According to CMSF2 lore vs Civilian-Military casualties & Political factor?

[Aleksandr2033]

Good day to everyone, I'm new in this forum!

I would like to first ask something that does not fit right or does not seem very realistic or easy to understand.

So according to the game manual in regards to the game's backstory; "Then, one day, a message was sent. The sleepers awoke and made their way to targets of their own personal choosing within cities not directly chosen by their leaders. Within a few hours, dozens of pounds of radioactive waste uranium were detonated by conventional explosives, polluting major cities of the West for hundreds of years."

Therefore we might be speaking about civilian casualties counting by the hundreds of thousands, if not a few millions and the brutal unimaginable economic, social and political shock this would have. However we don't know how many 'dirty bombs' were detonated, where and other important technical details, but we could estimate that "major cities of the West" could include cities like Barcelona, Valencia, Strassbourg, Antwerp, Bergen, Lyon, Toulouse, Napoli, Venice, Krakow, Edinbourgh, Newcastle, Hamburg and a few more others in the USA.

Thus, in such a catastrophical event, why would NATO members have any regards for the Syrian population? After suddenly murdering and irradiating several millions in the West, the shock would be soo big, I really don't get it why would NATO armies have to take any sort of "caution" when dealing with the Syrian civilians. Many officers, NCOs and soldiers would have very, very strong and negative feelings towards Syria and possibly also the whole Arab/Islamic World since it's possible friends or relatives may have been caught in such terrorists attacks. Reservists and people that join NATO armies after the invasion will surely have similar and extremely negative thoughts and behave as such.

And also... After the loss of billions worth in infraestructure, cities, bussiness, CBRN decontamination campaigns, etc. Wouldn't the West care that much for military losses, be it in personnel or hardware? I believe NATO countries would quickly rearm and gear themselves back to almost Cold War levels and EVEN possibly wage war against other suspicious countries like Iran, Pakistan and God knows where else, converting Syria in just a piece of a new world war which may have a strong resemblance to the rivalry of Christianity and Islam during the Middle Ages.

 

Food for thought I guess...

[mjkerner]

Welcome aboard, Aleksandr2033!

It's only a game. 

 

[Hapless]

IIRC, the terrorist attacks in the plot are carried out by a group operating out of Syria and the war begins because the Syrian regime refuses to hand them over to NATO. So, NATO doesn't have a problem with the Syrian people, the conflict revolves around NATO enforcing regime change in Syria and the Syrian regime resisting. For a real world example it's a bit like the Invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11: NATO vs Al Qaeda + the Taliban.

Dirty bombs are somewhat overhyped too: chances are they're going to kill more people with the conventional explosives than the radioactive payload. So enough to provoke a military response... not enough for the West to glass over the country where the perpetrators happen to be hiding.

Of course, from a gameplay perspective, this leaves room to restrict Blufor and give Redfor a chance by, for example, imposing tight casualty limits or necessitating the preservation of civilian infrastructure.

[Bozowans]

It's an interesting point honestly. I still remember the sheer bloodlust so many Americans had after 9/11. How many times did I hear that we should "glass the middle east"? Too many to count. Some Americans still talk like that to this day. That was especially the case after the rise of ISIL in 2014-15. And then again just recently after the Taliban victory in Afghanistan. Back when ISIL was at their peak, politicians like Ted Cruz were saying things like "We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don't know if sand can glow in the dark, but we're going to find out." And then Trump said we should kill the terrorists along with their entire families. There was a poll around that time where 26% of Republican voters supported making Islam illegal in the US.

People will argue about it on the internet, but I don't think people ultimately care much about civilian casualties, especially right in the middle of a front line combat zone like in a CM scenario. Drone bombing a wedding party might be different though, and certainly generates news headlines.

Would dirty bombs really be that effective? They aren't nukes. Doing some cursory searching it seems like they would not really be that effective in terms of mass casualties. The most lethal threat would be from the blast itself. Few people would probably die but it would be VERY effective in causing mass panic and chaos. Radiation might spread just a few blocks to a few miles away depending on the size of the bomb, but most of the sources I'm seeing say that radiation would never get concentrated enough to kill people or cause serious illness. People are terrified of radiation though, so it would be the perfect terror weapon.

