretty well. Terrorist attacks. And I hate that I'm going there. I'm usually the first to point out that our fear of terrorism has been blown way out of proportion to the threat it actually poses. But the motivational pattern fits perfectly. Terrorist attacks are conducted without any realistic hope of achieving any tangible political objective. They are conducted by angry people who don't see any way of having their grievances addressed, just lashing out and trying to kill as many people as possible. In that respect the October 7th attacks look a lot more like a really big terrorist attack than like a military operation with a definable political objective.

Just know that I haven't read all the posts that have been made over the last day or so, so I'm not entirely sure what we're arguing about right now. I'm only responding to this one post. It isn't a dirty word. It's just what that lot happened to call themselves. It's the individuals who make up the "reformers" that I take issue with. Not the label "reformer". My biggest issues are with Sprey. That idiot kept insisting to his dying day that the A-10 was a good plane (it isn't), that the F-35 was a terrible plane (it isn't), and that he designed the A-10 and the F-16 (he didn't). I have fewer issues with Boyd. The OODA loop isn't terrible by military acronym standards, but those are pretty low standards. It certainly isn't very helpful. "Think and act faster than the enemy" is already a pretty simple idea to explain to someone, and telling them to "get inside the enemy's OODA loop" really doesn't help to clarify anything. Boyd still isn't someone I could recommend citing as a source if you want to be taken seriously. That's exactly how we approached WW2. That's not a reform. That's a continuation of how we'd been doing things since WW2 (unless there was a period in the Cold War where we stopped doing things that way?). The mantra at the time was "steel, not flesh", meaning that we wanted to do as much of the work as possible with machines and firepower, leaving the humans to do as little dying as possible. And it worked. You can't substitute people entirely of course (at least not until automation gets a bit better than it is now). Sooner or later someone needs to go forward to actually take control of a piece of ground. Being an Allied infantryman in WW2 was still a brutal and attritional job, despite our best efforts to back him up with as much firepower as possible. But it was a heck of a lot better than being a German or Soviet infantryman. Probably the biggest thing going on in the 90s was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the "peace dividend". We could get away with smaller armies not because new technology enabled smaller armies to be just as effective, but because there was no longer a threat that required a large army to guard against. Armies shrank because governments didn't see the point of paying for large armies anymore. Of course I could imagine that senior leadership at the time, looking at their shrinking armies and equipment stocks and with the responsibility of figuring out how to keep their armies effective anyway, would hope that technology could provide the answer. Which may be why you might have noticed an increased emphasis on technology to offset manpower in the 90s.

I called it for 2024 back at the beginning of August. I'd guess that the module probably won't be released until around 3 to 6 months after we get some screenshots, and we haven't even seen those yet (we got some nice screenshots of one of the maps, but no pictures of any new units yet). If they aren't to a point where they have anything visual to show off yet, then it's still going to be a while.

I haven't comprehensively tested it. But my impression is that that kind of penetration is modeled in Combat Mission. At least it feels like heavier rounds are more likely to penetrate walls and foliage than lighter rounds. SMGs will quickly clear out infantry in nearby buildings because of the sheer volume of fire they are putting out, but it looks like a lower proportion of that fire is getting through the walls than rifle or machine gun fire. And 0.50 cals seem to deal with infantry in buildings much faster than anything short of an autocannon. So I'm guessing the SLR should see the benefits in barrier penetration that come with firing a more powerful round in game. That's something I'll need to start paying closer attention to.

