Centurian52

Yeah, that's a little too aggressive for my blood. I have been putting more emphasis on speed, mass, and aggression lately (I've been doing a lot of pushing my vehicles right up into the enemy's faces and then dismounting for lightning assaults). But I try to keep the enemy smothered in suppressive fire while I'm doing it. Ideally I want my infantry in the enemy positions seconds after the HE stops. But driving that close to unsuppressed enemy positions and exposing the side of the tank? Maybe they felt comfortable doing this since the drone didn't see any RPGs in the trench? Of course the infantry on the tank are still in a lot of danger. I thought for a bit they had accounted for this by piling up on the left side of the tank, where the turret would provide cover against the Russian small arms (which would explain why they turned the right side of the tank to the enemy). But then I saw some movement on the right side of the turret, so perhaps they were counting on their adamantium balls to provide cover.

Actually I could see this working well for Ukraine. They want to get rid of Russian dominance and influence, not necessarily people from Russia (so long as those people are willing to become Ukrainians). Millions of Russians flocking to Ukraine would be symbolically very powerful. It would mean that Ukraine has fully eclipsed Russia. That Russians now look to Ukraine for leadership, rather than Ukrainians looking to Russia for leadership.

The war will not last forever. I think it's pretty obvious that all talk of Ukraine being a potentially nice place to move to, with a little fixing up, is referring to a time after the war is over. I think my point of view is somewhere between yours and Steve's (depending on what timelines Steve is thinking on). I think I agree with you that it will take more than just a few years to make Ukraine a nice place to live compared with other places in Europe. They have a lot of catching up to do after all. But almost all of the gap between the standard of living in Ukraine and in western European countries is due to Russia. Now that they have pretty completely broken things off with Moscow I think we can expect them to grow very rapidly, just like every other former Soviet bloc country in Europe that realigned away from Moscow. With all the reconstruction money that I hope will be pouring in, Marshal plan style, I think we can expect them to grow far more rapidly than even Poland. Give it a couple decades and I think Ukraine really might be one of the most attractive destinations in Europe.

I know I've seen this image before, I'd just forgotten about it. Something like this is what I was imagining in my earlier post, just with an ATGM, HMG, or AGL mounted on it (maybe an autocannon at a stretch). Add in enough AI that a single operator could effectively command a platoon or 3 or 4 of these things and we're cookin.

3-4 tons is tiny, practically microscopic. Almost all combat vehicles weigh in the tens of tons. If the UGVs are supporting an infantry unit, then the operators are part of the infantry unit. Moving at the same pace as the rest of the infantry, just without having to lug the heavy weapons themselves. If the UGVs are part of an armored unit, then we are seeing the ground version of the manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) concept that is being developed for 6th gen fighters, in which the operators are in a central command vehicle which controls the swarm of unmanned vehicles. Because the vehicle is unmanned does not mean that the unit it's in doesn't have maintenance personnel. It doesn't make much difference that those personnel aren't with the vehicle during combat, because combat is not the time to be conducting maintenance anyway. You conduct maintenance between missions, not during missions. More so than manned platforms?

I'm trying to imagine how the TO&E would work for small, weapon truck style UGVs. Congratulations, the DoD has developed a small (maybe half the height of an average human, without a weapon mounted), tracked, unmanned vehicle with an attachment point for either an autocannon or an ATGM, and with just enough armor to be proof against 7.62. Now how do you use them? Do you attach one to every infantry squad? That could provide some valuable fire-support down to the squad level, and there is little doubt that it has the mobility to keep up with a squad that's pushing hard on the attack. But perhaps you're concerned that the squad leader already has his hands full commanding the human fireteams. Do you add an additional member to the squad whos sole job is to manage the unmanned assets (the UGV plus the little thumb sized recon drones that have been issued down to every squad)? That gives you a 10 man squad (two 4 man fireteams plus a 2 man command element). Perhaps you decide that these are a platoon level asset? In this case you may have a member of the platoon HQ team controlling the "unmanned squad", consisting of a fire-support UGV team and a recon/grenade dropping UAV team. Or scale this up to the company level instead, with an unmanned platoon consisting of a UGV squad and a UAV squad. Or perhaps they are organized as separate units entirely. A platoon sized number of humans commanding a battalion sized number of UGVs as a division level asset, to support or be attached to individual human units as needed.

Looking at something like the Wiesel for inspiration (and a UGV could likely be even smaller, since it doesn't have to make accommodations to fit a driver or gunner) an ATGM mounted on a dedicated vehicle definitely has a larger signature than an ATGM mounted on a tripod. But it would also have a significantly smaller signature than a full sized armored vehicle like an APC or IFV. And it has the added benefit that it can get into and out of position much faster. Both the tripod mounted and UGV mounted ATGMs would be small and concealable enough to conduct some pretty deadly ambushes, but only the UGV mounted ATGMs would be able to bug out moments after springing the ambush.

