At 67, I've been wargaming one way or another, for at least 62 years, gone from Cowboys and Indians, to Space Invaders. I have used, coins, draughts, and any thing else available to represent what I imagine on a board. Now I`d like to play skirmish games in our modern times, and into the future. I`m hoping that the modern range soon coming from Wargames Atlantic will finally give me these games. Yes there are metal figures out there, doing the job, but prices of some and quality fall way short. Boston Dynamics and others are showing where robotics are going in warfare. If Wargames Atlantic were thinking of a game, it would be nice to consider this area and time periods, the fact that it can be moved very easily to pure fiction is a bonus. Fims like Spectral, Gods and Men, and Outside the Wire, have all featured robotics, and by introducing a box of models consisting of these type of robots, with a box of modern figures extends play. A box of near future figures would also work well in the game timeline, along with a box of civilians, aid workers, and emergency services box. Six box of figures all able to be used separate or together.
Today and Tomorrows war.
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The picture is from Outside the wire, and with the following, have given me soom good ideas.
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Technologies most likely to be seen in near future conflict.
1. Aerial drones. We are witnessing a revolution in warfare currently.
2. Hypersonic missiles. I predict the demise of the super carrier in the next 25 years. Sooner if we get in a real war.
3. "Mule robots" to help Infantry move equipment.
4. Automated gun systems/robots. Believe the South Koreans are already using some on the DMZ.
5. Exo skeletons to increase Infantry load bearing abilities/strength. DARPA is definitely working on this. The problem right now is the power supply/batteries.
A good example of that is in a movie you may enjoy (certainly in a similar vein to the movies you mentioned) "Edge of Tomorrow." A very enjoyable film.
The Angel of Verdun demonstrates said exo skeleton.
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Some people are predicting the demise of the tank. (The USMC recently divested themselves of their armor.) I think this is premature. The balance between tanks and anti armor systems has pendulumed before.
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I agree with most of your points but not the Exoskeletton. Allthough a really cool and classic sci fi trope I am very much dubious about its actual value on a real world battlefield. Not to say that it is technically impossible but for most problems it could solve there are more cost effective alternatives eighter allready or beeing developed. I think infantry equipment will, in armies of the developed countries, go furhter down the road of more protection ( casualities are not only tragic but also a PR nightmare), more intergration with unmanned systems and augmented reality like the US enhanced thermal night vision.
Tanks will probably not go away, at least not in the near future. There is an argument to be made for them to be unmanned, but non of the developing tank projects is fully commiting to that.
Aircraft carriers can be assumed to be very vulnarable in high intensity conflicts, but will probably remain somewhat relevant for power projection against significantly weaker foes.
All that beeing said, I hope ( but dont expect) that humanity will start to put less ressources in technologies to harm each other, but rather starts to put its ingenuity to more fruitful endeavours
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Fair enough. It's hard to say if exo skeletons will be practicable on the future battlefield.
That being said, exo skeleton development is pretty far along in the U.S. As I mentioned, it's a DARPA project.
Sure it looks primitive now but so did Little Willie.
It may not be initially successful until they can better integrate weapons and armor. You are initially trading off some ability to use cover, and an increased noise and thermal signature in exchange for carrying capacity/freshness in battle.
You mentioned improving Infantry protection. How would you do that without an exo skeleton? The modern Infantryman is currently tapped out on weight carrying capacity.
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An interesting observation about supercarriers and hypersonic missiles. I find it hard to imagine them going the way of battleships but then I was an advocate of retaining a couple of battleships for special purpose missions... such as the Missouri and Wisconsin. So I see at least a couple supercarriers being retained for high profile special purpose missions but not so sure about a dozen of them.
I think we will see exo-skeletons continue to develop but again for special purpose missions, not line infantry. But I may be wrong. I would love to see some of Heinlein's Mobile Infantry ideas come to fruition but that may be wishful thinking on my part.
Mrs. GG is a Health and Safety inspector and she says she sees exoskeletons in the German workplace already.
Maybe we will see something like the industrial exo-skeleton like in the movies Aliens in my own lifetime. Wouldn’t that be something?
When it comes to tanks... and I say this as a former Bradley commander... it was an eye-opener to see M1 MBTs being taken out in Iraq by insurgents after their overwhelming success in open battle against Iraqi MBTs.
What we seem to be seeing in Ukraine is the same kind of asymmetrical anti-tank warfare rather than any huge Kursk like MBT versus MBT battles. Watching Ukraine footage I too was thinking the day of tanks was over but I think a lot of what we are seeing is poorly applied tank tactics versus well applied anti-tank tactics.
At the very least we are seeing a lack of combined arms coordination. Not enough screening Infantry. Advancing without sufficient air support and recon.
Soviet Commanders of 1945 would not be impressed.
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@JTam I think improvements in protection will come through a couple of ways.
One is better and improved Materials that improve protection without increasing weight. The next thing could be improved stealth capabilities, even stealth (ish) suits allthough I do not know how much of what is said there is realistic or just sci fi.
The most important thing would be again the augmented reality capabilities. The future Infantryman with target enhancing AR Systems will be able to engage over far greater ranges then today, which will increase their survivability by a considerable margin against most enemies ( seen from a US perspective)
Here are some pictures from the kind of information that modern Thermals can superimpose on a soldiers field of view.
II think it looks really cool
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I thought the night vision goggles we had back in the day were game changers, then I got to use the thermals in the Bradley and I was stunned by their capabilities. That was 20 years ago. I can not even imagine what cutting edge technology is available today.
But I am aware that there is a risk of information overload when it comes to basic infantry combat. How technology can be developed to help individuals manage information efficiently in combat will be key.
The same with things like body armor. More is not always better. Even if it does look cooler. Size profile and weight being key problems.
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Information overload is potentially a real problem. As the available information increases I expect there will be a lot of trial and error needed until the "right" balance can be found. I dont have combat expirience so I am just presuming but my guess would be that less but very clear information could be the way to go.Using automated pattern recognition in combination with a network could enable something simple as a green outline for friendlies and a red outline for non friendlies ( possibly even distinguishing between armen/unarmed). This simple information overlayed on a Soldiers field of view could be a large advantage over enemies without enhanced targeting and would not, I think, be an information overload.
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I guessed you guys would all have some great info, and you have, what ever real items come in the near future to real war fare. Ijust hope that Wargames Atlantic read our posts and think, yes we need to build some of these,I joked with D34dlyK that I`d still like to be alive, to make, paint, and play, with some of these things in his just waiting note. Just think how long Hummers and Bradleys have been around and we are syill waiting on plastic 1/56th, Rubicon are striking a head but are 70`s 80`s. I think we need some new Moderns what do you guys think what would you wish for.?
