Re: [semi OT] Women wargamers

tom.anderson@altavista.net wrote:

>
> > And also
> > that the MI _did_ require a high standard of physical fitness and
> > stamina--remember their basic training had a more than 80% failure
> > rate, a failure rate more in keeping with Ranger School in the US
than
> > with basic or infantry school anywhere in the world.
>
> true, but i suspect that this was more for plot reasons than
technology.
>

How do you figure? Guys in power armor still have to walk and run
everywhere. Power Armor doesn't make it any easier to run five miles. It
just makes it easier to run five miles carrying a one ton armored suit.
If you think you're going to pull some slug off the street and watch him
do miracles in PA, that's just not gonna happen in anyone's universe,
except maybe GW. (maybe not even theirs) The use of power armor, at
least as described in any SF I've ever read, still required a VERY high
degree of
fitness and is usually a "specialist" trade.

> >  I do know that they dismounted some
> > normally mech units and sent them to the Falklands as foot troops
> > because they don't/didn't have the sea lift capability to send them
nor
> > the logistical infrastructure to sustain them.
>
> now that's a bloody good point; i can envisage planners looking at
some hundred-man rebel army on New Boxtead (unimportant backwater world)
and thinking 'do we really need to send power armour? nah.'.
>

Again, if you are looking at managing your military resources, and PA is
not what your whole army is made out of, OR, you don't feel you have the
extra logistical capabilities required to keep PA troops in the field,
then  I think that is a very real startegic decision.