Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: jdnicoll@watyew.waterloo.edu (Brian or James) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Re: Desert Sheild Fact Book Message-ID: <1991Jan12.011107.23380@cbnews.att.com> Date: 12 Jan 91 01:11:07 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: University of Waterloo Lines: 35 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Brian or James I hope this works. Forgive me if this goes astray, please. >From: zonker@ihlpf.att.com (Thomas M Harris) >At winter war in CU this weekend Frank Chadwick had a Desert Field Fact >Book that his company (GDW) had put out. (Description of DSFB deleted) >We also ran a bathtub* version of a U.S. desert sheild attack on Kuwait >and then Iraq. While U.S. loses were heavy, there was nothing in the Iraqi >arsenal that could actually stop a U.S. attack. The U.S. decided to use a >direct attack on Kuwaite followed by a drive to the West of the Tigris and >Euphrates valleys to get to Baghdad. The fighting around Habinyia against >the Iraqi guards cost the most. I'm sure this doen't need to said, but I'll say it anyway; be very leery of trying to evaluate how a real war will go, using a wargame, or wargaming suppliment. GDW, like most companies, often simplifies situations to make the resulting game playable in a reasonable amount of time. In this case, they have produced a non-game suppliment based on what they knew at the pringting date, and while I do not doubt that they tried to make it as accurate as they could, it may very well *be* inaccurate in important areas. The US winning a simulation of a Iraq-US-lead alliance may simply indicate pro-US bias or incomplete information or imagination on the part of the simulators. As an exercise for the reader, compare and contrast the simulations the Japanese ran of Pearl Harbour and Midway, and why the Midway simulation was not as useful to the Japanese as the Pearl Harbour simulation. James Nicoll