On Monday, apparently Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s spokeswoman told AFP that Russia now has 41,000 troops on Ukraine’s eastern border and 42,000 soldiers on the Crimean peninsula.
Lets take that at face value for the moment. Ukraine has around 255K troops in active duty. So 83K vs 255K? Not exactly overwhelming force, yet. In response the United States is sending 500 additional troops to Germany. Now, last year we had 36K troops in Germany, but President Trump ordered a draw-down of 12K. I gather the drawdown was never really done and President Biden froze it in February of this year.
So, we are probably not looking at tanks rolling towards Kiev next week, but that does not ,mean there may not be trouble. In addition to Russian troops, there are also the armed militias of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic.
I noticed my posts in 2017 on the HERO and SAIC Libraries got a couple of hits a week or so ago. I was actually planning on continuing posting on this subject at the time, but got sidetracked. So, let me take a moment now to post on another disappeared library.
The Operations Research Office (ORO) was the Army’s RAND. Formed in 1948 under the leadership of Ellis Johnson, it grew to considerable size (220 in June 1952) providing studies and analysis for the U.S. Army. ORO was tied to Johns Hopkins University. But, the leadership of ORO had a contentious relationship with the army, so the Army decided in 1961 to dissolve it and reconstitute it under new leadership. The army set up a new corporation called Research Analysis Corporation (RAC) and hired back everyone at ORO but the senior management. It was also claimed that RAC stood for “Relax and Cooperate.”
RAC continued the work of ORO and in fact they were functionally the same organization. Under these two organizations, it included developing the first Army combat models (Carmonette and Atlas) in addition to field analysis of the Korean and Vietnam wars. They also had a historical analysis capability, having employed Dr. Hugh Cole,. the person who managed and wrote part of the Army “Green Book” series, the official history of the U.S. Army in World War II.
The Army decided to then build its own RAND. This was the Concepts Analysis Agency (CAA) founded in January 1973. My father was one of army officers assigned to this new outfit, which is the connection that eventually led me into this business. As I had a strong interest in military history and wargaming as a teenager, my father working at the Army’s premier wargaming shop got my interest. I often discussed with him the work they were doing, and in particular, his rather negative evaluation of the combat models they were using (in particular CEM – Concepts Evaluation Model). The Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB) that I managed in 1987-1989 was for the purpose of validating CEM.
With the Army having created its own RAND, RAC as an independent FFRDC (Federally Funded Research and Development Center) was no longer needed. They therefore mutated in a private contractor called General Research Corporation (GRC). They inherited most of the staff and the ORO/RAC library. Dr. Hugh Cole retired but ended up working for us on the ACSDB as a consultant, along with Charles McDonald.
GRC continued doing business, although I do not know what that was, as I never intersected with them. I started working in this business in 1987 at Trevor Dupuy’s DMSI (Data Memory Systems, Inc.) doing contract work for CAA among others. CAA eventually changed its name to Center for Army Analysis (CAA).
GRC about 15 or so years ago (operating from memory here) was bought out by AT&T defense systems (AT&T = old Bell Telephone). I also had never intersected with them. They inherited the ORO/RAC/GRC library and took over the GRC building in Tysons Corner. When I heard that they had shut the library down, I payed a visit to their office.
It turns out that this library, built up over 50+ years of research, was indeed shut down. It was taking up space and they decided they needed another conference room! So, they told the employees they could take whatever they wanted from the library and threw the rest away. So, the library and all of its material was dissolved and thrown away.
