G'day,
Has anyone here played with combat engineers as an integral part of their
games or scenarios (JohnA??). If yes is this via them knocking down/
putting up obstacles or in mine clearing or tread laying across swampy ground
etc?
SG-wise can/do combat engineers go on foot and if so what kit do they
carry (i.e. how does it vary compared to "normal" kit)?
And saving the dumb a$$ question for last do combat engineers = pioneers
(I
should probably have asked Derek this but I only thought of it on the way to
work this morning).
Cheers
> --- Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
Yes. And only obstacle breaching. You only do mine clearing (vice breaching.
Breaching is creating a lane or 3. Clearing means removing a minefield
completely), obstacle emplacement, and construction tasks BEFORE the enemy
arrives or after they are dead or gone away. We're suicidal, but not that
suicidal. Those tasks are part of scenario setup, not carried out during the
scenario. If an engineer unit is surprised carrying out those tasks then they
stop doing them long enough to kill the enemy (and then probably kill the
jackasses who were supposed to be pulling security).
> SG-wise can/do combat engineers go on foot and if so
Yes. Light combat engineers tend to operate out of their HMMWVs almost
exclusively during defensive operations (would you like to carry a couple
hundred land mines in your pack??), but they do carry out
sapper (ie, dismounted--'sapper' has multiple meanings
based on context) missions. You can do covert breaches, assault breaches
opening foot lanes, reduction of enemy fortified positions, and MOUT
operations dismounted.
What do we carry? Depends on the mission. I've carried satchel charges,
bangalore torpedos, mine sweepers, mine probes (hint: that old movie trick of
using your bayonet is suicide. Use titanium or fiberglass probes.), grappling
hooks, demolition charges, and initiating systems.
Not all at once. In addition to fighting load and weapons and so forth.
> And saving the dumb a$$ question for last do combat
No.
"Combat Engineers" means different things to US and Commonwealth. This is why
Derek thinks US Engineers are pogues.
We have no Pioneers. Commonwealth has Assault
Pioneers which are infantrymen cross-trained to do
basic combat engineering tasks (demolitions, breaching, hand emplacement of
mines, etc) but have neither the special equipment nor manpower to do
large-scale missions or the really specialized stuff.
US Combat Engineers are pretty specialized but not as specialized as pioneers.
We do breaches (covert,
assault, deliberate), obstacle reduction/clearance,
engineer recon (road, bridge, ford, and route), countermobility (minefields of
all sizes, wire, and other obstacles), and survivability (digging fighting
positions for vehicles and some light construction).
UK-style Engineers are all-singing and all-dancing.
They do more construction tasks--bridgebuilding,
roadbuilding, bunkers, etc, etc, etc. They train less extensively for
breaching and such since the pioneers take up their slack.
The construction-type tasks are done in US by
construction engineers and equipment operators from the Engineer Brigade of
the Corps.
G'day,
> Yes. And only obstacle breaching. You only do mine
What about places like Omaha beach or has stuff changed lots since then (or
was that exceptional circumstances?)?
> Yes. Light combat engineers tend to operate out of
Now no, when they're down to the size of a 5c piece may be;P
> What do we carry? Depends on the mission. I've
I've head of them, what do they look like?
> mine sweepers, mine probes (hint: that old movie trick of
So If I got Mr standard trooper and added a grappling hook/satchels etc
that would be enough?
> "Combat Engineers" means....
Thanks.
Cheers
> At 10:52 AM +1000 6/17/02, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
A bangalore torpedo is basically a pipe with explosives in it. You assemble
multiple lengths together and push it into a linear obstacle like a large mass
or razor wire and mines. The final sections of the 'torpedo' are just pipe so
you don't blow your face off.
> So If I got Mr standard trooper and added a grappling hook/satchels etc
Give him a skimmer with a good bit of kit and such on it. A pack or case would
be good as well.
[quoted original message omitted]
> --- Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:
Not really. The last section is primed with time fuze (or shock tube, or
detcord). You then get back so you don't blow your face off.