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I'd suggest picking up a copy (or just watching the cut scenes on youtube) of Call of Duty Infinite Warfare.
Its got some good stuff such as combat robots and some poor such as space carriers (which can operate in atmosphere) using drones to allow deck landings in zero g.
I'm a fan of Mantic's GCPS set for this sort of setting since its sci-fi but also very easily near future with a few cosmetic changes.
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On exoskeletons, I like Fallout 4's version of the power armour frame being an exoskeleton that the user operates rather than wears. In effect its a light vehicle rather than a suit.
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I will admit that when I played Fallout 4 (justbover 1000 hours play time) my character practically lived in his power armor. Fallout 4 has some real issues but some bits, like the power armor, are great!
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@Grumpy Gnome The new version of power armour in Fallout 4 was one of the ways they improved on previous games. I completed the base game and some of the DLC a while ago, I've still got to go back and play and play nuka world and Far Harbour at some point. It has its good points, but I find myself going back to play New Vegas and F3 more. I've also got Wasteland 3 in my to playlist having enjoyed Wasteland 2.
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My expectation is that MBTs won't go away entirely. However I expect their role will change more towards support as they become platforms for anti-drone weaponry or even drone swarm deployment. I imagine the MBT of the future to have a main gun sufficient for engaging and destroying enemy armor, while also having 2 to 4 automated anti-drone systems (such as the Laser Systems the US Navy has been playing with).
I also would argue that exoskeletons supporting heavier armor for infantry will be relevant. It's only a matter of time before someone decides to deploy kamikaze microdrone swarms powered by AI. Active counter measures will be the main defense, but there will still have to be something to protect the infantry for when the active counter measures fail, are unavailable, or are overwhelmed. It would be the equivalent of an NBC suit for an environment where there are thousands of self guided, flying micro-explosives. But, barring some significant advances in material sciences, it will be heavy - hence the need for the exoskeleton.
Speaking of laser defense systems - these could in theory both keep aircraft carriers relevant and lead to a new age of the battle ship. Sufficiently advanced targeting systems combined with a powerful enough laser could intercept and destroy even hypersonic missiles. Additionally, as missiles become less relevant to more advanced navies, a different weapon is needed to replace their ability to destroy at range. The weapon that would fit that bill best would be the rail gun. The range is not as good as a missile (but 100 miles is still nothing to shrug at) nor is it as accurate, but a metal slug isn't as vulnerable to energy weapons and it travels faster than even a hypersonic missile. The platform for carrying multiple rail guns would likely be a new generation of battleship.
EDIT: With the advent of laser defense systems, the weapon platform I think most in danger of becoming obsolete is the nonstealth aircraft.
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From my armchair, it seems like we haven't really seen an old-fashioned war between large, evenly-matched armies in a very, very long time.
Illustration: The Ukrainian Foreign Legion, one possible face of the modern asymmetrical fighting force.Seems like just about all of the war in my lifetime has been an asymmetrical matter of large first-world coalitions throwing the weight of technologically-advanced military hardware at small armies and major infrastructure, which quickly devolves into urban and guerilla warfare against crudely-equipped fighters who are all but indistinguishable from civilians.
Illustration: This is just an exercise: dystopian militarized police force on a typical modern "peacetime" battlefield in Everytown, USAIt seems like much of the world is marching grimly toward a dystopian situation where militarized police forces withdraw from the public to provide security for the powerful, the wealthy, and the privileged, while warlords and private criminal gang armies war against each other, and the public. Police forces sometimes seem almost indistinguishable from military contractors, and are more likely to be deployed against increasingly frustrated and dissatisfied civilian populations than violent criminals. Cameras and smart phones are more common and powerful weapons of war in many of these paramilitary conflicts than tanks and jets, while "less lethal" weapons like rubber bullets, bean bags, tear gas, batons, microwave and sonic weapons, flashbangs, and the like have become increasingly ambiguous in their short-lived role as a Public Relations-friendly crowd-control alternative to overt lethal violence.
First-world militaries seem to be increasingly drifting away from the human element, towards drones, smart weapons, and robots. Casualties play poorly to the public when it comes to maintaining public support for war in democratic countries, making these robotic alternatives desirable, but "collateral damage" from these weapons also results in public relations disasters when civilian bystanders become accidental targets, and aritifical intelligence and remote control can get alarmingly sloppy.
Illustration: the (for now) non-threatening future of urban pacification.Police forces are already deploying robot "police officers" - they don't look like much now, and at least one of the examples I've seen was designed to look cute and friendly: it simply rolls up and down streets with a painted cartoon smile on its bland robot face, warning pedestrians not to litter, and answering simple questions about where to find local points of interest, and serving as a public option for pedestrians who need help to call for emergency service. Drones are also in common use with modern police forces for many of the same purposes that they are in modern military forces: they can provide a better picture of the "battlefield", provide intel on enemies, etc. I've also seen prototypes of weaponized robots for crowd control, or first contact with dangerous criminals, etc.: robotic "police dogs" with mounted less-than-lethal and lethal weapons. It will be just a matter of time before it becomes routine for police to send armed robots in to raid the hideouts of dangerous criminals, or to put down civilian riots and acts of civil disobedience with weapons representing a range of possible lethality. Among the dystopian benefits of robot police and soldiers is that they do not feel conflicted about orders that violate human rights, or feel sympathy for human targets, while robots are also more disposable and replaceable than human officers.
Illustration: The less friendly face of the modern police robot - a sort of armed "robot police dog". How long until its counterparts find their way into the hands of equally militarized criminal gangs, militias, cults, etc.?And it's not just a militarized police force and criminal gangs that can make urban city streets look like a bizarre dystopian war zone - civil unrest can trigger a military response as well, as civilian populations rise up against out-of-touch, careless, and abusive governments, or nations even break down into revolution and civil war. I worked in Baltimore through the Freddie Gray riots in 2015 - nothing quite drove home the gritty, militarized, cyberpunk dystopia of the 21st century quite like seeing armed national guardsmen and military vehicles posted on the streets of the "Charm City" while tourists and business-men in designer suits and ties go about their every-day Fortune 500 big business while conducting business by smart phones and Bluetooth, and clouds of black smoke from active inner-city rioting and looting of drug stores and police stations rises above the buildings only a few city blocks away.....