So… where does one find ORO/RAC/GRC material? Well, I have a rather thick bibliography listing all the ORO/RAC reports. Forget how I scored that. It is a unique item and I don’t know of anyone else who has one. On the other hand, if you ask me to find it, I don’t know in which of the 80+ boxes of books it is in that I have stashed away. I am not going to even try at this point to find, as they are stacked up (although it is good exercise). Of course, ORO/RAC/GRC submitted their reports to DTIC and NTIS. But, as I pointed out in the my post on TDI Reports at DTIC that only about 40 percent of HERO reports are listed in DTC and 0 of the 80 TDI reports are listed there. Now, I also have all the HERO reports in those stacks of boxes I have stashed away. A friend of mine at CMH (Center for Military History) did inform me that some/all of the ORO reports are sitting in archived files of one DOD agency in the national archives, but these section of files are still classified and not available to most researchers. Also, they are difficult to locate and access. CAA also has its own library, but I do not know the state or extent of it. If CAA needs a HERO/DMSI/TNDA/TDI report, they invariably end up asking me, which does not give me a lot of confidence. I did ask a senior analysis at CAA once where he would go to get an ORO/RAC report, and he told me he would just call the library at GRC. Obviously that is no longer an option.
I do not know the state of the CAA library or its holdings. When the GRC library was shut down I did flag the issue to the director of CAA. The corrective action I believe would have been to assemble a small team to create a definitive Army Studies and Analysis Research Library to collect all the ORO/RAC/GRC and HERO/DMSI/TNDA/TDI and CORG/CDEC/CAA and RAND Arroyo and other relative studies in one place (probably the CAA library). This effort was not acted on.
It is probably still possible to do at this point, but as the “graybeards” are disappearing from the business, and it is amazing what they keep stored in their files cabinets and basements, then it will get harder to do over time.
As I have mentioned before, I am preparing a little write-up for the Italian wargame company Advancing Fire for their game Prokhorovka! (PROKHOROVKA! (advancingfire.com). They are designing a set of scenarios for use in the game Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). They have been providing me with some of their advance material, although I am not involved in the design of the game. This is the fourth game map they have provided me.
They are drawing their ASL maps from German aerial photographs of the battlefield. This game map covers the area around Andreyevka and Vasilyevka. I do use different transliteration conventions than them (and many other people). For example, they spell Andreevka with an ee in the middle. An American, seeing the ee will invariably pronounce it like geek as opposed to ge-yek with two syllables. The two e’s are separately pronounced in Russian. Some transliteration conventions use an apostrophe instead of a y. I don’t think most Americans know what to do with a word spelled ge’ek or Andre’evka. The apostrophe is part of the Library of Congress transliteration system (which I think sucks). Some people use that system but take out the apostrophes, which gets us back to geek or Andreevka. I think it should be Andreyevka, which is closer to the Russian pronunciation.
Andreyevka and Vasilyevka is where the XVIII Tank Corps attacks into and through, getting as far as 200 meters east of the Bogoroditskoye church. Bogoroditskoye is often not marked on maps, but it is south of the Psel just west of Vasliyevka. Bogoroditskoye was defended by German armor (tanks or assault guns or Marders) and the Soviets claim at one point that they repulsed German counterattacks by 50 tanks from the Bogoroditskoye area (see page 318 of my Prokhorovka book or page 931 of my Kursk book). We have never clearly identified who that German armor unit was. I believe the Bogoroditskoye church is the church marked on Map M37-26C just west of the ravine west of Vasileyevka and is between Kozlovka and Vasilyeka. The Totenkopf SS two bridges were just west of Bogodoritskoye.
At 1600 (Moscow time) the XVIII Tank Corps’ II Battalion, 32nd Motorized Rifle Brigade is claimed to be deployed from the Psel River to the center of Bogoroditskoye.
The eastern edge of the Andreyevka (assuming the gully marks the eastern edge) is some five kilometers almost due west of height 252.2. See 1:50000 scale Map M37-26C (there are copies of this map in both of my Kursk books). The village of Mikhailovka is just to the northeast of Andreyevka, along the Psel River (see story below). The XVIII Tank Corps moved through it during their attack.
Below is an aerial photograph of Andreyevka and Vasilyevka. The picture should be rotated 90 degree clockwise.:
The link to their game board is below. Just click on it and the game board should appear.
Now, I have looked their work, but I am hardly the right person to conduct photo analysis. Still, it looked pretty good to me. If anyone has any comments, criticisms, recommendations, corrections, edits, and so forth for this map, please let me know. I will forward the comments to them.