If you include everyone exposed to the radiation as being a casualty, even if ineffective, then that number probably would indeed go up into the hundreds of thousands if not millions. In the financial district in Manhattan, a few hundred thousand people would be packed within one square mile on a typical business day. In Washington DC, all three branches of government are within two miles of each other. No one is going to return to work after radioactive cesium just got sprayed all over their office building. A dirty bomb attack would shut down entire cities for weeks if not months alongside collapsing the entire global economy. Just a single dirty bomb shutting down a major port city like LA would be disastrous.

With all that going on, I don't think anyone would care if I blew up a mosque in CMSF2. 

[BFCElvis]

@BozowansProbably going over the edge here and invited this thread to go south very quickly. 

 

Let's try to keep it to the game for now, folks. This is @Aleksandr2033's first thread. I'd hate to have to shut it down.

 

Thanks

[Bozowans]

18 minutes ago, BFCElvis said:

@BozowansProbably going over the edge here and invited this thread to go south very quickly. 

 

Let's try to keep it to the game for now, folks. This is @Aleksandr2033's first thread. I'd hate to have to shut it down.

 

Thanks

My apologies then. I know mentioning anything political here ruffles feathers, but it can be hard to avoid sometimes with the more realistic subject matter of these games. I will try to avoid it then.

[Battlefront.com]

As the author of the backstory of CMSF, someone who designed the civilian accountability system in the game, watched the Twin Towers collapse in real time, and earned a piece of paper that says I know a lot about history... I'll field this one

First, if the goal of a terrorist group is to cause mass disruption, expense, and distraction of a large and well armed enemy nation state, dirty bombs are an excellent choice because that is what they do best.  Casualties that go along with it would be a nice bonus in their view, not a measure of how effective the attack/s are.  For example, think of any Western nation with the center of its capital city (Paris, London, Berlin, Washington, etc.) unlivable for a few hundred years.  Now think of this happening with zero civilian casualties.  From the terrorists' standpoint, don't you think they'd call that a win?  Yup.  From the victim nation's side do you think the resolve to go out and destroy the attacker is going to be any less than if there were a lot of civilian casualties?  In practical terms, absolutely not.  Therefore, civilian casualties is really not much of an issue for either side.

Second, Western militaries have strong doctrinal and legal restrictions on use of force against civilians.  As imperfect as those controls are, tactically and strategically, they exist and are very much a central part of military planning and execution.  The restraints on causing civilian casualties can be easily seen in Afghanistan even in the immediate timeframe after 9/11.  If anybody doesn't think the US, in particular, exercised massive restraint then it's clear to me they know almost nothing about what a lack of restraint would look like.  Bombing a wedding party because the local commanders were naive enough to believe their "informed sources" is not even in the same ballpark as deliberately ordering a wing of B2s to turn an entire village into dust.

Third, every nation has its fair share of idiot politicians and idiot political hacks calling for extreme action or, in fact, extreme inaction.  Right, left, center... they all have far too many nutters IMHO.  The measure of a nation is to what degree national policy is tilted to carrying out the will of the least informed, most extreme elements of its citizenry.  As we saw with 9/11, civilians did not become targets in any systemic, deliberate way.  That sort of restraint would likely exist in the CMSF scenario as well.

Fourth, citizens of a nation at war tend to not care about pretty much anything in my experience.  The hardcore pro-war types care as little about the impact of war on the enemy as they do on their own uniformed service personnel IMHO.  Very "ends justify the means" thinking tends to go in that direction.  Hardcore anti-war types swing in the opposite direction, don't care about future casualties and ill effects that might come about by not engaging in military action today.  The majority in the middle just go with the flow more than anything.  As a historian, short sighted clueless thinking is bad no matter what the motivations behind it are.  So a mosque gets hit and the hardcore pro-war folks say "serves 'em right" and the hardcore anti-war folks say "nothing justifies the use of force" and the middle majority say "that's a shame, but what can one do".  Predictable as the sun setting at the end of the day and rising at the beginning of the day.

