> On Sun, 25 Oct 1998, Thomas Barclay wrote:
ok, here's the deal: a cargo shell fired from a regular 205mm or whatever
howitzer, which bursts in the air and unspools millions of optical fibres
(thinner and much, much tougher than current ones) over the area between your
local FLOT and your artillery. grunts on the front lines just pick up a
handful of fibres, and shine a signal beam down them. the signals guy with the
battery looks out for glowing fibre tips (ie ones with grunts on the other
end) and jacks them into his transceiver. this sends a signal light back; the
grunts see this and jack into their transceiver. thus, a circuit is
established. if it breaks, find another fibre and repeat. with practice, and
with all the battery ends collected in one place, this should be quite quick.
or, for 'artillery', substitute 'command post', 'signals node', etc.
Tom
Good idea, but 2 counter ideas:
1. Can you say "shoot and scoot"? With today's counter-battery
capabilities, the shoot and scoot would seem to make this method inpractical.
2. Is the enemy going to find these and send scouts/LRRP out to
take-out
the artillery/command/etc.?
Just beign the devil's advocate here ;-)
Jeff Hancock mailto: jhancock@pilot.infi.net
> ok, here's the deal: a cargo shell fired from a regular 205mm or
> On Mon, 26 Oct 1998, Jeff Hancock wrote:
DOH! ok, so it's no use for contacting your local battery, but it might still
work for more static things like cp's. otoh, maybe it wouldn't. or maybe you'd
just need really, really long fibres,
> 2. Is the enemy going to find these and send scouts/LRRP out to
yes. the answer to this, and to some extent to your first point, is basically
to blanket your active area with fibres, so no matter where you are, no matter
where the other guy is, you have a fibre you can use. plus, there are so many
fibres that the enemy doesn't know which to follow.
> Just beign the devil's advocate here ;-)
many thanks.
ok, i consider this idea pretty much dropped. it obviously won't work so let's
not bother arguing about why not.
Tom
ps that last paragraph was reverse psychology - soon, i'll have everyone
arguing *for* my idea! bwahahaha!