P.S. In an email dated 12 April 2021, sent after this initial post, the game map designer informed me that “In the scenario, every hex North of the road A12-CCC10, on level 1 (the lower level), is Mud, so the vehicles and manhandled Guns may bog, the infantry goes slower and HE rounds effect is a bit “cushioned” (look at D8.23 and E3.6 in ASL Rulebook).”
P. P.S. My Mikhailovka story: In 1996, while leading a tour of mostly former German and American officers of the battlefield, we arrived at Mikhailovka while they were doing their presidential elections (back when Yelstin was running for re-election). Our American officers, led by a retired general, decided that this was a unique opportunity to see this new Russian democracy in action. So they decided to go into the town hall and watch the election unfolding. Needless to say, the local election officials were a little overwhelmed with the sudden arrival of rather large contingent of foreigners at their site. They initially said that we would have to leave, and then after conferring for a bit, they decided we could come in and observe the election in pairs. So we did. A rather informal observation of the 1996 Russian elections as conducted in the village of Mikhailovka by former German and American officers.
This trip is also discussed in a chapter in the book Becton: Autobiography of a Solider and Public Servant.
Colorized picture from California, 1918. Source: reddit
The number of cases from coronavirus is less than it was last week. This is weekly update number 53 on the coronavirus in the DC area. This week the D.C area (pop. 5.4 million) decreased to 5,615 new cases. There were 6,914 new cases last week. Eleven weeks ago it was 18,934 new cases. Twenty-two weeks ago there were only 4,256 new cases.
Almost all of Europe is still struggling with controlling the spread of the disease. Italy (pop. 60.3 million), the original epicenter of the European outbreak, is doing better with 8K new cases reported for yesterday. The UK looks like it has brought it under control with 2K new cases yesterday. Its high was 68K new cases on 8 January. France now has reported more cases of Coronavirus than the UK. Their death count of 97,431 (population 67.4 million) is the seventh highest reported deaths in the world (behind U.S., Brazil, India, UK, Italy and Russia). Still, it is less than the UK with 127,126 dead in a population of 66.8 million or Italy with 111,747 deaths in a population of 60.3 million. Yesterday they reported for France 8K which is a vast improvement, for Spain (7K), Germany (8K) and Russia (8K). The U.S. (population 331.4 million), which has never gotten the virus under control, had 62K new cases yesterday. This is pretty the same as last week but an improvement from the high of 300K new cases on 2 January. This is in contrast to places like China (19 cases), Japan (2,615), South Korea (668), Taiwan (2), Vietnam (11), Singapore (24), Australia (14) and New Zealand (7).
The number of reported cases in the DC area was hovering around 8,000 to 9,500 a week for several months, then declined to a low of 2,406 cases forty weeks ago. It has since increased. All the data is from the Johns Hopkin’s website as of 11:21 AM: Johns Hopkins CSSE
……………………..….Population…last week…this week…Deaths Washington D.C…….…..702,445…….44,513……45,328…..1,076 Arlington, VA……………..237,521..….14,227……14,464……..249 Alexandria VA……………160,530……10,940…….11,100…….129 Fairfax County, VA…….1,150,795.…..71,411….…72,390…..1,048 Falls Church, VA…………..14,772.………386.………402………….9 Fairfax City, VA……..…..…24,574..………522.……..527………..18 Loudoun County, VA….…406,850……25,251.….25,693………271
Prince Williams C., VA…..468,011……41,934……42,552……..473 Manassas…………………..41,641..…….4,159.……4,200…….…45 Manassas Park………….…17,307….…..1,169.……1,176…….…12
Stafford Country, VA……..149,960……10,150.….10,332……….70 Fredericksburg, VA…………29,144…….1,879.……1,916…….…22 Montgomery C., MD…….1,052,567……66,704.….67,505……1,484 Prince Georges C., MD.…..909,308……78,011.….79,286……1,395 Total……….…….….……..5,365,425…..371,256…376,871……6,301
This is a 2% increase since last week. The Mortality Rate for the area is 1.67%. This last week there were 51 new fatalities reported out of 5,615 new cases. This is a mortality rate of 0.91%. The population known to have been infected is 7.02% or one confirmed case for every 14 people. The actual rate of infection may be higher, perhaps as much as four times higher. I don’t have a good report of how many people have been vaccinated in this DC area, but I gather we are nearing 50% who have had their first shot (I have had both of mine). So we are looking at 50-70% of the DC area having either been infected or vaccinated.
