Centurian52

It's definitely not completely irrational. It may be a long shot. But any chance that a stray 0.50 cal round might hit an optic or damage something important might just give you the edge you need. Especially if you are in panic mode.

More Bradley pics
 

The idea that there is such a thing as a "nation", in the sense of a culturally (or worse, racially) homogeneous group with a well defined territory, needs to just die already. What proportion of a population in a given region identifies as what particular nationality is completely irrelevant. You will never have borders that closely align to regional national identities, because people move around and mix together. Even if you do get the borders just right, so that people with one nationality are all inside one country, and the people who identify as other nationalities are all in other countries, the borders will be obsolete within a century. People will migrate and bleed over the borders, so a century later the people in the border regions will no longer have a nationality that matches their country. And because people have this completely fallacious idea that countries should govern particular nationalities, and the only way to forcibly change the borders is by going to war, you get endless wars over territorial disputes.
The only solution is to recognize that nationality does not matter. The idea that nationality matters is a stupid and archaic idea that has no place in the 21st century. Countries do not exist to govern one and only one nationality, and there is absolutely no reason for their borders to match national settlement patterns (for that matter, I don't believe that any country has any right to insist that every member of its population conforms to the culture of the majority nationality). Ukraine has a right to retake Crimea because Russia took it from Ukraine by force, and that cannot be allowed to stand. Russia had absolutely no right to take Crimea in 2014, and that injustice will be reversed.
Edit: Another reason why Ukraine really needs to retake Crimea is that it is essential for Ukraine's future security. The opening months of the war demonstrated just how vulnerable that southern flank is, and closing it off would drastically reduce Russia's future offensive options.

Granted, but we're using two different senses of "matter".

The idea that there is such a thing as a "nation", in the sense of a culturally (or worse, racially) homogeneous group with a well defined territory, needs to just die already. What proportion of a population in a given region identifies as what particular nationality is completely irrelevant. You will never have borders that closely align to regional national identities, because people move around and mix together. Even if you do get the borders just right, so that people with one nationality are all inside one country, and the people who identify as other nationalities are all in other countries, the borders will be obsolete within a century. People will migrate and bleed over the borders, so a century later the people in the border regions will no longer have a nationality that matches their country. And because people have this completely fallacious idea that countries should govern particular nationalities, and the only way to forcibly change the borders is by going to war, you get endless wars over territorial disputes.
The only solution is to recognize that nationality does not matter. The idea that nationality matters is a stupid and archaic idea that has no place in the 21st century. Countries do not exist to govern one and only one nationality, and there is absolutely no reason for their borders to match national settlement patterns (for that matter, I don't believe that any country has any right to insist that every member of its population conforms to the culture of the majority nationality). Ukraine has a right to retake Crimea because Russia took it from Ukraine by force, and that cannot be allowed to stand. Russia had absolutely no right to take Crimea in 2014, and that injustice will be reversed.
Edit: Another reason why Ukraine really needs to retake Crimea is that it is essential for Ukraine's future security. The opening months of the war demonstrated just how vulnerable that southern flank is, and closing it off would drastically reduce Russia's future offensive options.

Granted, but we're using two different senses of "matter".

The idea that there is such a thing as a "nation", in the sense of a culturally (or worse, racially) homogeneous group with a well defined territory, needs to just die already. What proportion of a population in a given region identifies as what particular nationality is completely irrelevant. You will never have borders that closely align to regional national identities, because people move around and mix together. Even if you do get the borders just right, so that people with one nationality are all inside one country, and the people who identify as other nationalities are all in other countries, the borders will be obsolete within a century. People will migrate and bleed over the borders, so a century later the people in the border regions will no longer have a nationality that matches their country. And because people have this completely fallacious idea that countries should govern particular nationalities, and the only way to forcibly change the borders is by going to war, you get endless wars over territorial disputes.
The only solution is to recognize that nationality does not matter. The idea that nationality matters is a stupid and archaic idea that has no place in the 21st century. Countries do not exist to govern one and only one nationality, and there is absolutely no reason for their borders to match national settlement patterns (for that matter, I don't believe that any country has any right to insist that every member of its population conforms to the culture of the majority nationality). Ukraine has a right to retake Crimea because Russia took it from Ukraine by force, and that cannot be allowed to stand. Russia had absolutely no right to take Crimea in 2014, and that injustice will be reversed.
Edit: Another reason why Ukraine really needs to retake Crimea is that it is essential for Ukraine's future security. The opening months of the war demonstrated just how vulnerable that southern flank is, and closing it off would drastically reduce Russia's future offensive options.

