daellis94

Well technically the M-240 is an American machine gun based on the Belgian FN MAG, manufactured under license in the US.

Err debt has nothing to do with our revenues yearly, unless our credit rating sinks so low we can't borrow any more money (remember, our credit rating is still rating good, despite recently being lowered SLIGHTLY). Railguns are just physically not a viable weapon for tanks in the near future. We'll be hard pressed to pull off the energy breakthrough necessary to make that work.

I just have to ask... Why is it that so much of what is being said here, and I don't mean to bash the people that say it, amounts to "The Armaverse is fictional, so we can make fictional scenarios and change up aspects of the real world beyond what realism, but because it's a fictional game it's still authentic."? That just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I suppose Arma II had a similar problem with the setting of a made-up ex-Soviet country called "Chernarus," but really everything else about that game was fine. The US and Russian forces were realistic, as were those of the CDF and the Chedaki, as well as the Insurgents, despite the fact that their homeland was made-up. Aside from my earlier problems with what has been seen of Arma III so far, mainly the rail-gun, whose use I still have a nerdy, wrathful vendetta against, as well as the Iranian use of what appears to just be Israeli gear (not even copied rip-offs of gear, just straight up captured gear) on active front-line troops, although I have forgiven the use of the textured Merkava since it has been said the Iranian tank simply isn't finished yet, I still have to point out the problem storyline. Granted, this surely stemmed from the simple decision of pitting NATO against Iran in the next Arma game. I assume BIS then had to throw together an excuse plot which would allow NATO and Iran to go toe-to-toe. That I understand and forgive. My problem..... it really doesn't seem like they did a very good job, regardless of whether they put a lot of effort into the task or not. Maybe it was inevitable that Iran would have to go through Turkey, but the circumstances surrounding NATO's sudden incompetence are a bit hard to swallow. First off, how does Russia go about rebuilding most of the former Eastern Bloc using nations which we know, judging by fairly blatant political and diplomatic positions, would certainly NOT align with the Russian Federation? The Baltic States are really not very happy with Russia. Despite Russian political influences spawned during the days of the Soviet Union, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are happy to be held under NATO's wing, having their armed forces trained and reorganized by more powerful Western states. Poland is most definitely not a friend of Russia. It has spent the past 100 years being carved up and occupied by both of its next-door neighbors: Germany and Russia. Meanwhile, Poland has extremely good relations with the United States, due in part to a very large Polish population in America. Why Poland would turn against NATO, an alliance it seems to be very determined to be a part of, is difficult to explain. Not quite as extreme, but Slovenia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Albania, Hungary, and Romania have just left NATO, but remained friendly, which begs the question of why they didn't just stay in NATO in the first place, which has been a beneficial organization for those countries since they joined and up to the present, and damn sure be a nice alliance in a situation like Cold War II. BIS tries to explain why Greece left as well, but frankly Greece leaving the EU and leaving NATO shouldn't be very connected. The EU doesn't have much to do with NATO, so an economic crisis wouldn't necessarily get Greece mad enough to leave NATO. But more importantly.... Hey, Slovakia and Bulgaria! Where the hell do you get off? Honestly though, why would these nations leave NATO for Russia's corner? Have we forgotten how displeased so many of these countries are with their treatment by the Soviets? Honestly, the only country likely to align with Russia is Belarus, which really, really likes Russia, politically speaking. As I understand, Belarus even wanted to try uniting with Russia a little while back, but apparently that never went through. Aside form that, Ukraine MIGHT be swayed to join Russia. Generally, Ukraine is getting friendlier and friendlier with NATO, and already conducts exercises with NATO forces. Some of Ukraine's newest equipment was designed with technology given by NATO. However, Russia retains some influence in the region by acting as the major source of natural gas, which gives the bear quite some leverage, especially with the Ukrainians. We are always forgetting that Russia is not actually powerful enough to challenge NATO. Not anymore. They have quite a lot of firepower, but the Russian population is dropping, Russia's sphere of influence has been shaved substantially, and economically, if Russia were to try a military buildup reminiscent of the 1980's, they would find themselves in the same problems they did at the end of the Cold War. Despite everything, Russia is, economically, unable to match the capital the West can put into its armed forces. That said, I would be complaining about the loss of Turkey, and how could NATO have failed to send overwhelming force into Turkey, a long time ally, as soon as Iran starting moving over the border, but I have to accept at this point that there is little other way to get Arma III on a small island (i.e. the game won't be a massive war game and won't play through like a Bruce Willis movie) with Iran fighting NATO unless said island is in the Aegean.

