SgtMuhammed

Since everything is modular it would only take a matter of minutes to pull anything they wanted off of it. Then again there isn't really anything on the bird that the bad guys don't know about all ready. It's not like there are no other choppers like it in the world.

I would have loved to have seen the FalshirmPanzers make a drop!

They did bomb it but only after it had been carted away. Who knows what was taken off of it before we blew it up. I think they found it sitting by a bridge when they hit it. I know it caused a bit of angst when they couldn't find it for a while.

Yes but that is a recent developement (in a historical timeframe). If we were monogamic from the beginning men and women would look much more alike. Plus you also have to consider genetic diversity. Still females are a much more precious commodity in the grand biological scheme. At least I think so. As far as just having larger families, that hasn't really been the trend in human society recently. One would suspect that the populations of Europe would rebound with a big baby boom after the wars but the opposite has actually happened.

All other things asside, the biological reason you don't have female infantry is because a population can lose most of its males and still survive. Wipe out a large portion of the females and your civilization is doomed. Ok, you can start the rhetoric again...

Ah ha! Thanks. Is the Army using them as well or just the Marines? The only ones I saw were on Marine tracks.

Israel gives us a presense without even being there. Nearly all those other bases are in countries where we could suddenly be shut out. Israel might be a pain sometimes but we know we will be welcome if the baloon goes up.

Did anyone see the Military Channel show about the M1? It showed some Marine M1s with what looked like a bolt-on CIWS. I don't know if it could swivel but it was definitly an optic device. Any of you know about this?

There are some real lookers in the U.S. Army as well.

There is nothing theoretical about it. It is a fact that you can send a ray of light down a fiber optic cable and out the other end, it doesn't matter if you tie the cable in knots. I'm not talking about turning the soldier into a gravity lense but rather more like an LCD.

Strange how women have so much easier a time getting little favors like that.

No Peter you are being far too conservative about what might be standard equipment in the next few decades. They are getting ready to turn the average infantryman into a computerized fully integrated weapon's system. Once the system is up and running he will be able to see the position of all his mates on his computer display eyepiece and send all of them text messages. He will be able to lase a target and have the position of that target instantly transmitted to every big gun in the division. He will be able to send live video and thermal imagery to whoever requests it. All of these things were considered laughably impossible only 25 years ago. I know this because I have carried the system in its prototype stage. As for the soldier's equipment. As it is it renders cammo nearly useless as it is. "Hey, why I have never seen a grenade tree before! And look it's wearing NODs!" That doesn't stop the military from using cammo and spending a lot of time and money working on something that is going to be covered with a lot of non-blending junk.

Then again 50 years ago no one figured every infantryman would have a fully automatic weapon either. Fiber-optic cable is pretty cheap and is getting cheaper. In 10 to 20 years...

The Predator style suit might not be that far fetched. Imagaine this. Fiber optic cables woven into a combat suit that transmit light from 180 degrees behind the wearer. To someone looking at the wearer he looks like what he is in front of. No need to have some wierd force fields or some such. In the next couple of decades who knows what will happen.

Remember that the terrorists are not calling for the return of the West Bank but for the destruction of Israel as a nation. Simple solutions are never as simple as they seem.

PLEASE! Just because you're not expecting the Spelling Inquisition, doesn't mean that they are sleeping. </font>

The entire army is designed to go into harm's way so you can say that anyone can expect to go into combat. Women can fight and die just like men but there is a lot more than that to being an infantryman or a tanker. Women are allowed in some ADA units and Engineer units other than Combat Engineers. If CMSF is going to show a lot of combat support troops, which include MPs and some supply, then there have to be women. If BFC decides to stay below battalion level with all possible forces then there probably won't be any women unless they start letting them be cooks. Even female medics in a line unit would be very unlikely. Medics are expected to be able to move a casualty and your average infantryman weighs nearly 200 lbs buck naked. By the way, I knew the first female to be assigned to a "line" infantry unit. She was a cook in 1/4 Inf in Hohenfels, Germany. We were OPFOR, however, and were non-deployable so she wasn't in a real infantry battalion. Likewise I knew the first woman to command a combat engineer platoon (she was one of the most beautiful women I ever saw, by the way) but again that was in a special situation. The unit in question was doing a rotation on guard duty with us in Cuba and when they left she was reassigned to civil engineers. Things may change a little in the next few years but I still wouldn't expect to see many female trigger pullers.

Yeah, the HG can be the bad guy in a lot of scenarios in the Med. Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, lots to choose from.

You can shoot a SAM at a tank but it will just scratch the paint. They are designed as proximity warheads and have little penetration power. When I was with TOWs one of our possible targets was helicopters. It would take a bit to hit one that wasn't hovering but we were expected to try to engage them.

I can just hear the local German jokes about that: Hey Herman, vat ist vurst dan an American soldat out drinkink beer unt shtayink out late? I don't ka-no Jürgen! Vat ist vurst dan an American soldat out drinkink beer unt shtayink out late? Doink it mit a Britische soldat! Ah! But I tought you ver tellink a yoke. Britische unt Americanische soldaten together mit beer ist a yoke not! Steve </font>

Some of my fondest memories came from my friendships with various Brit troopers in Berlin.

And the Israeli's used ME109's against Egyptian Spitfires in the '48 war. Go figure.

Hi cousin Steve!

The traditional view of the Guard and Reserves as being separate forces has been inaccurate since after Vietnam. Vietnam was fought largly with Regular formations as part of Johnson's effort to limit the war. The response by congress was to force the Regular military to make more use of the Guard and Reserve so that any major action would involve much more of the general population. Many of the Regular military's functions are carried out entirely by the Guard and Reserves. USAF tanker aircraft are all Guard and Reserve and I believe the Army Water purification units are all Guardsmen and Reservists.

One has to ask, how can they be addressed? Something unforseen is, by definition, something that no one thinks about. I have seen things in CM1 such as squads firing Fausts at AT guns and troops, not really something I thought they would do.