Virginia has a number of large universities (23,000 – 36,000 students) located in more rural areas, often tied to a small town. This includes James Madison (JMU) at Harrisonburg, University of Virginia (UVA) at Charlottesville. Liberty University (LU) at Lynchburg and Virginia Tech (VT) at Blacksburg. Most of them were emptied out due to Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. Most of these universities went back in session in mid-January, except for UVA, which started its sessions at the beginning of February. I do not report on places like William and Mary (W&M) and VCU as they are located in or near major population centers.
Harrisonburg, VA (pop. 54K) is reporting 6,246 cases (6,166 last week) and 95 deaths, while Rockingham County (pop. 81K), where the town resides, is reporting 6,404 cases (6,347 last week) and 103 deaths. This is where James Madison University is located.
Charlottesville, VA (pop. 47K) has reported 3,895 cases (3,834 last week) and 55 deaths, while Albemarle County, VA (pop. 109K), where the town resides, has reported 5,348 cases (5,275 last week) and 78 deaths. This is where UVA is located.
For UVA (https://returntogrounds.virginia.edu/covid-tracker), after peaking at 229 new cases on 2/16, they had imposed new restrictions. The number of cases dropped precipitously and they partially eased up the restrictions. This Monday (4/05) there were 13 new cases. It does show what can be done with quick reaction and actual lock-down procedures.
Lynchburg (pop. 82K), the home of Liberty University, has reported 7,275 cases (7,196 last week) cases and 142 deaths.
Further south, Montgomery County, VA (pop. 99K) has reported 8,896 cases (8,780 last week) and 88 deaths. This is where Virginia Tech is located.
I do report the population, number of cases and number of deaths for each of these areas. This is because this is somewhat of a “laboratory-like” situation where you have four universities of 23K to 36K students located in rural areas of around 100K population. They do have different rates per capita in cases and in deaths.
Virginia (pop. 8.5 million) had 1,434 new cases yesterday. Last week it as 1,432 cases. Ten weeks ago it was 4,707. For a long time, it pretty much ran 1,000 cases a day, neither going up or going down.
Dare County, North Carolina (pop. 37K), a beach area in the outer banks, has 2,012 cases (1,987 last week) and 8 deaths.
NATO currently consists of 30 members. This includes three members of the former Soviet Union (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) and all former members of the Warsaw Pact except Russia (Poland, East Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania). Ukraine borders Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
This has been a long drawn out process. Ukraine joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace program in February 1994. In 2002 the President of Ukraine Kuchma declared that Ukraine wanted to join NATO and in 2003 sent Ukrainian troop to Iraq. They were also part of the peacekeeping effort in Kosovo. Ukraine applied for the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008. Viktor Yanukovich was elected president in 2010 (which was a free and fair election) and shelved plans to join NATO shortly thereafter. He nuzzled up to Russia, cancelling the attempts to get Ukraine to the join the European Union and instead decided to join Russia’s Eurasian Union. There were then massive protest against him that cost lives of over a hundred protestors and Yanukovich fled the county in February 1914. There was then multiple secessionist movements in Ukraine (Donets and Lugansk) and a Russian engineered seizure of Crimea and Sevastopol, which Russia has now annexed. So…..
P.S. The previous President of The Dupuy Institute, Major General Nicholas Krawciw (U.S. Army, ret.), also worked as the Secretary of Defense Senior Military Representative to Ukraine. MG Krawciw was born in Lvov in 1935. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_S._H._Krawciw
There seems to a little noise in the news reports and on twitter about Russian military build-up near the Ukrainian border areas with Russia. Yesterday, President Biden talked to President Zelensky of Ukraine. I do not know how serious this is, but it might be worthwhile for a moment to take a look at how big is Ukraine compared to Russia.