Well, British SLRs are only capable of single shots. So yes, it's completely representative of how British infantry fought. But it's not because they place a tactical emphasis on single shots. It's because their weapons are physically limited to single shots. The full auto capability of the original FAL has been completely removed on the British version of the FAL, the L1A1. So even if these soldiers wanted to fire in full auto, they couldn't. But, since it's firing a full power cartridge, not an intermediate cartridge, I'm not sure how controllable full auto from a FAL would be anyway. I imagine it would be bucking around pretty wildly, so much that you would be depending on more luck than skill to actually hit anything. Which is probably why a lot of armies that used a full powered cartridge in their rifles disabled any full-auto capability. The question of how the SLR will perform compared to the M16 is one I've been very interested in. I've been going back and forth, but my thinking right now is that British and Canadian infantry should mostly be fine against the assault rifle armed Soviets (probably). They'll be at a theoretical disadvantage at short range, but I think the situation and positioning should be more important than the weapon most of the time. Obviously a British infantry squad with SLRs and a GPMG will have a massive amount of firepower by WW2 standards. But having a massive amount of firepower by WW2 standards doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be able to compete with the fully assault rifle armed US and Soviet infantry in the late Cold War. Whether or not British infantry will be able to hold their own in this era is part of what I'm really curious about, and a big part of why I can hardly wait for the BAOR module to be released. Again, my current thinking is that they should do fine, but I'll lay out in a moment why that's in question. Unlike the British, both the US and Soviets are armed with assault rifles. The core principle of an assault rifle like the American M16 or Soviet AK74 is that it is a sort of universal small arm. With an assault rifle, there is no need to choose between a semi-automatic rifle or a submachinegun. An assault rifle fully combines the features of both a semi-automatic rifle and a submachinegun. You no longer have a tradeoff between long range firepower and short range firepower like you did in WW2, in which every submachinegun on the squad meant one less rifle and every rifle meant one less submachinegun. An assault rifle can smoothly transition from functioning like a WW2-era semi-automatic rifle at long range, to functioning like a WW2 submachinegun at short range. It does this by firing an intermediate cartridge. It is "intermediate" between a pistol cartridge, and what would have been considered a normal rifle cartridge in WW2. What was found in WW1, WW2, and Korea was that almost all fighting took place at ranges far shorter than what was envisioned when the rifles that were in service in WW2 were first designed. The intermediate cartridge of an assault rifle retains the ballistic properties of a full power cartridge out to the edge of normal combat ranges (about 500 meters), but not beyond. Instead of wasting power on achieving a maximum range that will never be utilized in real combat, you can have a smaller and lighter bullet (so you can carry more of them) with a much softer recoil. The soft recoil of the smaller cartridge makes an assault rifle about as controllable in full auto as a submachinegun (we are talking about aimed automatic fire, not random spraying). But because it is still as accurate as a full power cartridge out to the maximum range that you are likely to encounter in real combat you can, with the flick of a selector switch, have a weapon that is optimized for long range fighting or a weapon that is optimized for short range fighting all in a single package. The theoretical advantage that a full power cartridge, such as the cartridge fired by the SLR, has in range and accuracy only starts to matter at ranges far exceeding normal combat ranges. You would need superhuman eyesight (or optics (which have become more or less universal in the modern day, which is part of why we are looking at going back to something like the SLR (look up the XM7 rifle for more details on that))) in order to take advantage of the theoretically superior ballistics of an SLR. At long range M16s and SLRs should perform pretty similarly. The M16 may have a slight edge, since the softer recoil makes follow up shots a bit faster (your sight picture isn't thrown off as much by the previous shot). But at those ranges they are both functioning as if they were WW2-era semi-automatic rifles (with higher magazine capacities). But as the fighting moves from those longer ranges into close quarters the M16 can, with the flick of a selector switch, give you firepower equal to a submachinegun, while the SLR is still only giving you the firepower of a semi-automatic rifle. Unlike assault rifles, SLRs aren't universal small arms. They are just really good semi-automatic rifles. If you don't think that having a squad made up entirely of submachine gunners gives you a tremendous advantage in close quarters fighting, them I'm guessing that you haven't played CMRT (there's a reason that everyone has switched to assault rifles). Again though, I've been going back and forth myself on how much of a difference this will actually make. One day I'll find myself thinking that the British infantry are screwed, and the next day I find myself thinking that they should prove more or less equal to US and Soviet infantry. So I'm really curious to see how they actually perform when the BAOR module is released.

