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ottarrus
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 03:45

You could easily argue that without peace dividend, you have more continued development and spending on the military through the 90s... but then almost all of that would have gone into armored vehicles, aerospace, and other programs and probably not at all to the lowly rifleman.
YEP!
In 1995, the US Army was on a combined arms footing... they expected 'the next war' to be much like Desert Storm: a massive combined arms strike [air strikes, naval strikes, artillery preparation followed by an offensive featuring fast mechanized forces striking directly at threat command and control nodes. And what they got was VERY different.
The September 11th attacks radically changed the focus of the DoD changing from a combined arms to a 'satellites and snake-eaters' format-- high grade intelligence operations followed by special operations raids. Iraq and Afghanistan were 'infantry wars', where the skills of the infantry company almost acted in isolation from the those of the Armor and Artillery branches. And the Engineers spent most of their time on civil projects, except the EOD guys... who definitely had their hands full.
 
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Ursus Maior
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 11:32

You could easily argue that without peace dividend, you have more continued development and spending on the military through the 90s... but then almost all of that would have gone into armored vehicles, aerospace, and other programs and probably not at all to the lowly rifleman.
The poor bloody infantry would have seen money get spent on their integration into the AirLandBattle, i. e. the digital component of the Land Warrior program begun in 1989. What would become of this, would be a matter of fantasies, though. Historically, in 2001 Land Warrior was still very clunky and it wasn't until 2002 and then the 2003 invasion of Iraq that Stryker Brigades would become an operational reality, including digital management tools for individual soldiers - or at least squads - on the battlefield.

One might accelerate that a couple of years by putting money into it, but a big key to this would be an accelerated development of the hardware, meaning hardened chips and miniaturized electronics. The 1990s as we know them where already a period of rapid development and I am skeptical, if large investments and Pentagon-managed R&D processes would actually accelerate development or just squash joint operations with Silicon Valley as it developed itself into the power house of the 2000 eceonomy.

Of course, from a narrative stand-point it would be a dramatic and ironic twist, if the Cold War never really ended and US defense spending remaining high would actually smother the New Market Eceonomy including the Dot.Com bubble, doing more harm than good and leaving US forces ill prepared for the Neo Soviets.
liber & infractus
 
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Vader
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 11:55

It gets a bit complicated ... the way Ligan chose to define the setting, the point of departure from our history is 19 August 1991. Before that date, before that specific single point in history, nothing — nothing! — differs from history as we know it.

By then, The Wall had fallen, Germany was re-unified, the Warsaw Pact had not only collapsed but evaporated, the Gulf War had been and gone, the Yugoslav Wars were beginning to ramp up — and most importantly, all Western countries had started to cash in wholesale on the "Peace Dividend"!

In the Halls of Power, that ball was already rolling, and momentum was building fast. It would take a while before the effects would be seen out in the organisations, but going back to the decisions made in committees, sub-committees, procurement projects, and so forth, it can be seen that from the later half of 1989 and on, forward momentum in hardware plans and projects were being cut back, fast.

So yes, had the Cold War gone on unabated and then started to heat up during the 90's, we'd see a lot more investment in all kinds of weapon systems designed for a conflict between standing armies — mainly armour, artillery systems, air power ... a lot of interesting stuff was just about to happen in STA systems and small arms and all kinds of places right when History Ended and "peace broke out", and countries decided they didn't need it any more.

But it didn't go on. In a scenario where the "Moscow Putsch" (thanks!) somehow actually succeeds, western countries would need to start backpedaling awfully fast to get back up to speed ... but (a) these things are much easier to slow down than speed up, and (b) the nature of the beast — many of the politicians we had at the time were a lot more interested in finding reasons to cut back on military spending than in accepting any reason to increase it.


So, in that sense, the game in 1997 not really having any military technology beyond what existed in 1990-1995 is perfectly realistic.

Meaning that no, there really is no reason to believe that there should be more weapons with Picatinny rails in the game.
Before you use the word "XENOMORPH" again, you should read this article through:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aliens-throwaway-line-confusion
 
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Vader
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 12:16

The poor bloody infantry would have seen money get spent on their integration into the AirLandBattle, i. e. the digital component of the Land Warrior program begun in 1989. What would become of this, would be a matter of fantasies, though. Historically, in 2001 Land Warrior was still very clunky

Case in point! In the early 90's, several armies around the world had started had started or were about to start various "Future Warrior" concept studies. These actually went on into the 00's; some even still go on today. But given the ambition levels that had been formulated around 90, there still is a long way to go, as funding was cut, and the mismatch in requirements between the superpower conflict and asymmetric conflict became increasingly clear.

Land Warrior/Future Force Warrior I feel never really got beyond "clunky"; others got a bit further ... BAE probably the furthest.

It bears noting that Russia never fell into the GWOT trap. The closest I've seen to date to the concept sketches I saw in the late 80's is the Sotnik system ... not sure what kind of electronics package or BMS that it has behind it, though.

But that's all modern history. In another ten years, we might even be back at where we would have been in 1995...
Before you use the word "XENOMORPH" again, you should read this article through:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aliens-throwaway-line-confusion
 
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ottarrus
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 13:39

Fellahs, with all respect, I think most of us are saying the same thing in different ways.

