Recent content by Peg Leg Pom

Not when you consider that the alternative is the horse. While the horse can achieve a higher top speed it can't sustain it for very long. A tracked vehicle able to sustain 6-8 mph (Like the Whippet of 1918) for several hours at a time will soon outpace horse patrols.

Put a Rolls Royce Armoured Car body on the running gear of a Hornsby Artillery Tractor. Job done. However you're not going to get massed ranks of the things in 1914. At most you'd get a company per division for scouting and support. These things are expensive and as yet untested.

You might want a title that sounds less like a porn film.

I'm just speculating on what if. I personally think it's far too open to abuse to work.

At which point the British Government gets off fairly lightly with the British population. They'll be saying at every chance "It's France and Russia that were beaten not Britain. Our armies were still building up and not in a position to do more than save themselves by withdrawing to the...

That's not going to fool anyone, particularly the British who looked at the same idea.

And in this system the abuse is not who get's to take part or not as the laws would specifically prevent that. Rather as the individual would have little choice as to what role they have to fill, who gets the most dangerous jobs with the highest risks to life and limb and who gets to sit in a...

Every political system that's ever been tried has proved to be open to abuse.

Even conscripts ultimately have to make the choice to serve rather than attempt to dodge the draft. For example in the US many draft dodgers went to Canada rather than serve.

Limiting it to those willing to earn it, and having had earn it be less likely to take it for granted.

This is why I'm modifying the idea so that you don't have to serve in the military, but can also do so in some government run program that benefits the nation as a whole. Conservation, Forestry, Nation infrastructure construction and maintenance, social health care ect. The point being you...

That's true but in the book those tasks (even according to an example given in the book of counting the hair on a caterpillar) were performed while technically in the military.

I want to speculate on a variation of something Robert Heinlein set out in his book Starship Troopers. (Note I mean the book itself not the terrible films). The basic idea is that in order to gain the Vote the citizen must undertake a term of National Service. Now in the book that's military...

Every member of the armed forces gets knighted, problem solved.

The twin hangers allow light vehicles to be carried, the aircraft lighter derricks allow a landing craft to be carried and the extra workshop space can be converted to berthing for marines without causing overcrowding on the already existing mess decks. It's also a way to ty and mend fences...