Subject:
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Re: Tanks or Power Armor
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.build.mecha
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Date:
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Fri, 27 Aug 2004 03:21:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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885 times
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In lugnet.build.mecha, Allister McLaren wrote:
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I suspect that if we develop a technology that can manipulate gravity enough
to hold a tank off the ground (I really don’t think the fan and skirt design
would be practical in battle), then surely it would also be able to absorb or
counteract any amount of recoil. In fact, the same technology could
conceivably be used to hurl the projectile itself, negating the need for
chemical explosions altogether.
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Possibly. Or we could even develop energy-based weapons. We might also find
that even if we can develop the technology required to make hovertanks a
feasible concept that it’s still more economic and reliable to go with the more
mundane treaded tanks. Coolness isn’t what’s going to win the battle or get you
home alive.
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As for the future of combat technology, I hold out hope that we can put all
these petty squabbles behind us and learn to get along. Not very much hope,
but I hold it nonetheless.
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Petty squables as in the sort of things that real wars are fought over, or petty
squables as in what sort of military tech will reign supreme a century or two
down the road? I would be as happy as the next man if wars became obsolete, but
I hold no hope that this will ever happen. Conflict is part of our nature (why
do you think sports are so popular?), and technology development is often driven
by military arms races. A society without conflict will stagnate and fall to
the wayside.
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Apart from that, it should be remembered that superior technology does not
necesarily make a superior military. Knowing the enemy, and developing an
appropriate strategy will always be paramount.
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Luck/circumstance also plays a heavy role in wars between powerful nations. In
all of our recent conflicts, the arms situation has been so heavily skewed in
favor of the US that it hasn’t played much of a role, but look at WWII in the
Pacific. The aircraft carrier turned out to be, against most expectations, a
more important strategic resource than even battleships, and they happened to be
the only major portion of the fleet that wasn’t parked in Pearl Harbor when it
was attacked. The Zero was superior to the Mustang in terms of dogfighting, but
we had both just enough warning to be prepared for them and cloud cover enough
that they didn’t know we were waiting to ambush them in the infamous Turkey
Shoot. The development of explosive rounds was plagued by problems of all sorts
(the oddest one being that the solder they acquired to improve the reliability
of the electronic components had a low enough melting point that firing the
round was enough to slag it), and it was only when the next batch of test rounds
was delayed due to railroad obstructions that they tested a low-priority batch
that turned out to solve the last major problem.
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Rushing in headlong, all guns blazing might look good on television, but it
achieves nothing but killing and hurting a lot of people needlessly, and
that is not what war is about.
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Depends on who’s fighting it. There are countries that don’t care how much
collateral damage they cause and will simply blame it on their opponents (not
that anyone really believes them), and there are other countries that have
developed precision warfare to the point of potentially hindering their own
effectiveness (consider the attack where the US military blew up just the one
building that they had targetted, and it was later rumored that Hussein had
secretly relocated to the building next-door...which was left relatively intact,
barring any damage caused by chunks from the first building that might have been
flung at it). I believe that Sun Tzu held that the only unacceptable practice
in war is losing.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Tanks or Power Armor
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| (...) I suspect that if we develop a technology that can manipulate gravity enough to hold a tank off the ground (I really don't think the fan and skirt design would be practical in battle), then surely it would also be able to absorb or counteract (...) (20 years ago, 26-Aug-04, to lugnet.build.mecha, FTX)
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