Illustration: Baltimore, USA, 2015... it could as easily be Kenosha WI 2019, or Washington DC in 2022, or Hometown, Idaho in 2035....A lot of modern warfare seems to be fought on some really strange battlefields: cyberspace, mass media, social media, denial-of-service and hacking, propaganda and counter-propaganda, internet memes and late-night comedy routines, socio-political paradigms, thoughts and ideas, hearts and minds. Some of the world's most effective soldiers might look like a bunch of sedentary activists armed with energy drinks in a call-center boiler room full of smart phones and laptops targeted at banks, search engines, and lobbyists. Decisive counter-attacks have no doubt been fought by undercover agents dressed as janitors or plumbers or pizza delivery drivers springing surprise raids that are carefully scrubbed from the news cycle and buried under disinformation and more sensationalistic "fake news" distractions. The ultimate direction of modern wars may in many cases have been decided in these arenas before the first shots are fired on real battlefields, and entire governments might have been toppled by the results of warfare in these theaters.
Illustration: Cyberwarfare. "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here - this is the war room!"The nuclear genie, with its cousins, the bio-weapon and chemical genies, are all but completely out of the bottle. Efforts to contain them have lasted about a century or so, and the threat they pose to large, ripe targets in wealthy, powerful world empires has been used to justify more than one invasion or "police action", but the world's policemen do not seem as confident as they used to, the technology needed to produce these weapons has become increasingly more affordable, and large military superpowers have grown careless, and in some cases have collapsed and become desperate. It's only a matter of time before these weapons become widely available to smaller militaries, and to paramilitary groups, who will begin using them against the powers that developed and used them first.
Illustration: A typical apocalyptic Chemsuit Goon seeking a doomsday scenario.So, in addition to the great ideas from the replies before mine, I think a "20 Minutes Into the Future" cyberpunk-style today/tomorrow tabletop skirmish line should not neglect at least considering the following:
- Armed civilians resistance and other irregular forces, representing:
- guerillas
- militias
- cults
- gangs
- terror cells
- undercover agents and military advisors
- also doubles as hostages and bystanders (objectives or obstacles for skirmish gaming scenarios)
- Mercenaries/Private Security Contractors
- Special Forces, also:
- snipers
- scouts
- saboteurs
- the guys who tag targets with lasers etc. for laser-guided and smart munitions
- intelligence/counterintelligence agents
- Police:
- SWAT
- Crowd Control
- Security Guards
- Military Police
- Secret Police
- "NBC" (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) weapons, chemsuits, decontamination stations, sealed infantry vehicles, etc. Faceless chemsuit goons tend to look look scary and intimidating, and have become a common sight in post-apocalyptic movies and video games for a reason.
- APCs, fighting vehicles, scout cars, armored cars.
- Heavy weapons such as RPGs, anti-tank guns, improvised explosives, mine-layers, etc. - both crew-served, and mounted on self-propelled robot chasses
- Robotic sentry-guns: a dystopian near-future favorite in Aliens, Half-Life, and many other movies and video games. Civilians under the implied threat of thoroughly inhuman robotic guns controlled by remote corporate overlords are perhaps a perfect defining image for the dystopian Cyberpunk genre.
- Security cameras and drones, surveillance vehicles. (Surveillance vehicles make another fine objective for cyberpunk style skirmish gaming.)
- "Robo-cops" - robot "dogs", police drones, etc. for "urban pacification" purposes. Remember that Robocop and Terminator both draw from the thoroughly cynical cyberpunk aesthetic, and that faceless robot machines used to "pacify" civilians and enemy combatants make for some great enemy combatants in a near-future skirmish game.
- Crowd-control vehicles - sonic/microwave weapons, water cannons, grenade launchers (can in this context be loaded with teargas, rubber batons, etc.)
- Computers, Coordination, Communications, Command and Control - vehicles and other support and services for drones, etc. (These make great objectives in skirmish style games!)
- Personal equipment for soldiers, police, security, civilians, terrorists and other characters: computers and hacking decks, "briefcase nukes", gas masks and riot gear (even for civilians), satellite phones, cell phones and video cameras, door-breaching equipment, less-than-lethal gear (tasers, tear gas guns, batons, etc.)
- Scenic items - sandbagged walls and weapon emplacements, fences and barricades, metal detectors and scanners, guard posts and observation posts....
For what it's worth, the IronCore "Eisenkern" faction (as mentioned above by @JTam was not at all a bad start on a near-future army - Wargames Atlantic produces the great infantry figures in futuristic battle armor. It's unclear (and maybe unlikely) whether Wargames Atlantic will produce the armored car / infantry vehicle or the robot dogs/mules that were also produced for this game but are currently out of print, but these would have worked excellently for a cyberpunk/near-future skirmish or other wargame. Hopefully these vehicles and robots, too, find their way into production again!
As for main battle tanks, I have a feeling that, even in a world of EMP weapons, Rods of God, stealth bombers, and Daisy Cutters, the battle tank will find its nich in large government arsenals for a long, long time to come - especially in a world where a well-funded military's enemies are far more likely to be disgruntled farmers, protesters, and criminal gangsters armed with brickbats, rifles and Molotov cocktails, than uniformed soldiers armed with the latest anti-tank weapons.....
- Armed civilians resistance and other irregular forces, representing:
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@Grumpy Gnome
I think you're dead on in your observations here.
The new hot lick is hybrid/combo night vision/thermal helmet mounted optics. You can actually dial up one over the other depending on circumstances. It's a big step up over regular night vision.
Integration/ use of all the gee whiz battlefield trackers, navigation systems, and "situational awareness" is problematic for a number of reasons. Batteries are heavy. Electronics don't like being wet and/or covered in mud. Electronics that can withstand the wet are heavy. These things are supposed to enhance situational awareness but looking at a stupid little screen dropped down from your chest is a great way to lose it and get killed. A leader is trying to maneuver his men, emplace the crew serves, figure out what the enemy is doing, controlling his fires, potentially calling for air or indirect. Might have a SPC Raven operator trying to tell him some nonsense. Got an RTO telling him higher wants a SITREP now! Oh, and people are trying to kill him. As mentioned, sensory/information overload is a real thing. I do predict if the system talks to you it will be with a female's voice. Similar to aircraft warnings and the "B*etching Betty" in the vehicle MILES system.
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@Grumpy Gnome
I think the day of the Super Carrier may well be done. Just as it occured with the Battleship. The North Koreans supposedly tested a hypersonic missile. The North Koreans! Even if it wasn't homegrown, no doubt nations like North Korea, Iran, etc. will just buy buckets of Chinese or French ones. I just hope we recognize the new paradigm and address it ourselves and don't suffer our own Force Z.
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@D34dly K
The Army is working on the IVAS system that will supposedly do most all that you described and more.
https://www.army.mil/article/243505/ivas_goggle_amplifies_mounted_capabilities
Congress recently pumped the breaks on acquisition, but the program is still a go.
