Centurian52

And even more good stuff:
 
 

I've been playing since 2009. CMSF was my introduction to Combat Mission. I've played every single CM game since then as they were released, from CMBN, CMA, all the way to CMCW. And more recently I've started playing some of the legacy games, CMAK and CMBB. I think some people have a strong preference for either the WW2 or modern titles. But I play both (plus CMA and CMCW, which are neither really WW2 or modern, but right in the middle), and I really like getting a practical feel for the differences between WW2 and modern combat. Combat Mission is far from the only game I play (I'm excited to get home and try out Rule the Waves 3, which should have just released today). Basically anything with a strong claim to realistically model some domain of warfare will catch my interest. But Combat Mission is by far my favorite game. Nothing really comes close.

Hi All, 
First post here, I'm a 44-year gamer who plays a bit of everything but my main interest is anything WW2. I've been playing Gary Grigbsy War in the East, Steel Division, Panzer Corp, Hell Let Loose, and pretty much anything related to WW2.
Took me until 2 weeks ago to actually hear about Combat Mission (probably did but never took note). I took the plunge and picked up Battle for Normandy and have already clocked up 120 hours and barely seemed to have scratched the surface. 
I am so amazed at how low profile this game is considering how addictive and rewarding it appears. I am already installing mods and now pay little interest in graphics, UI, and presentation. It really takes me back to a golden age when you actually bought a good game, book, or film and indulged yourself in it, and keep going back to it! 

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.

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.

This sounds the most realistic to me(from possible optimistic scenarios).
We can be pretty sure that there will be a lot of money pumped into Ukraine for rebuilding destroyed infrastructure and then for improving it in general, this is what happened in every country that joined the UE. Given from how a low level of GDP PP Ukraine will be starting and being a part of EU common market, investments and rapid growth would be assured, it is just too good an opportunity to miss. And one thing that can be said looking at Ukrainians here in Poland is that they are hard working people.
Perhaps the greatest long-term issue for UA is demography. Between low birth rate, war losses, and several millions refugees who might not want to go back the country will be hard pressed to keep growing economically. As you mention though, their chance might be immigration from Russia - there are tens of millions of people there who are (or can claim to be) of Ukrainian descent. If RU turns into a failed state that Putin is leading it to become, perhaps it might work somehow? Learn the language, get rid of RU passport and repatriate to a country (of your ancestors) that gives some perspectives?
 
Edit:
Here's a stream from PISM Strategic Arc 2023 conference hosted by Polish Institute of International Affairs. It is completely in English, and included Q&A session with Polish Chief of General Staff gen. Andrzejczak and SACEUR gen. Cavoli (they even mentioned relation of mass and precision ;P). Surely beats TV if you need some background noise.
 

No source quoted but Jon tends to know his stuff

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?

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.

Close, messy fight:
 

While Googling UGVs I stumbled across this headline (of unknown provenance).
The UGV in the photo looks like a minuature WWI tank, I suppose a design optimized for driving over obstacles.

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

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.

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.

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?

I'm not so sure about that. I have been won over to the view that of all the problems the Germans had during Operation Barbarossa, starting too late was probably not the most significant (and starting earlier runs into the spring mud season, which effects pretty much the entire former western Soviet Union). It was probably more of a combination of mounting casualties, dwindling fuel reserves, and stiffening Soviet resistance that stopped the Germans in 1941 than anything to do with the weather. Their advance had been visibly slowing long before winter actually hit. And the cold weather would have done more harm to the Soviets, since they were the ones on the offensive through most of December and January.

On the topic of Wiesel, a couple years ago Hapless did a Youtube video of a CMSF2 firefight that seems pertinent. An infantry night assault across flat terrain. At minute 7:01 he brings up a Wiesel to assist the German infantry and the little vehicle frankly surprised him.
 

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.

20 minutes of  footage from recent advance around Bahkmut - reporting, interviews and some go-pro (no sub's unfortunately). Most of the go-pro starts around the 11min mark.  Looks like a dismounted UKR vehicle crew falling back at around 13:30?  RU POW at 16min.
 
 

I'm not so sure about that. I have been won over to the view that of all the problems the Germans had during Operation Barbarossa, starting too late was probably not the most significant (and starting earlier runs into the spring mud season, which effects pretty much the entire former western Soviet Union). It was probably more of a combination of mounting casualties, dwindling fuel reserves, and stiffening Soviet resistance that stopped the Germans in 1941 than anything to do with the weather. Their advance had been visibly slowing long before winter actually hit. And the cold weather would have done more harm to the Soviets, since they were the ones on the offensive through most of December and January.

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?

They are not comparable. On paper Aegis is supposed to have far better performance. See the pic below. Patriot PAC3 is a terminal phase interceptor with very short window of opportunity to intercept SRBM and MRBM (see the blue dots there?), Patriot's speed is too low to work on an IRBM.

 
The yellow Aegis BMD line in the graphic seems to be representing RIM-161 SM3,  an Exo-atmospheric interceptor.
As you can see , the right end of the yellow line does not extend to the x-axis, because SM3 doesn’t work in Endo-atmospheric. That makes this graphic a little misleading as the SM2 and SM6, two Endo-atmospheric interceptors deal with terminal phase interception also belong to Aegis BMD. They have better performance compared to Patriot PAC3, although they will have trouble to deal with IRBM.
 
Put hypersonic weapon hypothesis, Kh-47 kinzhal is just an air launched Iskander SRBM with a limited maneuverability MaRV . It’s flight profile might be very similar to DF-21D and YJ-21 ASBM, but I guess DF-21D is the hardest to be intercepted due to its terminal speed. There is no way for Patriot PAC3 to intercept a DF-26B, an IRBM with anti-ship roles. That’s when you need SM3 to intercept before the RV from the IRBM dive into the terminal phase.
 
So far there is no indication that the HGV from DF-17 has the anti-ship capability. But due to the HGV’s flight profile, it will make the detection very very hard, and it is also operating on upper edge of the atmosphere so SM3 is useless in the face of this threat. Also due to its flight profile, HGV won’t have a great potential energy to convert into speed at terminal phase, so THAAD and SM6 should be able to intercept that but it is still too fast and maneuver for Patriot PAC3. We don’t have any open source to study on this, this is just my guess
 
Anyway, the key to successfully intercept a ballistic missile is not about the interceptor missile’s performance, its more about early warning, detection and classification.  There are some discussions on this topic in Matrix game forum CMO section, I can see if I can find the discussion.

City mayor told about losses about 9-00. Most serious accident was in south-western district, likely Kalibr part fell on garage with buses - gareage and four buses burnt. Also large part of missile fell in zoo. Several dozens cars were damaged with fragments. Three civilians got light injuries.

According to updated data AD shot down 6 Kinzhals, 10 ballistic missiles (S-400, Iskander) and 9 Kalibrs (4 of them were shot down over Mykolaiv oblast, 5 in Kyiv oblast and over Kyiv), also two S-300 hit Kostiantynivka town in Donetsk oblast