A few more thoughts - I'm having a moment of insomnia.
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 01:11:46 -0500
From: Adrian Johnson <ajohnson@idirect.com>
Subject: Re: SG2/DS2 artillery
> Once you have a grav platform, the war is so much about mobility and a
Except that the tank isn't a tank any more, 'cause it starts to carry infantry
and all kinds secondary weapon systems. If the grav platform has the
capability to carry the weight of heavy armour, then why not have it
carry troops too - and you get multi purpose vehicles that serve as
orbital dropships and troopcarriers. What's the purpose of having separate
"tanks"
if the apc's can carry tank-size armament anyway... If the role of the
tank is JUST to fight other tanks, there isn't any point in having them.
Infantry hold the ground, and in the end, tanks now are about supporting
the infantry by killing the other guy's tanks, which can kill your apc's. But
if your apc's are as tough and as heavily armed as a tank, why bother having
tanks?
** Counterpoint: In a tank, I put in maximum weapons for my space or engine
power (and armour). In an APC, I put in troops. They take up space and consume
thrust or lift or whatever. A tank would always have a point as it would
always have heavier armour and more FP than an IFV. Even if the IFV
mounts a DFFG and a GMS/H.
And if you're fighting with these sorts of zoomie high tech flying apc's,
"ground" warfare will probably be about short, sharp, small fights between
dispersed forces that manoever for position to sieze strategic bits of land
or get the other guy's depots. No percentage in mass-battle type
fighting, 'cause the other guy will just slam you with ortillery if you
concentrate too heavily.
** This reminds me very much of the Traveller universe. The Imperial Marine
APCs and Grav Tanks were like a flying M1 armed with fusion guns and
TacMissiles. They were imprevious to small and many large arms. They
were armed horrendously, were out-atmosphere capable (no interface
transport, thank you very much) and could go hundreds of kph. The infantry,
when it debussed, was PA with Plasma Guns. Very Very Nasty. Also very very
expensive and small in number. And yes, orbital superiority is a big plus.
I don't see too much place for "conventioal" artillery at anything larger than
the platoon mortar size when you can do it from orbit.
** Assuming you have dedicated fleet elements. I think you may still want
company and battalion assets. But regimental artillery definitely falls under
the ortillery tab I think.
If you don't have some forces in orbit, then you're toast anyway 'cause he
ortilleries you into the stone age whenever you concentrate....
** Except, of course, on outposts where neither side can afford to station a
ship. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped some Thor
Javelin satellites before leaving - giving a limited ortillery capacity.
On these kind of backwaters, you'd see lower tech troops, with tracklayers or
wheeled vehicles, and with towed guns, etc.
> Until then though, I assume forces wanted a high mobility force and
> most land, tundra, ice floes, etc. It makes amphibious assaults a joke.
> Additionally, you'll get an AC tank moving faster than a track layer.
Sure. Forces nowadays are getting smaller but more highly lethal, and I
think that trend will continue. Artillery will get smarter, so you'll need
less of it and equipment not as BIG to do the same job - which means
easier logistic support, manoeverability, etc.
** Or the same you can do the same job better which is sometimes preferable.
If the arty shells are all guided by an AI, you won't need to shoot off
bazillions of them to get the other
guy - and that brings in the whole ew/counter-ew thing 'cause each side
will try to spoof the others' arty shells, etc etc.
** Though that leads to spoofing as you pointed out. Unguided shells are hard
to spoof.
But the arty you DO have will HAVE to be quick to move. No point in any
kind of towed stuff at all, unless it is being used by a low tech force.
** Sort of what I thought. Same reason you don't see many towed AT guns.
We know there'll be conflicts at different tech levels (NSL regulars vs ESU
regulars is HIGH tech, but NAC farmers' militia vs. marauding PAU irregular
militia will be much lower tech. In the case of extremely long lines of
communication, major powers may choose to send lower-tech equipment on
purpose, so that the local infrastructure can support the repair, maintenance,
and ammo resupply requirements of a long campaign. The NAC
may not take it's best equipment if the enemy force isn't equipped with
high-tech stuff and it is FAR away from NAC core worlds... So then you
get the lower tech arty being used because of it's inherent reliability and
ease of maintenance - and maybe it is towed - or wheeled SP.
