mrzafka

Oh noes! What if we offend the Russians? Interesting that you don't ask how the Poles felt about NATO expansion. How the Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Estonians, the Czechs, etc...  felt about it. The Russians are just pissy that NATO has stymied their attempt at restoring the Russian Empire. 

Ah, so we have been expecting the "NBCD Question".  Yes, we did look at it in detail and the decision to leave it out was a conscious one.  We knew some would disagree but hear me out:
- Nukes.  Ok let's just put that one to bed.  We have a beta tester who was in the "nuclear artillery" in the time period and the smallest strike would wipe out our largest maps, so not real point in modeling this as there is already a ceasefire/surrender option in the game.
- As much fun as it would be to drop a nerve gas salvo on the enemy and watch them squirm (I think inside all of us is that kid with the magnifying glass and the anthill) this is highly inaccurate use of these weapons in context of the game.  At a minimum chemical warfare was controlled and used at the operational level or higher due to the whole escalation dynamics.  So in game it really becomes an environmental factor much like weather or EW as opposed to a tactical weapon system (i.e. it is highly unrealistic for a Bn CO - the main rank of players in the game - to have control of chemical rounds.)
- So that fact really impacts the whole cost/benefit equation for the feature, we prioritized new features that the player can actually employ (e.g. ICMs).  So as an environmental factor, unlike rain or fog, chemical warfare was basically invisible beyond the initial drops, which look like smoke rounds.  So modeling smoke rounds outside of the players control, who then has to live with the effects is starting to sound shaky.
- So what does chemical warfare do.  Well it puts everyone in TOPP/MOPP whatever, so there are now uniform modeling efforts which are not small.  Then play-wise it slows everything down.  All infantry take a serious movement, morale and fatigue hit (which as has been noted the player can already model), vehicles are fully buttoned so spotting goes down.  And probably most importantly logistics take a serious hit, which was the actual main point of chemical warfare, strain operational logistics.  [Aside: this was over 60 years after Ypres, so no one was expecting magic breakthroughs, that is what the nukes were for].  So now supplies may run low and medivac becomes a nightmare.  Interesting but who does that really effect the 90 mins of a CM Battle in any better way than what we already have?
- So now we have a significant amount of work to essentially take decisions out of the players hands.  Play would risk slowing to a drag, which really goes against the fun factor.  And, if a scenario designer really wants to, they can already simulate some of this in the current game. 
So at the end of the day, even though we knew many players had been talking about this feature and it is likely that chemical warfare would have been employed, the effort was simply not worth the potential gains to in-game experience.   We needed to put it on the shelf right next to real-time area denial through flooding and psyops as all really cool and realistic stuff but simply not worth the level of effort to implement while a lot of other priorities existed.

We had a saying that the two most dangerous things in the peace time Army were a private in a jeep and a 2nd lieutenant with a map. 

Use of chemical weapons in World War One was not decisive, it just made life of all participants more miserable. And it was used on very large scale, both in terms of quantity and variety.
Using chemical weapons against a well-trained peer adversary in 1970s IMHO would yield similar results as 6 decades earlier. 

Use of chemical weapons in World War One was not decisive, it just made life of all participants more miserable. And it was used on very large scale, both in terms of quantity and variety.
Using chemical weapons against a well-trained peer adversary in 1970s IMHO would yield similar results as 6 decades earlier. 

I'm afraid we can't just discuss strategy here without at least mentioning the bigger picture, i.e. politics. Every thread about strategic layer will have some political component, simply because strategical aims in war stem from political decisions. Good ol' Clausewitz.

Wheeled vehicles are supposed to require less maintenance, they are potentially faster on operational level if there exists a road net...They are also cheaper, or so I've heard.
Wasn't the Stryker result of experiences from the Cosovo conflict in '99? Something packing more punch than a Humvee, yet way easier to deploy than a Bradley. The result being that you have considerable force on the battlefield quickly and you are able to hold your ground until armor arrives.

Pretty much a mix.
 
MBTs - Leopard 2A4 and 2A5. But there are still more T-72s, some of them upgraded (PT-91, essentially reactive armor, thermal sight for the gunner and new stabilization system with fire computer). No sane commander will send T-72s against modern Russian force, the upgraded model isn't exactly cutting edge either.
 
IFVs - Patria AMV, locally known as "Rosomak" ("Wolverine"). Exists in a few variants, the most interesting being one armed with the Hitfist turret (30 mm cannon). Roughly similar to the Stryker variants. Proved to be a good vehicle in Afghanistan. What else? BMP-1...not changed in any way since the seventies.
 
Individual equipment has seen some significant upgrades, at least forces used in Afghanistan had your usual sets of night vision, GPS, modern comms and body armor. Israeli Spike missiles are the main AT asset.
 
In the Air Force there are 48 F-16, about 30 each of MiG-29 and Su-22. Only the F-16 have a reasonable chance of being used against ground targets in CM battles (forget about Su-22, it would be suicidal).  In 2017 there is a chance that new attack helicopters will be in service, nowadays we have just the Mi-24 (which are left only with unguided ordnance, as guided missiles have reached end of shelf life and nobody is going shopping to Moscow...)
 
I think Poland would make an interesting addition. Perhaps together with other neighobouring countries, Czech Republic also has some interesting equipment.