I stand corrected. Serves me right for relying on memory

When did I ever say they wouldn't?

I know there are satellites well beyond LEO. I specifically restricted my statement to LEO because I know that above LEO large amounts of debris is unlikely to matter (there is just so much volume for things to fly around in without hitting anything at such high orbits). GPS satellites, for example, are unlikely to be terribly concerned with large amounts of debris, since they are way out at geostationary orbit. But the kind of satellites that are most relevant to ISR will tend to be in LEO. This really would make it far more practical to contest LEO. I'm pretty sure that we still have to physically hit satellites with something in order to render them inoperable at the moment. But once we are able to fry them with lasers I can see LEO being much easier to contest without ruining your own ISR at the same time.

Based on what I've seen of the Wiesel in action in CMSF2, I think they would make a valuable addition to the Ukrainian Army.

I should have qualified my statement a bit more. The debris from one satellite getting shot down is bad. But it isn't so bad that it would deter anyone from shooting down one satellite in a major war. I suppose it's easy to get the impression that I was saying that it wasn't bad at all in my earlier comment, since you need to read it with the right voice inflection in order to get the right meaning (stress on the "too" in "isn't too bad"). Regardless of the fallout of shooting down one satellite, I think we agree that you can't scale up to shooting down dozens of enemy satellites without knocking out your own satellite network in the process, along with the satellite networks of every neutral party in the world (none of whom are going to be very happy with you). It probably just isn't practical to contest low Earth orbit.

I could understand wanting to cut the Army back a bit, seeing as we aren't expecting a major land war anytime soon. But the Navy and Air Force will be the two most important branches if things heat up with China. I wouldn't want to cut back too much on the Marines either, seeing as they're likely to be at the forefront of what ground fighting does take place (amphibious warfare is kindof their specialty). Edit: It's unfortunate that I can't delete my comment. But after re-reading yours I realized that you said you wouldn't suggest cutting the Navy, Marines, or the Air Force back

Is anyone else getting a 404 error with Oryx? https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

For us, quite a lot. For them, not much.

#2 is indeed the rub. The debris cloud from one satellite shot down isn't too bad. Every reasonable person tracking the amount of debris in low Earth orbit absolutely hates it whenever someone shoots down a satellite. But both the US and China have tested anti-satellite weapons in the past without causing Kessler syndrome. But what happens when you are shooting down dozens of satellites in a high intensity war with space as an actively contested domain? No one wants to let the enemy's satellites observe their movements unimpeded. But if you get too trigger happy with your anti-satellite weapons you could rapidly set off Kessler syndrome. And that's a bad day for everyone.

There's still China to worry about. Their days as a potential peer adversary have already been numbered by the one-child policy, and I don't think they'll keep gaining on us for long. But they will likely remain a significant military threat to our interests in the Pacific for a few more decades*. *Assuming they don't do something stupid, like invading Taiwan, which destroys their military potential faster.

Ah, I suppose if they were all intercepted then that would explain the lack of reported casualties. They must have been intercepted directly above the city in order to give Haiduk the heart attack he posted earlier.

That's very strange. The clear intensity of the attack, and the lack of reported casualties so far (granting that I'm still 15 hours behind the latest posts) are facts that seem to be at odds with each other.

South Korea requires all males to serve in the military for 2 years. After they have completed their service they go back into the economy and don't need to be maintained as active reservists. This is pretty disrupting to their lives. But it means that if they are ever invaded they have a truly massive reserve of people who have already been fully trained once in their lives, and only need refresher training in order to be fully combat ready.

I still don't think that State Sponsor of Terrorism is quite the right label. There is a difference between sponsoring terrorism and conducting terrorism. They may also be sponsoring terrorists. But what we are angry at them for right now is that they are being terrorists. Edit: But I absolutely agree that we should publicly label them as...something. State Terrorists perhaps?

Yes. But it's easier to move around now more than ever. And it's easier than ever to find out which areas are populated with people who agree with you.

The estimates I heard were about 6 months. The trouble with these sort of estimates though, as Perun has pointed out, is that they assume no one does anything.

They managed to train new tank crews in WW2. In fact it takes months to adequately train any soldier, no matter their specialty (although some specialties take longer than others). And the overwhelming majority of soldiers who participate in any war lasting more than a year were trained from scratch after the war started. The trick is having a pipeline. You train multiple batches of soldiers in parallel. That way you have a constant stream of new, fully trained soldiers every day, even if each individual soldiers takes months to train.

Their stockpiles of Storm Shadow aren't that small are they? I thought they had around 800, with plans to replace them within a decade. So that means they could potentially spare hundreds (I'm guessing low hundreds, since I doubt the UK will hand over all of them before they have a replacement) of Storm Shadows for Ukraine.