** I'm thinking of rebellious areas too or areas that want independence
- they get it at a cost - they can't make high-tech goodies so they make
lower tech, cheaper (but still deadly after a fashion) technologies.
** Though I didn't address it by quoting, Oerjan raised a good point about
armouring the skirts on hover vehicles.... obviously you'd have to be able to
to make them viable military vehicles. He raised a point about low dust, noise
and heat sigs. Well, dust sig would be partly a product of environment, so
might or might not be avoidable though some
sort of electrostatic effects might help. Noise... AC might be noisy -
depends on plenum design. I've seen silent fans moving LOTS of air before.
Heat.... same problem as conventional vehicles. Assume to do AC
we need some big ass power - Fusion or A-Matter. To do grav, doubly so.
** The reason I said in my post tanks = arty = planes = helicopters once
you get grav is this - though their are in fact variants (APC vs Tank vs
Grav Arty), the use of conventional arty goes out the window to some
extent - if my tanks are as mobile as planes, armoured like tanks and
hit like a huge hammer, they are almost so dangerous to artillery of a
conventional nature that it is suicidal to use (as are conventional tanks
against tanks that can fly). Similarly planes and helos can't stand up to
something that can carry tank armour AND fly. Unless they can too. But once
you have grav, all other techs seem passe. My theory is that grav is expensive
enough (especially the variant that can fly rather than just hover) and techy
enough that only elite units might get it. But they'd be EVIL....
> Given this might be the case, wouldn't most artillery be of the form of
> an MRLS or a CPR (Chemically Propelled Round) nature mounted on an AC
Yep. Gotta be that way or they'll be counterbatteried right pronto. And I'd
have the counterbattery stuff set up as MLRS with guided hypersonic scramjet
(or equiv) rounds, so the return fire arrives REALLY fast.
* Or even worse, some sort of loitering drone slaved to the CBR system -
it then just flies over the field with its stealth running, and when an
enemy gun fires, it backtracks and unloads a guided strike rapid-fast.
Thus the offensive arty gets a very small window to launch and move (like fire
as you are driving....).
This
ammo would be more expensive than a simple explosive round, but the
counterbattery mission is about the most important one that arty can
undertake, so they use the good stuff.
** Hence why a UAV might be the answer.
> You might find field guns in militia and colonial forces (easier to
And that gives we gamers an excuse to use arty as a mission hook, and use
them as off-table support... I have added three of the Heavy Gear arty
pieces to my SG collection, and they are great to use as an objective in
scenarios. I use that one as a demo game at con's quite often, and it's
lots of fun. One side has to get on and capture or "spike" the guns, and the
other has to defend them... Simple.
** And I'm still waiting for the tech manual on how to build those....
;)
Tom.
> the infantry by killing the other guy's tanks, which can kill your
Well once again we get into a similar discussion that we had about
multirole assault landers/interface landers. It's not an issue of
technology it's an operational issue, maybe go back and check out the
discussions on that which we had a few months ago, it still holds true with
why every vehicle shouldn't be an APC. It seems that on this list it's
incredible easy to thing that the technical issues are the only ones of
relevance in combat, they are actually down the list
> ** Counterpoint:
Yep. That too.
> And if you're fighting with these sorts of zoomie high tech flying
They
> were armed horrendously, were out-atmosphere capable (no interface
And another thing, super-mega tanks will just generate a spate of more
lethal personal AT weapons, just as they always do.
