Re: [semi OT] Women wargamers

 ---- the redoubtable john atkins wrote: 
> You wrote: 
> >from a future army point of view, might it be that the introduction
of 
> power armour

> Step 1, NO army can afford power armor for all it's troops.

bzzzt! wrong! if my background says that armies can afford power armour
all round, then, in my background, they can. i accept that in most
backgrunds - gzg offical included - power armour is restricted to a
fraction of the infantry. in starship troopers, it seemed to me that the
whole infantry was powered, except for specialists such as the
sensitives who did not need power armour. in sp*** ma**** etc, the whole
of the marines was armoured, even if the guard (and all other races)
were not.

i think that it will always be true, from this point on in history, that
the limiting factor in raising armies will be people, most of whom would
rather sit at home at watch the war on bbc news 24 or cnn than go and
fight in it. on the contrary, with fully automated robotic assembly
plants, nanotech lathes, grow-to-order biomaterial components, etc,
building power armour will become trivial.

i expect that when armoured, mororised transport for infantry was
introduced, there were people who said it would never be universal. now,
every infantry formation has apcs/ifvs, or have more specialised travel
arrangements, such as helos or parachutes. in fact, i am sure the same
was said of the gun. i know the same was said of the machine gun.

>  I know in 
> my background, I've got four divisions completely power-armored.  Plus

> about 40 or 50 with no power armor at all.  In the 'official' 
> backgrounds, we see in Stargrunt that most units are unarmored.

true. and in these cases, my comments on powered women soldiers are less
relevant (in the regular infantry, the situation would be as now, modulo
social changes; in the powered infantry, women might be on a more equal
footing).

> Pet Peeve:  Eyesight has not been that big a deal since they invented 
> eyeglasses.  I speak from the perspective of a man with 20/400 vision 
> in one eye and 2/200 in the other.  

ok, sorry about all that. i already stand corrected on that one.
incidentally, what does 20/400 and 2/200 mean? we don't use that scheme
of measurement in the uk. we have diopters. i don't know how many
diopters my specs are. anyway, point taken. i do remember that in Full
Metal Jacket (going once more to fictional sources ...) half the
characters had specs.

> >of course, this is already true in many/most branches of the
infantry, 
> especially special forces, engineers, etc.
> 
> Engineers are NOT rpt NOT a branch of the Infantry.  Seperate--we're 
> the ones that PASSED the ASVAB.

please accept my most profound apologies! of course engineers are not
infantry, how stupid of me.

Tom

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