hellfish

1. Strykers augment light infantry - it does not replace mech infantry. It also doesn't make Strykers mech infantry. 2. Most accounts I've heard, even from non Stryker guys who have served near/with Strykers all seem to have pretty positive things to say. 3. He is indeed an idiot.

Don't know if this is reliable: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51555

Word.

The continuing commando-ization of the Army.

Are both Stryker brigades in Baghdad now?

There's always a certain fudge factor with weapons too. Defects in the warhead, deflection, etc. Even though a Kornet is rated at 1200mm of RHA penetration, it might not always penetrate that lower hull even if it hits dead on.

I still resent you for quoting me in your sig.

Or a 2000lb bomb.

The Aussies use CMAK - I don't know if it's a training tool or more of a historical learning aid.

I wonder if Mav1 only plays with elite, fanatical troops.

Its official: AT-5s and AT-14s http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/15/wmid15.xml

You're crazy. In my CMBB game last night I ordered an entire Russian rifle company (regular experience) across 100m of open ground and none of them made it - they all wound up back at their starting positions either in a panic or because they took too many casualties because a single MG42 opened up on them. Once I got rid of the MG, they moved across fine.

http://anysoldier.com/brian/Afghanistan/ Photos from a 3-man sniper team of the 173rd Airborne in Afghanistan.

The offer I made back when CMSF was first announced still stands - if anyone thinks playing as the US will be a cake walk, i'll happily play them in a game as the Syrians and spank 'em.

Aha! Found somefink! Karl Lowe's proposal for renaming the Army (from Army Magazine March 2005) http://www.ausa.org/pdfdocs/Lowe.pdf Soldiers Magazine poster - shows the Divisions, their BCTs and the battalions within those BCTs. Might be useful for the campaign to know which units are in which brigade - unless you're gonna go generic (A Coy/1st Bn as opposed to A Co/2-32 Armor) http://www4.army.mil/soldiers/archive/pdfs/pdfs/poster_ModularForce.pdf

I had a big pdf file from Soldiers Magazine (IIRC - may have been Army Magazine) that listed all the proposed names - the 82nd would be broken up into the 82nd, 11th, 101st and 17th Airborne Brigades, the 101st would become the 6th Light, 7th Light, etc. Damned if I can find it though. But the Center for Military History nixed the idea for some reason and said that we were going to keep the current naming conventions. Which is lame. I wanna see the 2nd Armored back again - wearing their patches over their hearts like Patton wanted.

I think the 172nd inheireted the 3/2nd's original Strykers and were due to bring them out. I might be wrong, though, but I don't think the 25th ID took their Strykers out with them when they handed over to the 172nd. Small, mostly-off-topic rant: I hate the new modular army naming system. Back when they first decided to do the BCT/UA thing, there was a proposal to give each brigade a unique name and lineage - mostly drawn from the old WWII divisions. So instead of 1/2/3/4th Brigades of the 1st Armored Division you might have the 1st Armored Brigade, which inheireted the history and shoulder patch of the 1st AD, 2nd Armored Brigade which would have done the same for the 2nd AD, etc. Now we've got brigades that are often totally unrelated to each other that belong to division commands that theoretically shouldn't even exist (only Corps level HQs are supposed to be the command elements last I heard) and its just more confusing and generic than ever. For example, the 1st Infantry Division now has some heavy and some light brigades. Had they renamed the light brigade after one of the old WWII divisions or older seperate brigades (197th, 198th, 199th, etc.) it would have made a whole lot more sense, IMHO, and promoted BCT esprit. End rant. Stupid Army History commanders.

It might be inappropriate to ask, but did the BMP-3s make it in?

My memory fails me on occasion, but didn't Israel stop at the gates of Damascus in 1973? Was it due to threats of Soviet intervention, the futility of occupying a city that big, US pressure or something else?

What about my tripod question?

I think the big lesson Israel is taking from this is that the American way to wage war (heavily airpower centric) does not always work well. Had they sent in forces closer to the start it might have been more effective. Of course, that might depend on what they had on hand to go in there with in the beginning...

www.imageshack.us is good for one-time uploads, as is www.photobucket.com if you want your own online photo album.

Yep - can't explain it. The RV variant doesn't even have the LRAS but the FO vehicle does.

It's an FO vehicle, not a direct fire support vehicle.

I wouldn't want "bugs" in the artillery rounds I'm calling in danger close.