Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Had never thought about it until I was reading the thread inquiring about nuc weapons, but where are the gas rounds for the artillery?

Gas has been used in a few locations since WW2 and was a major part of the old Warsaw Pact defensive invasion plans against NATO. As such it deserves a place in SPMBT. Or am I just missing it?

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Storage or destroyed by treaty agreements. Besides the basic game issues of available slots for these types of units for the countries most likely to have them, the use of gas is considered just as bad as the use of nuclear weapons. Most countries to put things in prospective, have signed a multitude of treaties against the use of gas whereas the same can't be said about CM. The last major use of gas between warring countries I can think of was the Iraq and Iranian War which saw some world condemnation while they fought it out for around 8 or 10 years. And there is a more practical reason as well, it's a good way to kill your own forces as well since mother nature can play her cruel jokes on the user as well with wind and other forces of nature depending on the agents being used. You could argue about NBC protection but then why bother? Escalation is a another battlefield consideration you'd only be a step away from the use of tactical nukes. Bottom line for tactical use unlikely therefore it wouldn't fit this game I would think, on a strategic level possible but with severe consequences, it simply for here or real life be "game over".

Regards,
Pat

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

There is not any worldwide use of gas since WW1,except in Iraq on the Kurds.
There maybe some countries hording some but not likely be using them after the timely demise of Sadamm and his,and i quote G.W.Bush, "WMD's".

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Also this just a game,not world annilation,you also have to consider, those that play PBEM,,,,it would end the first turn and everyone basicly dieing and gasping for air on both sides, oh what fun!

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

The biggest problem is the game-engine and programming gas and nukes, I would guess. Considering the non-use historically, I think this should be placed rather low on the "to do" list.
Halstein.

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

I have dug a trench in Germany at the height of summer in full noddy gear. We dropped the gas masks after about 15 minutes, and the entire exercise as A Bad Idea (tm) after a half hour or so and a dozen heat prostration cases being taken off by the doc. That was about 1975, so these days you probably will have an ambulance and paramedics standing by each section for "health and safety", plus a couple of overseers in yellow jackets and hard hats, since this is involves use of digging tools etc...

If you want a set of OOBS for NBC warfare then
- adjust every formation for about -5 morale, and -10 experience.
- Reduce the speed of all vehicles by -2, and all foot troops the same (0 if it goes negative)

That will sort of simulate the "fun" of wandering round in full noddy order, vehicles closed down and so trying to locate things through optics or gas mask goggles.

Note that no actual slime has been deployed by either side. Use or threat of use of slimes means NBC gear and so all the above. An actual sliming would therefore not change anything for the military folks with their noddy gear. (Eating, drinking and taking a pee or dump becomes (ahem) interesting of course!:shock:) However dead sheep, cows and farmers etc will now be be dotted about the countryside, towns and cities will look even worse. Civvies don't have noddy kit after all.

That is why civvy authorities get noticeably upset if there is even a remote possibility of a sliming happening (e.g. the Iraqi SCUD attacks on Israel). To a prepared military, it is merely an inconvenience.

Cheers
Andy

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Thanks for the useful response Andy. I was toodling about in Germany in what we called MOPP 4 about five years after you. And yes, living in a rubber lined suit was a major pain; but, of course, dying from nerve gas would have been a lot worse. Anyway you guys must have picked a rare hot day. We even had an officer, looking to his next efficiency report I'm sure, run a 10k volksmarch in full MOPP4. Not happy at the end, but fully functional.

However, that being said, the Warsaw Pact had a major investment in both offensive and defensive chemical warfare. I'm sure they expected to receive some return for that investment. Very oddly, very little on the WP attack plans has ever made it into the public forum. However, some tidbits included the likelihood of a 10-20 km swath of the the Inter-German Border receiving a large dose of chemical munitions on day one. They must have thought it would do them some good.

I have to disagree that to a prepared military it is a mere inconvenience in a general sense. Years ago (back when we were out scaring the German cows with our NBC attire) there was a Canadian exercise with a substance that could be used to simulate nerve agents. In spite of extraordinary precautionary measures and unlimited resources, they had a 100% failure rate in fully decontaminating casualties and getting them into medical facilities without killing all the medical personnel along the entire evacuation chain. This kind of problem would have had major implications.

But I have to agree with you that within the scale of SPMBT and assuming prepared troops, it probably isn't worth the effort to code. Probably its only use would be against unprepared troops and no modern Western military would dream of saving the lives of their own troops by using 'nasty weapons'. Though I do wonder how much chemical protective gear they have with the NATO troops in Afghanistan. If there is any, I suspect it might be nicely crated in some supply depot somewhere. I know the Taliban occasionally mortar NATO bases, but I don't know what the minimum mortar size would be for gas. You would need more than just a few rounds here and there to do any real damage, but one could sure get the infidels attention with just a few sarin induced corpses.

