Agiel

Apparently Trump wants a military parade in DC. You think those roads are going to be able to take a company of M1A2s going down them?

Still, I believe the fact that arms procurement industry in western democracies was nonetheless accountable to an extent that of the Soviet Union was not was a big factor in how they came out on top in the Cold War. Reading through Steven Zaloga's The Kremlin's Nuclear Sword and David E. Hoffman's The Dead Hand one gets the sense that the Soviet military industrial complex was wasteful and all-devouring to a degree the likes of Lockheed and General Dynamics could only idly fantasize of. You see this with the M-4 Bison (a jet-powered strategic bomber that only had the range to hit CONUS targets on a one-way trip; diplomatic overtures were made to Mexico to get permission to use their airfields as diversionary airstrips and when that effort came to naught the bombers were later converted into tankers) as well as the SS-11/SS-17/SS-19 debacle in which the RSVN wound up buying all three missiles to fulfill a single requirement.

6 hours ago, Damian90 said:

The thing is that M4's with 76mm M1 gun, at that distance, would simply pierce Tigers frontal armor without a problem. That was my biggest issue with "Fury".

In fairness, in Kelly's Heroes (which is a much better film) in spite of it being stated that the Sherman had the 76mm gun it was unable to take on the Tiger Is in a fair fight, so Fury has some company with that discrepancy.

6 hours ago, Ssnake said:

My gripe with Fury isn't so much the tropes or the manipulative music. Sure, leaving them would have helped, but the point where the film broke (for me) was: Up to pulling back into the tree line when having the surprise encounter with the Tiger the film was reasonably accurate with respect to tactics and equipment of the time. Even worse, at this point the script simply contradicts itself:

 

And then they take the Tiger head-on, and get slaughtered, and finally kill it by driving in circles around it. Reason? The film's finale needs a sole, isolated tank. That can't tun away. So we're driving straight to that single most obvious point where a single mine might be buried. Because, that's how badass we are, we just don't care about inner logic, we're blazing across the land at plot speed. So, this is the central failure of the script, and we're right in the middle of the film.

 

And then they pull the most exceptional stunt (with an uncanny resemblance to Audie Murphy MoH citation). I'm somewhat okay with the Audie Murphy part. After all, something like it actually happened in WW2. Once. I'm not so okay with not giving credit to Murphy by making it a clichéd Hollywood Hero's Last Stand (not the least because someone felt that defeating 50 Germans from a burning tank while being shot in the leg, and then leading the company charge to retake lost ground wasn't enough, they somehow had to up it for the film, thereby devaluing what actually happened for no other reason as the midguided feeling that they had to compete with over the top action computer games).

A friend of mine relayed to me that he knew someone involved with choreographing the fight sequences, particularly the much maligned Tiger-Sherman duel scene. Apparently when the script was picked up a much more dynamic and realistic sequence was planned for the climax, however Tiger 131 had been loaned to the film crew on the understanding that nothing too taxing was demanded from the tank (basically accelerating and reversing little more than 100m in virtually a straight line), thus that scene had to be re-choreographed with those constraints in mind.

If playing as a TC on older tanks that lack CITVs or the Leopard "Peri" don't be so averse to popping you head out of the hatch and scan for targets with your binoculars. An old maxim of Israeli tankers goes something to the effect of "a tank loses 60% of its effectiveness with its commander's hatch buttoned up".

Indeed, part of the reason India stopped at 36 Rafales was because HAL, India's domestic combat aircraft manufacturer, is notoriously difficult to work with for foreign designers and manufacturers. Not content with a frankly incredible agreement for  technology transfers and a production contract for 108 of 126 Rafales slated for service in the IAF, HAL overplayed their hand and demanded that Dassault guarantee the work which Dassault inevitably refused. The Indian MOD got around this problem by reducing the order to 36 which can be seen as a sweet spot of establishing the Rafale as a significant part of the IAF but not enough to justify a domestic production line.

I'm curious as to how it was ascertained that what was fired was a TOW-2A and not some older version like the legacy TOW-2 or BGM-71A/B or ITOW. Was there anything from the footage that distinguished it as that? Had the people who filmed it had a close look at the missile at some point? Was the TOW-2A known to have been supplied to this group of rebels? 

It appears the dazzlers were not turned on, probably due to the crew not expecting any ATGMs in the area. Also, based on discussions over at TankNet, the Shtora system would likely not be effective against the TOW2A in any case.

Any particular reason why it would have been deactivated? It would seem to me if you were working with the latest and greatest in the Russian arsenal it would be prudent to err on the side of caution, and I somewhat doubt fuel consumption is a concern since urban combat does require that a unit proceed slowly anyways.

By the way, can you link to the discussion about Shtora's effectiveness against TOW-2?

Purportedly Relikt was able to defeat tandem charge warheads, so that might explain why the turret didn't get sent all the way back to Nizhny Tagil. What is curious is that the very visible Shtora electro-optical dazzlers did not spoof the missile.

If what was shipped was the laser-guided variant, then I fail to see how countries like Russia or China could have gleaned something from it that they haven't already figured out 15-20 years ago.