Yes, we have a history class, but I misunderstood, as talking about a revolution in Iran typically means the Islamic Revolution of 1979, not the act of the CIA and British groups putting the Shah back in power, or rather the son of the former Shah who was deposed by the Allies in 1941 for not allowing supplies to pass through to the Soviet Union. ---------- Post added at 14:01 ---------- Previous post was at 13:51 ---------- You are talking about other weapons and vehicles. Iran neither possessed in the past nor possesses now the ability to replicate modern Western technology. They can't even keep their F-14's operational any more. How then could they take any design they want and just improve it or make it at all as good as the real version? I understand they have many vehicles whose designs are taken from the West, but unless the original vehicles are themselves outdated designs, the Iranians have not been able to make anything quite as good. When you say new... well, I would agree depending on your use of the term "new." Obviously, reworking captured designs to take old vehicles up to "modern" Iranian standards makes them new only in the sense that this newest incarnation of the design is the youngest. However, I would not say they are new in the sense that they can compete with other contemporary vehicle designs of nations such as Israel or the United States, or even Russia. To use the F-14 example again, they had more than 80 of those fighters in their own inventories but were not able to copy them. For all of Iran's interest in improving its own technologies using outside sources, it is only capable of so much. As for the Merkava... Well, I don't know quite what you mean. The Merkava was never copied by Iran. Even so, my argument was not to suggest Iran could not make use of or make its own ripoffs of the Merkava design, especially if we are talking about 2035 Iran, which appears to be much more powerful than Iran in the real world. I am saying that even if Iran took over all of Israel and captured enough Merkavas to be able to replicate the design precisely, I doubt they would like it very much. The Merkava isn't necessarily better than what Iran could make at that point. It simply fits Israel's need extremely well, but obviously Iran will have different needs as a result of varying strategic and tactical concerns. I highly doubt Iran holds the survival of its manpower to such a high priority as Israel, coming down, of course, to a simple question of population. Therefore, most of the design features of the Merkava would be completely unnecessary for the 2035 Iranian armed forces, and in some ways counterproductive, because design features of the Merkava in some ways detract from the effectiveness of some designs of other comparable Western tanks (counting Israel as "Western" because its military is very much European in character). ---------- Post added at 14:05 ---------- Previous post was at 14:01 ---------- I know, that's just a matter of their use of our funding to buy weapons on the black market. Legally, foreign weapons cannot be manufactured in the United States. For instance, the 120mm main gun on the M-1A2 Abrams is very much a German design. However, it is, technically speaking, not the same Rheintenmall 120mm gun found in Germany. It is, very formally, the M-256, manufactured in the United States, under license. In the same way, what may be "foreign" weapons built in the US are actually licensed versions of foreign designs. So, the US wouldn't actually have Kalashnikov rifles to give the Afghani fighters (assuming we are talking about their use of actual Soviet/Chinese AKM and Type-56 rifles, etc.), but obviously those funds would be put toward purchasing such weapons elsewhere. I just try to point that out because too many people seem to think we directly gave them all the arms that we are facing today.

Well, technically they copy it just so they can manufacture something similar. They are not like to be able to engineer and then produce equipment to NATO standards, unless, as you say, they are modernizing gear that is many decades old, though in some more specific cases I may resist that analysis even still. Again, as I have said above, Iran would likely not just take the Merkava anyway. It's not a tank designed to fit what would appear to be Iranian armored doctrine. Iran's tanks are already designed to fit different criteria. Bottom line, I would go with and/or prefer the suggestion that Iran simply has this captured Israeli gear as a supplement to proper Iranian weaponry, though whether BIS will abide by that preference we have yet to see. Though, technically, we do know their plan is to have a different Iranian tank, as the Merkava is just a placeholder. Along similar lines, I really hope they add a more appropriate NATO MBT, something like the M-1A4 Abrams maybe, or the Leopard 3. Preferably something actually from NATO and fitting of NATO armies. ---------- Post added at 23:55 ---------- Previous post was at 23:51 ---------- What do you mean by that? The US never backed the revolution in 1979. It was a revolution decidedly against our interests. Another thing I have to be pedantic about, and forgive me for this but I see this mentioned far too often that I can rarely resist responding to it, if the Taliban is seen using large numbers of Soviet RPG-7D anti-tank rockets and AKM rifles, then they weren't armed largely by the United States. What the US gave the Mujaheddin (the Taliban is not strictly the same group, it rose after the Soviet war) was mainly training, I think communications abilities, funding, and Stinger missiles. When funding is cut, you don't really have money anymore, unless you are a very frugal resistance movement, and most of their front line gear is Soviet in origin, since that is very suitable in a region where well trained men are hard to come by, and where Soviet weapons and ammunition are abundant to keep supplied.

Iran has copied many things, but never replicated with almost exact precision, nor has it particularly improved on any Western designs It has always lacked the resources, how could it improve on Western designs? More, though, I think the argument is Iranian use of actual Israeli gear, not just ripoffs of Israeli gear. ---------- Post added at 19:50 ---------- Previous post was at 19:43 ---------- Technically, we have yet to achieve 50% efficiency on those rail guns. We are fairly far below 50% actually. I think the figure is around 20% efficiency, which is, as you say, the main problem. Also, keep in mind the weapons we use today suffer from wear due to barrel friction. Though, I will concede not as much as a rail gun, but barrel wear isn't the biggest issue. Also, for a tank, you would still want to have muzzle energies beyond 25 MJ to justify a rail gun mounted on a tank (ETC could easily and much, much more practically take care of anything between 15 and 25 MJ), even for shooting upward of 5 klicks (approximate maximum LOS range anyway), which means each shot would consume around 100-130 MJ to account for waste heat, and that is just not a practical thing to try and store on a tank. It's also not practical to generate it on a tank with any power generation technology currently available or predicted for the near future.