Fifth, one of the neat things in CM's victory conditions feature is that it doesn't have to be the same for both sides.  One side might care a LOT about something, the other might not care at all about that very same thing.  Mosques, oddly enough, are one of those things.  For the West, blowing up a mosque plays out bad within the Muslim world and with domestic audiences.  For the terrorists or a despotic regime trying to cling onto power?  Ends justifies means thinking doesn't really care about such things, so if they blow up a mosque that's OK.  In fact, deliberately using mosques as a fighting position was pretty common in Iraq, much to the frustration of Western forces.  Lots of irony there.

Anyhoo... there's some thoughts for you guys to chew on.  Keep responses civil and responsible and the thread stays open.  Otherwise, SNAP.

Steve

[Holman]

FWIW, the "dirty bombs emptying multiple major cities for a century" scenario has always seemed a bit too apocalyptic for me, but in the end it doesn't matter and has no game effect. All you need is a plausible motive for Western-led regime change. It can be abstract, or it can be as specific as you find plausible.

All that matters is that *something* has motivated the scenario you're playing.

[Erwin]

Actually this has been a very interesting and thought-provoking thread.  My only comment is that we should not be too focused on dirty bombs and the destruction of real estate.  

There are much more immediately serious threats that my colleagues and I were working on in the 90's (so it's all out of date by now).  The first is cyberwar and its use for destruction of a nation's infrastructure (a nation's weak underbelly) - power plants, water supplies, food distribution, financial systems etc.  A couple of years ago a British bank (TSB) suddenly had all its ATM machines go off line for a day or two to much consternation  Now, imagine a city like Los Angeles with only one water supply.  Cut off water and there would be mass panic within a day or two.  The rich may have their yachts and planes.  But for 99.9% of the population there are very few major roads to use for escape.    

The 2nd "real and present" danger is biological weapons.  I didn't work on this.  But, it did occur to us that this is a wonderful "capitalistic" weapon as it destroys people, but leaves real estate and property untouched.  We have the opportunity right now to see what a relatively mild biological attack may look like with Covid.  Am not inferring or discussing whether it was created in a Chinese lab or is a natural-occurring phenomenon.  However, compared to a deliberately designed bio weapon, Covid is very mild (so far).  But again if we take LA as an example.  A mass of panicked people trying to escape a city contaminated with large numbers of dead and dying will create chaos in the surrounding communities and states.  

These are the concerns that would keep us up at night as there may be many tens (hundreds) of thousands of talented hackers in the world capable of destroying our infrastructures, far less the danger of (say) a suitcase nuke or dirty bomb.

 

 

[danfrodo]

Golly, I just wanna play w cool-looking pretend army-men and tanks

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, danfrodo said:

Golly, I just wanna play w cool-looking pretend army-men and tanks

Damn you for taking a dreadfully dour thread and making me crack up!

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I agree that the game designer's scenario behind CMSF, or CM Cold War for that matter, isn't really important OTHER than the player feeling there's a reason for the fictional war.  Let's be real.  If we had the background setting to CMSF be all about expanding markets for Walmart, Coke, McDonald's, and the likes... would people feel as justified for blowing stuff up and getting their own pixeltruppen killed?  I really, really hope not

In all seriousness, I've heard from many a serious wargamer that they can't get into playing Eastern Front games because they can't relate at all to either side's motivation for fighting.  Personally, that's not the sort of thing that gets me to play a game or not, but for sure it is for others.

Steve

[dbsapp]

16 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

 If we had the background setting to CMSF be all about expanding markets for Walmart, Coke, McDonald's, and the likes... would people feel as justified for blowing stuff up and getting their own pixeltruppen killed?  

 

[danfrodo]

There's a war, you are an officer up to ~battalion or so command, and you gets orders.  You tells yer fellers where to go and what to do to meet those orders.  That's all you get in real life mostly I think, cuz most folks is usually confused by why they are fighting, based on lots of lying -- the list of that is endless -- and even decades after lots of folks still don't see the real reason even when it's proven beyond a doubt. 

