Centurian52

I am nearly 60 pages behind now. I give up on catching up, this is my new starting point. I look forward to reading all however many thousand pages this thread ends up reaching when the war is over.

Yes, I have frequently heard the British experience in the 2nd Boer War being credited for the unusually high performance of the BEF in 1914, with experience in colonial warfare in general being highly valued. Despite colonial warfare, even the 2nd Boer War, being vastly different from WW1. It seems that any combat experience at all, even if it is very different from the current conditions, is significantly better than no combat experience. I have no doubt the same is true in Ukraine. The foreign volunteers who have experience in the low intensity wars of the last 20 years are certainly facing a steep learning curve, but are still probably performing much better than the ones with no combat experience at all. And if the Soviets had caused trouble in 1979, a US NCO corps stacked with Vietnam veterans absolutely would have boosted US performance in WW3. I think it might make a degree of sense to give US forces a Vietnam veterancy leadership bonus, that diminishes (or moves up the ranks) for scenarios set later into the 80s (slight leadership bonus in scenarios set in 1979 over scenarios set in 1982), while the Soviets gain an increasing Afghanistan veterancy bonus as we move later into the 80s (slight experience bonus in 1982 scenarios over 1979 scenarios). edit: All of this assuming the scenario is set towards the beginning of the war, and no one has any WW3 combat experience yet.

There is already a Mac version. Every CM game has a download for PC and a download for Mac. Where things get tricky is if you want to run it on Linux, which isn't officially supported, but we've managed to get that working too.

Not as far as I know. The T14 perhaps? Nothing that has been mass produced so far. Of course the KF51 is a brand new tank, and that means that being able to defeat current threats is not good enough. If accepted into service it will be around for decades, and that means it needs to be able to handle near-future threats with the capability to be upgraded to handle further-future threats. A new tank that isn't at least somewhat future-proofed is a terrible new tank.

The first military use of balloons was over 100 years before their usage was fully matured in WW1.

I always feel a strong pang of guilt whenever I hear about or see videos of the International Legion for not rushing over to do my part for Ukraine. I have to keep reminding myself that my knees are no longer fit for war (if this war had broken out ten years ago I would already be over there).

I think we can be pretty confident that all of the aid we send is being used to kill Russian soldiers and break Russian equipment. How much more "properly used" do we want?

I think I revised down to 2 weeks at my most pessimistic, but mostly I figured about a month and a half. That's the timeframe I thought it would take them to take eastern Ukraine. I didn't think they would try to take anything west of the Dnieper, or attempt to storm any dense urban areas, since it would be too costly (I did expect heavy Russian casualties). I also didn't expect them to begin their attack at the start of mud season. So clearly I'm not terribly good at making predictions either. I gave the Russians too much credit, the Ukrainians too little credit, and I didn't anticipate the extent of western support. But at least I can claim a certain amount of predictive high ground over the people who expected Ukraine to fold in two or three days. edit: As far as predicting where things go from here, I think I am in the collapse camp, as opposed to the perpetually frozen-front camp. I think the one thing that could have saved the Russian war effort was an early mobilization. And I think it is now too late for Russia to mobilize. It would take months for reinforcements to start showing up, even without considering that the Russians have now gutted their training throughput by committing the third battalions, and I don't think they have that long before their forces collapse. In any case, I can hardly think of anything more likely to kick the pace of western support into high gear than an announcement of Russian mobilization, and the Ukrainians already have a head start on training on western equipment.

I'd argue that there is also a 100% rational principle at stake here. Continuing the war until Ukraine has regained, at a minimum, all of its pre-Feb 24 territory (preferably all of its pre-2014 territory) may prolong the current war and postpone peace in the short term. But I feel it is important for assuring peace in the long term. Russia cannot be allowed to gain anything from this war, or even be able to credibly claim that it has gained anything. The message not only to Russia, but also to all future potential aggressors, should be aggression does not pay.

Even armies with massive numbers of ATGMs still have fewer ATGMs than machineguns. So I would still expect a lightly armored vehicle, that is proof against machineguns but not against any AT assets, to be more survivable than a soft truck. And if the MRAPS are used primarily for logistics near the front line, and mostly kept away from the actual front line, then I would expect light armor to provide a perfectly adequate amount of survivability. Unless you are advocating going back to horses, you need some sort of vehicle to supply your army.

