Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 5765040" data-attributes="member: 54707">That's what my dad was saying. You don't try and take large numbers of POWs unless you really can't help it. You injure the enemy troops badly enough, but don't kill them, and instead of then over-running the area immediately you let the enemy recover their own injured so that they have to devote resources to their recovery. It's a different way of looking at non-lethal weapons, not just as a non-lethal platform, but as a "crippling tool." Though in truth what my dad meant was really less than letahl wepaons, though that was well before the modern terms and ideas had developed. Less than lethal in a Big War (say a World War) would replace lethal or even non-lethal as the standard and no attempt would be made to take POWs, instead the injured enemy would be left for the injured enemy to deal with.That kinda thing is a big drain on enemy resources. Physically and psychologically.It was a theory he was positing on exhausting enemy resources over the long run. But of course it would require weapons that injured severely enough that injured combatants wouldn't usually be rotated back in again to the fight, but didn't always kill.However, and just to be pragmatic about it, if you were fighting the Communists in a big slog (and that's who my dad was expecting to fight, the Russians - and me too until my thirties), or Nazis, or even terrorists, they might very well abandon their injured for the US to recover and treat.Then you're right back to square one on the resource drain, except for the valuable Intel you might recover from injured and convalescing combatants.</blockquote>

Verification