So why overthink it here?  You signed up and you have a duty.  Your commanding officer is not interested in your feelings or thoughts or concerns at the national political level.  Here's a big pile of men in funny clothes and steel hats w lots of cool gear.  Now get your men moving and get the job done, and that is an order.      At least here you get to chose who's side your fighting for, don't get much of that in real world.

[Ithikial_AU]

One thing I did when I was brought on board as a beta was to revamp the Dutch campaign from the NATO module with Imperial Grunt. One of the first things I did was to draw together the relevant bits and pieces to try and sync up and improve the narrative as we both agreed the briefings as they were, were light on details about "why" the Dutch were doing this. I started building up an updated timeline given the modules were created over the course of a few years and there were bound to be a few cracks. A key reason for this was the ending of the Dutch campaign given you link up with US Army forces (very minor spoiler...).

Well if you know me I ended up going down the rabbit hole with this and it turned in a larger side project after the campaign was updated:

- Went through all stock scenarios and campaigns to ensure they followed a logical timeline based on NATO's push across the country. Briefing text and dates in editor changed. Nothing of any individual scenario itself has been altered.

- Created two maps. The first showing the initial formation deployments from kick off. Based on the briefings across the modules there were some changes since the Paradox printed map was released. The second had the location of every stock engagement (plus ChrisND's Taskforce Lightning campaign) and the daily progress of the overall campaign.

- Mod-tagged the scenarios with the correct (or closest by best guess) formation unit patches on the NATO soldiers to add a bit of flavour. (Just US Army and British). Requires some community mods from CMMODSIV to work.

- [Incomplete] Updating my AAR tracker tool to sort of create a meta-singleplayer super campaign assuming the player wants to run through the all content in a chronological order as Blue Force. Player can set their parameters for difficulty and measures for degree of victory or "defeat". Includes a chart comparing NATO casualties the player suffers compared to the real world Operation Iraqi Freedom and the follow on occupation of the country. Based on my progress so far either I'm a not a very effective commander or the scale of the scale of the conflict in Syria is much higher. (Probably the former).

Then R2V and F&R had to be worked on so this rabbit hole has sat idle for year and a bit. No idea if BF want to "re-re-release" the work I did here as part of a patch cycle or not but at least for my own fictional head cannon. Ugh... wargamers and there hobbies.

[DerKommissar]

In Khabour Trail, I faced a hybrid force. I was marked for damage to civilian infrastructure. Certain buildings (ie. Mosques) were valued more than others.

My primary concern was to accomplish all objectives, while minimizing casualties to core units. So, it was important to not bite more than you can chew.

I'd rather not face Fedayeen defenders in urban areas, if I could avoid it. The solution was to use airburst artillery instead of general purpose. Rolling in front of the armoured spearhead, it suppressed defenders on rooftops, balconys and upper stories.

I have know idea how many orphans/widows I created/destroyed with airburst artillery in civilian populated zones. Mission reports said it was fine. Small price to pay to avoid a holy war.

[Aleksandr2033]

20 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

As the author of the backstory of CMSF, someone who designed the civilian accountability system in the game, watched the Twin Towers collapse in real time, and earned a piece of paper that says I know a lot about history... I'll field this one

First, if the goal of a terrorist group is to cause mass disruption, expense, and distraction of a large and well armed enemy nation state, dirty bombs are an excellent choice because that is what they do best.  Casualties that go along with it would be a nice bonus in their view, not a measure of how effective the attack/s are.  For example, think of any Western nation with the center of its capital city (Paris, London, Berlin, Washington, etc.) unlivable for a few hundred years.  Now think of this happening with zero civilian casualties.  From the terrorists' standpoint, don't you think they'd call that a win?  Yup.  From the victim nation's side do you think the resolve to go out and destroy the attacker is going to be any less than if there were a lot of civilian casualties?  In practical terms, absolutely not.  Therefore, civilian casualties is really not much of an issue for either side.