Ukraine Russia Population 41.5 M 146.7 M
GDP 161 B 1,584 B
GDP (PPP) 420 B 4,226 B
Area (sq. km) 603 K 17,098 K
So, basically Russia has three and 1/2 times the population and ten times the money.
Note: Ukrainian population excludes Crimea and Sevastopol. It was 48.4 M in 2001. Russian population includes Crimea, which is 2.4 million.
Armed Forces
Ukraine Russia
Active 255 K 900 K
Reserve 1,000 K 2,000 K
Deployed 60 K
.
Budget $ 5.4 B $ 65.1 B
Percent of GDP 3% 3.9%
So, Russia two and 1/2 to three and 1/2 times the personnel and over ten time the budget.
And let us look at three of the other “players” in the area:
Belarus Germany United States
Population 9.4 M 83.2 M 328.2 M
GDP 57 B 3,780 B 20,807 B
GDP (PPP) 186 B 4,454 B 20,807 B
Area 208 K 357 K 9,833 K
Active 62 K 184 K 1,386 K
Reserve 345 K 29 K 849 K
Deployed — 2,697 165 K
.
Budget $ 0.78 B $ 57 B $ 738 B
Percent of GDP 1.2% 1.3% 3.4%
These are all just figures grabbed from Wikipedia without any further analysis or cross-checking.
As I have mentioned before, I am preparing a little write-up for the Italian wargame company Advancing Fire for their game Prokhorovka! (PROKHOROVKA! (advancingfire.com). They are designing a set of scenarios for use in the game Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). They have been providing me with some of their advance material, although I am not involved in the design of the game.
They are drawing their ASL maps from German aerial photographs of the battlefield. The game map covers the area around Stalinskii Sovkhoz (State Farm). Elements of the 25th Tank Brigade and 53rd Motorized Rifle Brigade had pushed through to this small village. It was retaken by the Germans in the early afternoon., The village is in between Storozhevoye and height 252.2 (the previous two maps). It is some two kilometers north of Storozhevoye and a little over 1 and 1/2 kilometers south of height 252.2. See Map M37-26C.
Below are two aerial photographs of the Stalinskii State Farm.
The link to their game board is below. Just click on it and the game board should appear.
Now, I have looked their work, but I am hardly the right person to conduct photo analysis. Still, it looked pretty good to me. If anyone has any comments, criticisms, recommendations, corrections, edits, and so forth for this map, please let me know. I will forward the comments to them.
Colorized picture from California, 1918. Source: reddit
Well, I have been providing updates for the DC area for a year now. I originally started tracking and discussing the virus back in January 2020. And then, as everyone else finally picked up that this was going to be a problem and started reporting on it, I decided in April to focus on local tracking. Because of the geographic nature of the DC area (parts of Virginia, parts of Maryland and DC), I could not find a nice summary for the area. It also personally affects me (and which is why I am reporting on university towns in Virginia and beach areas in North Carolina).
Back then (1 April 2020) we were looking at 1,941 reported cases and 23 reported deaths. Now we are up to 371,256 reported cases and 6,250 reported deaths. It has not been well handled.
Back to the present, the number of cases from coronavirus is higher than it was last week. This is weekly update number 52 on the coronavirus in the DC area.
This week the D.C area (pop. 5.4 million) increased by 6,914 new cases. There were 4,811 new cases last week. Ten weeks ago it was 18,934 new cases. Twenty-one weeks ago there were only 4,256 new cases.