I don't have any direct experience to contribute (I was about a week old when that war ended, and despite studying military history my entire life, I have never actually fought in a war (I did consider going to Ukraine, but I chickened out (I just didn't feel prepared to die))), so I can't replace a response from Splinty himself. But while airpower has been absolutely invaluable in every war from WW2 on, no war has ever been won by airpower alone. No matter how much the Iraqi military was degraded by air attacks, eventually a ground element was going to have to go in to finish them off. And that's what happened. The war ended after ground troops went in, not before. And as heavy as Iraqi losses were to air attacks, somewhere from half to most of their casualties (unfortunately there aren't exact records for Iraqi losses, so there is a lot of estimating going on) were taken in the four days of the ground offensive, with the other half to minority of their casualties being taken in the six weeks of the air campaign. So, with the necessity of the ground offensive (hopefully) established, how essential were tanks to the ground offensive? I'm sure Coalition casualties would have been higher without tanks, but it might still be doable if you permit the Coalition to retain IFVs. It's hard to imagine how we could have fought battles like 73 Easting and Medina Ridge without either tanks or IFVs though. As things went, tanks and IFVs accounted for a huge proportion of Iraqi losses. Taking those assets away certainly would have meant harder, more prolonged fighting, with higher Coalition casualties. Still, someone could easily point out that the Iraqis were hardly a top tier opponent, and the Gulf War was over 30 years ago in any case. So it doesn't prove the value of tanks in warfare in 2023 and beyond. We had TOWs and Dragons in 1991, but no Javelins and nothing like current numbers of drones. And that would be a fair point that I am not prepared to refute. While I am adamant that tanks are still important today, and I believe that it is pretty obvious that tanks were invaluable in the 1991 Gulf War, I will admit that the value of tanks in the Gulf War does not prove that they remain important today.

