Not even artillery anymore, it's almost all airpower.

The old “technological reliance” line is less accurate than you might think. US forces are acutely aware of the way they persecute conflicts and drill constantly for things like GPS outages. It’s easy to see it like video game stat bars where the US has high tech and low reliability or something like that, but a lot of effort has been expended to create a robust capability across the board.

For example, we have a massive variety of ground-based precision fire options. There’s everything from man-portable mortars to truck bed missile batteries. In recent years our ground based fires capabilities have been evolving particularly rapidly, as we’ve become more worried about airspaces contested by anti access weaponry.

Good to know, thanks for the info.

(Help I'm starting to sound like a bot)

Some of the worries are also on DARPA's radar. They are in the midst of creating several pieces of chip-based tech to address it. Including new timing systems, new INS that is about as accurate as GPS and has significant effective ranges, and other kits. One of the more interesting ones was called TIMU ( Timing and Inertial Measurement Unit) an advanced INS chip. It is smaller and thinner than a dime.

The Russians have taken a major blow with the loss of PD-50, their largest floating drydock. [1] It was damaged and then sank while the Kuznetsov was inside it, and though the Kuznetsov was able to escape (albeit with some serious damage) PD-50 is now lying on the bottom of the sea.

PD-50 was the only facility the Russians had that was able to service the Kuznetsov, and was critical to servicing some of their larger submarines. It’s not clear what this means for the Kuznetsov’s overhaul, which is most likely now on an indefinite delay, or overall readiness of the Russian Navy.

On a slightly more humorous note, around 7000 US servicemembers made a stop in Reykjavik over the weekend on the way to Trident Juncture, and managed to drink all the beer in town. [2]

Edited by archonspeaks on Oct 30th 2018 at 6:37:47 AM

Only in Putin's Russia does the dock sink while the boat floats.

The US Army 82nd Airborne has activated an armor support unit. The unit will be fielding the same LAV-25A2 as is used by the USMC It was officially drop certified by the Army.

However, this is intended as a stop gap until they can get a purpose-built vehicle.

You know, recently I realized something that's now bugging me about a lot of video games, movies, fanfics, etc. that involve a military coup taking over a global superpower with a huge territory, population and thus number of active troops like the USA, PRC or the Russian Federation: Even when such a coup succeeds in toppling the original government, aren't they awfully too quick in moving on to invading nearby countries and/or overseas rival powers — as in, they start the invasion(s) within a matter of months if not weeks of the takeover? Logically speaking, that could only happen if the following criteria are fulfilled:

1. The economy is not in complete shambles by the time the coup faction takes control.

2. The revolution is relatively bloodless for the coup faction (in the sense that they only suffer minimal amounts of casualties and serious hardware damage/losses), which itself requires that it has managed to secure the loyalty of the vast majority of the enlisted troops and secured all of the country's non-mothballed strategic arsenal at the very least.

3. The military forces that the coup faction controls are not suffering from several years of insufficient funding and lack of maintenance/upgrades, in order to be capable of sustaining an offensive war for any appreciable amount of time.

Is my logic sound so far?

Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 1st 2018 at 2:12:52 PM

I think you are spot on for the most part. Most coups need some time to more fully establish and stabilize their power base. The military ultimately represents the key force and is used often directly to exert their will. In large countries, it is possible for them to stabilize territory they already hold before moving on.

The Chinese Civil War, for example, the second phase was a lot of small conflicts with bandits, insurgents, and what was left of the Chinese NRA. The Communist has rapidly moved to stabilize their hold on regions they had captured before the war even ended and their military was big enough and they had good enough control they could launch some support to the North Koreans but they didn't launch as much as their military could provide as a whole.

Another thing that bugs me after watching a few videos of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier: We're in an era where practically every soldier of a modernized, relatively well-funded (para)military force has a radio built into their helmet, right? Well, in bases/camps of such forces that have every reason to be on the lookout for trespassers (e.g. an airfield that's being used to smuggle strategic nukes under the Russian government's nose), you'd think someone would quickly notice that something's very wrong when over a dozen soldiers that were supposed to be on patrol within the same general area went dark for over 10-20 minutes and aren't responding to any calls.

It's a game. Realism would make pretty much everything about Future Soldier impossible.

Less clickbaity headline than the Independent:

On a Tiny Finnish Island, a Helipad, 9 Piers — and the Russian Military?

Makes perfect sense for the Finns to be afraid. The Russians and the Chinese have practically perfected combining private capitalism and government authoritarianism when they buy land privately and have troops guard it under the guise of "protecting citizens abroad".

With modern military games in general, a major issue is basically that the US has no real competitors right now, which makes designing antagonists for us pretty much impossible.

My advice for someone trying to make a modern military-themed game would be to set it in another country. Even if you want the US army to be the protagonists, have them either be invading the other country or defending an allied nation from a third party. An idea that comes to mind is North Korea invading South Korea. And if you want something real severe, have China invade Japan or South Korea.

I would also encourage using fictional nations too, in fact. Make 2 fictional nations that don't like each other, then have the US intervene on the behalf of one of them.

And because it's not a /total/ war, the US being militarily superior to everyone doesn't really matter since the question isn't whether the US will survive but if it will be able to defend its allied state.

ARMA 3 has the military of a Greek-speaking Mediterranean island attacking the NATO peacekeeping forces stationed on it right after a coup and civil war. They're backed by an Iran-led coalition, whose force projection capabilities in the region are implied to rival the US and the northern Atlantic NATO states.

Call of Duty Infinite Warfare's introductory mission had the US intervening in South Korea to fight off a North Korean invasion. Most of the rest of the plot had your character working in various places on behalf of a Private Military Contractor, and then the plot went straight off the rails in the third act as they tend to do in Co D games.

The Call of Duty franchise post-Modern Warfare is fascinating in how so much of what had been initially considered to be laughably ridiculous plot points have now become Harsher in Hindsight in more grounded ways.

MW 2 featured a US military commander who wanted to make America great again by cooperating with a Russian ultranationalist. Said corrupt commander also was notorious for his contempt for ROE and used a private militia dressed in black as his henchmen in Afghanistan.

MW 3 had the Russians roll into NATO countries with friendly green men who commit chemical attacks on British soil. The UK PM is also female.

Black Ops 2 involved the US getting into a literal trade war with China over the latter's economic influence over the former.

Ghosts featured a literal invasion of the US by an alliance of Latin American countries.

Edited by FluffyMcChicken on Nov 3rd 2018 at 10:27:17 AM

I don't recall MW3 ever going into detail about the PM's identity. Are you sure you're not thinking of BO2 having a female POTUS?

I stopped paying any attention to the COD plot around the time the Russians found the off switch for the entire US defense network and early warning system and launched a trans-Atlantic invasion.

Russia Influence Operations Taking Aim at US Military

THE MEMES, JACK!

Russia, Russia, Russia...this is not The '50s nostalgia I had in mind...

Relevant:

So, with Veteran's Day right around the corner in the US, I thought it would be nice to share a page with the various free meals and offers available to vets this weekend. Some are only offered on either Sunday or Monday, so plan your free-ish meals accordingly!

Old news, now, from two days ago. But the final offensive against ISIS appears to have stalled, mainly because ISIS is now an underground insurgency again.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Nov 8th 2018 at 12:37:34 PM

I'd rather have them be an underground insurgency than enough people and materiel to have a standing army and fight people in symmetrical combat.

They were never really able to engage in symmetrical warfare. Even at the height of their power they were using hit and run and diminution tactics, which are trademarks of an asymmetrical engagement.