el cid again
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There is something to be said for your attitude. In simulation we are dealing with averages - the average gun in the hands of an average user with average training in average conditions. On the other hand, we also have to deal with limits - and related other issues. I am very reluctant to do away with the AA value of light machine guns - for two unreleted reasons:
1) These are actually part of the designed AA defenses of ships and specialist AA units - on both sides - and in third countries. US Army and Japanese army AA units, for example, all contain AAMGs, and the US Army has a great number of them. While it is clear the pre - war thinking that these would be adequate was less than correct for conditions that occurred by mid war - I don't think it was complete nonsense either. I think there needs to be some statistical chance - particularly when the number of guns is large - as with a US AA unit. If we set ceiling too low - we mess this up and make it never be so.
2) AA in general is not effective enough in this model. By reducing durability I have increased it. By giving AA units detection gear I have increased it. By giving guns with no ceilings a setting greater than 0 I have increased it. And by increasing the number of guns in many units I have increased it. Nevertheless, it remains true that:
a) We are grossly understating the number of guns in theater;
b) We are not yet seeing realistic AA attrition rates - even vs just MG opposition - although it is better than it was (and a few players are complaining - particularly when they fly in low - as an anti-air warfare guy I take that as a sign we are moving in the right direction).
IF we get this right players are going to agonize about sending in ground support. And they should. Even in 1982 it was found that light MG not set up for AAA work were of value against jets - and British ships ended up being coated with them - from the troops. My own experience and studies from the 1960s indicated this should not be a surprise - but few people expected it.
AA is an attrition weapon. IF you put ANYTHING in the sky - there is a chance of damage. My favorite "light AAA weapon" is an NVA one from the Viet Nam war. It came in two marks, and was undoubtedly the most inexpensive and least sophisticated weapon in its class of all time:
A specialist weapon for defense of a target when conditions - usually geographic - sometimes combined with other defenses - meant you could predict the approach path of an attack - say on a bridge and the planes had to come down a valley - the basic "projectile" was simply rocks!
The "projector" was - industrial dynamite! The "fire control system" was a man, laying on his back, looking strait up, a measured distance from the bridge (or whatever). When the planes passed over the man, he hit the detonator, which was connected by telephone wire to the dynamite - thus being jam proof.
This "Mark I" weapon actually worked. But not content with that, NVA engineers went one step farther. To increase lethality, the tied the rocks in pairs with piano wire! The chance of hitting the wire was more than an order of magnitude greater than the chance of hitting either rock - and when you hit the wire you guaranteed you would ALSO be hit by one of the rocks - a fraction of a second later - meanwhile the wire was sawing something - or bending something - or getting injected in a turbine.
Not that this worked at "thousands of feet" - but that amazingly primitive technology works. Taught by a Marine to use a WWI British concept called "indirect rifle fire" (pretend a body of riflemen is an artillery battery, and call the shots like you do artillery - if they aim together you can SEE the place they hit the ground in most terrain types) - I decided that you could also use rifles against aircraft. Never got to try it - but imagine my surprise when I learned - after the war - the ENEMY did do just that! A grossly exaggerated version of this is in the opening scene of Air America. Even so, it is believed this technique (not however involving single shots), accounted for numbers of Allied aircraft. It was also believed, at the time, that a .50 was "better than nothing" as a point defense weapon - although again a sea skimmer does not fly at "thousands of feet."
I really do not think it is safe to fly above a large number of hostile machine guns - and some low risk should be the case. Even when you use 20mm and 25 mm guns, the risk is entirely statistical - and in several senses. But the statistical risk can be very great: it is not really safe to approach a late WWII warship - no matter which of its batteries is operational. There is a very real sense in which the kamakaze (a problem never solved by USN - and Jim Dunnigan says still would be a problem today) and the unmanned missile (see the German use of these in particular) were the "solution" to the problem of intense AA. But intense is not entirely a function of electronics: we learned the hard way in Viet Nam that ancient "pattern shots" were still dangerous - when we defeated aiming devices. [You might oversimplify this by saying the defense puts up a wall and the attacker must hit it at some point].
And then there is the law. IF .50s are not effective against airplanes, and we admit it, we can't have em any more!
One final point: The Czechs devised a "better heavy mg" using a bigger caliber - and the Russians (and their customers) widely adopted it. But the PLA has now developed a true .50 cal - which is more effective than the "heavy heavy" as it was sometimes called. This weapon is not almost universally mounted on PLA vehicles for AA use - and I don't think they are doing this to instill a sense of false bravado in the troops. And PLA is not training - or sighting - these modern .50s only for strafers.
< Message edited by el cid again -- 7/13/2006 2:37:10 PM >
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RE: Creating HMG unit - 
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