The idea that there is such a thing as a "nation", in the sense of a culturally (or worse, racially) homogeneous group with a well defined territory, needs to just die already. What proportion of a population in a given region identifies as what particular nationality is completely irrelevant. You will never have borders that closely align to regional national identities, because people move around and mix together. Even if you do get the borders just right, so that people with one nationality are all inside one country, and the people who identify as other nationalities are all in other countries, the borders will be obsolete within a century. People will migrate and bleed over the borders, so a century later the people in the border regions will no longer have a nationality that matches their country. And because people have this completely fallacious idea that countries should govern particular nationalities, and the only way to forcibly change the borders is by going to war, you get endless wars over territorial disputes.
The only solution is to recognize that nationality does not matter. The idea that nationality matters is a stupid and archaic idea that has no place in the 21st century. Countries do not exist to govern one and only one nationality, and there is absolutely no reason for their borders to match national settlement patterns (for that matter, I don't believe that any country has any right to insist that every member of its population conforms to the culture of the majority nationality). Ukraine has a right to retake Crimea because Russia took it from Ukraine by force, and that cannot be allowed to stand. Russia had absolutely no right to take Crimea in 2014, and that injustice will be reversed.
Edit: Another reason why Ukraine really needs to retake Crimea is that it is essential for Ukraine's future security. The opening months of the war demonstrated just how vulnerable that southern flank is, and closing it off would drastically reduce Russia's future offensive options.

6 months of seeing the worst of humanity convinced you that there is no better part of humanity? No offense, but I think there might be some sampling bias at play here.

I'm toying around with the Chieftain in the WoT armor inspector, and I'm considering revising my opinion of it. My initial assessment was that, despite its heavier armor, it would not prove any more survivable than the M60 on the late 70s battlefield, since late Cold War HEAT and APFSDS ammunition was so deadly. But although nothing the Soviets have should have too much difficulty penetrating it in this time period, it may nonetheless manage to bounce an appreciably higher proportion of the shots that hit it. So it may have noticeably better survivability after all.
Granting I'm not working with a particularly detailed data set. The only source I know of that has a listing of ammunition performance that is as comprehensive as I need is the Steel Beasts Wiki. But I went ahead and grabbed the following, on the assumption that this was all ammunition that the Chieftain might face from 1976-1982:
100mm BM-8 HVAPDS-T (1968) - 300mm
100mm BM-20 APFSDS-T (1976) - 390mm
100mm BM-25 APFSDS-T (1978) - 430mm
100mm BK-5M HEAT-FS-T (1955) - 380mm
115mm BM-21 APFSDS-T (1975) - 430mm
115mm BM-28 APFSDS-T (1978) - 460mm
115mm BK-4M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 440mm
125mm BM-15 APFSDS-T (1972) - 350mm
125mm BM-22 APFSDS-T (1976) - 440mm
125mm BK-12M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 440mm
125mm BK-14M HEAT-FS-T (1970s) - 500mm
I then clicked on the WoT armor inspector model a bunch of times from the frontal aspect, trying to be as random as possible in where each "shot" landed, and I recorded the los thickness that shot would have faced. I got the following:
1: 430mm
2: 343mm
3: 429mm
4: 551mm
5: 140mm (joint between the upper and lower front plates)
6: 554mm
7: 384mm
8: 141mm 
9: 407mm
10: 658mm (ended up getting a particularly steep angle on the hull armor on this one)
Ignoring range, forgiving the small sample size, and taking both the WoT armor inspector and Steel Beasts ammunition data at face value we get the following performance for the Soviet tank ammunition.
100mm BM-8 HVAPDS-T (1968) - 20% of shots penetrated
100mm BM-20 APFSDS-T (1976) - 40% of shots penetrated
100mm BM-25 APFSDS-T (1978) -  60% or 70% of shots penetrated (one shot is right at the cutoff, perhaps it would have only gotten a partial pen or spalling)
100mm BK-5M HEAT-FS-T (1955) -  30% of shots penetrated
115mm BM-21 APFSDS-T (1975) -  60% or 70% of shots penetrated
115mm BM-28 APFSDS-T (1978) - 70% of shots penetrated
115mm BK-4M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 70% of shots penetrated
125mm BM-15 APFSDS-T (1972) -  30% of shots penetrated
125mm BM-22 APFSDS-T (1976) - 70% of shots penetrated
125mm BK-12M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 70% of shots penetrated
125mm BK-14M HEAT-FS-T (1970s) - 70% of shots penetrated
So it would seem that every Soviet ammunition type is still capable of taking out the Chieftain from the front, but it isn't as certain as it was with the M60. Considering that it feels like more than 90% of shots that hit the M60 manage to penetrate, that might translate into noticeably improved survivability. But we'll only know when we actually get to see it in action.

