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In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Niels Bugge wrote:
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I’m supprised about this too, but from a little different standingpoint: I
don’t think humans have any future on the battlefield, because everything
will happen so much faster than today:
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Humans will always have a place on the battlefield, if for only two reasons.
Aircraft have proven capable of instigating conflict and presenting a solid
first wave of defense, but the only way to hold territory is to maintain
pressence there. That means people on the ground. The other reason is that the
speed at which combat is fought is always limited by the ability to react to
changing circumstances. Machines currently need preprogrammed reaction logic,
so they can’t reliably react to unexpected events in the way that well-trained
soldiers can. The only way to make them capable of doing so is to develop true
AI, and Asimov’s literary history shows that this might not be a safe thing even
in terms of civilian bots, much less bots with guns strapped on them.
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Why should you use something as demanding and confused as a human, when
inserting intelligence in military units? AI are much better: It doesn’t
demand space, lifesupport or rest, is way faster and smaller, and do what
it’s told to without moral considerations...
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Think about this. You’ve got to develop a military AI that has no objections to
killing, but won’t go on a killing spree when it gets home. You’ve got to give
them enough deduction capability to figure out who to shoot and who to not
shoot, but expect them to not turn around and go Swiss on you. And you’ve got
to develop their reactionary capabilities beyond those possessed by humans, who
still don’t really understand how the brain works.
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Rockets are fine and is here to stay, but drones are the future. Still, you
need humans for humane stuff like peacekeeping and heart & mind missions, but
they’ll need heavy space, air and drone-support.
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Drones with off-site human control are already here, but I wouldn’t want to bank
on the idea of drones that require no human input once you send them on the
mission.
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What about tanks and powerarmor then? Well the infantry’s gotta get around
relatively protected in hover-APC’s, and they may need some light hovertanks
for support, but unless some serious cloaking technology becomes availible
that can protect them against rockets, the main offensive weapons will stay
airborne or spacebased (orbital bombardment).
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I have a feeling that orbital bombardment will have a very short period of use
before it becomes illegal by international treaty.
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Tecnically there’s a maximum limit of how fast wheeled or tracked vehicles
can move - they just barely managed to reach mach 1 recently in one of the
flattest areas in the world: I wouldn’t like to drive a MBT through rugged
terrain at that speed (or higher)!
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Speed is also constrained by the driver’s ability to not smack into buildings,
trees, and the occassional cow. Fighter jets have the advantage that there’s
not much in the way of obstacles once you get a few thousand feet into the air,
but SW:ROTJ should show you how treacherous it is to exceed safe travel speeds
during combat on unfamiliar terrain.
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When you add oceans and mountain to the equation
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Mountains? That’s what aircraft are for. Tanks, hover or not, have no business
trying to hop over the Himalayas.
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as well as the need to avoid enemy smartbombs by moving around or dodging,
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Dodging is probably never going to be a real option. Fighter jets don’t dodge
missiles, but rather out-manouver them, or misdirect them. Hover tanks will
likely end up in the same scrap pile as mundane tanks when jets scream over at
Mach 2+ and unleash cluster smart-bombs like they were doing in Iraq.
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I think that that pretty much sums up why tanks need to hover (and with
beamweapons or rockets, recoil wouldn’t be a problem).
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Rockets are more bulky compared to the depleted uranium darts that we (the US)
currently use. In order to equal the destructive capabilities, they’d need to
be huge, so you’d have a very limited ammo capacity. Depleted uranium rounds
will punch through pretty much any armor plating out there (including that which
is used for the Abrams), but they’re probably not much bigger than the RPGs that
weren’t even much of a threat to our Humvees, and were just bouncing off our
Abrams tanks. And without currently existing beamweapon capability to back up
the hover tank argument, there’s no way of guaranteeing that the two
technologies would become available at the same time.
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