dan/california

More about Hezbollah than you wanted to know, except for a miltary TO&E blast it. www.intelligence.org.il/eng/bu/hizbullah/aabst_f.doc

I'll answer the justificaation question just as soon as someone hands me an OSX beta version.

What you gain by adding Hezbollah is a much more disciplined force. They probably have the best trained, best led light to medium infantry in the Arab world. The equipment may not be much different but they will use it to its limits, which is true of virtually no other Arab army. Would that stop a competently led American or Israeli combined arms team from rolling over them? No, but it would be considerably more expensive than grinding up and spitting out the same number of troops from virtually anywhere else in the Arab world. And trust me, this is coming from someone who would not lose one minutes sleep if the U.S. and/or Israel did just that. But underestimating the opposition is how you get the important bits chewed off. Hezbolla is dangerous, Oren may have easier acces to many of the details if he is reading this thread.

There was a great Mythbusters on a lot of these bullet impact issues and how wrong Hollywood has them. They took an approximately man weight pig(dead), put a completely bullet proof somthing around it to ensure that the rounds didn't blow thru and was thus guaranteed to transfer all of it's momentum to the target, and hung it on a straight bar. They then proceeded to shoot it with every thing up to a Barret 50 cal and they may have used one of those too. End result, the pig barely twitches much less blows back. All caught on high speed camera ect., very good stuff.

On a completely different subject. A number of precision guided mortar rounds of various types seem to be just coming into or about to come into service. I am strictly an interested amatuer but these strike me as enormously effective force multipliers under the direct control of battalion and company commanders. Will these be in the game or will it be possible to mod them into the game relatively easily for experimentation purposes?

Here is the link on the backpack/ power supply. I google better on a well caffenated Saturday morning. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7970

The army is working on a backpack unit on the very general lines of the the flash light that would power a lot of the soldiers gear. They build it right into the frame and it turns all the usual pack shaking into useful power. I can't find the weblink right now but I read this in the last month or two. They are also heavily pursuing fuel cells as an alternitave to batteries so you could just inject more alchohol or what ever the fuel cell was running on instead of changing batteries. I have read several times about SOF teams agonizing over taking more guns or more batteries.

Somehow turned three points into two. The mistake will always be noticed right after the print(or fire) button is pressed.

I would like to make three points. 1. Extremely close simulations of histoical warfare can be utterly facinating and I irritate my wife to the edge of reason playing them. 2. I will pay full retail for dropteam todady! I mean right now, for the priveledge of being a beta tester. The games basic premise of fudamentally well reasoned vehicle performance, ability to have upload maps in a standard existing format, and the prospect of battlefield 2 style team communications, hopefully between somewhat intillegent adults mostly could make the most fun it is possible to talk about in a pg13 enviorment.

Can I but in now and join the beta test? please? pretty please?!

I think task force Arsenault would be an excellent place to start. Meeting engagements where both sides have the same objective seem to make a fairer game.

Two completely seperate issues, 1. I am available for tcp/ip games durning the day west coast time and am also interested in email games. The computer is getting boring so I will probably only embarrass myself a little playing a live person. I can at least use the interface well enough too embarass myself reasoably quickly . 2. To the people who do this for a living instead of a hobby, if the hellfire is the most effective atgm in our(U.S.) arsenal, why do we only use it on helicopters. The potential for some kind of well protected apc tucked compltety out of sight that can pop then out at the beck and call of lighter units seems like a no brainer, especially for weight sensitive forces like the airborne and marines. Even more so after some recent very unpleasant lessons in how easy it is to shoot down helicopters.