my dudes... get a TTS. dragon team, m1, or m2 and use any smoke you can, including the tanks rounds, its  own smoke, nearby infantry rounds, and arty.  Basically you can park that tanks fat azz somewhere and as long as you keep smoke between it and threats they literally.. cant do ****. its about the thermals, sovs have none and theres no multi spectral smoke. I had a single crack m60 TTS stop literally about 16 T64s because they literally couldnt shoot back.
This is key - make SURE that you are using FACE commands then the smoke order. You want the smoke going where you want it, if you neglect this you can totally ratfck yourself
 
DO NOT use this tactic with ITOWS or TOWs they will be just as useless as the vatniks you want dead
While Im at it IMO your biggest threat with a western tank is letting a capable opp move a ATGM team in.  The western sensors - youll see the 40 ton tank move into view. you wont see the AT7 team do the same, likely...
edit : best cover IMO ever, this chick does Zevons Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
 

All fair points! Again, not trying to poopoo. 
I get it, something to do with the anticipation generated energy. 
Like you, I am really interested in seeing how Chieftain ends up performing. It is a tank with quite a reputation to it, and I wonder if some may be a bit chafed by its in game performance. Or not!
I also agree that it should generally speaking be a bit more survivable than the M60. The ability to take one on the chin (even if its a marginal advantage over the M60) could end up being decisive. 
I think I am most interested to see Chieftain take on T-64 equipped Soviet formations.

That was my thought too, a lot of 'specialists' and no actual infantrymen. But that was my impression going all the way back to CM:Afghanistan's Russian TO&E. Its the opposite concept to US Marines in CM which is extremely infantryman-heavy.

I would argue we don't want Putin to panic just yet. The ideal scenario is panicked mobilization after the land bridge is broken and Kerch bridge is in the water. Let the security forces try to round up another three or four hundred thousand people when not even the Putin regime's propaganda can spin the SMO as anything but a feckless failure

I'm toying around with the Chieftain in the WoT armor inspector, and I'm considering revising my opinion of it. My initial assessment was that, despite its heavier armor, it would not prove any more survivable than the M60 on the late 70s battlefield, since late Cold War HEAT and APFSDS ammunition was so deadly. But although nothing the Soviets have should have too much difficulty penetrating it in this time period, it may nonetheless manage to bounce an appreciably higher proportion of the shots that hit it. So it may have noticeably better survivability after all.
Granting I'm not working with a particularly detailed data set. The only source I know of that has a listing of ammunition performance that is as comprehensive as I need is the Steel Beasts Wiki. But I went ahead and grabbed the following, on the assumption that this was all ammunition that the Chieftain might face from 1976-1982:
100mm BM-8 HVAPDS-T (1968) - 300mm
100mm BM-20 APFSDS-T (1976) - 390mm
100mm BM-25 APFSDS-T (1978) - 430mm
100mm BK-5M HEAT-FS-T (1955) - 380mm
115mm BM-21 APFSDS-T (1975) - 430mm
115mm BM-28 APFSDS-T (1978) - 460mm
115mm BK-4M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 440mm
125mm BM-15 APFSDS-T (1972) - 350mm
125mm BM-22 APFSDS-T (1976) - 440mm
125mm BK-12M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 440mm
125mm BK-14M HEAT-FS-T (1970s) - 500mm
I then clicked on the WoT armor inspector model a bunch of times from the frontal aspect, trying to be as random as possible in where each "shot" landed, and I recorded the los thickness that shot would have faced. I got the following:
1: 430mm
2: 343mm
3: 429mm
4: 551mm
5: 140mm (joint between the upper and lower front plates)
6: 554mm
7: 384mm
8: 141mm 
9: 407mm
10: 658mm (ended up getting a particularly steep angle on the hull armor on this one)
Ignoring range, forgiving the small sample size, and taking both the WoT armor inspector and Steel Beasts ammunition data at face value we get the following performance for the Soviet tank ammunition.
100mm BM-8 HVAPDS-T (1968) - 20% of shots penetrated
100mm BM-20 APFSDS-T (1976) - 40% of shots penetrated
100mm BM-25 APFSDS-T (1978) -  60% or 70% of shots penetrated (one shot is right at the cutoff, perhaps it would have only gotten a partial pen or spalling)
100mm BK-5M HEAT-FS-T (1955) -  30% of shots penetrated
115mm BM-21 APFSDS-T (1975) -  60% or 70% of shots penetrated
115mm BM-28 APFSDS-T (1978) - 70% of shots penetrated
115mm BK-4M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 70% of shots penetrated
125mm BM-15 APFSDS-T (1972) -  30% of shots penetrated
125mm BM-22 APFSDS-T (1976) - 70% of shots penetrated
125mm BK-12M HEAT-FS-T (1969) - 70% of shots penetrated
125mm BK-14M HEAT-FS-T (1970s) - 70% of shots penetrated
So it would seem that every Soviet ammunition type is still capable of taking out the Chieftain from the front, but it isn't as certain as it was with the M60. Considering that it feels like more than 90% of shots that hit the M60 manage to penetrate, that might translate into noticeably improved survivability. But we'll only know when we actually get to see it in action.