Second, Western militaries have strong doctrinal and legal restrictions on use of force against civilians.  As imperfect as those controls are, tactically and strategically, they exist and are very much a central part of military planning and execution.  The restraints on causing civilian casualties can be easily seen in Afghanistan even in the immediate timeframe after 9/11.  If anybody doesn't think the US, in particular, exercised massive restraint then it's clear to me they know almost nothing about what a lack of restraint would look like.  Bombing a wedding party because the local commanders were naive enough to believe their "informed sources" is not even in the same ballpark as deliberately ordering a wing of B2s to turn an entire village into dust.

Third, every nation has its fair share of idiot politicians and idiot political hacks calling for extreme action or, in fact, extreme inaction.  Right, left, center... they all have far too many nutters IMHO.  The measure of a nation is to what degree national policy is tilted to carrying out the will of the least informed, most extreme elements of its citizenry.  As we saw with 9/11, civilians did not become targets in any systemic, deliberate way.  That sort of restraint would likely exist in the CMSF scenario as well.

Fourth, citizens of a nation at war tend to not care about pretty much anything in my experience.  The hardcore pro-war types care as little about the impact of war on the enemy as they do on their own uniformed service personnel IMHO.  Very "ends justify the means" thinking tends to go in that direction.  Hardcore anti-war types swing in the opposite direction, don't care about future casualties and ill effects that might come about by not engaging in military action today.  The majority in the middle just go with the flow more than anything.  As a historian, short sighted clueless thinking is bad no matter what the motivations behind it are.  So a mosque gets hit and the hardcore pro-war folks say "serves 'em right" and the hardcore anti-war folks say "nothing justifies the use of force" and the middle majority say "that's a shame, but what can one do".  Predictable as the sun setting at the end of the day and rising at the beginning of the day.

Fifth, one of the neat things in CM's victory conditions feature is that it doesn't have to be the same for both sides.  One side might care a LOT about something, the other might not care at all about that very same thing.  Mosques, oddly enough, are one of those things.  For the West, blowing up a mosque plays out bad within the Muslim world and with domestic audiences.  For the terrorists or a despotic regime trying to cling onto power?  Ends justifies means thinking doesn't really care about such things, so if they blow up a mosque that's OK.  In fact, deliberately using mosques as a fighting position was pretty common in Iraq, much to the frustration of Western forces.  Lots of irony there.

Anyhoo... there's some thoughts for you guys to chew on.  Keep responses civil and responsible and the thread stays open.  Otherwise, SNAP.

Steve

Thanks to everyone for their polite, extended and well explained points in their replies.

Though I am going to focus on this one specifically  

Regarding the first point, I mostly agree on anything but I do still believe that there would be a difference on their behaviour when it comes to the Western civilian losses. Let's suppose Spain gets one of her major cities attacked but only 10-30 people die from inmediate, brutal doses of radiation while still getting some urban areas highly contaminated, Spanish forces may likely act as in CMSF is stipulated, taking care not to cause many civilian casualties. But on the other hand, somehow in The Netherlands, one of their cities gets not just highly irradiated, but also half a million people get extreme doses of radiation... I strongly believe the Dutch Army commanding officers would overlook a lot more civilian casualties than Spain, ignoring possible barbaric acts from their own soldiers. (Btw, I would pay for a Spanish Army mod in CMSF2  )

And about the second, third and fourth points... How does 9/11 compare to dirty bombing several major cities at once? Yes, 9/11 was a very, very important turning point in History; the West pretty much instantly changed from a relaxed behaviour after 1991 to a state of anti-terrorist paranoia, where military interventions were easily justified and it was all about that "bearded old man holstering an AKS-74U in a cave" and neutralising potential sponsors of terrorism(Iraq)........ But dirty bombing? In the most optimistic scenario, you only get a few hundreds killed by radiation and a few thousand needing specialised CBRN medical assistance, it would be just as lethal as 9/11 just like that. However, you are causing national traumas to not just the US, you are causing national traumas to Germany, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain... And also deniying the use of very important urban terrain to those countries.

