Sgt Joch

I would say the issue is not so much that there are no longer any heroes in war as the fact that war has lost much of its glamour. Prior to the advent of television, civilians would generally find out about war through oral stories, newspaper, books and paintings, most of which tended to glamorize the heroic aspects of war. Even in WW2, reporters left out the worst aspects of combat. The documentary "With the marines at Tarawa" was a noticeable exception, but it required the approval of president Roosevelt to be released. By the time Vietnam rolled around, news cameras were everywhere, for example these CBS news reports from the 1968 Tet offensive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiW5FXs1n6M and now of course, on the net, you can find pretty much anything: http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do?displayContent=190518&page=1 Once civilians sitting on their ass safely at home (like me ) can get of glimpse of the real face of war, it does not look very glamorous at all. It looks more like organized slaughter, hard to find much heroics in that.

yes, most of the really interesting stuff concerning armor protection is classified so that the numbers you see in CMSF are basically educated guesstimates based on what little real world data there is. The people who know anything worthwhile, like Gibsonm here, refuse to give us any interesting tidbit.

this one is good too: -Challenger: http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/chall2.htm -Abrams: http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/abrams.htm -T-90: http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/T-90S.htm

JK, even if we assume that your theory is correct, how do you explain the fact that the Soviets took until 1949 to produce a working bomb. After the war, the Russians scoured germany to find german scientists who had worked on the German atomic program. At least 40 were sent back to the Soviet Union. Yet even with German scientists and all the data on the US bomb sent back by spies, the first workable bomb was not produced until august 1949. This is detailed in this article on "German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project": http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/72pavel.pdf

I have no doubt that the Luftwaffe may have studied the feasibility of a strike on New York and drawn up plans on how this might be achieved. Militaries are always drawing up plans for various contingencies. Secondly the JU-390 did exist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_390 It may even, as some claim, have made a reconnaissance flight to New York City in 1944, although the evidence is sketchy. But that does not necessarily prove anything, I don't think anyone doubts the Nazis were working on their own atomic bomb, the question has always been how close thay came to actually building a working bomb.

John, I looked at some of your links, but your "evidence" is not entirely convincing, for example from the DER SPIEGEL article:

looking forward to this as well.

I seem to recall that the US look very closely after the war at what the status was and came to the conclusion that the germans were still far away from producing a working bomb.

I read with great interest the articles AKD posted, both Falkner's "Wounding patterns of miltary rifle bullets" from 1989 and "small caliber lethality", thereby expanding my knowledge in an area in which I will admit I only had general knowledge, however I still have some questions: -Falkner states that much of the wounding potential caused by the 5.56x45mm M855 comes from fragmentation leaving exit wounds up to 15 cm. However, I have seen other comments that the M855 does not fragment consistently and may travel 6-7" in soft tissue before it begins to yaw: http://ammo.ar15.com/ammo/project/term_m855yaw.html 2. the data appears conclusive that the 7.62x39mm M43 round exhibits little yaw and will generally produce through and through wounds. However Falkner states that the M67 round will begin to yaw in as little as 9cm leaving a 11 cm exit wound. It also appears that the Chinese manufactured 7.62x39mm rounds will begin to yaw as little as after 2-2.5" of travel in soft tissue. So, unless I am missing something, the data does not appear to be that conclusive that the M855 has superior wounding capability to M67 and later rounds? Secondly, which type of 7.62x39mm ammo is most likely to be in use by Syria and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is the M43 still in use?

do you have any backup for your assertions?

to continue the 5.56x45mm v. 7.62x39mm ammo debate: from:http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1986/MVT.htm this is from a 1986 U.S. military report discussing the distinction between the NATO 5.56mm and 7.62mm ammo, although many of the conclusions could also apply to a comparaison versus the Russian 7.62x39mm round.

of course, many of the Syrian troops in CMSF use the AK-74 which fires 5.45x39mm ammo, so to a large extent, this discussion is moot.

