CyberMurph

Oh PUH-leeeeeze....

I was stationed at Ft Bragg 2000-2001.

Fayetteville, NC has population of about 170,000, but the per-capita crime rate of NYC.

Ft Bragg alone has over 40,000 soldiers on it (not including civilian dependants or Pope Air Force Base personnel).

The only reason anyone heard about these particular murders is because it made it's way to NBC news for once. Soldier goes on deployment, comes home to find wife with another guy's di** in her mouth, pop-pop. Two dead a**holes.

Happens all the time.

Quote (Dog Soldier @ Aug. 13 2002,15:40)

I like Britney  she has great abs.

Oh sure, if she were a porn star I would think she was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Until then that honor goes to Jenna Jameson...

Quote (Bookwyrm @ Aug. 12 2002,21:51)

Why should we?  You're legally allowed to own automatic weapons over there, the solution should be obvious. Which leads me onto (yet another) pet theory of mine...I think that if you were to rip the masks off Slipknot you'd find they're all redundant members of boybands led by Britney! Hey, thay've got to fulfil their contractual obligations somehow.

Yes, but we're not allowed to shoot people. Not famous people anyway. Or at least famous white people. Then the media gets mad and judges and prosecutors wake up and feel the need to enforce laws.

Wow, a thread I have absolutly nothing to contribute to.

Just wondering, in this era of multi-national nation building, peace-keeping, and recovery efforts...

WHEN THE HELL ARE THE BRITISH GOING TO GET THE FU** OVER HERE AND SAVE US FROM BRITNEY SPEARS AND 'N' SYNC!?  

Well, what I am asking is when you make a call to further the story as opposed to allowing them to make a roll that might screw up things from a story continuity point of view.

Yeah, there's a SGT in my company with "Death" on his tags for his religion. He just did it to be weird. He's the only one that gets the joke. The rest of us know its a joke, we just think its lame.

At the risk of starting a new topic:

When you guys do something "as a factor of storytelling", do your players go with it, or do they get miffed that they did not get a roll to see if their Barret Light .50 was noticed under their smoking jacket?  

Seriously though, I do make a lot of plot driven decisions, and I was just wondering how does it work out for you guys?

Actaully the vast majority of the Republican Guards fought it out during the ground assault. Their tanks went head to head with ours. Their rounds bounced off (if they were even able to get the range) or fell short. Ours not only penetrated their tanks, but our sabot rounds went clean through and kept on going.

They also had a superiority in artillery in quantity and in some cases in quality.

As for "playing merry hell", you mean fighting back and actually causing coalition casualties (which tends to happen in war) yes they could have. Nonetheless, they did not even have a snowballs chance in hell of anything resembling a victory.

Attack it with Infantry, helicopters, aircraft, kinda like we're doing right now.

Or you could fly over it, or drive around it, or conduct deception operations to make them ambush the wrong pass, or ambush their ambush or...

Yes, Presidential authorizaion is required to call up the Reserves, the Individual Ready Reserves, and Retired personnel. If you have been discharged and no longer have an obligation you go to the very bottom of the draft pile. I also believe (but may be mistaken) it takes an act of congress to authorize the draft.

The oath is taken pretty seriously, especially if youare about to be court0martialed for violating a lawful order.

ENLISTED

"I (state your name) do solmenly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegience to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

OFFICER

" I (state your name) having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above, in the grade of Second Lieutenant, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegience to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without mental reservation or purpose of evasion,; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; so help me God. "

I should think they are self explanitory, but the President is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, as stated in the Constitution. So I don't see where the conflict is. If the PResident were to attempt to overthrow the Constitution or use the military against the Congress, the Joint Chiefs would simply tell him to go pound sand. Or the Comabatant Commanders or the Corps comanders or whoever realized this was wrong.

You can't have Congress giving orders, there's like 500 people in the Congress. Military Leadership by commitee is notoriously unsuccessful.

M855 Ball

The US 5.56mm M855 Ball is a 62 grain gilding-metal, jacketed, lead alloy core bullet with a steel penetrator. Fragmentation has nothing really to do with the round. In fact there were complaints in Somalia that the rounds would pass right through soft targets (Somalies) without doing much damage. But when the Balkans became an issue, where people wear helmets and flak vests, any re-evluation of the round went away.

The M4 carbine only has a 14.5" barrel and received high marks from the troopers in Op Anaconda.

Addendum: In fact come to think of it, the M16A2 was critisized for it's 1:7 in rifle twist (ass opposed to 1:11 for the A1) as being to high of a velocity. The turn rate was necessary to fire the tracer versionof the M855 round. The AAR from Afghanistan describes quite clerly US troops being hit in the chest (flak vest) by regular FMJ 7.62x39 rounds fired from RPK machine guns, getting up unharmed and returning fire with their wimpy little steel penetrator 5.56mm round and knocking down their targets.

Many reports done on the M855 were done by civilians firing ballistically similiar 62 grain 5.56mm rounds without the steel penetrator which delays or prevents any yaw (tumbling) of the round. However vs a soldier wearing a flak vest that penetrator will help the round get through the body armor (up to 3mm RHA) which will then be moving slow enought to do some damage (pssibly brining a little of the body armor wiith it.)

Yup. Folks said the same thing about balckpowder weapons, automatic weapons, computers in tanks, etc etc. Some armies take the bold leap forward in technology and win wars, others play catch-up.

Sometimes it works (M1 Abrams), sometimes it doesn't (SA-80). (Althought that's really a production quality issue, not a design features issue. Good example of good idea, bad

execution.)

And where in the hell did you get the 5.56mm fragment idea? It bouncing around in you tearing up your innards is how it does damage. 5.56mm NATO is also called .223 caliber and is a very effective hunting round for animals up to and including white tailed deer. (Which are are pretty big, MUCH bigger than those puppy dog sized things that ran around my house in Germany.)

No, tanks come in brigades and divisions with Infantry, mortars, artillery, combat engineers, attack helicopters, remotly piloted vehicles, recon surveillnce and target aquisition (RSTA) radars, fixed wing ground attack aircraft, scouts, COLTs, forward observers, TACPs, get my point?

Combined arms teams win wars. Others go from the 4th largest army in the world to the second largest army in Iraq in 100 hours.

That is not a tank issue. That is a tactics and training issue. The Soviets, and the Russiansonly trained with one battlefield doctrine against one type of enemy.

Same thing happend in the 1st Chechnyan war. Russkies lead with tanks in a city. Chechnyans stood on roof tops with RPGs and AT missiles and fired on the rood tops of tanks. Tanks dead.

Second Chechnyan war. Russians applied lessons learned from Part I. Russians lead with aircraft and artillery cleard roofs of infantry (or destroyed the building they were in) then lead with Infantry, followed by BMPs and tanks in support. Rebel with RPG stands up, grunt shoot rebel. Rebels set up machine gun position in basement window, BMP-3 rolls up and puts 100mm main gun round in window. Took a long time, leveled the city, but it worked.

Simple solution. Don't drive tanks there.

Even by the end of the middle ages, the mercenary would have still been hard-pressed for employment. I'm in the middle of moving so all my books are packed, but if I am not mistaken the entire amount of ACTUAL campaigning time (troops in the field) in the Wars of the Roses amounted to less than two months.

Yup. They're doin' it!  

("Friends" Quote)

I've never liked the sci-fi/magic mix. THe exception would be Star Wars, but that is handled in a totally different distinctly non-D&D manner.

ONE MORE TIME FOR OUR SLOWER STUDENTS....

Chrys & Bullet?? Hmmm....