Centurian52

I use my Slitherine credentials to log into the PBEM system. When I get booted back to the main menu I no longer appear to be logged in. Granted there doesn't appear to be a way to tell whether or not I'm logged in from the main menu screen, but when I go back to the PBEM in Progress folder I'm asked to log back in.

I've never used the PBEM system before and I can't seem to start the first turn. I see '[Grand Tournament] CMCW Round 1 (Turn 0)' I click Continue I see New Password (looks like I'm playing the Soviets) Per instructions I leave the field blank and click ok I see the Save Email Game box, File Name: Valley of Ashes 002 I click Ok I'm back at the main menu and logged out of my Slitherine account

Yeah that's a pretty good line. Of course Firefly is full of good lines.

Wow. This is by far the most incomprehensibly stupid thing I have heard in this war (edit: from anyone outside of Russia) so far (and I do not throw around words like "stupid" lightly. They are really going to need to explain how the concept of an "exit plan" applies to this war. The US doesn't need an exit plan, because US forces aren't in Ukraine. Ukraine doesn't need an exit plan, because why would Ukraine want to leave Ukraine? Russia is the only party to which an exit plan might apply. But their objective is to conquer Ukraine and make it a permanent part of Russia. An exit plan would be an admission of defeat. The United States needed exit plans for Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, because we were foreign forces in those countries that had no intention of permanently conquering those countries (in other words, our forces would eventually need to "exit" those countries). I haven't been watching the regular news or paying much attention to how the average American views this war. But I wonder if this is part of a larger trend of assuming that every single war is like Iraq or Afghanistan. This is not the first time I've heard objections raised about this war that were applicable to Iraq or Afghanistan, but not in any way applicable to Ukraine. Some conversations I've had with some of my coworkers have left me with the suspicion that Iraq and Afghanistan are the only frames of reference they have for any war.

Interesting. I have heard of this phenomenon many times before, but I've never heard a proverb for it before. Unfortunately proverbs don't tend to translate well from one language to the next ("Fear has big eyes" almost works in English, but it might need some workshopping).

Well, spotting in CM is broken. But spotting in real life is just as broken

Because you are talking about one factor one day does nothing to prevent you from talking about another factor the next day. For someone who spends their entire life studying warfare, spending a single day focused on just one factor absolutely does not risk missing out on all the other factors. Nor does it risk missing out on how those factors interact with each other or produce emergent effects (it's easy enough to talk about the trees one day and the forest the next day). There are a lot of days in a lifetime. And of course bodycount is an imperfect measure of scale. It was very consciously a rough and imperfect measure, in part because there is no perfect measure, and in part because this one is good enough for the purpose it was being used for (Pinker's purpose being to illustrate a point about scale invariance, and my purpose being to forestall calling everything a world war).

It was supposed to be a very rough definition, which is why it was just going by orders of magnitude. Pinker is well aware that there are far more dimensions to war than just body count. But he needed a model to help explain what he was talking about to the reader, and this one was good enough (I seem to recall that he was talking about scale invariance in this chapter, and using this model he was able to point out that the ratio of small wars to medium wars was the same as the ratio of medium wars to large wars and so on (with the somewhat terrifying implication that no matter how large a war gets, there is a constant probability of it getting even larger)). He was not trying to denigrate the experiences of people who fought in smaller wars. In fact he did not even begin to imply that their experiences were less valid than the experiences of people who fought in large wars (is the experience of someone who survived a gang war which killed a few dozen people any less traumatic just because the incident was tiny compared to an interstate war?). He was not trying to reduce all of warfare to this one concept. This was a tiny footnote in a big book. Deaths in the hundreds of millions would almost certainly be a nuclear war. And if you want to extend the scale into the billions, that would just be the last war (though it's generally a bad idea to try to extend models beyond their intended scope (all models break down eventually)). This scale obviously will not work in the far future when the size of the human population is very different from what it is today. I like the definition because when we are talking about whether or not war X qualifies as a world war, we really don't need to account for every dimension of warfare. The scale of the war is the only dimension that matters for answering that question, because ultimately what we mean by a "world war" is a "really goddamn big war". It is only defining one dimension, scale. It is perfectly fine to refer to one dimension at a time. In fact it may even be necessary to be able to talk about one dimension at a time to allow us to go into greater detail. Dimensions I've found myself discussing lately include but are not limited to duration, intensity, relative capabilities (peer, near peer, asymmetric), and whether a war is a conventional war or a guerilla war (sometimes called an unconventional war or an insurgency/counterinsurgency). So I'm well aware those other aspects exist. But they don't need to be taken into account when you're just trying to define scale. Not every concept about war needs to capture every other concept about war. It would be impossible to discuss any one concept in detail if that were the case.