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Just a quick Google search turns up:

* 1963-67 Egypt used phosgene and mustard against Yemen
* 1975-83 Soviet-backed forces in Laos and Cambodia used Yellow Rain.
* 1979-84 Soviets used chemical weapons in Afghanistan, to include phosgene, Yellow Rain, older nerve gases and Flash, a newer nerve gas.
* 1984-?? Iraq used tabun against Iran
* 13 Feb 2012 - A Syrian defector from the Assad regime stated that Assad's forces were using nerve gas in its fight with rebels.


While trolling around the web I found this gem of Russian chemical science:

Novichok - Recently developed (1987 I think) choline sterase inhibitor (USSR). May affect human genes and thus damage could be genetically transmitted to offspring.
Skin contact and/or inhalation
Very rapid
Novichok 5 estimated to exceed effectiveness of VX by 5 to 8 times
Novichok 7 estimated to exceed effectiveness of soman by 10 times.

By 1987 Soviet scientists created a new binary nerve gas they called Novichok (pronounced no-vee-shok). Novichok (which means newcomer) has been
described as "a new toxic agent ... an injury with it is practically incurable ... those who were once affected with this toxic agent have remained disabled for the rest of their lives . Novichok agents are made of benign industrial and agricultural chemicals and can be made quickly in quantity. There is far less need to produce and stockpile vast quantities of agent or controlled precursors in advance.

Do bear in mind that the Sverdlovsk Incident (where workers failed to replace an exit vent filter in an anthrax munitions plant, resulting in anthrax spores being vented into the city of Sverdlovsk) occurred several years after the Soviet Union signed a treaty forbidding the production of biological weapons.

DIT: Turned up a reference to weaponized chemical agents and the smallest listed was "122-mm non-rocket artillery shells (2.9 kg),"; so I guess the Taliban will just have to rely on more conventional killing.

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Another problem with simulation of chemical or biological agents is the lack of hard evidence on the effectiveness. Lots of anecdotal stuff, but very little to no documentation as to the actual wartime use, effectiveness, conditions. And most of the data I've seen is often "interpreted" depending on who is doing the reporting. It would be a very tough simulation to sell to a group of us when we can't even agree on the effectiveness of 5.56 vs 7.62 :)

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

How about NCOs who made us get into full MOPP gear and then smoked the hell out of us because they thought it was funny? FTA.

Matt

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Never to be found in Steel Panthers,I so hope.:up:

To me this is the greatest simulation of small units tactics ever devised for wargaming. It is the standard by which I judge all other wargames.

A strategic game this one surely ain't,and I like SPMBT just the way it is.:first:

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Thanks, you just made the last few months massive aggravation worthwhile :)

Don

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

I too spent much of my 18 months in the FRG working in MOPP gear during the mid-eighties. As Mobhack noted, the scale of the game doesn't really warrant the actual attack but if you wanted to simulate combat in an contaminated environment, then you'd just modify the OOBS- although it hardly seems worth the work.

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Iraq produced a few thousands of tons of various agents, such as various types of mustard, and used a fair portion of that, mostly against iranian troops. What fun must have been manning an iranian 155mm battery in NBC gear under the local sun is probably better left to imagination...
For that matter I vaguely recall that using chemical weapons against airfields was something considered in soviet and likely still in north korean plans. Sortie rate would have taken a big hit.

The effects of various weapons against personnel are going to be mainly anedoctal. Testing the effects of weapons on hardware is done sparingly as it is expensive, but say sticking a few guys in a trench and experiment how many artillery rounds it actually takes to incapacitate the survivors just cannot be done. Hence you have to rely on models backed by whatever data is available.
That being said I would be extremely suprised if the various WW1 combatants did not produce substantial amounts of paperwork on their use.

A small number of smallish mortar/rockets rounds loaded with some home made quality agent shot at random in the direction of of your run of the mill army base aren't going to accomplish much of note. It is far more likely to get oneself killed while producing the agent and loading it in the shells.

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

I think, like a lot of WARPAC theories, the gas and chemicals were expected to be beneficial in the initial shock. They seem to have been very very focused on driving a resolution in a very short amount of time, so it makes sense to hit them with /everything/ you have and try to overwhelm the opposition.

Of course, plans like that don't always work out right as basically any modern military operation can attest to. (maybe the recent scuffle in Georgia is a notable exception?)

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

Yugoslavia never officialy had any ABC weapons, but tell that to my frend who is in the army as an ABC soldier, and he had to take Chlorine from old wooden barrels in an army warehose and put it in the new plastic barrels. They also moved containers with VX in them.

Re: Where are the gas artillery rounds?
 

I agree with Kenny. Continue with an ongoing evolutionary approach to SPMBT, rather than revolutionary or worse yet, a change in direction. I have followed Steel Panthers from it's early DOS-based days and stayed with it, massively flawed though it was because it was the best out there though Close Combat had its appeal, too. But when Steel Panthers was revamped from the DOS engine, if I'm saying it right, to Windows it finally reached its full potential. This isn't meant to be fawning, but the time and effort invested in Steel Panthers by those responsible is appreciated fully, and I'm certain I'm speaking for the majority of us. Thank's guys! Another thumbs up!:up: