Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From: military@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Napalm
Message-ID: <8597@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 26 Jul 89 02:22:19 GMT
Organization: BRS Information Technologies
Lines: 29
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: brspyr1.brs.com!miket (Mike Trout)
In sci.military Digest  Saturday, 22 July, 1989  Volume 2 : Issue 52
kamk@uunet.uu.net (Kameran Kashani) writes:

> White phosphorous will also burn under water, making it harder
> to extinguish the fire, and polystyrene makes the Napalm sticky
> so it's harder to scrape off.  Neither of these enhancements
> were appreciated by the Viet Cong.

Oh, I dunno...While there's no doubt these enhancements made the weapon more
effective both physically and psychologically, a great deal of Communist
strategy centered on getting the USA to spend as much money as possible on
technology.  The drain on the US economy from the development of weapons for
Viet Nam was considerable, and eventually became a major factor in the US
reluctance to continue the war.  Communist leaders were more than willing to
sacrifice soldiers (from what was in effect a limitless supply) in exchange for
bleeding off more and more of the USA's will to fight--achieved through
increasing the USA's cost in both blood and money--while the Communist will to
fight was hardly affected at all by casualties.  When it costs literally
millions of dollars to kill each enemy soldier--and the enemy has a manpower
pool of tens of millions--it becomes difficult to afford a war.
 
-- 
NSA food:  Iran sells Nicaraguan drugs to White House through CIA, SOD & NRO.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Michael Trout (miket@brspyr1)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BRS Information Technologies, 1200 Rt. 7, Latham, N.Y. 12110  (518) 783-1161
"God forbid we should ever be 20 years without...a rebellion." Thomas Jefferson