A comic book reader iPhone app for French bande dessineé I was quite fond of using had to take some titles off of its service, since with the French being who they are generally had steamier content than us Americans in their comics and didn't have the Comics Code to limit its creative freedom at some point in its life.

From the History Channel Youtube channel, though this almost makes up for the years of Duck Dynasty, pawn shops, and Nazi "aliens".

https://youtu.be/pcVzfOmt4Tg

I am designing a scenario for Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations in which a joint NATO force of the United States and Turkey launch a marine invasion on Crimea.

It's title: "Operation Thanksgiving" :bigsmile:

What do you suppose that cutout to the left of the T-14's gun on the turret is? The gunner's sight?

it is said that everything within the strike radius of the CVBG remains intact at the Task Force Commander's discretion :gun:

Well the Russian MOD has progressively slashed its order from ~166 for the production aircraft that would eventually come of the PAK-FA T-50 program down to as of this post 12 airframes as a result of the recent sanctions. I think it quite likely for the foreseeable future that the biggest customer for the latest and greatest of Russian conventional military tech will continue to be India.

I think the next step should be the "Joint Mobile Offshore Base". We fix the problem of regular airfields being static and vulnerable and regular carriers being too small to host conventional takeoff craft by making carriers too big to sink by conventional means.

Put a bunch of MIM-104 Patriot batteries on board and have it flanked by Flight III DDGs and a bird doesn't take a crap in its airspace without a say so. :gun:

Sorry for reviving this thread, but...

Came back to this sim after a while and thought I'd play through the "Deliberate Assault" missions, and for the life of me I can't get an acceptable number of tanks to secure OBJ Viking in the first scenario "Hurricane at Fulda" fairly unscathed (or with enough ammo to repel the impending reinforcements. In spite of the fact that I managed to get a 100% rating in the Tank Gunnery Range the AI tankers in my company are unable to score hits on the tanks in prepared defences, and they expend all of their sabots trying to do so. I've tried nuking that entire position with ICM barrages but most of those T-72s are hardy enough to shrug the submunitions off with light damage.

So the ERA on the tank in the photo is Relikt, not Kontakt-5? I had been under the impression that there were few if any cosmetic differences between the two. Or is the way the bricks are arrayed indicative on the ones in service with the CIS? From what I've seen the Ukrainian T-80s have retained the rubber flaps over their Kontakt-5 bricks while many newer T-72s and the T-90 have done away with them to give them a a more clamshell appearance. What sites did you discover this on (for citation purposes, not that I doubt the validity of them unless you would recommend taking it with a grain of salt).

Sorry if this is an egregious case of necroing and if it's verging into potentially volatile territory as it involves the current troubles in Ukraine.

I'm engaged in a discussion over T-72s in Ukraine at the moment among friends (nothing vitriolic, I assure you), in particular footage of a T-72 that is supposedly of a T-72 that is exclusively in Russian service:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28961080

What is the probability that it is an abnormally modernised T-72 that was in Ukrainian stocks and not of Russian make as IISS suggests?

....[M]ost of the cash flow is coming from everything Leopard related. It's a good tank, but it's from 1975, and a new development isn't in sight.

Do you believe the latest incarnations of the Leopard 2 have areas in which it is deficient that could not be offset by modular systems and thus would necessitate an entirely new design? Does it need better engines? Additional hull protection? Next-generation reactive armour? Better IVIS systems? A TIS and CITV suite comparable to the M1A2's? Even more COIN-oriented systems?

Or am I being too unambitious and the next step is directed-energy/magnetically-accelerated weapons, nanotech-reinforced alloys, and quantum-computing systems able to reduce CEPs to micrometers and provide low-latency platoon-level to theaterwide situational awareness and command and control?

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-01/tank-builders-krauss-maffei-wegmann-nexter-systems-to-combine.html

So what does this mean? The Eurokampfpanzer Leclercopard? the Leoclerc? Another step towards that superpower "Etat-Franco-Allemand" everyone's been talking about?

The big strength of drones is the feeling of hopelessness instilled in the enemy. They are losing PEOPLE while, at best, they are destroying what should be expendable equipment. It is the ultimate unfair exchange. This is why I think the long term goal will always be to remove humans from the battlefield, in every aspect possible. Just sayin.

Reminds me of this passage from Mark Bowden's piece on remote piloted vehicles from The Atlantic:

"[C]onsider the emotions of those on the receiving end, left to pick up the body parts of their husbands, fathers, brothers, friends. Where do they direct their anger? When the wrong person is targeted, or an innocent bystander is killed, imagine the sense of impotence and rage. How do those who remain strike back? No army is arrayed against them, no airfield is nearby to be attacked. If they manage to shoot down a drone, what have they done but disable a small machine? No matter how justified a strike seems to us, no matter how carefully weighed and skillfully applied, to those on the receiving end it is profoundly arrogant, the act of an enemy so distant and superior that he is untouchable."

The article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/

Was your research also informed by what was known about the L11A5 used by the Chieftain and the Challenger 1? Though I acknowledge that its within the realm of possibility that the same round fired from an L11 and a the L30 would be like going from the L/44 to the L/55 using the same round, but I'm curious about the performance figures for the older gun.