Fingerspitzengefühl

I am reading Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat. My grasp of naval warfare is still comparable to the one of a two year old kid, but ... Crap! This book sometimes is a trip down the deepest roots of war waging.

I came across this passage on leadership and I wanted to share it here.

"Another difference between good and bad leaders lies in what they see when they look, what they hear when they are told, and what they communicate when they speak."

Cheers,

How much is a user interface worth?

Well folks, I am enjoying Achtung Panzer Kharkov 43. So much that I've got a serious case of Graviteam virus and yesterday I decided to get Steel Fury Kharkov 42. First I downloaded the demo to check out if there was any type of graphics incompatibility issues (there was none). But the sim's interface of the demo is hell and the user's manual editor appears to be Google translate. After Achtung Panzer Kharkov 43, I was expecting some clunkiness in those two aspects of Steel Fury. Still, I was shocked with the demo's interface and manual.

I'm not a gamer that expects 100% polish in games and simulations. I don't even care about storylines, campaigns or how many missions the game has. As such, from what I saw in Steel Fury's demo, I'm going to enjoy this thing. Yet, I can't help but wonder about the impact of presentation in Graviteam's offerings. Sales lost ... developer goes under ... we are left again in the dark.

It is kind of funny that other GREAT games have wonderful interfaces, manuals and tutorials but still struggle to convince gamers about their worth. And I'm not going to give names ...

Yes! Download of Steel Fury is done. Off to climb the ultimate learning curve.

Steel Fury Kharkov 42 demo.

Cheers,

Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge - New video

There is a faint smell of release coming from Matrix Games' kitchen. :)

Dave Arjuna, head honcho of Panther Games has assembled a video about their upcoming Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge. It covers the basic theme and mechanics of the game.  This video will help the newcomer to appreciate what this game is about.

A Matrix forumite was kind enough to upload it into YouTube. The first part is embedded here. Please follow the links below for the other 3 parts.



Second Part (YouTube)
Third Part (YouTube)
Fourth Part (YouTube)

Cheers,

Where is the Hearts of Iron franchise heading?

Among other many sore spots, this blog never covered anything at the strategic level of war. As you know, I blog about what I play, and with the many work and family obligations I don't play as much as I would want. I have toyed around with some strategic-level war games, but although I think they are great playing them would demand an amount of time I can't afford.

Past Friday I received my press pack of screenshots for Hearts of Iron III Semper Fi and while browsing them I remembered the nice level of detail that the Hearts of Iron franchise packs for land warfare. I don't think any other strategy level war game models land warfare as good as the Hearts of Iron franchise does. But take that with a grain of salt because as I said, I am mostly ignorant about this genre.

The Russian front: expansive, limitless ... Like the amount of time needed to play this game? 

Nothing quiet of the Eastern Front ... Am I supposed to remember where each unit is going?

How long would it take to manually set the stance of every unit in your OOB?

In closing, Paradox appears to be taking the Hearts of Iron franchise more deep into micro-management territory. My question: is it more always better?

Cheers,

LOMAC Flaming Cliffs 2.0: Close Air Support (Part 3)

This a continuation of this previous entry.

We left the contact point and we are a few miles short of the initial point ALAMO (IP ALAMO). The chat with the JTAC continues.

Talk to me JTAC ... (laser spot is the green diamond in the HUD)

The "talk-on" is a very common part of type-1 CAS because this type requires the aircraft to have visual tally to where the JTAC wants the ordnance delivered. "Contact" is the brevity code for having visual contact and "spot" is the one for being able to receive the reflected laser signal emitted by the JTAC. I still can't see the target, but moving a few miles forward solves that issue.

I see the target now ... (laser spot is the green diamond in the HUD)

The "readback" is just to make sure that both the JTAC and the attack aircraft are on the same page. The attack aircraft reads back items 4 and 6 of the 9-line brief plus some items from the remarks given by the JTAC.

Once the readback is acknowledged by the JTAC, he clears us for the attack run.

