Curtis Lemay -> RE: Chemical Agents Seriously Underpowered? (7/7/2012 4:16:22 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Akmatov Quite agree, as far as it was possible. For example, suppose the Germans use sarin to devastating effect. Would it then be likely that the Russian would be able to design, produce and distribute adequate numbers of full protective suits to salvage their military situation? I'm thinking the answer would be probably not. Of course, the German ability to produce and deploy enough sarin to be effective also gets us into questions of industrial capability. They could disperse into a defense in greater depth - lower troop concentrations would reduce the gas's lethality. In contrast, the Germans, as the aggressor, would be more concentrated. And just because they had the gas doesn't mean that they had developed the suits for it at the time - or that their troops were supplied with them, or could even operate in them if they had them. Wind changes could kill more Germans than Soviets under that scenario. And, they would respond with their own gas. The Allies had Phosgene - 1/30th the lethality of Sarin. Of course, you just need a gas mask to protect from that - but that was true in WWI, and it still was deadly. The force concentration issue makes NBC stuff better defensive than offensive options (true for those Warsaw Pact planners you mentioned, as well). This is why the real danger of Sarin was to the Normandy beaches. The Germans produced 7,000 tons of Sarin during the war. 0.1 milligram (1/1000th of a raindrop) will kill you in 1 minute. Soman (30 times as deadly as Sarin - and persistent) never reached the mass production stage.
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