Looks awesome! Just the hype material I need now that CMCW:BAOR has been announced.

Orthodox Easter is a week later, so that would still count if needed.

Looks awesome! Just the hype material I need now that CMCW:BAOR has been announced.

Ok, I got some information on 84mm gun armed Centurions. It looks like our best bet is the Canadian army. They purchased 274 Mk 3 (84mm gun) Centurions from 1952-1953. In 1971 supposedly they had 322 Centurions, of which 81 had 105mm guns (meaning the other 241 had 84mms), and they started replacing their Centurions with Leopard 1s in 1977. Only one regiment of four would be fully equipped with Mk 11 (105mm gun) Centurions before they were fully replaced in 1979. So it sounds like the majority of the Centurions we'll be getting with the Canadian army in the early years will be 84mm. Though it sounds like the regiment with the Mk 11s was the one stationed in Germany, so any 84mm Centurions will have to come as reinforcements.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/centurion#:~:text=The Centurion went on to,and operated them until 1979.

Well, according to Wikipedia: "The M48A3 was withdrawn from Europe by October 1961, being replaced by the M60 tank. As US armored and cavalry units rotated out of combat deployments to South Vietnam most of their M48A3s were either directly transferred to the South Vietnamese Army or to Thailand. FORSCOM withdrew the M48A3 from combat service with both the US Army and US Marine Corps in 1973, replacing them with the M60A1. Some M48A3s continued in service with National Guard units until 1979."
So, if this information is correct, there were no USAREUR units equipped with M48s during CMCW timeframe. Some 90mm gun armed M48A3 might be considered for the upcoming BAOR module (since it extends the game's timeframe back to 1976) in the same way as NG M48A5 tanks are included in the current base game.

For what concerns the ability of the 90mm gun to frontally penetrate the T-55 tank, a member of the TankNet forum that had access to primary sources describing the results of the live firing tests carried on by the Yugoslav Army, posted there data that are relevant to the issue. 
Yu guns vs armor tests of 1960s... - Page 2 - Armor Scientific Forum - tanknet.org
It's actually M47 vs T-54 but I presume that the figures given are comparable to the  M48 vs T-55 matchup.
Here's the relevant quote from the above thread:
90mm M36 gun from M47 tank firing AP, HVAP and HEAT
T-33 AP fails to penetrate glacis even @ 100m
M304 subcalibre fails to penetrate glacis even @ 100m
M431 HEAT penetrates glacis, but fails to fuse if side angle is more then 20deg.
T33AP penetrates front turret @ 350m
M304 subcalibre penetrates front turret @ 750m
M431 HEAT penetrates front turret
T33AP penetrates frontal part of the side of the turret @ 850m
M304 subcalibre penetrates frontal part of the side turret at any practical range
M431 HEAT penetrates frontal part of the side turret
All round penetrate rear part of the side turret at any practical range.
Conclusion:
Amount of M431 HEAT rounds in ammo load should be increased, and load of T33 AP be reduced.
Frontal engagement of the new foreing tanks is to be done only with M431 HEAT round.
Engagement from ambush position can be done with M304 subcalibre and M431 HEAT at any range and T33 AP at ranges less then 1000m.
Problem of M431 round failing to fuse at angles more then 60deg is to be fixed with production of domestic HEAT.
That round should be also capable of being fired from M3A1 gun mounted on SO-90 M-36. without sagnificent modifications to the gun or vehicle.
 