The IVAS will also allow Soldier's to see "through" the hull of vehicles they are mounted on. This is potentially huge. More sectors covered for threats, Soldiers can pull air guard from within the hull, etc. Just the increased situational awareness is amazing. Do you know how disoriented you are crammed into a tin can and then charging out a ramp into a situation/terrain you have no idea about until the ramp drops?
The little problem with this system however is that within 5 miles all your hull cameras are covered in dust or mud.
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That is an amazing system. Makes me even doubt we Austrians could win a war against America 🤔
The biggest Problem I could see regarding such systems, would be over reliance on them. If crucial functions are dependent on a battlefield network that would open up a very cheap/assymetric avenue of attack for enemies
That could ofc be mitigated if the soldiers are still sufficiantly trained in classic infantry combat ,without those systems. That will be a balanicing act between getting the most out of a techical advantage and beeing over reliant on potentially vunerable systems.
Regarding the inital topic: Fully agree with @Yronimos Whateley
There are some good Modelling options from Anvil Industies and also if you are into resin printing, but some good plastic Kits would be great
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@Grumpy Gnome
Arguably a Battleship (As a host for ADA and ship to shore missiles, as well as providing coastal artillery support) could a least take a couple hypersonic missile hits and probably shrug them off. Just too expensive these days though. The crews are huge, and Seamen are expensive. These days we prefer our ships to be made out of tinfoil and have shrunken crew sizes that can't adequately conduct damage control.
Anyway, you can say you were right, and I told you so when the Aliens attack and we don't have a battleship to defeat them.
Sidenote: If you haven't seen it, "Battleship" isn't a bad film. Sure there's all kinds of plot holes and WTF but it succeeds in story telling and being entertaining.
When the old timers show up to fire up the battleship? Got me right in the f**king feels.
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@D34dly K
But why would we want to fight one of our oldest allies? We couldn't have won in the Pacific without the efforts of the Austrians.
I kid of course.
We TRY and keep our analog skills. We still can survey a point the hard way to emplace artillery. We use the whiz bang battle tracking computer systems in the Command Posts, but always keep some analog products going.
We know the Chinese game plan is to attempt to shoot all our GPS satellites out of the sky on day one of the shooting war. There goes navigation for men, aircraft, and ships. There goes precision indirect fires. All our smart bombs are dumb again. Throw in some cyber warfare to target our systems and we probably can't even get troops into theater.
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The interesting thing to me is how little advantage a modern Infantryman has over his WW2 equivalent.
Let me elaborate. A single F22 (supplied with a s*it ton of fuel, munitions, spare parts, and supported by mechanics) could stop the entire WW2 Allied bombing campaign in week.
A single M1A1 could generally massacre a WW2 tank battalion.
Same with most modern warships versus just about any WW2 warship.
A modern Infantry platoon would have a real fight on its hands versus a good WW2 Infantry platoon. (At least in daylight).
A M240L is barely if at all better than a MG42. We wear plates front and back these days, but 8mm is still punching a big hole in you anywhere else. The superior mobility the WW2 Soldiers not wearing armor probably makes any advantage from plates really a wash. We got 320 grenade launchers (which are sh*tier than the 203s they replaced, but that's different rant) but they have rifle grenades. We got organic 60mm mortars, but so do they.
My point is we've made huge advances with platforms, but much more modest advances in equipping the Infantry.
My rant about small arms development can wait for another day, but suffice it to say there's been little to no radical improvement in firearms in nearly 70 years.
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@JTam As an old timer myself, I enjoyed Battleship.
It is interesting how some aspects of infantry combat has not changed, ie give me a Ma Duece .50 cal and a M1911a1 any day of the week but some of it has changed immensely, ie man portable anti-tank, anti-air (did you hear about Stingers being successfully used in Ukraine like mini Patriot missiles?) and night fighting capability. Not to mention often overlooked improved combat support such as communication, rations and medicine.
That said, I would have thought we would be using portable, individual railguns by now or at the very least caseless ammunition.
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@Geoff Maybury
Check out this film Vexille from about 7:00 to 12:00 for some near future high tech warfare.
https://www.funimation.com/shows/vexille/vexille/Uncut/?lang=English
You can change the settings to watch it with subtitles as opposed to dubbed if you desire.
Actually the entire film is worth a watch.
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@JTam The 'Handbrake Turn' was my favourite part 🙃
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We got 320 grenade launchers (which are sh*tier than the 203s they replaced, but that's different rant)
Now that is a rant I do wanna hear. I was under the impression that for basic usage they are pmuch equivalent, with the addition of longer projectiles and standalone use. Like, did you ever use flares, and how important are 40mm flares in the first place?
On the general sentiment of infantry updates being long overdue: polymer-cased telescopic might actually be happening this time around. But in the end, the purpose of infantry is to crawl through holes, and to be a person talking to another person - not a lot of room (literally and figuratively, respectively) for technology there.
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I was thinking that optics are an advancement on individual issue small arms... but this video I just watched reminded me that even if you have fancy optics you need to know where to point your weapon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lpf_KsFYg8
@JTam I would like your opinion in particular on that clip but I am curious as well to hear what others think. The old Infantry NCO in me had a seizure while watching it. It really illustrates the point that basic infantry fighting skills have not changed since... well... the Stone Age. When slings and arrows of outrageous fortune come whizzing in on your kill zone, return fire, assess and then move out.
This is why some folks talk about sheep and sheep dogs.
Now imagine gaming that situation with your minis of choice.
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I don't know if it was just propaganda or not, but I seem to remember hearing that it wasn't that long ago that a British unit in, I think, Iraq ran out of ammo, and ran one of the most recent bayonet charges against the enemy, and won. At the time, the world was pretty well into the era of space age warfare, and pretty well onto the threshold of the era of cyber warfare, and we were still basically running at each other with pointed sticks in much the same way our prehistoric ancestors did - and, against all odds, it worked. At least, if the story was true. The more things change....
I was in a conversation a couple years ago where I came to the realization that in many ways, we've reached an interesting bottleneck in infantry firearms technology: we can maybe get gunpowder-based rifles a little more reliable, a little more accurate, a little lighter, and a little smarter, but not a whole lot so. For as long as the technology relies on gunpowder, they probably aren't getting much better range (and most infantry probably wouldn't benefit from better range), they probably aren't going to get much better capacity, they probably aren't going to get much more powerful. I'm thinking someone might find a way to make them quieter - traditional suppressers/silencers aren't really all that quiet! - but that's about it.
In the pendulum dance between guns and armor that had largely favored guns since the days when tradiitonal armored knights fell out of practicality, I think modern armor technology has a lot more room to swing, compared to gunpowder-based guns alone. The modern first-world infantryman has all but become a modern reincarnation of the traditional fighting-man in space-age plate armor, carrying a gun that hasn't really changed much since the Victorian era, and doesn't seem likely to change much anytime soon.
