Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!ucbvax!arms-d From: ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) Newsgroups: mod.politics.arms-d Subject: Arms-Discussion Digest V6 #16 Message-ID: <8601110109.AA06173@ucbvax.berkeley.edu> Date: Thu, 9-Jan-86 17:05:00 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8601110109.AA06173 Posted: Thu Jan 9 17:05:00 1986 Date-Received: Sat, 11-Jan-86 07:46:35 EST Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: ARMS-D%MIT-MC.ARPA@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 124 Approved: arms-d@mit-mc.arpa Arms-Discussion Digest Thursday, January 9, 1986 5:05PM Volume 6, Issue 16 Today's Topics: Automatic weapons Deep Strike Paranoia ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 9 Jan 86 13:49:38 EST From: Jeff Miller AMSTE-TEI 4675 Subject: Automatic weapons The function of automatic weapons is primarily to achieve full fire super- iority by means of fire suppression. Many "old timers" have never understood this concept, and have traditionally groused about the demise of older, long-range aimed fire small arms like the M-1 Garand and the M-14. Unfortunately, as the Germans during the latter stages of WWII, and then the Soviets right behind learned, the era has long passed where the majority of infantry combats would take place at 600-1000m ranges, favoring more accurate slow fire weapons. The fact that combats since mid-WWII average about 150m or less, and the advent of automatic weapons at all levels of infantry organizations, has placed emphasis on lighter, higher firepower weapons which allow for the massing of fires so as to overpower the enemy's fires. This means, in effect, that keeping the other guys' heads down is more important than individually zapping them. Going back to the original musing that started further musing on automatic weapons, theorizing incorrectly that the advent of automatic weapons was somehow inspired by a need to indiscriminately plaster the opposition so as to obviate the chances that soldiers would deliberately choose to miss enemies out of humanitarian concerns, it just isn't so. - It may be of some interest along the lines of that earlier discussion that great numbers of Vietnam veterans were traumatically affected by their inability to acquire targets so that they could strike back at the enemy who they hardly ever saw, yet who remorselessly slew and maimed their comrades. Perhaps the humanitarian reluctance to shoot the other guy is a noble feeling among troops fresh to the fray, but one which dissolves rapidly as the reality of seeing one's friends killed, and of being a target one's self, comes home. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Jan 86 13:55:42 EST From: Jeff Miller AMSTE-TEI 4675 Subject: Deep Strike ** Tried to send this to Gary Chapman What difference does it make that the Soviet leadership considers its military >outlays purely defensive if their defensiveness is based on a paranoia that >requires them to look upon the world from behind militarized borders and bands >of buffer states which never seem to totally satisfy? No informed person >believes that they have held the East Europeans in thralldom as part of their >"world-wide ideological conspiracy" It is their buffer zone against the West >in general and against Germany in particular, the specter of whose re- >unification strikes more fear into the Russian soul than six Ronald Reagans. > J.Miller It makes a big difference if their expansionism is coming from paranoia rather than something else. The worst way of dealing with paranoia is to do things which reinforce their belief that the world is out to get them, ie installing cruise misssiles in Germany etc. richard foy ------------------------------ End of Arms-Discussion Digest *****************************