Re: [GZG] [SG] Rapid Fire antipersonnel plasma gun?

[J L Hilal <jlhilal@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 9/28/06, J L Hilal <jlhilal@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > So you could say that well equipped NAC, NSL, and IJF professionals have
> > nomex skivvies, but the ESU doesn't waste funds on such frivolities for
> > their conscript hordes.
> 
> You know, I'm eventually going to write my entire rant on the extreme
> unlikelyhood of 'conscript hordes' in a war where your expeditionary
> forces have to be transported by spacecraft.  Unless your space fleet
> is the size of America's merchant marine in WWII, your naval dominance
> is as pronounced as the USN/RN dominance in the Atlantic by 1944, your
> travel time is as short as an ocean-crossing in the 1940s, you can't
> project a force the size of the US's in WWII in Europe.  And even that
> was tiny compared to the Soviets or Germans.  Rember, the US had
> something like 90 divisions and fought two wars with them, compared
> the Russians who raised in the neighborhood of 400 or so, or the
> Germans who also had hundreds.

Who said anything about conscript horde EXPEDITIONARY forces?  But YOUR
expeditionary forces have to deal with THEIR (local) conscript hordes.

When someone shows up to take possesion of an ESU frontier world after
thrashing their fleet, who do you think is under arms on the surface?  The
"Filitov" Guards Grav-Tank Shock Corps or a horde of 2-year conscripts and
reservists recalled from the local populace?

For that matter, who is manning the garrison force keeping the local workers
and peasants in line?  Well-paid long-service volunteers or a bunch of
conscripts commanded by officers who didn't have the political clout to get a
better posting and a commissar who pissed off his superiors back at Third Chief
Directorate headquarters?  Are the garrison locals or shipped in from other
colonies?  Remember when the PRC had to call in provincial forces to drive a
bunch of students out of Tien An Mien because the local conscipts had spent too
much time chatting with the students to be trusted to fire into the crowd?  To
paraphrase Capt. Armand Pahner, "If the troops are raised there, and their
officers come from there, and the governer is from there, how do you keep
control from here?"

So the "Black Sea" Guards Armored Heavy Naval Drop Infantry Regiment (Spiffy
+1) probably gets fancy longjohns, but the 1st Backwaterskaya Reserve
Motor-Rifle Regiment (Dismounted) isn't going to get them, even (or especially)
when the Reactionary Imperialist Bourgoise Capitalist Counter-Revolutionary
Enemies-of-the-Proletariate land.  Or the drooling beasties... but they're hard
to tell apart.

For that matter, when the Black Sea blah blah blah Regiment shows up in orbit
around New Ozark, the local Minutemen Chapter probably doesn't have no-flame
bloomers either :)

J
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