Personally I like the definitions offered by Steven Pinker. Small war: Deaths in the thousands Medium war: Deaths in the tens of thousands Large war: Deaths in the hundreds of thousands Historically large war: Deaths in the millions World war: Deaths in the tens of millions No definition of a "world war" will ever be perfect (largely because any definition is obliged to include WW1, which was almost entirely a European war, not really a global war). But the advantage to defining it by the scale of the carnage, rather than by the number or size of the countries involved, is that it neatly prevents a skirmish between all the world's major powers over a desert island which results in two guys getting wounded from being called a world war.

Hmm. Regrettably that actually makes a lot of sense. Leopard 1s have been out of production for quite a while (Wikipedia says production ended in 1984, so even the newest one is 39 years old). However reliable they might have been back when they were brand new, any equipment gets less reliable as it ages. I had hoped that the 100+ (now nearly 200) Leopard 1s pledged to Ukraine would be a boon (not as good as Leo2s sure, but at least the Leo1s were being pledged in more meaningful quantities). But it won't do any good if none of them are in working order anymore.

It would matter politically. Probably not so much that Russian information operations couldn't cope. But it would put additional stress on the Russian information space. Come to think of it, the Russian information space could probably come up with a way to spin the loss of the Kerch bridge, or the land bridge, or any of a number of single blows. But could you imagine if the Ukrainians took Bakhmut, dropped the Kerch bridge, and cut the land corridor all one after the other? With each blow falling just as Russian propaganda is getting its story straight for the previous blow it might just get overwhelmed. Even the most ardent ultranationalist might struggle to cling to their belief in final victory.

The pounding that the Russian Black Sea fleet has been taking recently may force me to reevaluate what a siege of Crimea might look like. I had assumed that even with the land bridge cut and the Kerch bridge destroyed the Russians would still receive a trickle of supplies by sea. If the Ukrainians can cripple the Russian navy in the Black Sea then incoming supplies for the Russians might not just be severely constricted, but reduced to zero.

Darn. And I was so looking forward to seeing some Leopard 1A5Vs

I guess when you're out of artillery ammunition the artillerymen become the ammunition

Interesting that you say that. Money is one thing (along with tank and artillery stockpiles) that this war is running down fairly quickly.

I think a Wiesel is best classified as a tankette. Is a tankette a tank if there are no MBTs? I don't know. But I suppose the answer, whatever it is, is probably relevant to whether or not we refer to small, tracked, gun-armed UGVs as "unmanned tanks". My stance on the issue is that some sort of direct-fire asset will continue to be a part of the ground warfare combined arms team. Whether or not that direct-fire asset is called a "tank" remains to be seen.

I'll DM you with my email address so you have a place to send anything you have, but I'll put what I'm looking for out in the open. And if anything you have is the sort of thing that can just be posted as a link on this thread, that's probably better than sending it directly to me (provided that isn't a problem for whatever contact you get the info from). That way other people that may be interested in this period can read it. I'm really not looking for anything specific. In fact the point is that I don't want to leave any part of the war untouched in my studies. That means covering events that occurred before the Russians escalated the war into a full scale invasion in Feb 2022 (I already have masses of sources for post Feb 2022, to the point that it would take me more than a day to go through everything I have for any given day (if no one beats me to it I could probably write a book with all this information (but who am I kidding, someone will probably beat me to it))). The kind of information I'm looking for is basically the same as what we're looking at for the Feb 2022-present period. Which is to say anything tactically, operationally, or strategically significant. What actions took place between which units, when, and with what result (ground gained, casualties), what equipment was present and in what quantities, which settlements were captured by which side and when, any relevant machinations between political figures or people in high command, any overall casualty or vehicle loss estimates for a given period, or anything else in this period you think might be of interest to a military history nerd. For the Russian invasion of Crimea details like where Russian troops were landed, how many were landed, what equipment they landed with, what routes they took to what objectives, any information about any clashes they had with Ukrainian forces in Crimea. How the initial fighting in the Donbass broke out, what battles were fought and what their outcomes were. Once things settled down into low intensity warfare I suppose relevant events would be things like raids or exchanges of artillery fire, and whether they resulted in any casualties or anything else significant. The more granular the better, but a higher level picture would also be appreciated. Haiduk has already provided a bunch of information, mostly on the initial fighting in 2014, which I'm slowly working on translating, but I don't want to just rely on one source. Even if something you provide basically says the same thing as something in what Haiduk provided, that's still useful since it means the two sources are corroborating each other (no one source is ever 100% reliable, but when multiple sources are in agreement you may be on to something).