Almost all of Europe is still struggling with controlling the spread of the disease. Italy (pop. 60.3 million), the original epicenter of the European outbreak, is still struggling with 16K new cases reported for yesterday. The UK is actually bringing it under control with 4K yesterday, the same as last week. Its high was 68K new cases on 8 January. France now has reported more cases of Coronavirus than the UK. Their death count of 95,495 (population 67.4 million) is the seventh highest reported deaths in the world (behind U.S., Brazil, India, UK, Italy and Russia). Still, it is less than the UK with 126,955 dead in a population of 66.8 million or Italy with 108,879 deaths in a population of 60.3 million. Yesterday they reported for France (31K), Spain (5K), Germany (24K) and Russia (8K). The U.S. (population 331.4 million), which has never gotten the virus under control, had 61K new cases yesterday. This is higher than the last the last four weeks (53K, 54K, 55K and 57K) but an improvement from the high of 300K new cases on 2 January. This is in contrast to places like China (18 cases), Japan (2,141), South Korea (506), Taiwan (1), Vietnam (3 on 3/29), Singapore (26), Australia (8) and New Zealand (2).
The number of reported cases in the DC area was hovering around 8,000 to 9,500 a week for several months, then declined to a low of 2,406 cases thirty-nine weeks ago. It has since increased. All the data is from the Johns Hopkin’s website as of 11:25 AM: Johns Hopkins CSSE
……………………..….Population…last week…this week…Deaths Washington D.C…….…..702,445…….43,488…..44,513…….1,064 Arlington, VA……………..237,521..….13,915……14,227……….246 Alexandria VA……………160,530……10,784……10,940.,…….128 Fairfax County, VA…….1,150,795.…..70,096……71,411…….1,040 Falls Church, VA…………..14,772.………378………386……..……9 Fairfax City, VA……..…..…24,574..………509…..…..522……..…18 Loudoun County, VA….…406,850……24,659……25,251…..….269
Prince Williams C., VA…..468,011……41,153……41,934………468 Manassas…………………..41,641..…….4,120……..4,159……,…45 Manassas Park………….…17,307….…..1,153……..1,169…….…12
Stafford Country, VA……..149,960……..9,970……10,150………..69 Fredericksburg, VA…………29,144…….1,844……..1,879…….…22 Montgomery C., MD…….1,052,567……65,686……66,704…..1,472 Prince Georges C., MD.…..909,308……76,587……78,011…..1,388 Total……….…….….……..5,365,425…..364,342….371,256.…6,250
This is a 2% increase since last week. The Mortality Rate for the area is 1.68%. This last week there were 53 new fatalities reported out of 6,914 new cases. This is a mortality rate of 0.77%. The population known to have been infected is 6.92% or one confirmed case for every 14 people. The actual rate of infection may be higher, perhaps as much as four times higher. I don’t have a good report of how many people have been vaccinated in this DC area, but I gather at least 20% have had their first shot. So we are looking at 40-50% of the DC area having either been infected or vaccinated.
Virginia has a number of large universities (23,000 – 36,000 students) located in more rural areas, often tied to a small town. This includes James Madison (JMU) at Harrisonburg, University of Virginia (UVA) at Charlottesville. Liberty University (LU) at Lynchburg and Virginia Tech (VT) at Blacksburg. Most of them were emptied out due to Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. Most of these universities went back in session in mid-January, except for UVA, which started its sessions at the beginning of February. I do not report on places like William and Mary (W&M) and VCU as they are located in or near major population centers.
Harrisonburg, VA (pop. 54K) is reporting 6,166 cases (5,961 last week) and 95 deaths (up 24 in the last five weeks), while Rockingham County (pop. 81K), where the town resides, is reporting 6,347 cases (6,187 last week) and 103 deaths. This is where James Madison University is located.
Charlottesville, VA (pop. 47K) has reported 3,834 cases (3,771 last week) and 53 deaths, while Albemarle County, VA (pop. 109K), where the town resides, has reported 5,275 cases (5,176 last week) and 77 deaths (up 29 in the last five weeks). This is where UVA is located.
For UVA (https://returntogrounds.virginia.edu/covid-tracker), after peaking at 229 new cases on 2/16, they had imposed new restrictions. The number of cases dropped precipitously and they partially eased up the restrictions. This Monday (3/29) there were 9 new cases. It does show what can be done with quick reaction and actual lock-down procedures.