They haven't started using the Abrams yet as far as I know (at least none have shown up on Oryx yet), so no information on them just yet. But they should perform similarly to the Leopard 2s. What I've heard about the Bradleys and Leopard 2s so far has been glowing, emphasizing crew survivability. Overall my impression is that the usefulness of these vehicles is severely limited by the small numbers that they have been provided in. After nearly two years of war Ukraine just doesn't have enough tanks and IFVs left to be able to accept any further significant losses, and the small numbers of western tanks and IFVs being provided isn't enough to give them confidence that any losses taken now will be replaced. Regardless of how good a piece of equipment is on a one for one basis, numbers still matter. That's mainly why I really don't think that the 31 Abrams that have been provided are going to make any difference. The M1A1 Abrams that have been provided are good tanks, but no 31 of any tank will ever be enough to move the needle. I was hopeful back when the delivery of Abrams was first announced that the 31 reported merely represented the first batch, not the total number to be sent. But I have yet to hear of any further batches. I seriously doubt that we are witnessing the end of the tank. Drones do represent a significant change in warfare. The battlefield is significantly more transparent now than it used to be. Drones have significantly changed how battles are viewed and coordinated by the leaders involved (company commanders in Ukraine now coordinate their engagements from a command post in the rear, from which they can see the drone feeds from each of their platoons (company commanders are relatively low ranking as officers go (only around 100-200 men under their command), and in earlier wars they would have been in the frontline with their men)). They have significantly enhanced the capabilities of artillery. They have increased the emphasis on overhead concealment and made tactical surprise far more difficult to achieve. But they don't really impact the relevance of tanks. They are an additional threat that tanks need to worry about. Drones can direct precision artillery onto tanks that remain stationary for too long in inadequately concealed positions. Loitering munitions are one more asset that can be used to damage or destroy tanks. But none of this has increased tank losses out of proportion to what we've seen in past wars, nor have they replaced the tank's ability to provide responsive and accurate flat-trajectory fire. People who argue for the obsolescence of tanks point to the large numbers of tanks that we can see being knocked out in the abundance of available combat footage, and to the sparing use of tanks by the Ukrainians. I think people who bring up the first point have a poor understanding of military history. Tanks have always been lost in large numbers in every single war in which they have played a significant role. The anti-tank gun repeatedly proved its superiority over tanks in head to head engagements as early as 1941 in North Africa. The British lost huge numbers of tanks in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917 because the Germans had figured out they could be easily knocked out by artillery firing in the direct-fire role. Pointing to heavy tank losses alone can't prove the obsolescence of tanks in modern warfare, since such heavy losses do not set a modern war apart from any other war in history. The second point, that the Ukrainians have been very sparing in their use of tanks, preferring to use small groups of infantry in most of their attacks, is much more valid. But I think it is easily explained by the fact that the Ukrainians cannot count on timely and substantial replacements for any tanks they lose. Heavy tank losses in earlier wars were acceptable because the armies involved could count on those losses being replaced. The Russians have also started switching to less mechanized, and more infantry heavy attacks. And I think it is for the same reason. They don't have the industrial might of the old Soviet Union, so can't produce new tanks at the rate they are being lost in the war. They've been counting on their large stockpile of stored tanks to replace losses. But a large portion of their stored tanks have already been used up, and it doesn't look like the war is going to end anytime soon. If they are going to make their finite reserves of tanks last as long as they probably need to, they need to be much more sparing in their use of tanks. If the US found itself in a major war today I doubt we'd have the same problem. Like the Russians, we also have thousands of tanks in storage (though not as many thousands), and unlike the Russians we have considerably more industrial potential. We probably couldn't scale up tank production to the tens of thousands per year that was achieved in WW2 (Abrams are a tad more complicated than Shermans), but I'd bet that we could probably scale up into the thousands per year. Not that anyone really knows for sure. No one in US industry in 1940 had the slightest idea of what US industry would be capable of in 1942 either, so we might be able to manage more than we think. Frankly the line that the tank is obsolete is pretty tired at this point. People heralded the death of the tank after WW1, WW2, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In each case they turned out to be wrong. I think there is a long running assumption that tanks are the modern cavalry, and therefore must eventually suffer the same fate as cavalry. I wish I didn't need to point out how absurdly over simplistic that point of view is. Tanks and motorized infantry may have finalized the obsolescence of cavalry, but they are not cavalry. To get things back on topic for this thread, I think the Israelis probably can afford tank losses on the scale we've seen so far. Even if the footage we've seen in Gaza so far really does represent actual knocked out Merkavas (which remains unclear, since none of the footage lasts long enough to show whether or not the hits actually destroyed the tanks (or even whether they were genuine hits, and not intercepted by the APS just short of the tank)). They have fewer tanks than the Ukrainians (I heard around 400 tanks at the beginning of the war, though I'm not sure if that was prewar active-duty tanks or total tank in their inventory). But they are fighting a smaller war, and they can count on their own domestic industry to replace losses without having to count on donations from allies.

Very interesting. Unfortunately, as always, none of the footage clearly shows whether or not any of the vehicles were actually knocked out. I'm surprised that I haven't yet seen any footage of Hamas fighters firing salvos of two or more rockets at the same time at an Israeli tank. It's one of the obvious adaptations to APS. Theoretically the APS shouldn't be able to reset in time to intercept the second rocket of such a salvo. Possible explanations that I can think of at short notice include: 1. The APS is less effective or less common than I'd assumed. Making such tactics unnecessary. 2. The APS is more effective than I'd assumed. Making such tactics ineffective. 3. Hamas fighters just haven't thought of it. Hamas my lack enough of a centralized system for disseminating lessons learned to implement such a tactic on a wide scale. 4. They may not have enough RPGs to implement such a tactic. Obviously firing a salvo of two or more rockets at a tank at the same time requires that you have two or more RPGs in the same place at the same time. 5. Other tactics may be effective enough to limit the value of implementing this particular tactic. We've seen Hamas fighters running up to place warheads directly on Israeli tanks, which would get the warhead past the APS. And APS have a limited number of charges, so it may be enough to simply saturate the APS with one rocket at a time until one finally gets through.

