Quote:
Originally Posted by dragoon500ly
IMO, the Project would issue the best gear it had at the time the team is frozen. Ranging from that extra case of toilet paper, to NVGs, Kevlar vests/helmets, all the way to something as "useless" as sandbags. The intent is to use the gear as a force multiplier so that a small team has the maximum possible effect on the survivors.
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Lee,
Sure, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride! Also, I want to make clear you make good points that are difficult to refute logically. (As always, I don't necessarily believe you're wrong or I'm right, merely there are other perspectives to be shared.)
In real life, even the best most lavishly equipped military (and paramilitary) forces have constant issues with gear in different conflicts and situations. (Not just military but police, rescue, NGOs large and small, etc.) It seems like a constant that there will always be poor choices in procurement and logistics. For the record, I certainly do believe that you (or I, or a chimp) could do better. Strangely, that's not the point. There are always constraints, budgets, even simple human error (which also defines major parts of the Project).
We are free to pick and choose the "best" gear list to our hearts' content. In theory, the Project should be equipped to the best standards of 1987 (or whenever) with a fairly limitless budget. In practice, I think the Project won't be. A lot of thinking about TMP seems to revolve around the perpetual search for the "perfect" gear/weapons/vehicles and the optimal combinations thereof.
Yet paradoxically, real life always lacks this perfection. So errors or "non-optimal" choices paradoxically add verisimilitude by reinforcing the characters are not living in a perfect world (because none of us do). That's realistic, it's human nature. It may also seem counter-intuitive, I know!
For that matter, I can well believe that your experience with packing would lead you to doubt the numbers, but that's a technical issue. It's clear that MP personnel are traveling very light by modern (or even 80's) standards. Even if we take the numbers as correct, around 30kg of weapons and gear (including food for 2 weeks, which can be shitcanned) isn't that much at all and doesn't allow for cross-loading. We take for granted that what the teams are issued is all they're going to get, period, until they crack a cache (which should not be all that soon). It's possible that the original intention was to activate the Project, then do supplementary issues of things like toilet paper, NVGs, Kevlar in general as needs are assessed in the field. So as time goes on, their load will be added to as time goes on... like in real life.
Tony