I don't think it's a matter of inferiority vs superiority. "The" in this context seems to refer to whether the subject is considered a geographic area (a region), or a political unit (a country). When people refer to "the Ukraine" they are speaking of it as a region, and when they refer to it as "Ukraine" they are speaking of it as a country. All that is required of "the X" is that it is thought of as a geographic area, not a as a political unit. But that geographic area could contain within itself multiple smaller political units. We refer to "the Balkans", which is a larger area that contains many countries (in this case it is the "the" entity which is greater). Or it could be a smaller part of a larger political unit. We refer to "the Donbass", which is a geographic area within Ukraine. Like all things in language, this is not a hard and fast rule (what language in history has ever been consistent?). It does not seem to apply to continents. We refer to "Europe", "Africa", and "Asia", not "the Europe", or "the Africa", or "the Asia". Meanwhile there are some political units that are prefaced with "the" such as "the US", "the UK", and "the EU". What the political units that are prefaced with "the" seem to have in common is that they are themselves collections of smaller political units. "The United Kingdom" is a collection of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. "The European Union" is a collection of the various member countries that make it up. "The United States" is a bit of an odd one, since its member states are no longer considered to be an alliance of sovereign countries. But originally the member states of the United States were considered their own sovereign countries under a UN-like federation, which is how it got the name "United States". Where "inferiority vs superiority" comes into play I think is that when Russia-aligned people refer to "the Ukraine" at this point, they are denying that Ukraine is, in the present day, its own sovereign country, and are instead referring to is as a region. They are tacitly following Putin's line that Ukraine doesn't deserve to be a sovereign country, and that its historical place is as a region of Russia.

I suspect the lesson is that there will always be an ammo shortage within the first year of a real war. I doubt it's practical to maintain a large enough stockpile in peacetime, and I suspect it isn't easy to rev up production when the **** hits the fan.

Consider yourself lucky. I'm still three days and 20 pages behind.

It would indeed be an incredibly stupid move for Ji to pull the trigger on an invasion of Taiwan. But there are several reasons to think he might do it anyway. 1. The rhetoric supports it: China has claimed Taiwan as an integral part of its territory for decades. But the intensity of that rhetoric has been stepped up in intensity in recent years. It is likely that the purpose of this rhetoric is to appease an increasingly nationalistic population, more than to justify a premeditated war. But it creates a positive feedback loop, because the rhetoric feeds the nationalism of the population, and the increasing nationalism of the population demands increasingly intense rhetoric. If the loop isn't broken, it is possible that at some point the rhetoric alone may no longer be enough to appease the population. 2. The demographics support it: This one is more statistical in nature than it is based on the specific facts on the ground in China. But historically, countries with an overinflated male population are more likely to go to war than countries with a balanced ratio between males and females. I'm not sure that the cause of this tendency has been nailed down (they could both be caused by a third factor, rather than having a direct causal relationship), and it doesn't guarantee war by any stretch, but it does seem to nudge up the probability by a non-negligible margin (there is a correlation). China currently has an overinflated male population thanks to decades of the One Child Policy. 3. The timing supports it: China's economy and military are still growing more powerful every year. But that boon time is coming to an end very soon. Demographic realities will catch up with China sometime this decade, and their economy will begin shrinking (and inevitably, their military strength will begin shrinking with it). The mid-2020s will represent their peak power relative to the United States, and therefor their best chance of successfully taking Taiwan. I believe the 2020s represent a "now or never" moment for China. If they do not attack Taiwan in the 2020s, they will lose their chance forever. This sort of "now or never" mentality may have echoes throughout history, with it being a possible motivating factor for the aggressing side in WW1, WW2, and even the current war in Ukraine. 4. China's military structure and spending supports it: China's military hasn't had equal growth in all areas. Growth has been disproportionally concentrated in the PLA Navy and PLA amphibious capabilities. Particularly capabilities that have no use but to invade Taiwan. 5. Xi's parallels to Putin support it: Xi may not understand just how stupid it would be to invade Taiwan, because he isn't being fed good intel about how difficult it would be, because he is every bit as isolated as Putin. Both Putin and Xi have surrounded themselves with yes-men who tell them what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear, because the most important quality of an advisor in an autocracy is loyalty, not competence. None of this guarantees war, but the probability of war is definitely way above normal "background" levels.

