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Can anyone explain to me the joke [Two Soviet Army Colonels are drinking in Paris, one of them asks the other: "Who won the air war?"]? -Obvious implication is that the WARPACT won. -But how could they win if they didn't gain at least local air superiority? I was reading a book by Ralph Peters called "The Red Army" and I hope this is the right thread for this sort of speculation, but in it basically the cold war turns hot. We don't really know for why until the end, (the ultimate reason was kinda lame "Because we could" but it beats 'Stan Muslem terrorists blowing up a oil refinery.) but it basically takes place over a three-four day period in which the Soviet Army attempts to race across the Fulda Gap to the Wesner. The plan is basically "encircle the Germans before they request nuclear release." in a double envelopment, the encircle plan I actually really like as its the kind of plans I could even envision when playing milsims like Hearts of Iron. You attack the flanks to draw reserves away from the center where your real attack comes through which now leaves two or three smaller encirclements on the flanks. A lot of luck falls on the Soviets by design, the author claims a lot of NATO-WWIII books tend to be just as lucky for NATO so he was just answering that. Its rather short though, maybe 130 pages without much plot with a lot of shocking character deaths that served no narrative purpose. Anyone else read it? I really liked it and was there any chance the author would've been right if in 1987 or so the Soviets decided to play for keeps right then and there? I really liked it, first time I ever see The Soviets win.
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Jan 21, 2013 21:30
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A point to mention though that Warsaw Pact armoured doctrine operated along the lines of Deep Operations which deemphasised tactical superiority for the operational goals; as such having tank on tank combat and proving the victor didn't matter so much in the grand scheme of things if their planning went as it should and the enemy was surrounded from the zerg rush happening at places where the NATO did not have their uber tanks in good numbers.
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Jan 22, 2013 05:19
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mikerock posted:My favourite paper I ever wrote in college was a comparison paper of interwar Russian and German armoured doctrine and tank development. Tukhachevsky basically was right about everything and gently caress Iosef Dugashvili. Can you post that? I've actually hit a dead end on online resources for this kind of stuff, the Lensworth Papers seems to be the most I can easily find... Fake edit: Sunuvabitch its down, I can't find their papers on august storm anymore.  read edit: Found it, yay! And there was much rejoicing. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Jan 22, 2013 |
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Jan 22, 2013 07:32
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I picked 87' arbitrarily, the most I could get was that it was definately the 80's and that the senior military commanders such as Malinski were pretty sure their side was eventually about to throw in the towel without a shot fired. So it had to be a year where it was obvious enough to the senior brass anyways. Other bits of evidence in the book as well, NATO having some big fuggly uber tanks that scared the poo poo out of a lot of tankers in the book. The US using the Apache I'm pretty sure (was it LO or something? The Soviets had difficulty detecting it for some reason.) and some sort of plane that out maneuvered the fighter bomber engaging its home runway (and got away). And that seemingly the motorrifle division we see crossing the river had its infantry platoon was understrengthed.
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Jan 22, 2013 18:37
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Right, its hard to keep the geography straight in my head, especially when I play so many games covering different time periods that the names never stay consistent.  I wish he had decided to make it a full book or maybe a franchise or something, it would've been interesting to see the war escalate to the Far East with maybe Soviet vs American Assisted Chinese formations; that would've been cool, though if Ralph Peters is anything like the other "Cold War Warriors" I know like Stuart Slade or Clancy he's probably racist 'yellow peril' kook and the PLA will exist only to die in large swaths to keep the US units alive.  But assuming he had as much effort and research for Red Army as he would have for the PLA it would be awesome.*That and being a full length book Malinski's son and maybe that Para NKVK Captain and maybe his Commander would survive; because honestly their deaths were the ones that just did not make sense at all if I were writing. The bad rear end commander should die maybe, in order to inspire the capable younger Captain; and Malinski Jr, should in order to lead his own Army far east while Malinski himself fights off political assassination from the NKVD proper in Moscow while at the same time keeping a second shooting war from happening across the Rhine, give him a second son to be the sacrificial lamb to motivate him there. Honestly there's a huge gaping hole in the niche market for a series of books from the Soviet perspective, its a drat shame. *I imagine he would get in contact with his PLA-Watcher analogue to help out.