Errr, it is resistance that would cause energy loss in the form of heat. And, technically, since the coils are wrapping around the barrel, resistance would be higher in a coil gun than in a rail gun, as resistance increases with the length of the conductor. Of course, since the coils are essentially segments, each individual coil might not be more resistant than a rail gun, but there is no reason to suspect that a coil gun would have inherently less resistance than a rail gun. I would think at least around the same resistance.

I understand how rail guns work, thank you. In the first place, heating the round is not really a concern, as the round will be heated by air friction as well, and do not forget rounds in conventional chemical weapons are also very hot. Where wear is a concern is the barrel. Wear in a coil gun would be very similar to a rail gun. In both you would have very high friction on the inner surface of the barrel, and you have massive heating due to the resistance associated with either the rails or the coils.

Coil guns would have the same heat effects. By that logic, either kind of electromagnetic weapon would begin to melt. That is, unless you use a coil gun whose barrel doesn't hug the round, in which case you have a lolinaccurate weapon. In that case, you'd remove friction heat in the barrel.

By the way, people, the T-95 was cancelled before it went into production. Strictly speaking, the T-95 in any advanced form never existed, so BIS has some freedom deciding what the T-95 would be. Couple that with the fact that the railgun tank in the screenshot definitely has that Russian look, in fact looking very much like a Ukrainian T-84 Oplot, which is of course a derivative of the Soviet T-80U, and that tank is definitely viable T-95 material.

Coil guns, also known as Gauss guns, are another similar option, but have the same fundamental flaws railguns have: energy inefficiency. Of course, that leads to the issue of storing enough energy on-board or generating enough to power the gun. Keep in mind you will end up with muzzle velocities in excess of 10 megajoules, for which you would need to supply more than 40 I would think given heat loss. They are interesting weapons, to be sure, just not as close perhaps as we would like them to be. ---------- Post added at 15:15 ---------- Previous post was at 15:13 ---------- Did they? Good, there's closure on that. I was talking with a friend a few days ago about how I really hope the weapons shown as Iranian are just placeholders, and that not all weapon and vehicle models are finished. Also, the picture shown in your signature....... That Arma 3 logo is displaying the Chinese flag, isn't it? Hmmmm, hint about the game to come, perhaps.

Of course, though the Germans never made it at all a standard battle tank. My point about the Merkava is that the Israelis build the Merkava to be very centered on the survival of the crew rather than the survival of the vehicle. Israel does not have a large body of available troops, so it cannot take strategic losses in a time of war. One design feature that supports this on the Merkava is the placement of the engine at the front. The main function of this is to add another object that a penetrating round must go through. As a result, you have the thicker front armor backed by an engine, which makes the crew safer, though a frontal penetration will kill the tank by knocking out the engine. Because there is thick frontal armor in the way, as well, it is very difficult to access the engine for maintenance, one of the problems with modern composite armor and one of the reasons the rear hull of most any MBT is protected by next to no armor. Because of this, there is an access hatch of some sort located I think on the lower left front hull, which is a weak point on the armor. Again, this does not concern the Israelis as much as the potential loss of the crew, as tanks can be replaced, but men not so easily. I just think, based on indigenous tanks already designed and produced in Iran proper, for instance the Zulfiqar, would have specifically Iranian interests in mind, one of those, especially with a large Iranian "empire in Arma 3, would definitely not be manpower.

Tanks are different. Their use is much more dependent on nation-specific armored doctrine. The Merkava, in this case, is an Israeli tank very much deigned with Israeli interests and concerns in mind. That said, yes I really hope they change the NATO tank. I think pretty much any NATO tank surpasses the Merkava in performance, not to downplay the Merkava, but I'd like to see a proper Western MBT on the field.

I see that Armaverse can be used as an excuse for this game to not be as realistic a shooter as advertized, eh? Yes, fictional universe, but it does not use fictional technology. Railguns are real, they just cannot fit on a tank with any known or theorized power storage, and anything higher yield for power than we could use on such a vehicle would be fusion, as you need nuclear level power for railguns to be at all practical. Sustainable fusion is not likely to come before 2050, and that's from the people trying to develop sustainable fusion. Just because you can't predict the precise events of the future doesn't mean you can't say, "yeah we probably won't have this by then because we still need all of this technology and we aren't near enough to having it yet." That is done all the time and is completely legitimate. For instance, we will not have efficient interstellar travel by 2035. That makes perfect sense. So, why doesn't it make sense to say, because of vastly insufficient power supply technology, rail guns do not belong on tanks in this game? I maintain ETC is a much more logical and realistic choice.

The technology existed, and even then internet was just a large project in communications networks. This is a different feat, though don't misunderstand me to downplay the immensity of what has been acheived through the internet, where there needs to be an advance in physical energy storage and power generation far beyond what has been acheived. Truly, far beyond what we have today, and I don't mean what we have available as stnadard, I mean far beyond our best yet acheived.