> I don't see too much place for "conventioal" artillery at anything
I still don't get the assumption that something fired form 200 miles
(ortillery) up will be more accurate (or cost effective) than something fired
from 10 miles away (SP arty) from the ground. I can't make that leap of faith
very easily since ground based fire technology wion't be moving
forward just as well as space-based fire control.
> On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Los wrote:
> I still don't get the assumption that something fired form 200 miles
It may not be as acurrate, but it will have a much longer flight time. You
wanna wait 40 minutes for a firemission to land fromthe time you request it?
> On 29-Nov-99 at 11:19, Ryan M Gill (monty@arcadia.turner.com) wrote:
> You wanna wait 40 minutes for a firemission to land fromthe time you
My question is why would your ortillery fire from 200 miles away. We have
what, about 3 miles of atmosphere? That space based artillery could be 5 miles
away. As for flight times, both are going to be insignificant.
> On Mon, 29 Nov 1999 11:21:53 -0500 (EST), Roger Books writes:
> request it?
We've got a lot more atmosphere than that. Planes routinely fly at 37,000 feet
(~7 miles up). Geo sync orbit is at 22,236 miles. A lot higher than 200.
I think you're seriously off on your data about the atmosphere. The
SR-71
cruises at around 85,000 feet which is 16 miles. Low earth orbit is much
higher than that, and any orbit that would be remotely useful for dropping
ortillery
would be somewhere out around geo-synchronous which is out around 22,000
miles. This is JMO, as you would want a long scanning window to formulate your
fire solution (atmospheric entry is extremely delicate), but even if you cut
the orbit to a quarter of geosynchronous it would be 5000 miles, which would
be a LONG ways for a fire mission to travel.
Ortillery just won't be a viable replacement for ground based artillery for
the forseeable future, IMO. It can't be as accurate (it would be nearly
impossible to perfectly account for every air current and change in air
density), and it
will take a long time for a bombardment to hit (hours). Not exactly
what you want for precision fire support. Orbital bombardments would work well
for large area destruction, for example leveling a city.
Bill
Roger Books <books@mail.state.fl.us> on 11/29/1999 10:21:53 AM
Please respond to gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
cc: (bcc: Bill Brush/NET/UNL/UNEBR)
Subject Re: DS2/SG2 artillery
:
> On 29-Nov-99 at 11:19, Ryan M Gill (monty@arcadia.turner.com) wrote:
My question is why would your ortillery fire from 200 miles away. We have
what, about 3 miles of atmosphere? That space based artillery could be 5 miles
away. As for flight times, both are going to be insignificant.
Roger
> Roger Books wrote:
> > > I still don't get the assumption that something fired form 200
> My question is why would your ortillery fire from 200 miles away. We
Reality check:
The top of Mount Everest is about 5.3 miles above sea level.
WWI Zeppelins could reach about 3.4 miles above sea level (and WWI aircraft
flew higher still).
WWII aircraft could fly at least 6 miles above sea level.
Modern SAMs (Hawk-style, not man-carried) can reach at least 10 miles
up, indicating that modern aircraft can fly higher still... and they still
don't move anywhere close to the outer reaches of the atmosphere.
Roger, I'm afraid your estimate of the atmosphere's thickness might be
a bit low :-/
Regards,
> I think you're seriously off on your data about the atmosphere. The
Just a tidbit of info re: low Earth orbit: the Hubble telescope is at what is
known as 'high' low Earth orbit, and is around ~370 miles up.
Another bit of trivia. As for a 3 mile thick atmosphere, or space-based
arty being 5 miles away, ummmm...just fyi, but Everest is ~29,235', which is
over 5 miles above sea level. And while there isn't a whole hell of a lot of
O2 up there to be breathin', people still trudge up to those altitudes
sans oxygen to stand the 5-some miles above Earth's surface. Everest
base camp is located ~3 miles above sea level. If the atmosphere were 3 miles
thick, going up sans O2 would be.....oh, a trifle more challenging.