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Jan 22, 2013 19:40
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movax posted:Play some Red Alert 3 if you're hankering for some good ol' fashioned Soviet curb-stomping  I have no idea how the idea in the book, and the hinted continuation being a Soviet-Sino war with American meddling, is at all comparable to Red Alert 3. The US was a major arms supplier to China up until 89'.
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Jan 22, 2013 22:43
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Snowdens Secret posted:If you put this capability in front of Stalin, having weathered Operation Barbarossa, with 25+ million dead just from repulsing an invader, I cannot see him not using it. At a risk of some but not all of his civilian population he essentially eliminates forever any current and future external threat to the workers' paradise. As stated before in the thread the people most likely to be willing to bring on the horrors of nuclear war were those who had seen the horrors of world-sized total conventional war. It probably also says something about the changing views of Soviet leaders over time on the real-world viability of a global Communist regime. That's interesting as a nuke analyst duder I know of argued the opposite. For example he argued Mao quieted down significantly in his international denounciations once he had nuclear capability. quote:Aha, I hear you say what about the mad dictator? Its interesting to note that mad, homicidal aggressive dictators tend to get very tame sane cautious ones as soon as they split atoms. Whatever their motivations and intents, the mechanics of how nuclear weapons work dictate that mad dictators become sane dictators very quickly. After all its not much fun dictating if one's country is a radioactive trash pile and you're one of the ashes. China, India and Pakistan are good examples. One of the best examples of this process at work is Mao Tse Tung. Throughout the 1950s he was extraordinarily bellicose and repeatedly tried to bully, cajole or trick Khruschev and his successors into initiating a nuclear exchange with the US on the grounds that world communism would rise from the ashes. Thats what Quemoy and Matsu were all about in the late 1950s. Then China got nuclear weapons. Have you noticed how reticent they are with them? Its sunk in. They can be totally destroyed; will be totally destroyed; in the event of an exchange. A Chinese Officer here once on exchange (billed as a "look what we can do" session it was really a "look what we can do to you" exercise) produced the standard line about how the Chinese could lose 500 million people in a nuclear war and keep going with the survivors. So his hosts got out a demographic map (one that shows population densities rather than topographical data) and got to work with pie-cutters using a few classified tricks - and got virtually the entire population of China using only a small proportion of the US arsenal. The guest stared at the map for a couple of minutes then went and tossed his cookies into the toilet bowl. The only people who mouth off about using nuclear weapons and threaten others with them are those that do not have keys hanging around their necks. The moment they get keys and realize what they've let themselves in for, they get to be very quiet and very cautious indeed. Another great - and very recent example - look how circumspect the Indians and Pakistani Governments were in the recent confrontation - lots of words but little or no action to back them and both sides worked very hard not to do anything that could be misunderstood. (When the Pakistani's did a missile test they actually invited the Indians over to watch in order to ensure there was no ground for misunderstanding. The test itself was another message from both countries to the rest of the world - basically it read "Don't sweat it, we know the rules") Guy's an asshat in person but there isn't much reason to doubt his work. The recent old WWIII movie discussions reminded me of how in war games it claimed the Soviets had like 60 typhoon's 
Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Feb 10, 2013 |
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Feb 10, 2013 04:43
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Anyone have or know of any blogs or reference sites that have oodles of pictures of men/women in 70's era Soviet kit in different poses/camera angles? I need reference pictures for some art work. Google shows me a lot of front view pictures but I don't quite have enough side, rear or 3/4 view references. I'ld greatly appreciate it, anything with a focus on the Afghanski I wouldn't mind either. 
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May 19, 2013 11:07
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I originally asked this in the Ask/Tell Mil/Hist thread but remembered that I might get some good responses here; can anyone recommend me some good atlas's of Cold War Europe? Circa 85' is fine; its for a game concept I'm putting together. On that note, for a Cold War strategy game if you had to think of some mechanic, feature, or any element at all you would want from a grand strategy game set in the Cold War what would it be?
