Re: How big is a troopship? [DS/FT/SG2] (and what it all means)

On Thu, 23 Sep 1999, Michael Llaneza wrote:

> It takes an awful lot of softening to get all the power armor out of 
> biphase carbide bunkers. And the environment that creates in't real 

ok so he gets one lucky shot. We dismantle his armour and sacrifice him 
to appease Murphy. 

One question again (I'm ful of them aren't I), why am I dropping my 
forces where there are bunkers hiding power armour when I have a whole 
planet to choose from?

> firestorm...)  The Japanese in WWII endured hours of bombardment 
> sitting behind a couple of meters of coral, concrete and steel; and 
> so did plenty of other nations. The island war analogy does force me 
> to concede that a BB could hit a machine gun nest with a 14" shell, 5 

And when the endured hours of bombardment, they were mostly an annoyance

to the crews building the airfields by that point. The marines didnt' 
like them because they had to go hunt the 50 japanese left on the island

by then. Usually the japanese had been without supplies for months. In 
some islands the japanses fell prey to the head hunters and the
marines...

> feet was the estimated accuracy from one example I recall. Ortillery 
> is likely to be much more accurate, and significantly more powerful 
> than 2000 lbs of HE.

Your guy in the bunker better use a land line and some pretty nicely 
shielded commo gear if he chats with anyone...

> And a good justification of using historical analogies is that 
> offense will eventually catch up with the defence, or vice versa 
> depending on your initial conditions. Mobility, detection and 
> communications are not in any form of dynamic balance as offense and 
> defense are and so their relative capabilities increase as we project 
> into the future. [draft idea, comments welcome]
> 
> I've also found concealed PA troopers somewhat useful against grav 
> armor on the march. A coordinated SAM launch from a platoon of PA can 
> seriously mess with even heavy armor. It's very possible to create 

Armour alwys gets bit in an ambush. The question is do they bite back 
once they orient? If the force has the right gear and doctrine they do.

> Light ground fire sucks, heavy ground fire Very Bad ?

Pretty much. I'd rather have small arms coming up at me than heavy AAA
or 
THAD.  
 
> >Why are C3 assets coming in on the first wave? Same goes for
hospitals.
> 
> 
> They're in there as an er, ah, uh, well, assume you've missed one 
> yahoo during the initial phases and he pops a SAM into something in a 
> follow-on wave. I'll mutate my point into an adminition to be 
> generally paranoid about your most critical assets. I was just 
> listing useful and important units off the top of my head, which 
> isn't how I plan my own assaults :-)

Which is why you have backups. You don't have two C4I tracks why?

I'm reminded of a WWII picture of a barge load of ambulances. It looked 
like one good push would send the lot over the side. > 

> on reflection, I think the M2HB is from elsewhere; I swear I've heard 
> of 'em used as door mounts, it'd be worth wrestling a bear in an 
> urban LZ. Of course, there's precious little in your average 
> (terrestrial) jungle to slow down even a 7.62.

7.62 out of an M14 will cut a tree down. A SAW will take down a bunch of

trees. A MiniGun....well.......

> some armies use that caliber as a sniper round. The sights are 
> calibrated out farther even than my old Enfield (2km, it's actually 
> doing indirect fire, you could shoot over a hill at the angle need 
> for 2km)

The first use of .50 as a sniuper round was off an M2HB that had a
rigged 
trigger to do single shots. The user was a nut at a fire base that
didn't 
like the VC waving at them 1 click away on the next hill.

.50 BMG us really an "anti-material" round. Not really for "personell" 
sniper work..."not really"...There are a bunch of really nice .50 rifles

out there. Barret was the first big maker, Later came the Marine 
requested McMillan Brothers .50 tactical rifle. There are Auto Loaders, 
bolt action single shots, and all those in between (5 or 10 round mags). 

Range is generally 1000 yards for a man sized target. Further for
material.

> Not with me planning it ! Or in it ! The big lesson from WWII for 
> opposed landings: more firepower delivered with greater precision, 
> closer coordination and better timing.

The bigger lesson is be where he don't expect you...

> Drop them in robot landers (chutes with retros and a small brain 
> maybe) along with the semi-essential supplies. Food, water, ammo and 
> medical supplies land behind armor. I've just gotten through a novel 
> set in the Stalingrad Pocket, don't EVER run out of those.

Crewed or uncrewed?

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- Ryan Montieth Gill		DoD# 0780 (Smug #1) / AMA / SOHC -
- ryan.gill@turner.com	    I speak not for CNN, nor they for me -
- rmgill@mindspring.com 	     www.mindspring.com/~rmgill/ -
- '85 Honda CB700S  -  '72 Honda CB750K  - '76 Chevy MonteCarlo  -
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