Woodey

It is at least an interesting question. Are "other" people less worthy of freedom? Or are the rights of local despots to crush their own people under their heal his right since they are "his" people? The flip side is whether people who have no tradition of democracy or the education to lift them up above the cycle of dictators and warlords can be helped? Or as leaders of many countries say, their people don't want freedom. In a world where freedom is considered less important than trading it for government protection/securitydirection maybe the thought of freedom is rightly laughed at in a majority of countries. I myself see it as the dying of hope.

CMBB Close Combat II Carriers at War So much fun...

Mines, ied's or ambushes have a long and lauded history in warfare. That isn't what we fight against now. There is a reason we call many of these people we fight terrorists. The great majority of ied's aren't used against our troups. They are used by a very small number of people to control the civilian population in Iraq. If someone in the neighborhood irritates the "freedom fighters" then an ied goes off under that civilian or his children. Or children taking candy or presnts from US troops. That is the coward, and worse.

Ah, no worries. If it refers to the wild west and cowboys you would be sadly mistaken. I think one would find more Californians here than people actually born and raised here. LOL

Molloy, I don't get the "no surprise" comment. Could you extrapolate?

LOL, hoist on my own petard. Aye all else is fluff but fluff is what lets you live with yourself afterwards. It is the stuff you fill your mattress with so you can sleep at night. The fluff is what makes civilization and it is what is traded off in dribs and drabs to win a war, any and every war. The quicker one can win the war with the least loss of fluff the better. If a Stryker unit goes in and takes casualties then we loose a little “fluff”. If we send in the heavies and call in the artillery or air on a mosque or school that is being used as a fire base we loose “fluff”. My point is that the longer the fighting goes on the more “fluff” we loose. A shorter sharper conflict is much less damaging to both sides in the end The unfortunate part of this is that a significant number of the other side has no fluff. Those who send out the suicide bombers want power and prestige and those who go to die just want their 100 virgins. (A sad thought that they just want 100 pleasure slaves as their ultimate goal. And they don’t seem to understand that if we run out of fluff then millions will die. Don’t think the world has changed that much in the last 60 years.

Civilized? If one is going to be civilized then one can just surrender whatever was going to be fought over. WWI was not civilized, WWII was even less civilized and I am talking about the Americans and British. They killed millions of civilians and knew they were doing so. Were they wrong? In individual cases yes, absolutely. Over all, no, not at all. War is the art of achieving ones objectives by killing enough of the opponent that they stop. All else is fluff. If ones ROE causes the routine death of ones own forces and no disadvantage to the oponent then that is a mistake and if continued a betrayal of those in harms way. War isn't pretty, it isn't fun. It is the worst thing in the world. Save lose of liberty. (Liberty is America's conciet in that we believe we can visit it upon others who often want none of it if it means their neighbors get it too.)

Aye, the interceptor armor being used will stop 7.62 rounds if they hit the ballistic inserts. The insert covers a significant portion of the vitals area but not all and one still has the legs, arms, neck and head sticking out. I would absolutly want to be wearing one if someone was shooting at me but a burst of AK rounds could still mess me up pretty badly.

Body armor would be tricky to test. It is not proof against rifle or above rounds. It is proof against pistol rounds (extremely rare on the battlefield). It is really ment to reduce injuries from shrapnel ie. grenades and artillery. I suppose the best test would be to have an American squad near the beaten area of an artillery attack and then try it with a Syrian squad.

Agreed Testudo. A surprise attack with the Germans off balance and part of their army otherwise occupied would have allowed the Soviets to make some good advances initially. This would have given the Russian leadership some unfounded confidence. More Red armies would have been fed into the assault in time for the German’s to do what they did very well indeed, a backhand blow against an overextended and depleted enemy. My theory on the result is as I posted 5 or 6 posts ago.

The question of what would happen if the German leadership had actually been a bunch of nice (or even sane) guys is a totally different “What if”. I think it would have made a huge difference if for no other reason than hundreds of thousands of willing hands to build and improve railways to the front. Of course the “good guy” theory leads to the question of why they would start a war in the first place. I don’t think the German expertise in war was directly related to the racial theories of their leadership. The Germans were excellent soldiers in WW I without Himmlers and Hitlers. Unfortunately the Versailles Treaty reparations and the Great Depression made desperate people open to incredibly stupid decisions about their leadership.

Leadership would still be the defining deficit of the early Soviet Army. Terrible leadership while on the defensive is, well, terrible. Terrible leadership on the attack would have been catastrophic. Imagine human wave attacks and their armor equivalents along the entire front for a month. The German army was gutted by Operation Barbarossa. In 1942 they were only able to conduct a major offensive action on one front instead of three because of the first year’s losses. On defense they would have exacted very heavy casualties from the Soviets and reduced their own losses by hundreds of thousands. The surprise losses the Soviets actually had in their air force and tank arms would have not happened but most of these machines were antiquated and possible a majority not even working. The Luftwaffe was not the force it had been before the Battle of Brittan because of the pilot losses but would still have wiped the Soviets from the sky. I would envision the Russians advancing 75 to 100 km and then being hurled back that far and another 100 km beyond The Russians would have lost huge numbers of soldiers although maybe less than the real 1941. The German’s casualties would have been about half of what they had in the real Barbarossa. The next year would have told the story. Soviet production would not have suffered from the initial overrunning or forced evacuation of some of their industrial areas. The Germans would have ramped up their own production instead of the reduction that actually occurred. Germany’s supply problems would have been only a fraction of what they had really suffered at the beginning of 1942 with their now current proximity to Germany. I don’t think the German’s could have taken Moscow and Leningrad and Stalingrad. The German’s problem with supplying there armies would not have improved over their historical capabilities. The offensive would have ground to a halt I would think that after a devastating advance by the Germans in 1942 the Soviets might be ready for an armistice. Russian casualties might be half a million to a million higher than what was really lost up to the end of 1942. Hitler might be ready for one also since the 1942 assault would have cost the German’s similar casualties to the actual 1941 assault. Then again Hitler was a nut. He might have thought just one more push would win the war. In short I think that no, the Soviets could not win with a 1941 offensive. At best it would have lengthened the war and at worst they would have had to accept an armistice that gave away the Ukraine, the Baltic states and a few other areas.

Back to the topic at hand. My wish list has two main points. The first is a campaign system that carries over your loses from battle to battle much like Close Combat 2. While I still enjoy CM more than CC the most enjoyable Wargaming I have ever done was the campaign game in CC2 against a friend of mine. The second wish is for the ability to play cooperatively with 2 or more players per side. I have always enjoyed playing cooperative wargames. They add a whole new dimension to the experience. Incoming! Woodey