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Mar 5, 2014 04:10
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Totally TWISTED posted:Yeah I forget if it was here or elsewhere that I saw this posted but it's basically a big gently caress you/reminder to anyone that a promise to protect you if you give up your nukes it worthless coming from Europe/the USA (and honestly probably from anyone). NATO/EU membership might give you a chance of being defended but at this point I honestly wonder if that is even enough. The problem is they likely couldn't have maintained them.
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Mar 6, 2014 06:57
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This came up in a discussion with a co-worker but what's the relevant law involved if you poke a fighter plane out on exercise using some sort of radio transceiver that tricks it into thinking there's a missile launch going for it while lighting off some fireworks or something to add the visual effect? Say two situations, prove intent vs not being able to prove intent?
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Jul 24, 2014 00:50
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Godholio posted:And China is totally not looking to upgrade any of this, and the US is totally not committing to half-assed improvements itself. Totally. The situation today is exactly what it will be in 20 years, and in 40 years, when we are still using exactly the same loving hardware we're using today. Jesus Christ, you're as bad as Bob Gates at this. Out of curiosity what was Bob Gate's problem here, the more details the merrier.
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Jul 7, 2015 19:09
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xthetenth posted:He gutted the raptor buy. I mean more around the lines of... His justifications and general issues with not planning for other nations capabilities 20 years down the line.
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Jul 7, 2015 20:49
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Actually this is really fascinating, 21st century warfare stuff I'm first seeing about right here.
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Jul 12, 2015 01:58
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Dandywalken posted:Buddy shared this with me, and gave the go-ahead to share: This looks straight out of Wargame: Airland Battle.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:09
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Koesj posted:gently caress, every piece of fiction I've seen on that kind of stuff, outside Red Army and Chieftains!, had a drawn-out, relatively low optempo conflict going on. The former was basically a well-written Team B manifesto for investment in conventional forces, and the latter is kinda scattershot, but at least they get 1980s-ish modern warfare right. There was some collaborative web novel WWIII story (taking place in 2008 where the Iron Curtain never falls) by some people that also went balls to the wall "everything goes right" for NATO, with NATO destroying virtually every bridge and rear supply depot and rail junction successfully in the first few hours. The cause being the Kremlin getting spooked by a Polish Solidarity 2.0 movement and deciding to use the incident as a cover to mobilize their Cat B&C formations and invade NATO in a rather blatant "The Soviets are unquestionably evil" writing. Weirdly when I brought it up they apparently hadn't even realized just how one sided it was. Red Army by Ralph Peters still remains my favorite story since it's also a criticism of that sort of writing where "everything goes right". I can get Tom Clancey's overwhelmingly one sided narrative exists because he has a franchise and the hero's need to survive to get to the next book but I don't understand why it's so prevalent.
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Jul 22, 2015 17:56
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Sperglord Actual posted:And while we're on the topic of nautical nonsense, what’s behind Beijing’s drive to control the South China Sea? Some people don't know what reborrowing is?
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Jul 28, 2015 19:12
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That Works posted:This is purely from memory but I thought it was some paper / article he wrote about the MX missile that got him a visit from someone. Maybe not though... coulda been something he talked about in Hunt for Red October. It was the propulsion system.
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Aug 5, 2015 22:06
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B4Ctom1 posted:hahaha I think he enjoyed Electric Retard comic "terrorism" too much So Russia isn't alone in having Dugins do they?
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Sep 1, 2015 15:40
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Fojar38 posted:Oh, you're literally taking the "inscrutable far thinking mandarin" position. While it's true that Chinese politicians sometimes have moments of "Mah legacy!" like with Jiang who thought he could maybe secure Reunification during his tenure to cement his legacy as being on par with Mao; I think it's also not so simple as the Chinese politburo checking in a constant while loop of "return CanWeIntoTaiwan?". I think the argument that there is a long term consensus has merit and one started by Deng but probably more militarily oriented than posited. Long term economic growth that will eventually carry military investment along with it until they get to the point they can challenge the status quo if the need arises. The largest worry would be some popular widespread outburst of nationalism forcing a military solution because non of the current generation have the clout to get the PLA to do what they're told that Mao, Deng, and Jiang did.