I imagine there will be a place in the infantry for gunpowder well into this century, and probably the 22nd century as well, but there's probably going to have to be a technological revolution at some point that will replace gunpowder in much the same way that guns replaced the crossbow and archery.
I think there's a good argument to be made that that technological revolution, whatever it will look like, will have a difficult time relying on power: rail guns, lasers, partical beams, and so on take a fair bit of power, and batteries are big, heavy, awkward, and dangerous.
Unless someone has revealed some better technologies for either power sources or for weapons that do not rely on electricity, I'm going to have to imagine that something based on rockets might well become the king of the infantryman's arsenal in the centuries ahead, until a practical power source for other technologies appears: we're practically approaching that point already, with anti-tank rockets, RPGs, and so on effectively putting even a lone ambusher onto an even footing with a battle tank: it will be a while before an infantryman in armor plates can shrug off a direct hit from an RPG, or a small hypersonic missile, for example!
Much of great points made in the replies above me about the things that can go wrong with electronics on the battlefield due to the inevitable mud, dirt, grime, dust, sand, and rubble of the modern battlefield, not to mention anti-satellite warfare and EMP, scramblers, and other electronic countermeasures: can especially be applied to robots - and probably more so: a human infantryman can at least take off the goggles and use his eyes, or drop the GPS and use a paper map, or think of an inventive way around the problem of a mud-caked rifle, or whatever. Robots have a lot of advantages to them, but as many video gamers can attest, even great AI's are limited by artificial stupidity, and that becomes even truer when the AI is taken out of its element and placed into and the grime and grit of nature, and left to its own devices, in much the same way as a Martian rover when communications go down and equipment is failing.
The military of the near future is at any time practically a fistful of mud or sand away from stone-age combat with pointy sticks and blunt objects!
On the other hand, there's the fact that I've started hearing a lot more professional futurists like Klaus Schwab talking very seriously about a "fourth industrial revolution" and "transhumanism", and - rather a bit in full Bond Villain or Frankenstein mode - rather cheerfully predicting a future where natural human beings are obsolete. There are people who are rushing right now toward replacing humanity - and especially human soldiers - with cyborgs with direct interfaces to computers and machinery implanted in their brains, genetically enhanced supermen with designer genetics and souped-up biochemistries, programmable and hacked human brains, and more. The world they are dreaming of is one in which a government can buy an army of patented and program-ready transhuman shells, turn off the emotions and self-preservation and autonomy and ability to feel exhaution or pain, or fear or compassion or mercy, bypass the human senses with electronics or genetically-engineered super-senses derived from other animals and filters to allow them to see what they need to see while ignoring anything deemed unnecessary for them to see, and deposit them onto a battlefield to begin killing the moment they are injected with adrenaline and the mission programming needed for the job, and keep killing until the job is done, or the soldier has been rendered incapable of completing the mission.
Basically, one possible near-future for combat is a battlefield full of futuristically well-armed and power-armored transhuman "fast zombies" who think at the speed of computers and the power of computers, with all the inhumanity of computers, relying on human brains and human flesh for only those things that computers can't do better, while completely devoid of the capacity to be slowed or deterred by pain or fear or exhaustion or grief or sorrow. And I suspect we might already have unlocked the secrets to human aging and death, with the possibility that it's only a matter of time before those soldiers can virtually live forever, until effectively damaged.
I suspect that it won't take someone long to realize the disadvantages to that go beyond the sci-fi/horror aspects of creating undying, inhuman killing machines that are more powerful than creators and masters they technically no longer need: nature/evolution/a Creator/whatever has built things like compassion and fear, grief and fatigue, aging and death into our DNA for a reason: they've helped our species survive, and have almost certainly done a better job of doing so over millions of years of "experience" than futurists and inventors over a span of decades or even centuries: I'm not so sure it's as easy as futurists expect to effectively "hack" a human being or even a lab rat well enough to overcome the limitations of the would-be hackers.
So, those futuristic trans-human killing machines may ultimately become the surreal victims of much the same sort of thing that comes of artificial intelligence in computer programs when it 'glitches out' or otherwise lends itself to exploitation by more human beings who can take advantage of "artificial stupidity" or the problems that creep in when you run the incomplete shell of a human body on adrenaline for days without sleep....
I don't know how much of that transhuman angle might translate to gaming miniature design, but Wargames Atlantic might be on the right track with the cyborg arms included in the last couple Death Fields kits - especially the Cannon Fodder and the Accessory Sprue 1. Just add more cyborg bits?
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@Grumpy Gnome
I don't really like Monday morning quarterbacking these kinds of clips. They lack context. What kind of troops are these? When was the last time they slept? Ate? Have they recently lost key leaders? What happened in the 2, 4, 8 hours leading to this moment in time?
Additionally one just sees this narrow band defined by the camera. Very difficult to judge the bigger picture.
Also, I've seen plenty of clips USGIs posted up where my only comment would be "You survived, so that's a win, but I wouldn't post that video cause you look like di*k soup."
That being said, one can always try and glean some lessons learned from these things.
These are my thoughts on the video.
1. The narrator doesn't know as much as he thinks he does. He starts the video by describing the American battle drill for far ambush. OK.
During the video he says they are not performing react to a close ambush well. Well which is it? Close or far ambush?
Which leads to 2.
2. I can't even tell if the Russians are in contact. I would assume if it's an ambush, it's a far ambush as they don't seem to be receiving anything resembling accurate or effective fires. Sure the Russians seem to be taking their time to cross the road.... but again they aren't taking effective fires. How do I know? Well do you see any Russians dropping? No? Than not effective.
3. This is a 15 second clip played out in parts in slow mo. I don't know how you are supposed to draw serious conclusions from a 15 second clip. But if I had to draw conclusions from the 15 second clip it looked like this to me: The Russians were possibly taking light and ineffective fires from the left flank. They were setting up/building the base of fire (with at least one precision rifle lending fires) from the truck on the left side of the road. A maneuver element crossed the road and started maneuvering on a covered and concealed route to the find the enemies flank. This is classic battle drill 1A. I have no serious trouble shooting to do with any of this.
4. The trucks and MT-LB APC says rear echelon troops. In which case these guys are doing great. The optics say combat troops in which case they are doing OKish during this 15 seconds.
5. Their weapons handling is fu*king dismal by modern Western standards. They are flagging each other constantly. That being said, that's modern Western standards. Is that the gold standard? I think so, but there's more than one way to skin a cat. Look at the greatest generation in WW2. Their weapons handling would not fly today, but they managed to put a lot of Axis troops in the ground. Sh*t, look at the Afghans, they constantly flag each other and have their fingers in the trigger well, and they MOSTLY manage not to kill each other.