Did you get it through Battlefront.com or Steam? If you got it through Battlefront you may need to activate it, but the files should already be present if you have the most up to date version of the game. Do you have greyed out scenarios/campaigns that claim you need a Battle Pack in order to play? If so then your version of the game is up to date enough. You may need to download the latest patch from Battlefront if you don't see any greyed out scenarios. To make those scenarios playable you just need to activate the Battle Pack. See if there is an "Activate New Products" .exe in your game folder. If you don't know where the folder is then you should just be able to right click on the game shortcut and then click "open file location". Once you have the game fully up to date and have entered your product key in the Activate New Products window you should be good to go. If you got the game through Steam then you don't have to do anything. Everything should be good to go as soon as you install the Battle Pack.

That's actually not as unrealistic as you might think. I don't know of any examples of someone IRL trying that exact tactic. But people have tried all sorts of things to get the enemy to reveal their positions. I know of at least one instance in which a jeep was sent speeding down the main road of a town for the express purpose of seeing if any Germans would shoot at them, which is the exact sort of thing that you might call gamey and unrealistic if someone tried it in Combat Mission. But the truth is that Combat Mission is realistic enough that if you've thought to try it in game, odds are that someone has tried it in real life.

I'm pretty certain that the WIA listed at the end of a scenario do not include lightly wounded pixeltruppen. The number of men listed as ok has always been equal to my unscathed plus lightly wounded troops. Some variable percentage of seriously wounded will be listed as KIA at the end of the scenario if they are not buddy aided, which is why you will count more light red bases than the end screen lists as WIA. The end screen will list fewer KIA and more WIA if you buddy aid all of your seriously wounded. From a game mechanics perspective there is no difference between seriously wounded and KIA apart from which category they are counted in on the end screen. A casualty is a casualty in the eyes of the scoring system and replenishment parameters. But I always try to buddy aid as many of my seriously wounded pixeltruppen as practicable anyway since, from a roleplay perspective, I want as many of them to survive as possible.

So there is the 3D modeling, which I'm sure takes up a chunk of time and money. But just as important is accurately modeling all of the technical details. They need to get all of the armor characteristics just right. They need to make sure they are modeling the right kind of ammunition and giving it the right performance. Optics and subsystems need to be accurately modeled. I don't know how long it takes to plug all that information into their system even assuming they already have it, but it certainly takes time to research it (it would be nice if there was somewhere you could go to pull up the exact undisputed characteristics of an old vehicle or weapon, but unfortunately no one has made history that easy yet (or if they have, no one has told me about it yet)). It's not good enough just to get the vehicles and weapons visually correct. They need to be technically correct as well. "Modeling" doesn't just refer to 3D modeling. In simulation lingo a "model" is the full suite of characteristics that get plugged into a simulation to represent something. When someone disputes the results of a simulation you will often hear them say things like "that wasn't modeled accurately". They aren't saying that the 3D model didn't look right. They are saying that some of the technical details that were plugged in were incorrect. In the scientific world a "model" can be entirely mathematical, without any visual characteristics at all.

I doubt it. None of the games have the right forces to properly model it yet. But once the BAOR module is released for CMCW we'll have British forces of approximately the right era. Not sure what can be done to model the Argentinian side, but I'm sure someone can think of something.

The intensity of the fighting may increase as the IDF moves deeper into Gaza city. ISW thinks that Hamas may not have committed heavily to defending the outskirts. Still, the loss ratio should continue to heavily favor the IDF. This is definitely an asymmetric war, not a peer vs peer or near-pear war. It's basically CMSF2 NATO vs uncon, if the NATO forces had APS.