Hi @Butschi - I keep looking at this thread and thinking ... must help - but have been a bit overwhelmed by RL stuff.  This is a shorter answer than I'd have liked but something's better than nothing.
First up, your MRR does have four battalions but once you task organize them by giving a tank company from the regiment's tank battalion to each of the three motor rifle battalions you end up with three manoeuvre elements.  Advancing three-up with all three of your battalions would; therefore, be extremely unusual. 
There's no mention of reconnaissance elements in the scheme of manoeuvre - if the finished campaign thing is going to do the whole regiment's advance, rather than just the southern axis you have scope for a series of recce battles employing elements of the divisional reconnaissance battalion and the regimental reconnaissance company.  In fact, even if you only stick with the southern axis you can still have some reconnaissance battles using those elements.
I absolutely wouldn't stretch your narrative to include T-80s in the ORBAT of a Cat III division.  This type of division would be rounded out by reservists who had probably finished their conscription period years and years before - it would be hard enough for them just to recall their skills and drills on the equipment they had used during their service, let alone learn to operate a newer piece of equipment.  Not only that, even Cat I divisions were not fully equipped with T-80 by 1980.  We don't seem to know what 50 GMRD was equipped with in 1980 but we know it had T-62, BMP-1, BTR-60 and BTR-70 in 1985.  I would suggest that in 1980, 69 GTR would have had T-62 and BMP-1, while the three MRRs would have had T-55 and BTR-60.  You can see how far down the food chain it was by looking at its artillery allocation in 1985, the 152mm D-1 which is a towed gun dating back to WW2. 
Regarding the US - I can't give a huge amount of detail but you'll see that the US 5th Division of which 256 Brigade was a part only had 3 tank battalions and 3 mechanized infantry battalions in 1978 - it was therefore massively understrength and I doubt that situation would have rectified itself much before 1980.  Link below, Table 35, page 38 refers:
Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades (army.mil)
I hope this helps.

Spent a bit of time day dream a BAOR expansion over the weekend - used a mix of assets from CMSF, CMA and CMBN. Sadly no idea how to take it further as a playable faction mod.

Last few mucking about 🙂

And I was emphasizing how valuable a whole new game would be, because there is only so much we can do with CMBS.
The 14 T90Ms we've seen on Oryx are hardly what I would call large numbers. And CMBS doesn't have T-72Bs, T-72B3Ms, T-80BVs, T80Us, or T80BVMs. It does have T-90As, and those are more common than T-90Ms (perhaps common enough to warrent representation), though those should still be rare in scenarios based on the current war. So yeah, until we get a new game, scenarios using what we have in CMBS should mostly limit the Russians to T-72B3s (perhaps very occasionally they can have T-90As). My point is that I was agreeing that a full new game based on the current Russo-Ukrainian war would be nice to have.

From FM 7-20:
2-7. COMMANDER'S INTENT
The commander's intent drives mission tactics. It is the commander's stated vision, which defines the purpose of the operation and the end state with respect to the relationship among the force, the enemy, and the terrain. It should also include how this end state will support future operations. (Appendix A shows how the commander's intent is integrated into the OPORD.)
a. The overall purpose of the mission is more important than the individual assigned tasks. Each subordinate commander must know why and how his assigned tasks relate to the overall concept of the operation. Then, if the situation changes and contact with higher headquarters is lost, the subordinate can use his initiative to achieve the desired end results.
b. The battalion commander has a dual responsibility. He must understand the intent of the brigade and division commanders (two levels up) and must ensure his intent is understood at company and platoon levels (two levels down). The commander's intent paragraph in the OPORD should begin with the words, "My intent is..." so it can be understood and relayed to subordinates easily.
c. A clear commander's intent enhances agility, timing, and initiative at all levels. It helps in shifting the main effort on a fluid battlefield.