EDIT: I probably would have had the guns in the base of fire talking more. Maybe this Russian element is running low / trying to conserve ammo? Just conjecture. US troops in the GWOT almost had always the luxury of near immediate ammo resupply at the next FOB or via air if necessary. It's not the same situation at the end of a 100 mile long supply line fighting a well armed and determined foe for 4 weeks.
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@Yronimos Whateley
Great post and ideas as always Brother.
Reference:
The British Army conducted successful and well documented bayonet charges in both Iraq and Afghanistan. British Infantry seems to habitually fit bayonets for CQB. At the very least they fix bayonets far more often than most other Western Infantry.
This article describes many of the most recent bayonet charges:
The Korean War incident was well documented by SLA Marshall and his description is a great read. It's also a great example of leadership and how to assess a unit and turn it around.
My Father had CPT Millet as a unit Commander in the 60s.
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@Yronimos Whateley
Ref:
I can tell from this and some of your other posts that your a gun guy. I fully agree with you in the above. There has been no significant firearms advances in 70 years.
This is a high capacity shoulder fired weapon chambered in an intermediate cartridge with a 3 or 4 power scope in WW2:
This is a high capacity shoulder fired weapon chambered in an intermediate cartridge with a 4 power scope that is current issue in the US military:
Not a lot has changed.
Heck, you can add a rail to a crusty WW2 M1 carbine, attach an optic, light, and laser to it and it's more or less equal to any modern fighting carbine (at least within 200 meters).
All the advances we've seen in the last 70 years have been small things. A bit more ergonomics in the controls for instance. (Pretty much perfected in the AR10 in 1956.) We've added more and better optics and IR lasers for fighting at night, but you can add them to any older rifle as well.
Optics have helped to simplify obtaining a proper sight picture and aligning the sights. The next thing to tackle is the trigger squeeze. My guess is the next big improvement will be electronic triggers.
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This might actually be a bit of a game changer:
But again, you could bolt it in near any rifle/weapon.
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I remember hearing the bayonet charge a couple decades ago, and it impressed me - both for the surreal image of an old-fashioned bayonet charge at the end of the 20th Century, and for the kind of guts it takes to charge an enemy that is presmuably armed with modern automatic weapons and RPGs with little more than those "pointed sticks", along with the discipline and skill to make it work.
My take on the reporting of things like that has gotten a little more cynical over the years - I have trouble buying anything that I'm being told about the Ukraine conflict - and I'm working overtime with precious little time to research that sort of thing anymore, so I try to take it with a grain of salt now, but somehow I couldn't dismiss it entirely. Glad to get the documentation on it - much appreciated!
Speaking of Ukraine and being suspicious of what I'm told - are we really sure that video was taken in Ukraine, rathr than being, say, a training exercise in Russia somewhere?
I'm betting a lot of the kids in that video were probably not the Russians' most experienced and well-trained fighters, perhaps sent in first as "human mine-sweepers" to test the waters before rolling the serious business in, and at the very least they seem way too young to remember the last couple conflicts the Russians were involved in (I'd have to refresh my memory on the years involved, but I think even Chechnya was a generation ago, and Afghanistan a really long time ago, as the careers of fighting-men go: I don't think these were Russia's elite fighting men....)
In any event, Grumpy's point still stands: the most advanced weapons technology in the world is only as good as the skill and training of the men using that technology, along with the experience, leadership and discipline of the team as a whole.
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Re: being a gun-guy - guilty! I'm a terrible shot, and wouldn't want lives to depend on my being able to hit a target, but I did get hooked on the flood of inexpensive surplus weapons that flooded over to the USA after the Soviet Union fell, and have owned, handled, and fired a few in my time, and I built my own AR-15 from a stripped lower reciever up on my own back in the 90's when I could still see the small parts like pins and springs and so on.
I can't help remarking that even the most modern military firearms are basically just an elaboration on the clockwork-style Victorian era improvements on the guns invented by the Chinese or whoever centuries ago!
In many ways, two of the biggest technological advancements in the design and manufacture of military weaons since the Victorian era has been space-age materials like fiberglass and polymer plastics, and CAD/CAM technology that basically has a programmed computer make basically the same weapons that skilled craftsmen used to make by hand.
And I've seen some older hand-made guns that could really give those modern computer-made guns a run for their money in terms of art, quality, accuracy, durability, and reliability! Apples and oranges, of course - the modern stuff makes up for the art and craftsmanship with consistency, portability, interhancheability of parts, ease of maintenance, and so on - but the comparison isn't as lopsided in favor of modern technology as I might have assumed, before I got a chance to appreciate it from hands-on experience!
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@Yronimos Whateley
You're right to mistrust anything related to the fighting in the Ukraine. The Russians are long time masters of misinformation. (During the 1939 invasion of Poland the Soviets broadcasted that Soviet troops were entering Poland to "help" their Slavic brothers against the Germans). The Ukrainians are fighting for the survival of their country and will say (make up) just about anything to convince the West to keep sending supplies.
The tape identification bands on the sleeves and the "V"s on the vehicles lead me to believe this is actual footage from the Ukrainian fighting. Those aren't really kids per say in that video. War is just a young man's game. But the Russian army is still a hybrid conscript/volunteer army. The conscripts serve ONE year tours now. Barely any time to become proficient in arms. The Russians (and many of the post Soviet CIS states) suffer from a weak NCO corps/tradition. Hard for institutional knowledge to stay in the ranks. An American army would at least have 1SGs, Sergeant Majors that remembered Chechnya.
The Afghan vets are getting older, well past active military age. But there are large numbers of them fighting both for Ukraine and with the separatists. Quite a few of them that were buddies or acquaintances in that war and are now trying to kill each other. They are a force to be reckoned with. They have seen the elephant, their kids are out of the house, they know there aren't THAT many years left, but are still reasonably spry. F*ck around on his lawn and find out.
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@JTam Great reply mate! That was why I wanted to hear your opinion in particular. You make some very fair points. Points I failed to voice as part of my context.
For the sake of this discussion it does not really matter if they are Russian or not, real fighting or training, frontline or support troops. I was not trying to fight the Ukraine war from my keyboard.
The narrator as you pointed out is flawed and I was more interested in the visuals as they are, for what they are. Largely the equipment and techniques.
I do not see it as Monday quarterbacking to watch, assess and learn from videos. And I think there is a lot to critique and learn from that video.
You make an interesting point about weapon handling safety and WW2 veterans. I am not sure how much of our current techniques are born out of hard earned experience in WW2.