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Sep 29, 2015 21:30
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Murgos posted:I'm curious as to how important this type of evaluation is to the actual combat usefulness of the aircraft? Because every time The Powers That Be declared that the day of the dog fight is over the enemy somehow stumps them and finds a way to get a dog fight and win.
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Mar 2, 2016 20:19
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I'd like a movie based on what Operation Olympia would be like and how it would go down based on the most pessimistic predictions.
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Jul 9, 2016 04:06
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Godholio posted:Frankly this has been a big problem for the entire USAF/USN flying community for years. The problem is just further exacerbated with the new fighters. So whats the problem here? The fighters are now "too gud" for your equipment and doctrine to provide a sufficient enough challenge?
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Jul 10, 2016 18:14
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That Works posted:Why would the Norwegians have that info? gently caress with Norway and you'll find out! 
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Jul 11, 2016 23:45
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TheFluff posted:For the self-propelled AA vehicle, why do the guns and the missiles need to be on the same platform? Isn't that a bit impractical, they're completely different systems with different needs, engagement methods, ranges etc etc. Is it just to make the solution cheaper overall? I know the Soviets did it on the Tunguska but isn't that the only vehicle configured that way? Helicopters after you run out of missiles.
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Jul 14, 2016 20:33
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aphid_licker posted:Lots of weighted dice rolls take place - do your conscripts get bogged down in the crowd and talked into surrendering, do you manage to capture enough media outlets / manage to put out enough confusing propaganda to keep people inside so your guys don't get bogged down, do you have troops that are unlikely to be talked into surrendering because of their ethnic or class background (conscripted country bumpkins vs. urban bourgeoisie or something) and what do you blow that particular load on, how many officers are your political appointees vs. someone else's, how many officers have your social background (technocrat, commie, islamist, liberal) vs. that of the government. Did you manage to make a good plan, do you have people who can properly execute it before the other side marshals their forces. Did you identify the crucial targets and weak points. Are you lucky. Do you manage to stun the opposition with fait accompli, decapitation, whatever - prez getting shot as step one in the coup etc. How much can you achieve with means that the other side can't counter - air strikes or whatever. Did you put enough of your pieces in place? Did you try to put too many pieces into place and gave someone time to squeal? Do you get enough momentum going that your guys don't jump ship? I wonder if there are any tabletop games that are about organizing and executing a coup. It has all of the elements of a heist but you get to wear a swag uniform.
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Jul 17, 2016 06:35
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Is he going to use this to completely purge the military of anyone that would actually stop him?
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Jul 23, 2016 05:06
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Mortabis posted:Jesus Christ they were shoveling waste into pipes that were visibly glowing from Cherenkov radiation. I'm sad that we never got any interesting scifi monsters from this.
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Jul 24, 2016 06:26
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Mortabis posted:I find it deeply annoying that conservative media, to wit National Review, the Weekly Standard, etc. have been screaming about this Putin connection for like, 8 or 9 months and only now are cable news channels actually covering it. And then of course four years ago Barack Obama was like "hur dur what century do you think we're in" when Mitt Romney singled out Russia as our most serious geopolitical foe. Nice to see we're all on the same page now, glad you got with the program, would have been nice though if you'd noticed back in 2012. This is an over simplification. Romney couldn't have predicted the course diplomacy and history have taken and was essentially red baiting, take it in context of his assertion that the US Navy was smaller then it has been since WWI.
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Jul 27, 2016 16:25
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So this game up in a chat and I'm pretty sure the person is either wrong or taking something out of context, but there's two one-off mentions in Wikipedia that the JSDF camo scheme (Type I and Type II) were Copied by China, the Type 1 apparently for experimental purposes, the second mention is less detailed and after some google searching I haven't found any other references. The PLA has a decent amount of resources and funding and plus given some of the geopolitical tensions between the PRC and Japan I somewhat doubt the claim without further collaboration. Does anyone know? I also see reference that at some point the PLA may have copied the camo scheme of the USMC but that seems more reasonable, if you want the best fighting force why not study the best fighting force (the Americans in general, I don't mean the Marines in particular)?