Lynchburg (pop. 82K), the home of Liberty University, has reported 7,196 cases (7,056 last week) cases and 140 deaths (80 deaths these in the last ten weeks).
Further south, Montgomery County, VA (pop. 99K) has reported 8,780 cases (8,642 last week) and 86 deaths. This is where Virginia Tech is located.
I do report the population, number of cases and number of deaths for each of these areas. This is because this is somewhat of a “laboratory-like” situation where you have four universities of 23K to 36K students located in rural areas of around 100K population. They do have different rates per capita in cases and in deaths.
Virginia (pop. 8.5 million) had 1,432 new cases yesterday. Last week it as 1,267 cases. Nine weeks ago it was 4,707. For a long time, it pretty much ran 1,000 cases a day, neither going up or going down.
Dare County, North Carolina (pop. 37K), a beach area in the outer banks, has 1,987 cases (1,948 last week) and 8 deaths.
As I have mentioned before, I am preparing a little write-up for the Italian wargame company Advancing Fire for their game Prokhorovka! (PROKHOROVKA! (advancingfire.com). They are designing a set of scenarios for use in the game Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). They have been providing me with some of their advance material, although I am not involved in the design of the game.
They are drawing their ASL maps from German aerial photographs of the battlefield. The game map covers the area around Oktyabrskii State Farm and height 252.2, part of the tank fields of Prokhorovka. The road to Prokhorovka runs down the right edge of the map. One the previous map, Storozhevoye, is some 3 1/2 kilometers south of height 252.2. This is an aerial photograph of Oktyabrskii State Farm.
The link to their game board is below. Just click on it and the game board should appear.
The road running down the right edge of the board it the road to Prokhorovka, heading northeast. Also worth looking at is the 1:50000 scale map M 37-26C in my Kursk and Prokhorovka books. The area is mostly in between the grid lines 35 and 37 and 55 to 58 (six square kilometers).
Now, I have looked their work, but I am hardly the right person to conduct photo analysis. Still, it looked pretty good to me. If anyone has any comments, criticisms, recommendations, corrections, edits, and so forth for this map, please let me know. I will forward the comments to them.
Now, I never walked the ground right around Oktyabrskii Sovkhoz. It was still a working farm when I first toured the battlefield in 1995. But you could see it from height 252.2.
Colorized picture from California, 1918. Source: reddit
In general the number of cases from coronavirus remains the same as it was last week. It is still high and needs to come down further. This is weekly update number 51 on the coronavirus in the DC area.
This week the D.C area (pop. 5.4 million) increased by 4,811 new cases. There were 5,549 new cases last week. Nine weeks ago it was 18,934 new cases. Twenty weeks ago there were only 4,256 new cases.
Almost all of Europe is still struggling with controlling the spread of the disease. Italy (pop. 60.3 million), the original epicenter of the European outbreak, is still struggling with 29K new cases reported for yesterday, an increase from last week. The UK is actually bringing it under control for a change with 5K yesterday, the same as last week. Its high was 68K new cases on 8 January. France now has reported more cases of Coronavirus than the UK, although their death count of 93,065 (population 67.4 million) is less than the UK with 126,523 dead in a population of 66.8 million. Yesterday they reported for France (15K), Spain (6K), Germany (21K) and Russia (8K). The U.S. (population 331.4 million), which has never gotten the virus under control, had 53K new cases yesterday. This is about the same as the last three weeks (54K, 55K and 57K) but an improvement from the high of 300K new cases on 2 January. This is in contrast to places like China (22 cases), Japan (1,517), South Korea (425), Taiwan (5 on 3/15), Vietnam (3 on 3/22), Singapore (13), Australia (10) and New Zealand (8).
