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My biggest issue with "The Siege of AR-558" is that they put the wrong song on. If you're going to rip off a great film, you should at least do it properly.

One GPMG could have held off any number of Jem'Hadar coming through that chokepoint - the fact that they were able to reach, and almost overrun the Fed defences shows just how crap Starfleet's ground forces are

Hell, half that number of Feds should have been able to hold back the Jemmies, even with the craptastic phasers they had. The Jemmies were running through a complete bottleneck. 6 guys with phasers should have been easily able to take them down as they rushed through.

Why haven't the Federation developed something like an E-Web?

E-web? All they would have needed was a MINIMI.

Mikey wrote:E-web? All they would have needed was a MINIMI.

Well an E-Web is like a machine gun. You got a bottleneck, set up a machine gun and let lose and all.

The E-Web is roughly equivalent to a GPMG - Mikey's point is that an LMG would have easilly sufficed for the situation at AR-558.

Exactly. Thank you.

What do those anagrams mean?

The acronym GPMG is (I think) "General purpose machine gun;" LMG is "light machine gun;" and MINIMI is a particular type: the Fabrique Nationale MINIMI.

GPMG (aka the Jimpy) - General Purpose Machine Gun. Belt fed with a detatchable barrel, and a cyclic rate of fire (ROF) of up to 1300 rounds/minute (although sustained ROF is usually only 100-200 rounds/min). Depending on whether it's equipped with a bipod or tripod it can be used either as a section support weapon, or in the sustained fire (SF) role in fixed defensive positions.

LMG - Light Machine Gun. Has a lighter barrel, often magazine rather than belt-fed, and occassionally has a fixed barrel. They've got lower cyclic and sustained ROF than GPMGs, and they're used almost exclusively as section support weapons.

I would say that hurting them even more than there poor Ground Combat Training would be the complete lack of equipment for the role. They have 0 man portable weapons that can serve as a Section Support Weapons, everything is personal. They don't seem to have anything that is able to deploy in a fixed installation to areas such as 558.

I mean this is supposed to be the most valuable piece of real estate (other than DS9) along the front lines or anywhere near it since it has this high tech communication relay that they just had to have. They have had how long to prepare proper defences and they have nothing. If I was Starfleet I would assign a full Battle Group to the System at least to make sure they can't retake it then set up proper defences at the chokepoint including my earlier mentioned Heavy Phasers on the Clifs, mine every milimeter of ground through the whole thing and install weapons capable of shooting down shuttles and damaging Bugs to prevent them from landing any troops.

IIRC, the space above the planet had changed hands a few times, so they didn't really have time to set up any heavy emplacements. I agree about the dire need for a support weapon there, for sure.

But that would indicate some military intellegence on the part of starfleet and that's not possable!

To think that the whole scenario could have been completely changed by a 1917-vintage BAR.