No, they did not (there is a lot of myth around the Battle of Agincourt, but suffice it to say that the successful employment of archers against knights in one battle did not portend the successful employment of archers against knights in every subsequent battle). Granting it's a bit ambiguous when knights stopped being knights, but they were going strong for at least another century after Agincourt (if a "knight" is "a warrior in service to a lord", then it was the professionalization of armies that rendered knights obsolete), and expensive heavy cavalry of some kind continued to be in use right up to the beginning of the 20th century. Sure, but it's also cheaper than a platoon of infantry. And the machine gun didn't stop cavalry from proving their worth in 1914. At least in the British army, which had a sensible doctrine for how to use cavalry in the early 20th century (they almost always fought dismounted, unless a particularly tempting target for a charge presented itself). The British retreat from Mons would have been a lot more difficult if they didn't have a cavalry rearguard. They were admittedly pretty useless during the static warfare phase from late 1914 to early 1918 (they could still fight just as effectively as infantry, but without contributing mobility they were basically just more expensive infantry). But they proved their value again when mobility was restored in 1918. What killed cavalry once and for all wasn't the machine gun, but the realization (in the interwar period) that mechanized units could perform every mission that a cavalry unit could perform, but better. Pikes were used alongside muskets for centuries (the "pike and shot" era is a fascinating period). They ceased to be of any value when bayonets were invented. The bayonet essentially allowed every last soldier to be both a musketeer and a pikeman, eliminating the need to bifurcate the infantry into two roles. As a side note, though no one reputable has ever told me so, I strongly suspect this is why muskets are so absurdly long by the 18th century (with the butt on the ground, the muzzle will reach up to your shoulder, and with the bayonet attached it will be about as tall or taller than you are). They are specifically designed to be a hybrid firearm/polearm. They are far longer than it makes any sense for a firearm to be, while being well short of the optimal length for a polearm. But they are about the perfect compromise length between a firearm and a polearm. I don't think I strongly disagree with anything in the rest of your post. I think we both agree that the tank isn't dead yet, but it's on the way out the door. I think it's further from the door than you do, and that it's on the way out for different reasons.

That all sounds very truthy. But at no point in time has that ever been how anything works. Anti-tank munitions have always been far cheaper than the tanks they are meant to destroy. If you ever have an anti-tank munition that is more epensive than a tank, you don't have an anti-tank munition. There is a fancy name for this actually. It's the shot exchange problem, and it has been plaguing air defenses throughout this war as they struggle with decisions over whether or not to expend an expensive missile to shoot down a cheap drone (in fact this is the driving factor behind the big comeback that anti-aircraft guns have made, since they can shoot down cheap drones without expending ammunition that is more valuable than the drone). So no, cheap ways of killing tanks do not render tanks obsolete. Cheap ways of killing anything has never rendered anything obsolete. And I should remind everyone that the tank losses in this war are not remotely unprecidented (no one mentioned heavy losses recently, but I think the number of tanks destroyed is a large part of why so many people seem to think the tank is obsolete). Tanks have taken extremely heavy losses in every single conventional war they have ever participated in (I'll admit that they haven't taken heavy losses in many guerilla wars as far as I'm aware). The Isrealis lost around 400 tanks in just the two weeks of the Yom Kippur War. The Germans lost around 25,000 tanks in WW2, with the combined US and British tank losses being about the same, and Soviet tank losses being over 80,000. Yes, this war is an order of magnitude smaller than WW2, but tank losses have also been about an order of magnitude smaller. As far as I can tell tank losses in this war have been about on par with WW2 when you adjust for scale. I think I am in agreement with Steve that what is likely to render tanks obsolete in the near future is gun armed UGVs. The services that a tank provides on the battlefield are still essential. But once something comes along that can do a better job of providing those services, such as a UGV, the tank will no longer be required. So I think once a country somewhere adopts a gun-variant of a UGV the tank will be obsolecent (and fully obsolete once that gun UGV has been produced in sufficient quantities). When that happens it will not be Javelins or Lancets that rendered the tank obsolete, but a better direct-fire asset. Even when UGVs do render manned tanks obsolete, I'm still not sure that it won't be entirely appropriate to think of them as unmanned tanks.