I don't think Battlefront has that kind of AI. The kind of AI that you feed training data to is called a neural network (because the data structures involved have a passing resemblance to a very basic understanding of how biological neurons work). A well designed neural network, fed a sufficient amount of training data, can do things like accurately identify hand-written letters, or guess which pictures are and are not pictures of bees. Very large neural networks, which are fed massive amounts of training data, are called deep-learning networks. Some well known deep-learning networks have gotten very good at specific tasks such as, in the case of chatGPT, convincingly mimicking human language. A neural network would probably not be the most efficient way to create a good wargaming AI. A neural net can't think multiple steps into the future. It can only make the decision with the lowest cost at this particular moment ("cost" in this context refers to the mathematical punishment/reward system that was used to train the AI). That works just fine for things like chatGPT, since all it takes to convincingly mimic human language is to respond appropriately to the most recent prompt. No memory of past prompts nor anticipation of future prompts is required. But a good tactical AI needs to do more than just anticipate the immediate consequences of a decision. It needs to be able to think several steps into the future. It needs to be able to plan. Neural networks (as they exist today) can't plan*. A better approach might be to do something like the General Staff: Black Powder AI. It analyzes the battlefield (using pre-programmed methods (if you watch the video the narrator mentions a spanning-tree algorithm used to calculate frontages), not training data), breaks the situation down into a series of logical statements, and then deduces which courses of action it should take. In the video I linked the General Staff AI was able to identify an exposed flank and assign a unit to conduct a flank attack. For something like Combat Mission the AI would, for example, need to have a concept of fire-superiority. It would need to recognize whether or not it had fire-superiority, and know not to attempt to advance without fire-superiority (that would stop a lot of AI lemming charges). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0K8DnS414o *Which is not to say that neural nets don't have some really exciting possible applications. They can be trained to be extremely good at recognizing objects, so they are ideal for tasks such as spotting and identifying targets. And they will do that way faster than any human ever could. But they will have an error rate, and they will be stumped by any object that wasn't in their training data, so we'll still want a human in the loop to approve/disapprove targeting decisions for at least the next few years until all the kinks are worked out. You could also send such systems into areas that are known to contain no friendly or neutral targets, allowing it to engage targets without waiting for human approval.

Well the good news on that front is that the year is almost over. So we're due for another New Year's bones thread in a couple months.

I've got to second @Anthony P. here. Boyd is not a source to be taken seriously. Same goes for Sprey and the rest of the reformer lot. If it turns out they've gotten something right about modern warfare, then it's more likely a "broken clock is right twice a day" sort of situation, than any real insight on their part. But in the interest of not straying too far off topic, does anyone have any details on how the ground operation is going? Looking at liveuamap it looks like the Israelis are cutting a path between Gaza city and Al-Mughraqa. Looks like a good path to isolate Gaza city without having to engage in too much urban fighting just yet. Last report is a few hours old so it's possible that they've already reached the coast by now. https://israelpalestine.liveuamap.com/

In the short term (next year or two) mainly I'm waiting for the CMCW BAOR module, the CMFB module bringing it to the end of the war, and the CMBN Battle Pack adding Utah Beach and Carentan. In the medium term (next several years) I'm hoping to see a Cold War module adding West and East German forces, WW2 modules/base games moving the clock back to earlier in the war, and a CMBS module or new base game adding all the equipment necessary to recreate the actual fighting of the Russo-Ukraine war. I would love to see them go straight back to the beginning of the war, with Poland 1939 and France 1940, as well as Barbarossa. But they've explained multiple time why that's not practical (too much new equipment would have to be modeled all at once), so I'm anticipating a more incremental move back. Perhaps the next game can turn the clock back as far as Tunisia 1943 for the western front titles, while either a module to Red Thunder or a new eastern front base game might roll the clock as far back as Kursk 1943. And of course, while the CMFB module will bring all the fronts up to the end of the war, that's no reason the clock can't keep incrementally inching forward. One reason why it might be a good idea to include the Pershing in the CMFB module (keeping in mind the more features and units we demand the longer we should expect to wait), even though it barely saw any action, is that it might help pave the way for a base game set in Korea later down the line. Ultimately what I'm really waiting for is for realistic wargames to cover every front of every real and hypothetical war from the dawn of time to the distant future. But my expectations are somewhat more modest than my ambitions.

I hope it has the Pershing. On the one hand, it might be difficult to justify including the Pershing since so few of the things ever actually saw action. On the other hand, getting to see the extreme early side of the Patton family of tanks in action would provide a nice link between the WW2 titles and CMCW.