As AKD points out, the 5.56mm does not necessarily yaw or fragment consistently either. I have no doubt that the 5.56 is better designed and performs more consistently than the 7.62, but you can't avoid basic physics. The 7.62 round will develop more Kinetic Energy and hit harder than the 5.56 round. The 5.56mm is still just a .22 caliber bullet. There are many reasons why NATO went with the 5.56, but it was not because it had more stopping power than a 7.62.

You have to take into account the scale to see the real size since the russian round penetrates to 26" while the NATO round stops at 12". Also, as you will see at the wiki site, the bottom drawing is for the M43 round, the M67 would have better terminal velocity.

In theory, the 7.62mm round gives the AK-47 a one-shot/one-kill capability while 5.56mm ammo typically requires 2-3 hits to incapacitate/kill an opponent. While it is true that the recoil of the 7.62 ammo makes it harder to control, especially in fully-automatic mode, I would still give it an edge in urban combat where the fights are typically very close and very quick. for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_AK-47_and_M16#Comparison_of_characteristics Having said that, I would agree that the 5.56mm armed NATO rifles are better all around weapons than the AK-47.

6.8 already exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6.8_mm_Remington_SPC it packs more punch than 5.56mm and less recoil the 7.62mm and is already available in the civilian market such as in the Ruger mini 6.8: which is legal in canada with a 5 round magazine.

Hard to say. I have tried to run tests recently between British and Syrian troops, but since all the teams/squads have a mix of weapons and equipment, it is hard to determine the effect of any one weapon. If you look at typical military assault rifles (i.e. AK-47, M4, M16A4, L85A2), all are similar in weight, size, magazine load, ROF, but the AK-47 packs 7.62 mm ammo as opposed to 5.56 mm ammo for the rest. In theory, this should give the AK-47 armed infantryman an edge over the NATO soldiers in close combat, but this is not readily apparent in CMSF where NATO squads have additional heavier weapons and body armour to compensate.

yes GPU interface. I usually play CMSF with no FSAA. I find it redundant at 1920x1200.

I play on a Dell 27" widescreen at 1920x1200 with no problems whatsoever. The image is sharper and clearer, and the colors are more vibrant than on my previous 22" CRT monitor. My computer, powered by a now 2 year old Intel Core 2 Duo E6750, has no problem handling the game at that res. In fact, I play CMBB at 16xAniso/16xFSAA (8800 GT) and I sometimes forget to dial it down when switching to CMSF, but the FPS is still nice and smooth. One of the best purchases I made in years.

its a strange camo scheme, more something you would find on a ship:

I should also point out that Steve has mentioned that CM:WW2 will feature a new way to treat casualties. I am as much in the dark about what that means as everyone else, but I presume this will affect how casualties, including "Buddy Aid" is handled in CM:WW2 and CMSF2.

Charles actually spent a lot of time tweaking the "buddy aid" behavior arround 1.10/1.11. We tested builds ranging from one extreme, where soldiers would totally ignore their comrades dying right next to them to the other extreme where they would ignore enemy soldiers firing on them to perform buddy aid. Under the current behavior, at least from the testing I saw, a soldier should not perform "buddy aid" if he is currently being fired at or under fire. The problem, of course, is that it is impossible to get the AI of the individual pixeltruppens to always behave as a real human would. The way it works now is obviously the compromise that BFC and most testers felt the most comfortable with, within the limitations of the AI.

you should have seen the smile on our defence minister's face when he announced the deal.

Canada leased 20 leo 2s from Germany, all of which were shipped to Afghanistan and bought another 100 used Leo 2s from the Netherlands, none of which are anywhere close to a battlefield.

bold words there mate, I know some americans who might disagree. of course, Canada bought some surplus Leo 2s from the Dutch, so I dont necessarily disagree with that sentiment...although they do seem to require as much maintenance as a Porsche... http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/defencewatch/archive/2009/03/19/canada-s-new-used-leopard-2s-and-the-long-road-to-becoming-operational.aspx