Cheers,

LOMAC Flaming Cliffs 2.0: Close Air Support (Part 2)

This is a continuation from this previous entry.

We are at the contact point, ready to copy our next CAS mission from the joint tactical air controller (JTAC).

Huh? See text to get even more confused.

"Type 1 in effect"

CAS comes in three tasty flavors (types 1 to 3). Type 1 CAS is used when the JTAC needs to acquire visually both the target and the attacking aircraft. The situation down there must be delicate.

"ALAMO ... 012 .. 11.0 ... etc"

This is the so-called "9-line brief". It has to include these specific items in this specific order:

1. Initial Point (IP) (ALAMO in this case)
2. Heading from the IP to the target (012)
3. Distance from the IP to the target in nautical miles (11.0)
4. Target elevation in feet above the sea level (325)
5. Target description (Enemy infantry ...)
6. Target location coordinates (NB 456746)
7. Type of target marking (laser in this case)
8. Location of friendlies form the target (East 400 meters. Sh!t I knew something was kinda pressing down there. Better watch out for where those bombs fall!)
9. Egress direction and where to go (Egress east and go to the CP again)

"Remarks"

What? There is more? See below, please.

Huh? See text for further confusion.

Final attack headings is almost self explanatory: is a range of headings that you can have while flying to the target. This headings range ensures that you can see the reflected laser radiation and in some cases is used to make sure that we hot-rod pilots remember if there is any fire de-confliction measures in effect (nothing funny about being shot down by your own artillery).

Immediate TOT (time on target), means that we should deliver our ordnance as soon as possible (told you something urgent is going on down there).

"Say when ready for talk on" ... well ... there is a lot of talking in CAS. 

More coming soon ...

Cheers,

LOMAC Flaming Cliffs 2.0: Close Air Support (Part 1)

A boy returned from Sunday school and his mother asked him what he had learned. He said that he heard about how Moses and his people escaped from Pharaoh's Egypt. He told her that as Pharaoh's tanks approached the Israelites, Moses got on the radio and called in an air strike, which knocked the tanks out of action. The puzzled mother asked, "Is that really the way the teacher told the story?" The boy replied, "If I told it her way, you'd never believe it!"

This joke originally appeared in Reader's Digest around 1967 and it is the opening paragraph of "The Warthog and the Close Air Support Debate". The author of this book quoted the joke to make the point that in popular imagination, close air support is a given.

This series of entries are an amateurish attempt to outline how CAS is done in real life by the USAF, using LOMAC Flaming Cliffs 2.0 as a framework. I make no claim of being knowledgeable enough on the topic to provide totally realistic dialogs and comments. Whatever I write here you will find it elsewhere in the web. My only point is that besides the complexity of putting ordnance onto the enemy while flying at 300 knots, in real life there is another layer to it that is quite technical and time-consuming.

We are the US Air Force and we love to bomb ... just not near the battle lines!
This is what we got today. We (a flight of 2 A-10s) have been loitering for a little while before AWACS controllers directed us to a contact point (CP, way point 2 in the map below) and contact Dragon 11.

In the map below you will notice the CP (way point 2, WP2) and three other way points. These other three are pre-planned IPs that both us and the ground controllers know about. Since CAS is dictated by the needs of the troops below, we don't know which of the IPs we will use beforehand. But we will find out when we contact Dragon 11 from the CP (WP2).

Where are the troops in this map? Well, we only know that a US Army Bn is advancing north west and that they are fighting near IP TARAWA. This map should contain some control measures, but I omitted those for clarity. 

When we reach the CP, the following check-in chit-chat takes place.

Huh? See explanation in the text.

JTAC is the joint tactical air controller or more simply put, our ground controller. His callsign is Dragon 11.

