Originally posted by Lorenzo from Spain:
May be my english is not good, when if someone said I only want to win even using bugs, this is a little... personal.
Ok, you reported it to the forum, but your report wasn't reporting a bug, you were passing along a "strategy" others could use, a warning to Soviet players, instead of condemning it as a game exploit. Really, look at your first 2 posts in this thread. If at first you didn't think the strategy was unrealistic, that's ok, but you've been trying to defend it ever since instead of realizing just how ahistorical the tactic is. It never happened historically because it couldn't happen.
I see you agree with Saddam Hussein, who thought was not posible supply in the deep desert an only mechaniced division. Do you know how many water needs a man in the desert in combat conditions?
Supply and movement wasn't the problem, navigation was. Since western forces have been using GPS for years to locate their position to within a few feet, these forces can go anywhere without getting lost, and reach their objective in a short amount of time because they could go in a straight line at full speed. Saddam and his generals never realized how important GPS was/is to our military. Besides, Saddam and friends relyed on a World War One mentality, while the West relyed on the modern strategies of manuever warfare and vertical envelopment.
When he see an entire modern army advancing, he could protest: "this is a bug, this is not possible".
Like I said, the GPS made this possible. We know it can be done now because we did it in the real world in a real war. We can safely predict they might be able to do it again in the next war.
And a M1 Abrams needs a lot of oil, more of a Pz-III.
Sure the M1 gets from 3 to 9 gallons per mile depending on who you believe. They use a kerosene based fuel called JP8 not oil or diesel. They had tankers following the mechanized divisions to refuel the tanks and other vehicles, but toward the end that wasn't even enough:
Third, the jury remains out on certain performance factors on which data have not been thoroughly analyzed. The high fuel consumption of the M1 remains an open question because the lack of an enemy air threat reduced the risk of bringing fuel supplies forward in unarmored trucks. By the end of 100-hour war, however, fuel demands were noticeably straining VII Corp's logistics system. An observer later told Periscope: "If the unit did not have a top-notch S-4 (staff officer in charge of supply), it was almost out of gas."
http://www.periscope1.com/demo/weapons/gcv/tanks/w0003593.html
So even by ground they were having a hard time getting enough fuel to the mechanized units. Air supply wouldn't have put a dent in the problem even if it were possible today. We don't have planes that can do this anymore - for transport now we rely on large planes that need large, paved runways.
150 kilometers a week is easy over plain terrain, if there is not necesary fight eavy. And I say, the Luwaffe fight, the armored division only ocupied de groung.
Again, we aren't talking about how far a force can go in a week in a given terrain type. We are talking about whether such a force could operate at full potential if behind enemy lines and being supplied only by air.
[ July 17, 2001: Message edited by: Ed Cogburn ]
). Moving though the mountains without supply must cost many heavy weapons(remember Hanibal losing many of his elephants 