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Aug 2, 2016 18:57
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priznat posted:It's all CADPAT ripoffs anyway Canadian brother! Did we do it first?
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Aug 2, 2016 19:11
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MrYenko posted:In a world where two idiots on youtube are routinely filming stuff at 300k+ FPS, it amazes me that a state university can't do better than that potato-video. Gavin Free and Dan Gruchi? To be fair Gavin at least has worked in the film industry for a few years on various films for their SloMo and that's partly why he can afford the absurdly expensive camera(s) he uses for that. I would like them to film a tank blowing up.
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Aug 13, 2016 18:14
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Dark Helmut posted:Can confirm that 40mm (at least on USS North Carolina) were most likely manually aimed. You need to "Open link on new tab" and get the i dot address with the file extension at the end.  Like so.
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Aug 19, 2016 19:07
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Cyrano4747 posted:Nine thousand dash line. Did Chinese Rocket Trip or Japanese Moon Rabbits come first?
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Aug 23, 2016 21:00
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Baloogan posted:I've often thought that sticking a couple of manpads on board would do wonders Do ships Frigate sized and larger not keep an armoury just in case?
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Sep 5, 2016 00:11
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So a question about OPSEC, what happens if someone comes on and starts leaking opsec stuff in this thread but he isn't a US consultant/servicemember but is a foreign intelligence agent? Would Lowtax get an email from the CIA to do something about it? I'm curious about how much effort intelligence agencies put into counter intelligence operations stuff on internet forums.Force de Fappe posted:What worries me a little is that he comes along in an age when the tepid technocrats are being shifted to the side at the top echelons of the CCP by people like Xi Jinping, who practice a much more person-oriented type of politics, more prone to jingoism and nationalism and harnessing the power those things have over Chinese masses, and I'm not sure the mix is very good. Susan Shirk has called out these issues back in like 2008 in China: Fragile Superpower. There's an interesting key element how the Long March generation of leaders basically were the Army and could do "Nixon going to China" type of diplomacy, keep military funding lower, etc, all because they had the trust of the army. Starting with Hu Jintao you have leaders who in order to keep the military happy have been forced to raise the budget every year, they used nationalism as an easy short term solution to domestic troubles and now they can't stop using it. It's really interesting because the whole thing back then about China passing a law to make it illegal for Taiwan to declare independence was actually Chinese thinktanks desperately trying to come up with something, anything they could do to thread the needle between needing to take a strong stance and not going to a possibly nation destroying war they can't win. I'm not sure how much of this is Xi finding it useful as a means of consolidating his faction and power base and how much of it is him literally having no other options because of decisions made over the last 40 years ago by Deng, Zheng, and Hu.
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Dec 3, 2016 18:53
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Godholio posted:I imagine US authorities would still be interested in identifying the person, and if possible, have their own government sit down and chat with them about not being stupid on the internet. I mean more specifically, like, what if a KGB agent was leaking US OPSEC stuff. So someone in this thread asks a question that can't be answered except in at best the vaguest way, but Yuri is like "Yeah it's like this, that, that, and like it's over there like so."
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Dec 3, 2016 20:00
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We live in interesting times.
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Dec 17, 2016 19:50
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Vahakyla posted:Would I be correct in declaring that any modern armor ISIS acquires is completely null effect due to western airpower? Yes and no I imagine. Yes if/when airpower gets around to it; but it may still cause some western aligned militia's some headache while waiting.
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Dec 23, 2016 23:53
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China had decent diplomacy under Deng Xiaopeng who knew he needed to allocate less funding to the military to focus on economic growth and regional border wars are kinda bad for that. China has a lot of investments in Africa and I don't think has bad relations with South Korea; I can see a panic reversal of some of their more belligerent diplomacy if they see the situation worsen enough; I think they depended on the US being distracted by Russian adventurism. Nebakenezzer posted:It seems sorta obvious to me now that China, at least, sees US-Russian relations warming as a threat directed against them - it's ironic, since this is the exact opposite of Nixon's play normalizing relations with China 40 years ago. The US just had to sell out all of its NATO strategic interests! 
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Jan 4, 2017 18:56
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