Anyway, it's about 5' long, about 3" diameter, and weighs 11 lbs and change.
> --- Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
> What about places like Omaha beach or has stuff
First day at Omaha was purely breaching and assaulting fortified positions.
After they pushed the Germans back then they got on with port construction and
so forth.
> > Yes. Light combat engineers tend to operate out
5c piece? Not likely...
> > What do we carry? Depends on the mission. I've
I tried to find a picture of 'em, but the demolitions manual is locked.
Imagine that. Someone else described 'em already.
> > Not all at once. In addition to fighting load and
Probably. Pick a troop with a full rucksack and hang more stuff on him.:)
> On Mon, Jun 17, 2002 at 03:26:16PM -0700, John Atkinson wrote:
M67 grenade weighs about 400g, of which about 184g is filler. A 5 cent piece
weights about 3g, so say you get about 1.4g of filler. That's
going to need to be a pretty high-tech explosive, though antimatter
could do the job very easily. Bury it deeply enough and you can use the ground
as shrapnel.
> > carried satchel charges, bangalore torpedos,
http://www.wood.army.mil/577th/diver/images/Bangalore%20torpedo.jpg
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/stephen.johnson/arms/misc8.jpg
http://www.uxocoe.brtrc.com/images/CM%20Photos/bangalore-torpedo.jpg
> M67 grenade weighs about 400g, of which about 184g is filler. A 5 cent
How do you get the containment field small enough to keep anti - matter
from matter in a 5c piece?
One could PSB an exotic explosive or combination of materials that, when
exploded or exposed to explosive forces a tiny amount of anti-matter is
"created" (reality tearing explosives, explosion-powered field
generators that are consumed in the explosion).
It's just an idea, don't go sharp-shooting it. I know jack snot about
anti-matter theory except that it goes boom when it touches matter.
> On Tue, 2002-06-18 at 09:28, John Sowerby wrote:
> ---
John Sowerby schrieb:
> How do you get the containment field small enough to keep
By the same method which you use to build a big anti-matter-bomb - PSB
;-)
Greetings
> On 18 Jun 2002 at 9:55, Flak Magnet wrote:
> One could PSB an exotic explosive or combination of materials that,
Ah, but that's the fun bit...
The energy needed to 'create' the anti-matter has to be greater than
the energy contained within the anti-matter. (Conservation of Energy,
etc.) The energy released in the matter/anti-matter explosion is
twice the energy contained in the anti-matter. (E=mc^2, etc.) So the
energy stored in this mine when it's just sitting there is at least half the
energy of the resulting explosion.
If this is not the case then you have a free source of energy, which
would revolutionise your economy/society/technology way beyond what's
normally assumed in SG2 games.
ISTR that the matter/anti-matter explosion will mostly create high-
energy photons (gamma rays, x-rays) which may or may not interact
with whatever the mine is buried in. So the mine may not produce much of an
explosion in the conventional sense. But it will probably fry any unprotected
electronics.
> One could PSB an exotic explosive or combination of materials that,
Oh god no, I'm not sharp shooting the idea.. I like the idea of small anti
matter grenades for really high tech forces in either SG or DS. I'm just
fishing for a rationale to justify their use / design...
> M67 grenade weighs about 400g, of which about 184g is filler. A 5 cent
From: John Sowerby sowerbyj@fiu.edu
> How do you get the containment field small enough to keep anti - matter
from matter in a 5c piece?
Buy it from the antimatter engineering specialists at Forward Power, Alarishi
Empire. The AE doesn't have all the finickety nitpicking regulations on
antimatter experimentation that the UN does (and the NAC, and FSE, and, well,
just about everywhere else, now that I think of it), so AM engineering has
been studied for over a century. Specialized applications are available for a
select clientele. But the 38gram version is much cheaper.
(in fact, as I understand it, AM would probably just go "fizz" instead of
"boom" unless you went to a lot of effort to arrange it otherwise)
Forgive me, but don't anti-matter explosions involve high energy
emissions like gamma rays and such?