I wonder how many times the tank has to die before it finally dies? Sorry, but I gotta stick up for the tank here. Maybe it is dead, but I haven't been convinced of it yet (of course I also think the battleship took longer to become obsolete than some people, so my opinion may have limited value). From the combat footage I've seen it looks like the tank is still playing a useful role. The Ukrainians still want tanks (I doubt they would want them if they didn't have a use for them). And I still find tanks to be a valuable part of my own forces in CMCW, CMSF2, and CMBS (for what that's worth (even with the war on CM is still one of my biggest windows into what modern warfare is like)). Mechanized maneuver warfare might be dead. But the tank predates mechanized maneuver warfare (armies were building them by the thousands even before the Germans plugged them into a maneuver warfare doctrine). So while there's probably no maneuver warfare without the tank, it doesn't necessarily follow that there is no tank without maneuver warfare. The key thing that the tank provides is direct firepower. It will become obsolete either when direct firepower becomes irrelevant or something else does a better job of providing direct firepower. Perhaps the tank will become obsolete when UGVs start providing armored direct firepower (or maybe we'll just call those "unmanned tanks"). I think technology is moving in that direction, so (assuming that you think of a gun-UGV as something other than just an unmanned tank) the tank's days probably are numbered. But that number hasn't reached zero yet.

I think you're being sarcastic, but honestly a more detailed fire-panning interface would be awesome. Are you sure you're talking to the audience you think you're talking to? Also, based on what we're seeing in this war, obstacles and breaching ops clearly are a requirement. At least if you want something that can accurately simulate warfare. And that is what I want. If it wasn't, I'd be playing Starcraft.

This is very big news if true! But fully cutting off and destroying an entire brigade is so difficult and rare that I'm inclined to be extra cautious before I go around repeating this (of course, that is precisely why it would be such big news). What degree of confidence do we have in this? Are other sources saying the same thing? Are there any competing narratives that are more modest about what has been accomplished here?

I concur. Some more breaching assets in future CM titles and modules is a must (don't hold up anything already in development for breaching assets though, if they weren't already planned (I'm all too aware of the dangers of feature creep)).

Not heresy at all. I'll grant that there seems to be a positive correlation between people who voice doubts about Ukraine's capabilities and people who have trouble following basic etiquette for healthy discourse. And that may have had the unfortunate side effect of giving the impression that this community is hostile to any naysaying towards Ukraine (maybe it is a little). But I believe this community is open to bad news if it can be supported. I'll admit that I've started to have doubts that Ukraine can reach the Sea of Azov this year. The offensive has been going very slowly after all, and they haven't taken anywhere near as much ground as I think most of us had hoped by this point (I don't think I was expecting them to reach the sea in days, but I had certainly expected that they would have reached the sea after three months). But it's easy enough to find counterpoints. First, the offensive isn't a failure until it is over. And I think the Ukrainians can continue to maintain the offensive for a very long time. Part of their slow progress after the first two weeks is due to a deliberate strategy of force preservation and attrition over gaining ground. The weather will slow, but not stop the offensive. Mud is not helpful for any operation. But it is most disruptive to fast paced mechanized maneuvers. It won't be as disruptive to the kind of small, set piece, infantry-centric attacks that Ukraine has been conducting so far. So I think the offensive will be able to continue through the fall and winter, and into 2024. The Sea of Azov is the big objective. I think the offensive can only be considered a complete success if they reach the sea before the offensive culminates. But Tokmak is also a valuable objective, and I think the offensive can be considered a partial success if the Ukrainians manage to take it, or at least cut the rail line that runs through it, even if they don't manage to reach the sea. The offensive can be considered a failure if they don't manage to even take Tokmak. Things could always speed up if the Russians run out of units they can safely strip from other fronts, they suffer a general collapse, if the Ukrainians pick their way through the last of the minefields, or if the Ukrainians shift their strategy back towards rapid advances (say, if they decide that the Russians have been degraded enough). Things have already been moving a bit faster over the last couple of weeks, so its entirely possible that some of this has already started to happen.

I'm very pro-simulation as a learning tool (I really feel that CMAK, CMBN, CMFI, CMRT, and CMFB have given me insights into the tactical level of WW2 that even some fairly reputable WW2 historians lack). But I think there is a right way to do it. For one thing, just any old game won't do. It needs to model reality as closely as possible (it needs to be a good wargame). The number of rules it takes to do a half decent job of modeling reality is probably more than any human player could be reasonably expected to learn or remember, so I really think computer wargames (which can have an almost endless number of rules, all being processed by a CPU instead of a human brain) are the only way to go (it's actually a bit distressing that the US DoD is still relying on tabletop wargames). It also needs to be recognized that even the best game will never do a perfect job of modeling reality (no offense intended, but I could produce a pretty lengthy list of ways in which even Combat Mission falls a bit short of reality). Any attempt to use wargames to learn or develop modern tactics, or predict the course of a modern war, should begin and end with a discussion of all of the ways in which the wargame doesn't quite match reality, and how those deltas might have influenced the outcome. When using wargames as an aid to studying military history, I think they need to be combined with a healthy amount of reading to help identify elements that the wargame may have missed or imperfectly modeled (I really do advocate this approach, since I think you can learn a lot more about different eras of warfare from wargaming + reading than you can from reading alone).