To make it easier to understand, in my case, I serve in the Spanish Land Forces in a unit very close to Madrid and I was born and raised in the capital, just as many of the guys in my unit. My home is just 3km from the main Madrilian cultural and social center, where our most preciated museums are, the heart of this city, the "0km of Spain" where everything begins. You cannot(me neither) probably imagine how shocked and revengeful I would be if one such dirty bomb were to make it impossible for me and everyone else to linger around these symbolic places. 

Now add to the combination that there's a lot, a lot of people inside not just my unit, but the whole Armed Forces that are extremists(if you know what I mean). The daily routine here is not complete if you don't hear at least 5 jokes or references that are politically incorrect, having especially negative feelings towards non-Western countries, cultures and religions. I promise some people have extremely radical mindsets around. And it's a general problem you can find in pretty much any Armed Forces in any country.

Can you imagine what such people would do in a scenario like CMSF? I mean, these terrorists have utterly irradiated for centuries Madrid's historical urban area, one of the most iconic places in the country and we are deploying this kind of people in Syria... Extrapolate this example to several other European countries and you get the idea of what I mean.

You can build a thousand more Twin Towers if you wish, but you cannot build a copy of Madrid's(or any other major city) historical centre and make like if nothing happened.

[Battlefront.com]

I agree there would be individual/unit activities that would be generally categorized as "war crimes" (plenty of those in the past 20 years), but widespread civilian destruction would not happen as a national policy for any Western country.  Even Spain   I can envision a bunch of other things that might happen that didn't happen with the 9/11 attacks (such as curbing/restricting Muslims within their own borders, sanctioning any nation that offered even mild opposition to military action, etc.), but not widespread civilian casualty causing military actions.

Steve

[domfluff]

I do think there's some truth to the fundamental point here. I don't agree that NATO would operate without concern for the population, but CMSF in the broadest sense does sometimes find itself confused.

Sometimes CMSF feels like a direct conflict - a twist on Desert Storm or OIF, and sometimes it presents itself as representing COIN. Sometimes it feels like the scenarios and campaigns are trying to achieve both at the same time, which can be confusing. (I do mean more than one transitioning to the other - there are some official scenarios and campaigns that feel like they don't agree on what the CMSF high concept actually is). This is obviously compounded with user-made content, but that's not really a fair thing to critique by the same standards.

This isn't necessarily a problem - despite CMSF having being set in the near future, it does a good job of representing the last few decades of warfare, and importantly can cope with hybrid warfare in a manner which none of the other CM titles currently touch.

I do think there's a lot of value in having a firm background to the hypothetical modern titles, but the degree to which the scenarios stick to that background varies.

[Erwin]

1 hour ago, domfluff said:

despite CMSF having being set in the near future

I thought CMSF was set in the recent (approx 10 years ago) past.  

[Sgt.Squarehead]

2008 IIRC.

[domfluff]

Sure, but it was released in 2007. 1984 is not a book set 37 years in the past...

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I believe that the TOE was modelled on a best estimate of what would shortly become available, I believe it may have been further corrected in CM:SF2.

[Sequoia]

And if you don't mind answering Steve, if I'm not mistaken, the accompanying map to CMSF One did not include any Turkish forces on the NATO side. Many NATO forces started out in Turkey however.  Was the absence of Turkish ground forces intentional?

 

Thanks 

[Battlefront.com]

Only minor changes were made to the original CMSF TO&E to better reflect the way emerging concepts of the mid 2000s wound up looking like in the 2010ish timeframe.  In particular we reduced the number of grenade launchers for Marine Squads.  Off the top of my head I can't think of anything else, but I'm sure there were some other tweaks.

Turks were kept out of it on purpose.  At the time there was some doubt that Turkey would want to involve its ground troops in Syria.  I think that was the right call when we made it.  Since then, however, things have changed significantly with a protracted conflict which bolstered Kurdish capabilities.  Something even the older Turkish government wouldn't be keen on, but especially not under Erdoğan's government.  Even still, it took many years for Turkish forces to become directly involved in combat ops on Syrian soil.  The suddenness and overwhelming ground force response by non-Turkish forces that are the core of the CMSF backstory, to me, still seem to lean in favor of the concept of the Turks leaning towards a hosting role only.

Steve