The number of reported cases in the DC area was hovering around 8,000 to 9,500 a week for several months, then declined to a low of 2,406 cases thirty-eight weeks ago. It has since increased. All the data is from the Johns Hopkin’s website as of 9:26 AM: Johns Hopkins CSSE
……………………..….Population…last week…this week…Deaths Washington D.C…….…..702,445…….42,730…..43,488……..1,051 Arlington, VA……………..237,521..….13,729…..13,915………..243 Alexandria VA……………160,530……10,643…..10,784……….128 Fairfax County, VA…….1,150,795.…..69,041…..70,096…….1,034 Falls Church, VA…………..14,772.………370………378…………10 Fairfax City, VA……..…..…24,574..………507………509…………17 Loudoun County, VA….…406,850……24,197….24,659……….263
Prince Williams C., VA…..468,011…….40,625….41,153…….…467 Manassas…………………..41,641..……..4,089……4,120…………45 Manassas Park………….…17,307….……1,145……1,153……..…12
Stafford Country, VA……..149,960………9,858……9,970……..…68 Fredericksburg, VA…………29,144……..1,825…..1,844……..…22 Montgomery C., MD…….1,052,567……65,053….65,686……1,461 Prince Georges C., MD.…..909,308……75,719….76,587……1,376 Total……….…….….……..5,365,425…..359,531…364,342……6,197
This is a 1% increase since last week. The Mortality Rate for the area is 1.70%. This last week there were 28 new fatalities reported out of 4,811 new cases. This is a mortality rate of 0.58%. A couple of municipalities dropped their count of deaths this week. The population known to have been infected is 6.79% or one confirmed case for every 15 people. The actual rate of infection may be higher, perhaps as much as four times higher. I don’t have a good report of how many people have been vaccinated in this DC area, but I gather at least 20% have had their first shot. So we are looking at 40-50% of the DC area having either been infected or vaccinated.
Virginia has a number of large universities (23,000 – 36,000 students) located in more rural areas, often tied to a small town. This includes James Madison (JMU) at Harrisonburg, University of Virginia (UVA) at Charlottesville. Liberty University (LU) at Lynchburg and Virginia Tech (VT) at Blacksburg. Most of them were emptied out due to Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. Most of these universities went back in session in mid-January, except for UVA, which started its sessions at the beginning of February. I do not report on places like William and Mary (W&M) and VCU as they are located in or near major population centers.
Harrisonburg, VA (pop. 54K) is reporting 6,077 cases (5,961 last week) and 95 deaths (up 24 in the last four weeks), while Rockingham County (pop. 81K), where the town resides, is reporting 6,280 cases (6,187 last week) and 102 deaths. This is where James Madison University is located.
Charlottesville, VA (pop. 47K) has reported 3,771 cases (3,738 last week) and 53 deaths, while Albemarle County, VA (pop. 109K), where the town resides, has reported 5,176 cases (5,081 last week) and 76 deaths (up 28 in the last four weeks). This is where UVA is located.
For UVA (https://returntogrounds.virginia.edu/covid-tracker), after peaking at 229 new cases on 2/16, they had imposed new restrictions. The number of cases dropped precipitously and they partially eased up the restrictions. This Monday (3/22) there were 11 new cases. It does show what can be done with quick reaction and actual lock-down procedures.
Lynchburg (pop. 82K), the home of Liberty University, has reported 7,056 cases (6,986 last week) cases and 141 deaths (81 deaths these in the last nine weeks).
Further south, Montgomery County, VA (pop. 99K) has reported 8,642 cases (8,460 last week) and 86 deaths. This is where Virginia Tech is located.
Note I to report the population, number of cases and number of deaths for each of these areas. This is because this is somewhat of a “laboratory-like” situation where you have four universities of 23K to 36K students located in rural areas of around 100K population. They do have different rates per capita in cases and in deaths.
Virginia (pop. 8.5 million) had 1,267 new cases yesterday. Last week it as 1,276 cases. Eight weeks ago it was 4,707. For a long time, it pretty much ran 1,000 cases a day, neither going up or going down.
Dare County, North Carolina (pop. 37K), a beach area in the outer banks, has 1,948 cases (1,906 last week) and 8 deaths.