Also, given that the mine would have a power source to keep the containment
field up, do you really want to drive around in a light vehicle with a bag
full of battery operated devices that will explode when their batteries fail.
Additionaly, given the explosive effect of grenades, mortar rounds and
artillery shells, dont' expect that mine to get too small.
Does it have to be anti-matter? Or are you just looking for really
dinky grenades that still make a full-sized kaboom?
"Where the kaboom? There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom."
- Marvin the Martian after Bugs Bunny swipes his Q-38 Space Modulator.
> On Tue, 2002-06-18 at 10:39, John Sowerby wrote:
> ---
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 11:40:32AM -0400, Flak Magnet wrote:
Gyrobombs, for example. :-)
> Does it have to be anti-matter? Or are you just looking for really
It was more an idle thought that anything else. The idea of the 5c sized
antimatter grenade got me thinking that they would make a good high tech
device for some games. As my own army is rather lower tech than that, it's not
something I would use. My other half might mind. Her army is based
around the European minis from Ogre / GEV....
> At 11:40 AM -0400 6/18/02, Flak Magnet wrote:
The one problem I can see with a really dinky sized grenade is throwing it.
Throw a baseball as far as you can. Now throw a marble as far as you can. Now,
take a basball and add a stick to it, then throw that as far as you can.
[quoted original message omitted]
From: <laserlight@quixnet.net>
> >How do you get the containment field small enough to keep anti -
Also makers of fine Mass Detectors (at least their OU subsidiary, Dragonfly
Industries,
> On 18-Jun-02 at 10:37, steve@pugh.net (steve@pugh.net) wrote:
That's the beauty of this. The energy is already there in the
form of matter. If you flip one gram of matter to anti-matter
you have neither created nor destroyed energy or matter. When
the anti-matter interacts with matter it goes boom. Matter
turned into energy, nothing created or lost.
It's just another name for direct matter to energy conversion.
A bit late in piping up on this, but:
We're talking about a high-tech force using these anitmatter grennies...
(grenade+penny). What's a low-power, breach-loaded, underbarrel gauss
launcher between high-tech friends?
Or an even more low-tech launcher:
Sarge: "Watch out, that kid has a slingshot! Scan him."
New guy: "Pfah! A slingshot!? We're in MkIV FussPanzer armor, Sarge, what's he
gonna do to us?"
Sarge: Scans kid any sign of hidden gear, finds none. "Let me tell you about
the time I was on Dorandall III. No shit, there I was (as any
REAL war story starts, -ed.) There were these young native guys with
simple leather thong slings near our base, just chucking rocks out into the
grass fields outside our perimeter... we figured they were having a distance
contest or something... Then we get the call, a nearby outpost spots some
opposition light vehicles moving through a pass we didn't want 'em comin'
though. So we prep our quick reaction force to move out. As soon as those
trucks started to roll, bomblets started raining down on us!"
The Air defenses were silent, and for a few seconds, nobody knew what was
going on... we were supposed to own the sky in our sector, and nobody had
indicated that ortillery was supposed to still be up there. But sure enough,
we were getting battered by blast after blast. Then we hear a perimeter guard
light off with his rippergun and the "arty" stopped. Turn out the opposition
recruited the locals and smuggled some of their antimatter grenades to 'em
earlier that week with the time that they ought to be sending an attack in."
Every one of those locals was shredded by that ripper gun, but not a
single one of our QRF vehicles was mission-capable. The opposition held
that pass and about 2k past it for about two weeks... then we pushed 'em back.
But they'd have never had it if it hadn't been for those grennies getting
lobbed in by slinshot."
*Ahem* Sorry about the short story... I think I ought to set aside time to
write some fiction sometime soon. The urge is getting stronger.
> On Tue, 2002-06-18 at 12:41, Ryan M Gill wrote:
> We're talking about a high-tech force using these anitmatter
Sounds ideal for black ops, doesn't it?