In fact I do anticipate that we'll be needing to ship a lot of equipment to Taiwan sometime soon. But I anticipate that a war over Taiwan is still a few years out, and we will have time to replace stocks we send to Ukraine. Ukraine is the more urgent need. But I do think we should take a few lessons from how difficult it is to hastily ship off equipment to Ukraine only when it's needed, and start ramping up shipments to Taiwan right now before they are needed. But I also don't think Europe needs to spare anything for Taiwan. Europe should give all it can to Ukraine. The US has plenty of equipment in it's inventory to supply its fair share to Ukraine and have plenty left over to start ramping up shipments to Taiwan as well.

I think the main problem with Trumpism is that the idea that people can be subhuman comes packaged with it.

This all adds up to an explanation, not a justification, of Germany's lackluster response. If anything, it is just about the most damning explanation that could have possibly been provided. "Germany isn't helping much because they don't really care about Ukraine and view the whole situation as an inconvenience" is not an explanation that is going to make me sympathetic to Germany. I was far more sympathetic to explanations that leaned on the assertion that the modern Bundeswehr is in fact very weak and doesn't have much to give.

four days (and 25 pages) behind now. *sigh* I'm still convinced I'll catch up eventually

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I really don't think it's good to whitewash our past. We probably shouldn't pretend that the British Empire were the good guys (you don't conquer a quarter of the globe by being nice). On the other hand, it isn't relevant to any discussion of who the good guys are today. No reasonable person should have any concern that the British will get up to their old habits.

For full granularity the Russian forces would need 16 different tanks (T64BV, T72A, T72AV, T72B, T72B Obr. 1989, T72BA, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80BV, T80U, T80UK, T80UE-1, T80UM2, T80BVM, T90A, and T90M), while Ukraine would need 14 different tanks (T64A, T64B, T64BV, T64BV model 2017, T64B1M, T64BM, T64BM2, T72 Ural, T72M1, T72A, T72AV, T72B, T72AMT, and T80BV). But if you just want to represent 90% of the Russian tanks you just need the 8 most common tanks (T72B, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80U, T72B Obr. 1989, T80BV, T80BVM, and T64BV). And if you are fine with getting 80% of the Russian tanks than you only need the 6 most common tanks (T72B, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80U, T72B Obr. 1989, and T80BV). For the Ukrainians if you just want to represent 90% of their tanks you only need the 5 most common tanks (T64BV, T64BV model 2017, T80BV, T72B, and T72AMT). And if you are fine with 80% of the Ukrainian tanks then you just need the 3 most common tanks (T64BV, T64BV model 2017, and T80BV).

It did create some alarm in the US that Orange Putin was alienating our allies though.

100% true. At least it is my view that the only justifiable use of an army is to deter other people from using their armies (and, if deterrence fails, to fight the ones that use their armies first). And the best possible world is one in which no one has any armies at all. But unfortunately that only works if everyone agrees to disarm. And that is extremely difficult because you need to convince everyone to trust everyone else to disarm, since it doesn't pay to be the only sucker in a world of potential aggressors. It's a perfect prisoner's dilemma.

That would appear to be several non-uniformed (civilian?) personnel sitting on a T-62 (fume-extractor 1/3rd of the way down the barrel, although I suppose the road wheel gaps are a more reliable identification feature, I just can never remember which road wheel configuration goes to the T-55 and which goes to the T-62), which appears to have gotten stuck on the side of the road (hung up on the barriers on the side?) and (I assume) abandoned. Not sure what conclusions to draw. We knew they were bringing in T-62s. If this is showing up in the Kherson area perhaps it is there to free up a higher quality unit for the push on Sievierodonetsk (I suppose that would be a sensible use of lower quality equipment)? Obviously it didn't have the best driver in the world.

That is some signature line material

They have a right to desire whatever they want. They do not have a right to do whatever they want in order to actualize that desire. They are allowed to want to be a great power. They are not allowed to invade a sovereign country to make that happen.