During our check-in we say the following about us to the JTAC:

1. Our Mission Number (ADM5685, this is something we got from the AWACS)
2. Our Number and type of aircraft (2 A-10)
3. Our position and altitude (6 digit grid number and altitude in feet ASL)
4. Our ordnance (2 MK84, 2 Mavericks, rocket launcher)
5. How much time we have available to be on station
6. Which type of sensors we have available
7. The abort code for our CAS mission (DEL, the JTAC will consult a code book that we also have in the plane and check which letter matches "DEL"-that letter is B in this case, so the abort code will be "BRAVO")

More coming in the next entry.

Cheers,

LOMAC Flaming Cliffs 2.0: Battlefield Loitering in the A-10

One of the most crucial capabilities of the A-10 is it's ability to loiter around the battlefield for hours so it can be available after a few minutes whenever a ground commander needs its firepower.
Even the most hardcore combat flight simmers will stay away from a mission where you have to fly an aircraft for  more than one hour. Me too. Who has the time for that?

Nonetheless, I wanted to see if I could experiment the A-10's loitering capability in LOMAC. So, I took onto the virtual skies in my virtual A-10, loaded with 100% fuel and a spiffy payload for close air support. In this mission that I edited there is an SA-11 battery some 30 km ahead so I started my loitering circular circuit at around 1,000 ft.

How to stay airborne the most time with the least fuel? Stick and Rudder says:

"An airplane will maintain flight with the least amount of power if it is flown quite slowly, very nose-high, with its wings at very high angle of attack.[...] The airplane is not covering distance very effectively, for it is too slow, but if develops perfectly astounding endurance".

I make no claim that I nailed an optimal flight regime for loitering or that I even know the "speed of best duration" of the virtual A-10. But I was mildly surprised with my flight conditions, which I kept almost hands free for a good fifteen minutes (fell asleep on the keyboard).

At this fuel consumption rate, I can loiter for more than one hour and still have some fuel for an attack run and the RTB. 

In the image above, also note how the RWR is quiet. :)

Cheers,

Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge, Almost there

According to this thread, there are still a number of bugs to fix. Get ready for some this war gaming gem, folks.

Some screenshots below.

Click the image to see it in full size. I thought the Allies at Stavelot would run for the hills. Hours later I figured out I was wrong.

Click the image to see in full size. Moving to contact as the Germans. Night combat is always complicated because you almost have to stumble upon the enemy to see it. This may result in engagements that are difficult to shake off from.

Cheers,

Random Book Snapshot:Death of the Wehrmacht

Some selected text from just the second paragraph of this book by Robert Citino. There is some hyperbole, but the passage certainly conveys the epic proportions of the Eastern Front during WWII.

"Incredible", he muttered to himself, "absolutely overwhelming". Marshal Fedor von Bock stood at his hilltop observation post, just southeast of Lozovaia, shaking his head at the scene. The vista beneath him was on that few generals in history had ever been privileged to see: an entire army surrounded in a tiny pocket just a few miles away. He focused his field glasses here, then there, flitting back and forth. The entire area couldn't have been more than two miles wide from east to east, perhaps ten miles from north to south, and every inch of it was seething with activity. Massed formations of dusty brown infantry, tank columns so dense you could probably walk from one vehicle to the other without touching the ground, guns of every shape and description -all milling about, moving hither and yon without apparent plan or purpose.  Above them thundered hundreds of Luftwaffe ground attack aircraft, Richtofen's boys: Stukas and 109s and Ju-88s, bombing and strafing and herding. With so many men and tanks, guns and horses, packed into such a tight space, they were an impossible to miss target. The airmen were probably licking their chops, the thought, and the same went for his gunners. As he surveyed the scene, he could see artillery firing from all points of the compass into the helpless, writhing mass below him. There were explosions every where; every square inch of the pocket roiled with fire and smoke.

He thought of a term he had learned so many years ago as a cadet in the War Academy: Kesselschlacht, the "cauldron battle". It was the perfect term to describe what was going on below: an entire army being boiled alive. He remembered studying the campaigns of the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, Blucher, and Moltke. They were the gamblers of their day: bold maneuvers, daring attacks from flank and rear, battles of encirclement. And he remembered another word: Vernichtungsschlacht, the "battle of annihilation."

Cheers,