Some years back now I was fortunate enough to attend a seminar run the now late Jeff Cooper.
https://www.gunsite.com/about-lt-col-jeff-cooper/
Cooper was the first one to define and stress the Four Basic Rules of Firearms Safety
- All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
- Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. (For those who insist that this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.)
- Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target. This is the Golden Rule.
- Identify your target, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything that you have not positively identified.
I wonder how much trigger discipline comes from practical experience rather than from an instructor‘s bark.
As an aside I preferred my training with Massad Ayoob to that with Jeff Cooper but neither one was perfect. We are all human, as are the soldiers in the video we are discussing.
I would agree that it looks like a far ambush from the perspective of the camera as we see no effective incoming fire.
We also notice that if you wanted to game that scenario you would not need the build the usual pointing or otherwise gesturing officer or NCO.
I am curious why the APC turret is not being employed but good call on the conflicting evidence of the combat or support nature of the unit.You make great points about potential fatigue and ammo supply. I think you are too generous with them but very fair points.
I can not tell you how enjoyable it is to debate these topics with someone who can spot such details, even when your argument defeats mine. Respect!
@Yronimos Whateley As always you bring an outstanding perspective to the discussion as well.
I have always believed modern infantry still needs a close combat element. In the late 80‘s US Army Infantry close combat, ie melee combat, skills and tools were lacking. The M9 “Rambo Knife” Bayonet was junk. Bayonet and hand to hand combat training was poor.
When I was with the British Army, the Royal Welch Fusiliers in particular, were not particularly focused on technical melee skills but had a high emphasis on actually getting stuck in. “Milling” a sort of boxing with less rules was a form of PT we did and it was a real eye opener for me. Brawls in the barracks and off base in pubs were very common, and few of them were the “friendly kind” you see in movies. British Infantry squaddies had a keenness to “get stuck in” that was much stronger than American, German, French and Italian troops I have worked with. Now of course these are all generalizations, anecdotal and well out of date today. But I thought some folks might find it interesting to hear.
Back to Jeff Cooper for a bit, he avocated pistols for all infantry which was contrary to US doctrine. Many did not think the additional weight, training and cost was worthwhile. However he also believed (very) close combat fighting was being severely neglected by US military doctrine.
While I got out of the US military in 2000, it seems to me as an outside observer a lot of special operations folks seem to support the “a pistol for every operator” doctrine.
I never worked with the British Gurkhas but I understand their use of kukris is not just propaganda.
But let me clear here, I very much agree with a sentiment that I believe Heinlein had, “there are no dangerous weapons, just dangerous men (people).” If you intend to be in the Infantry you have to be prepared to confront your enemies with everything from automatic weapons, pointy sticks and your bare hands.
And that will not change even if you are facing transhuman killing machines.
There is just so much interesting Inspiration in this thread! Keep it coming!
Edit: You guys really kept it coming by putting in two replies while I was writing this post!
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@Geoff Maybury "Just think how long Hummers and Bradleys have been around and we are syill waiting on plastic 1/56th, Rubicon are striking a head but are 70`s 80`s. I think we need some new Moderns what do you guys think what would you wish for?"
I totally missed this question earlier!
Generic modern/near-future European/NATO forces. Accuracy of the uniforms isn't too important to me - a general pastiche is fine - but some of the equipment looks space-age enough to fudge into any near-future sci-fi setting. The G-36 rifle, for example:
The GTK Boxer APC/IFV:
The Fennek armored car:
Kitbash figures in generic modern body armor, helmets, night vision gear, and fatigues with bits from the Cannon Fodder kits, and those G36s, and you've got a little army of Colonial Marines-style general-purpose cyberpunk/sci-fi grunts, along with jump-suited drivers or pilots for their "futuristic" APCs etc. and any sort of drop-ship you could cook up (we could use a good, affordable, generic Aliens style drop-ship - I've seen some nice models in MDF somewhere, and Games Workshop of all people actually made an example I like, even though the rest of their vehicles usually make my skin creep due to the weird proportions! Too bad the price alone is enough to scare me away from using GW models!)
I was in the mood to run a few faux-Aliens style sci-fi bug-hunt skirmish games using Stargrave rules a few months back, and was really surprised and dismayed that some good vehicles and figures of the sort in 28mm, 1/56, or even 1/48 scale didn't already exist, at least in print. Reaper does supply a few fair and cheap plastic imitations of alien xenomorphs and Terminator robots, along with tons of other useful monsters (the Lovecraft monsters and even fantasy monsters like their Doom Cacodaemon-style imitations of Beholders), and Wargames Atlantic almost comes to the rescue with the Cannon Fodder kits, and the Iron Core Eisenkerne kits. I still haven't quite found a satisfactory one-size-fits-all low-budget source of vehicles, though....
Short of that, generic nowhere-and-nowhen-in-particular civilian militias/freedom fighters/terrorists with modern weapons. Again, mostly for sci-fi use - rebel Martian colonists, zombie apocalypse survivors, Terminator robot resistance, Shadowrunners, or whatever.... Kitbash with western gunfighter bits to make Firefly style space-desperados!
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Trying to crack the 28mm vehicle issue is a reoccurring nightmare no matter the setting.
Aliens is still one of my favorite “go to” military sci-fi movies of all time. I wish Cameron and his team at the time had gone on to make a more faithful to the source material version of Starship Troopers.
Also, in relation to Ukraine videos (and not just those) this fellow makes some good points.
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@Yronimos Whateley
The Raumjäger kit more or less has G36s.
I wonder how those arms fit on other WGA kits? They seem a lot squatter than later kits.
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@Grumpy Gnome
I'm not necessarily right, and your not necessarily wrong. Again, it's hard to reach definitive conclusions on a 15 second video devoid of context.
Hand and arms signals certainly have there place. But the wildly gesticulating, easily identifiable leader probably isn't going to last too long. I remember reading a lot of British leaders in WW2 ditching the sub guns as it just made them to obvious.
Not getting the crew served weapon on top of the APC in the fight, or at least having it cover the right side of the road is odd. Perhaps a reflection of the extraordinary density of antitank weapons in theater. Nobody wants to crew it. Yes the one squad assembles behind the APC, but they don't hang out there for long.
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Well the good news is that if you can hang on just a few years longer they'll both be replaced ;)
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The idea of G36 in a scifi setting amuses me greatly. The thing was specifically intended to be conventional, with no Kraut Space Magic involved.
@Grumpy Gnome Having never touched anything related, I don't get the problem with vehicle scale. Isn't 28mm effectively 1:64, meaning 1:56 or bigger should be easily big enough? Like, this isn't fantasy with its loose interpretations of reality and silly size creep. I would expect folks dealing with historical minis to be a bit more picky when it comes to realism in proportions. But hey, what do I know. Not much.