Most of us agree that the GWOT infantry improvements, such as Picatinny rails, the much improved infantry armor systems, the 'mine-proofed' Humvees, battlefield computers down at the infantry squad level, etc. would not be present in a T2K scenario. The monies devoted to those systems would have gone to improving Armor and Artillery systems, along with some long overdue improvements for the Engineers. In US Army terms, you would most likely have seen programs that were already running in 1992 get sped up... for example, the M109A6 Paladin and M996 FAASV artillery systems were scheduled to be in full service Army-wide in 1998 [it was first fielded in 1994]. You could realistically suppose that that system would be fully fielded by Regular Army and Reserve artillery battalions in mechanized divisions by the time It All Went Wrong. You would probably see the incremental improvements in the M1 Abrams [the M1A3 SEP package] fielded. The IVIS battle-link system would be up in all formations.

And, of course, by T2K most of these advanced systems would be destroyed. Certainly some of the vehicles would remain, but much of the Air/Land Battle 2000 integrated battlefield system relied on electronics for which there are no longer spare parts and satellites of which at least half are dead [the T2K rules state that GPS systems only work half the time, and IVIS piggybacked on that network].

So at this point in the discussion we're all essentially repeating ourselves. The consensus answer to the OP's question is No, we don't think that the M4 and other Picatinny systems would be in use in a T2K scenario.
 
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Vader
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 14:47

Fellahs, with all respect, I think most of us are saying the same thing in different ways.
[...]
So at this point in the discussion we're all essentially repeating ourselves.

True — and now you reiterated it again, from yet another different angle, adding yet another tidbit into the mix — and honestly? I really don't see a problem with that. It's the nature of the beast with discussion forums. It has been for the last 25 years or so.

I can get really riled at people who reiterate a point I already made as great new insight one or two posts after mine ... but again, nature of the beast.
Certain people simply don't read others' posts very carefully, if at all.

But the reward comes when, at some point, someone might find some new, interesting angle on the thread's topic, the discussion goes off on some other fascinating tangent, and all of us get a chance to learn something new. Or at least, show off our own deep insights once more.

That's simply how the forum format works. I can be very patient with the discussion going around in circles as long as people feel they have something to add (whether or not they actually have it). I see no reason to make people desist, rather the opposite.
Before you use the word "XENOMORPH" again, you should read this article through:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aliens-throwaway-line-confusion
 
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ottarrus
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 15:11

Fellahs, with all respect, I think most of us are saying the same thing in different ways.
[...]
So at this point in the discussion we're all essentially repeating ourselves.

True — and now you reiterated it again, from yet another different angle, adding yet another tidbit into the mix — and honestly? I really don't see a problem with that. It's the nature of the beast with discussion forums. It has been for the last 25 years or so.

I can get really riled at people who reiterate a point I already made as great new insight one or two posts after mine ... but again, nature of the beast.
Certain people simply don't read others' posts very carefully, if at all.


But the reward comes when, at some point, someone might find some new, interesting angle on the thread's topic, the discussion goes off on some other fascinating tangent, and all of us get a chance to learn something new. Or at least, show off our own deep insights once more.

That's simply how the forum format works. I can be very patient with the discussion going around in circles as long as people feel they have something to add (whether or not they actually have it). I see no reason to make people desist, rather the opposite.

Well, at least I'm contributing :D :o
 
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Vader
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 15:13

Well, at least I'm contributing :D :o

Keepin' the ball rollin', man — Keepin' the ball rollin'! 8-)
Before you use the word "XENOMORPH" again, you should read this article through:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aliens-throwaway-line-confusion
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Fri 26 Nov 2021, 15:18

Moderator Message: Before anyone do get hurt, lets discuss the topic of this thread and not how to discuss the topic of this thread. Thanks.
“Thanks for noticin' me.” - Eeyore
 
Oddball_E8
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Re: Should there be more weapons with picatinny rails?

Sat 27 Nov 2021, 05:37

Thanks for all the input, guys.

I'll be running it this way (Swedish campaign):

For the US; Only SF will have gotten weapons with rails and such (essentially what I've been staring at in those pics from 2001). The vast amount of line soldiers just had the "good ol' stuff".
For the USSR: No rails whatsoever, but Spetsnaz and such would have more N and M models of the AK, with options to mount their side mounted optics.
For Sweden: The AK-5C has been rushed into production due to not having budget cuts in the 90's, but it hasn't reached front lines really, but rather goes to the more "elite" units like Jägare and Specialförband.

In other words, the weapons *are* out there, but few and far between in working condition.
Of course, weapons like these would be prized possessions for anyone, so not only special units have them now, but rather whomever happens to have acquired one over the years (either from dead enemies, prisoners or from fallen comrades or just random corpses).

EDIT: As an added bonus for this, It'll be semi-easy for my players (all non military nerds) to spot soviet special forces due to them being the only ones using the newer black polymer furniture AK-74M's (not all of them have them, but they're the only ones who have them, essentially, in my game).

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