From the mouth of Aristotle

[Boron]

Arryn said:

You left out China, India, and Pakistan. As well as the UK and North Korea. And Israel. France does have ICBMs. Their subs carry 64 of them, each missile with a 6000km range and 6 MIRVs with a 100-150Kt yield. 6000km is more than enough range to qualify as an ICBM.

Yeah i left them out with purpose
Israel has them from the Usa .
Great Britain is now more or less the little ally of the Usa . Blair is like Bushs dog .
In ancient times ( before the american civil war ) Britain was still like the caring father for the Usa .
Now they have gotten old and the Usa cares for them .
Sure any patriotic British citizen will hate me for saying this but Great Britains great times are long over . Now it is just another european country like France or Germany . Still remarkable but not any longer a big power .
Basically they have only the choice wheter join the EU as an rather important country ( like france and germany the 2 historic arch enemies ) or become the Ally of the Usa if they still want to play a major role in the world .
Afaik China has only "shortrange" missiles which can target japan or huge parts of russia . In some years they may become the successor of Russia as second big power in the world .
Pakistan and India have mainly short range missiles too which can target each other but not much farer .

With North Korea i didn't know that they possess good enough ICBMs to target the Usa .

That Russia had no

(well-educated) noble class, especially one that was highly skilled at the arts of war and politics as was Germany's.

is not so surprising since Stalin killed with his Great Officer Purge the Last remaining onces .
I think it was Schukov who wanted to make a preventive strike on germany when they massed their troops in spring 1941 for operation Barbarossa . Stalin refused because he didn't believe it .
Really sad because i think this preventive strike would have perhaps ended World war 2 a lot earlier .
Russia had at that time lots of KV-1 series tanks and already lots of T-34/76 ( Both about 1000 each ) .
The only question is if the at that time still relative impressive german air force would have been enough to stop the russian advance to Berlin .
So if Stalin hadn't executed most of his good officiers but studied the german blizkrieg strategy really only the german air force would have been between him and Berlin in 1941/42 already i think given how inferior the german army was at that time to the russian army technically and equipmentwise .
Only the good german tactics / strategies combined with Stalins officiermurdering + his own military incompetence similiar to Hitlers made the german "success" in 1941 and early 1942 possible .
He gave away the command to the army then to his generals and the success hadn't to wait long and was already great in stalingrad .

Btw are you familiar with german/russian tanks ?
Do you think that Steel panthers world at war is a really superb/realistic simulation of that or rather not ?
If you think not please say why .

[Arryn]

Boron said:
Israel has them from the Usa .

You really should check your facts before you speak/write. Israel developed its own nuclear devices, with the clandestine assistance of the then-racist South African government.

Boron said:
Afaik China has only "shortrange" missiles which can target japan or huge parts of russia .

Quit guessing, please, or making assumptions without actually doing any research. Repeating my advice above, check your facts BEFORE you post. China has 20 ICBMs with 13000km range. That's enough to hit the continental US.

Boron said:
With North Korea i didn't know that they possess good enough ICBMs to target the Usa .

They can hit Alaska and Japan. That's more than sufficiently dangerous. But even short-range missiles versus South Korea are a big problem.

Boron said:
The only question is if the at that time still relative impressive german air force would have been enough to stop the russian advance to Berlin .

Easily. The Soviets lacked the logistical capability to support massive operations against Germany in 1941. It's questionable whether they even could have done it in 1942 assuming they had attacked first in 1941 and kept the fighting away from their own factories. Russia had more men and tanks, but they had a bad organizational structure and poor morale. Even after the Finnish Winter War and the lessons they learned from it.

Boron said:
Btw are you familiar with german/russian tanks ?

Very much so.

Boron said:
Do you think that Steel panthers world at war is a really superb/realistic simulation of that or rather not ?
If you think not please say why .

They've done the best that can be done given the limitations of that game's scale and design. There are more realistic games, but they are not turn-based overhead-view. You have to go to the 3D-style games to get better realism, such as Combat Mission.

[Boron]

My assumptions about nuclear missiles were only from an extreme viewpoint i fear which i tried to "simulate" .
The book/film The Sum of All Fears from Tom Clancy has impressed me there .
The scenario seemed pretty realistic to me when the Usa thought about a preventive strike on Russia . And in a few years if Bush keeps the power and gets another likeminded republican successor with better technics and his new anti-missile programs when they show results i guess it is even more realistic .