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@Blutze You would think it would be simple. I certainly did. Until you start digging into it.
Not all 28mm gaming figures are accurately to scale first off. Fantasy, sci-fi or historical... it does not matter. Things like “heroic proportions” come to mind. Bigger heads, hands and weapons to greater or lesser degree. Hence why some minis have swords that look like Larp weapons and guns that look like Nerf.
Why do this? Aesthetics some say. Easier painting say others.
I thought I would favor realism in scale for my Twilight ‘49 project given how I generally feel about GW heroic scaling. However, once I had “true scale” Perry plastic minis and “heroic scale” Warlord minis I found myself preferring the slightly more cartoonish or toy soldier look of the Warlord sculpts. And ideally I wanted the biggest pool of various kits from various companies to bash together.
I am hoping WGA kits bash well with Warlord. My first look makes me think they will. More than they would with Perry anyway.
Now on to vehicles. Die cast models are not scale models despite sometimes listing a scale.
1/56 scale models sold by Warlord might look fine next to Perry 28mm plastic and metal sculpts as well as Warlord metal sculpts but they look out of proportion to the Warlord plastics. Far too small.
Worse yet you can not even always count on the same company being consistent in what they consider 1/56, 1/50, 1/48 and 1/43... let alone various different companies being universal in their stated scale. This has been discussed in various threads here as well as over on Lead Adventure Forum, Dakka Dakka and the Miniatures Page.
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@Yronimos Whateley @Blutze
I mucked about with the G36 a couple times in Germany and fired it to earn a Schutzensnere. I wasn't much impressed. Inferior to the M4 in every metric I can think of. My chief complaint is it's an enormous 2 by 4 in comparison to an M4. The only possible metric the G36 MIGHT beat the M4 out in is reliability. If so, I doubt it's by much. Isn't reliability the single most important thing in a combat arm? Well not really, it's a balance of factors. If reliability was the single overriding factor we would still use bolt actions.
Brick.
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@JTam In that last photo, is that German soldier‘s booger hook on the bang switch?
Perhaps the G36C might have felt less like a brick?
But maybe not.Congrats on the Schutzensnere!
I missed my opportunity to try as I was away on exchange with the British Army when my unit did marksmanship training with the Germans. I also missed a chance at French Commando School as well as PCT (Platoon Confidence Training, run by Green Berets in Bavaria) during those four months with the Brits.
I remember when I first got to the Royal Welch Fusiliers (1991) I thought the SA80s were amazing compared to our M16a2s.
Three point slings made them feel all tactical and they had integrated optics compared to our iron sights. The short length that made it feel all tactical at first but later made them feel like the bricks you mention thanks to their weight. The three point slings were narrow and not padded, and with somewhat sharp edges to the hard nylon and cut into you more than the softer then issue US 2 point M16 sling. Not that you should generally be marching with a slung M16 mind you... not back then, not in Infantry anyway. But the chest slung SA80s (thanks to the three point slings) made you feel all high speed, low drag.... at least for the first few miles of a road march.
And the first time I went to the range with the SA80, not only was it not particularly reliable but the optics kept fogging up on me.
I never got to use an M4 but I did have a civilian version for a time and the handling was better than the M16a2 but I am not sure how different the accuracy or reliability was compared to the M16a2 as I rarely shot the AR15 before I sold it.
As for the G36, I seem to recall hearing it did not like heat and sand but I have very little experience with it. North Wales Police had some for their armed unit but I only got to mess around with them one time on the range for a very brief time during a familiarization course for new officers. The MP5 felt more ergonomic and fun to shoot but the 9mm round has some severe limitations in combat despite the hype.
I did apply for the firearms team with NWP but never got past the paper sift. I probably would have struggled with the PT obstacle course (age, injuries and too many donuts) as it was a “SWAT team” style of police unit but it irked me to not even get the chance given my military and civilian law enforcement firearms instructor experience from the States. And being an experienced Taser officer.
Same with PSU (the riot police unit)... never got past the paper sift. Despite repeated attempts and appeals. Never got a clear explanation from bosses in either unit why I was passed over.
It was at times difficult dealing with American stereotypes within British policing.
One of my many gripes with NWP and part of the reason I resigned.
But I digress... the G36, like most H&K weapons has quite a good rep on paper but I am not sure how well it actually performs in combat.
The M4 is hardly innovative but sometimes you do not need to reinvent the wheel. The M2 .50 caliber is still a great weapon system despite the design being what, 100 years old?
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More news on the IVAS:
(Not going to lie, that looks fairly miserable.)
Sidenote: The Army Times is not an official military publication and is fairly garbage.
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Not sure on the trigger finger. I have noted some armies don't train their Soldiers to have their trigger finger extended along the frame, but instead to grip the pistol grip with all fingers. Most notably the IDF seems a proponent of this. They always have had some unique thoughts on weapons handling, status, etc. Example: Keeping pistols with no round in the chamber, and racking the slide on the draw. (VERY recently I have seen some IDF Soldiers with their trigger finger extended along the frame so I don't know if that is a recent ongoing shift in training).
(That's the newest type buttstock the IDF is using, making the photo at least semi recent.)
The G36C probably would have been a bit better. But it was the general width and height that stuck out to me. The near M16A2 length was a secondary concern.
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*Schnur. Please don't turn this into another Landsknecht.
The G36 is indeed a bit of a stack - piston system, mounting hooks, 90s optics, effectively piggybacked, all of it with luxurious margins, does add up. Sadly the problem continues even if you switch to a railed top, as most rail solutions attempt to keep the space for NV attachments (and the railed piece is mounted to the hooks instead of being moulded into the receiver).
While in most media it was the plastic receiver that had to bear the brunt of the blame for the heat issues, it was mostly caused by one of the two ammo suppliers making an unregulated change to the bullet design. And I guess in 20-30 years we will find out which politian got a seat on some executive board in exchange for blowing it out of proportion enough for the BW to adopt a new rifle.
On the length, I can't find it anymore, but there was a clip of a BW soldier barging through a shoothouse door with an 18" barrel (for some reason, you get about 2" less barrel length for the same overall length compared to an AR15) and getting it jammed in there real good. Shorties are made short for a reason I guess, and AFAIK the external piston system can handle supershorties way better than the internal one. Getting that benefit, without the increased weight of a 416 (or rather compensating for it with material choices), is probably the greatest strength of the G36.
Also, an army having a branch of instagram thots is so weird. Like, I get it, you have to get your youngins hyped up for their military service if you wanna run general conscription, but suggesting that "these are the (t)hotties you get to bunk with" is such a strange angle.
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