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[mainiac]

A regiment of Napoleonic troops looked and behaved exactly the same,

You are really selling Nappy short.  And you are homogenizing 2000 years of Roman tactics.  For instance you say that the roman fought as flexible infantry formations.  Well the roman also fought principally as heavily armored horse archer skirmishers for a couple hundred years.  And the romans fought as mass peasant levies and as elite heavy foot skirmishers.  And what about Napoleons use of suppressing fire from cannons?  Classical battle simply doesn't have an equivalent because the word "suppress" means something very different without guns and cannons.  People always simplify past tactics.  For instance did you know that the practice of "stacking up" was something that British troops were using in the American revolution?

[Parsely]

The way I understand it, at the company level superiors tell their inferiors what support is available to them and give them instructions about when they have permission to use them. Fire support exists at different levels. As an example, a Marine Expeditionary Unit (division) has infantry regiments and also an artillery regiment. Marine regiment-level support for infantry usually just includes small-bore mortars. Moving up to the battalion level there is an artillery regiment whose batteries carry out missions as they come in. Battalion commanders are the ones who assign and schedule this kind of fire support. If he's planning for one of his infantry regiments to make an attack at a certain time, he might ask his batteries to only accept missions coming from that area for a certain time frame.

There's some reading here that you could do from a 1994 fire support manual. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/6-71/Ch3.htm

Thanks but that seems to be behind a paywall to me... I'm more or less familiar with the various TOEs and OOBs, but what remains a mystery is how things are done at the lowest level, platoons and fire teams.

The Platoon Leader kicks his Forward Observer and the FO makes the call for fire.

http://arotc.uncc.edu/sites/arotc.uncc.edu/files/MSL%20302%20Tactics%20and%20Techniques%20Section%2010%20-%20Call%20for%20Fire.pdf

[Shazbot]

You know Mainiac, pointing out that someone's post which attempted to compress twenty years of study including college courses into three paragraphs for the benefit of strangers made a few generalizations or failed to expound every detail of 3,000 years of history...

Is kind of a dick move. But don't worry, I won't tire the all-knowing Mainiac with my prattle any further.

[mainiac]

If you want to defend your thesis against my statement (for instance) that late roman cataphract tactics and marian-era legionary tactics were fundamentally different then please do so.  What information am I missing having not had 20 years of formal study of the subject?  If you dont want to defend your thesis, there is no need to be sarcastic at me for questioning it.  You made a statement in a public discussion so there's really no reason to be surprised by questioning.  Glad you recognize my omniscience however. 

[Catmeat]

Ghillie, any thoughts on these tools?

[Parsely]

Ghillie, any thoughts on these tools?

What?

[Jimmy]

Ghillie suits are great against anything that doesn't use thermal imaging or motion detection and where you don't really care about getting somewhere any time soon. With these considerations added, their utility becomes less useful.

[Parsely]

Ghillie suits are great against anything that doesn't use thermal imaging or motion detection and where you don't really care about getting somewhere any time soon. With these considerations added, their utility becomes less useful.

IR is really expensive and only given to special forces about as expensive as image intensifiers but I can't find any sources on how often US line infantry get them. They're seemingly always mounted on vehicles with powered weaponry. US line infantry ideally always have at least image intensifiers, which don't help you pick out a target that's blending in with the terrain. If the shooter has stuck around long enough to be targeted by gunships and armored vehicles he deserves to bite it.

[guessingo]

well if its the Russian airforce its shoot missiles at Syria and have them explode in Iran. This seriously happened.

[Jimmy]

Thermal cameras are getting a lot cheaper, even to the point they're in consumer electronics. I can see them becoming pretty widespread in use once the price is comparatively cheap.

[Parsely]

Thermal cameras are getting a lot cheaper, even to the point they're in consumer electronics. I can see them becoming pretty widespread in use once the price is comparatively cheap.

That's super neat. I've never used thermals or read any testimony about their use in combat, so I have to wonder if there aren't some limitations that I'm not aware of that are keeping that from happening.

[i2amroy]

Thermal cameras are getting a lot cheaper, even to the point they're in consumer electronics. I can see them becoming pretty widespread in use once the price is comparatively cheap.

That's super neat. I've never used thermals or read any testimony about their use in combat, so I have to wonder if there aren't some limitations that I'm not aware of that are keeping that from happening.

Honestly the only real big problems with thermals are lack of definition (which is something we're quickly fixing), problems in resolution as the day/area gets warmer (seeing 90 degree bodies is much easier against a 40 degree background than against a 80 degree one), and increased ease of being blinded by accident (essentially large heat sources like explosions are turned into pseudo-flash bangs as a side effect).

Of course that's not to say that these things can't be solved with enough application of technology, thermal is already creeping it's way into use in things like improved night vision goggles in the military already.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

No RTS simulates a message horse riding from the general to the commander of a unit, but if you imagine one being required to issue an order, you would realize the sluggish nature of exterior lines (as well as why the German adoption of the radio allowed the blitzkrieg).

actually...

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/574/details/Scourge.of.War:.Waterloo

[Erkki]

The Command Ops series too.

Thermals have their limitations: they cant see through certain materials too well or not at all and they can be almost useless in hot environments where people are almost as hot as their surroundings. There are also materials in wide use, on equipment and clothing, that limit IR their radiation. One can get an IR camera from a store, but even the 500+ euro ones tend to have low resolutions. Too costly to provide everyone with one, and I know I dont want to count my life on spotting a sniper from a kilometer out with a 512 x 512 res camera, thermal or not. 

[HAMMERMILL]

Paradoxically, thermal imagining equipment works somewhat worse in cold weather than in hot. The imaging equipment must be cooler than the surrounding environment in order to work. Otherwise the image is spammed by the device's own radiation. It detects differences in infrared or black-body heat as it contrasts in the environment. You can use similar technology to find hot-spots on a bucket full of molten gold.

The ones I used at work are cooled by a heat pump and constantly made a ticking sound. It radiated a great deal of heat on your face the whole time it did this, so it was nicer to use in the winter than the summer, but it gave you the same imagery either way.