So if China would really shoot all their 20 long range nukes on the Usa the Usa would strike back , China would not exist anymore .
Since the newest military development is always kept secret i am not sure how it would exactly be but even with the current technic perhaps Patriots and other anti-missile missiles would even destroy 30 , 50 , 70% ?? of the incoming 20 nukes . A few would still hit and do some harm .

My fear is that in a few years some fanatic militarists may calculate the risk of being hit as worthy doing a preventive strike . If the new SDI Bush lets develop now in 5-10 years can kill 95/99% of all incoming missiles this might get a big problem .

And there is always the other problem mentioned in The Sum of All Fears that terrorists may get a small bomb and smuggle them to New York / Berlin etc. , just to the most important city with which nation they are "at war" atm.



Do you have played combat mission yourself ? I made a quick google search and saw it is from CDV .
I have Sudden strike this is one of their earlier WW 2 games and totally unrealistic . From my short glance at a few screenshots Combat mission 3 just looks like a sudden strike in 3d .
I don't care if the game is turn based or RTS but i want an as realistic penetration model like in steel panthers . If Combat mission 3 has this and you can convince that i am interested in it
But in sudden strike it didn't matter if you attacked a Tiger or a Panzer II with a small anti tank rifle . The Tiger just needed 2-3 more hits .
And 3-4 Panzer II could still kill a Josef Stalin 2/3 tank. So if this is still true with combat mission 3 or another such game you suggest i think it is not realistic

[Arryn]

Boron said:
My assumptions about nuclear missiles were only from an extreme viewpoint i fear which i tried to "simulate" .
The book/film The Sum of All Fears from Tom Clancy has impressed me there .

You used a totally fictional story that Clancy wrote as the basis of your saying that in REAL LIFE the Israeli's got their nukes from the U.S.? Wow. I wonder (and shudder) to think what other things you might believe based upon fictional sources?

Boron said:
The scenario seemed pretty realistic to me when the Usa thought about a preventive strike on Russia .

While I enjoyed this story (so much so that I own both the book and the DVD), it's a work of fiction. There are numerous flaws in the story if you know what to look for and where to look for them. But they do not detract from the story because it is very well written and they are well hidden and/or subtle. Tom Clancy knows his art (writing and research), which includes what facts to alter and how, so that reality gets distorted (for the sake of security) and fiction gets a taste of "reality".

Boron said:
And in a few years if Bush keeps the power

Ye gods I hope not.

Boron said:
So if China would really shoot all their 20 long range nukes on the Usa the Usa would strike back , China would not exist anymore .

More or less. They'd get sent right back to the age of feudal warlords, not that present-day China is much more advanced, socially.

Boron said:
My fear is that in a few years some fanatic militarists may calculate the risk of being hit as worthy doing a preventive strike . If the new SDI Bush lets develop now in 5-10 years can kill 95/99% of all incoming missiles this might get a big problem .

The U.S. will never engage in a nuclear first-strike. However, a non-nuclear pre-emptive strike is possible ... which if executed as ineptly as the war in Iraq was, would simply trigger the other side into launching first. It doesn't matter who launches first. Everyone loses. All rational military and political leaders have known this for 50+ years. What's scary is that the leaders of some nations (like N. Korea, Iran, etc.) don't care if they lose millions and their country becomes a wasteland. Some of these fanatic morons actually think dying is good. It's just too bad we can't let them have their wish (to die) without suffering collateral damage in the process. The more fanatics kill themselves, the cleaner the gene pool becomes. Now if we could only figure out a safe way to make them happy ...

Boron said:
And there is always the other problem mentioned in The Sum of All Fears that terrorists may get a small bomb and smuggle them to New York / Berlin etc. , just to the most important city with which nation they are "at war" atm.

That's the only realistic, and hence truly scary, part of the movie. The unrealistic parts of the movie are how the terrorists got their bomb, and what the US and Russia did after the attack. But it's a movie. A certain amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary. Just don't forget that after you've finished watching the movie you need to turn your disbelief back on and not confuse what you just saw with reality.

Boron said:
Do you have played combat mission yourself ?

No. I rarely play that style of game.