:-)
Thomas and Adrian wrote, in a kinda mixed-up way (ie, I'm not entirely
certain who wrote what):
[Adrian's - I think - description of the all-powerful Grav Tank
snipped]
> ** This reminds me very much of the Traveller universe.
It is also a very close description of warfare in the Renegade Legion
universe.
> I don't see too much place for "conventioal" artillery at anything
Doubtful. A ship in low orbit is pretty difficult to hide even when it doesn't
fire at anything.
> If you don't have some forces in orbit, then you're toast anyway
Also assuming the ground forces don't have any ability to reach out
into space (sneaking high-stealth assault landers down is rather
different from hanging in a low orbit screaming "HERE I AM!!" everytime your
ortillery batteries open up at something, unless you're absolutely
certain there are no surface-to-space weapons available), and that you
have enough ortillery batteries in orbit to have one available whenever
you need it :-/
> >Additionally, you'll get an AC tank moving faster than a track
Can *move through* swamps. GEV-mounted MRLS might work (ie, fire) in a
swamp; GEV tube artillery won't, unless you have an extremely good recoil
absorbing system or a vehicle which is extremely large compared
to the gun - eg, a 25-meter corvette with a single 40-mm cannon.
Drowning your vehicles is considered a Bad Thing, like :-/
> Forces nowadays are getting smaller but more highly lethal, and I
To clarify Adrian's comment here: when artillery gets smarter, you'll need
vastly less of it to do the same job much better. There is no real
contradiction between the two. I'm not sure if that's what he actually meant,
but that's the trend in today's artillery world.
> If the arty shells are all guided by an AI, you won't need to shoot
Trajectory-corrected munitions (ideal against stationary targets but
not too effective against mobile ones, unless the TCMs carry
target-seeking sub-munitions) can be spoofed, but you'd pretty much
need to shut down enemy communications in the area completely to do it.
Target-seeking shells can be spoofed by the target's ECM. However, I
doubt if you'd need as many target-seeking munitions even against
heavy-ECM targets... you'd need to spoof something like 97% of all
incoming rounds in order to get a higher hit ratio with unguided shells
than with seeking ones - depends a bit on how good your point defence
is, but it would cut quite deeply into an unguided missile barrage as well.
> ** Though I didn't address it by quoting, Oerjan raised a good point
Electrostatic effects would need to be fairly strong to be effective, and
they'd also need to cover the area around the vehicle rather than
the spot just below it - ie, you can't easily screen it off from enemy
sensors... and as a mine designer, the thought of that EM field is very,
*very* attractive <G> I'd rather take the dust as it is than try to contain it
by electrostatic means.
> Noise... AC might be noisy - depends on plenum design. I've seen
Sure. However, when you have a volume of air under relatively high
pressure and present it with leaks, it tends not to be that silent :-/
Wheels are often less noisy than an air cushion. Of course, the biggest source
of noise are the engines (more of them, or bigger, than on a
conventional vehicle) - unless you use some really fancy stuff, of
course.
> Heat.... same problem as conventional vehicles.
At least as bad as on conventional vehicles. GE requires more power
than wheels or tracks (so more/bigger radiators to screen off) and
you'd need to make sure that the air in the cushion doesn't get heated as well
(or at least that it cools down to the ambient temperature before it leaks
from the air cushion.
> Assume to do AC we need some big ass power - Fusion or A-Matter.
Today's armed GEVs don't have fusion or anti-matter drives AFAIK. Sure,
they're not as heavily armoured or armed as tanks, but I wouldn't be surprised
at all if you could build GEV SPs and APCs with today's hovercraft technology.
Not particularly economic, of course, but probably possible.
> To do grav, doubly so.
Grav would need rather extreme power sources, yes.
> ** The reason I said in my post tanks = arty = planes = helicopters
You're confusing the armament with the drive line here. Grav engines make all
the other modes of propulsion obsolete, but it does not make the *weapons*
(tube and rocket artillery, in this case) obsolete... and making your SP guns
fly doens't turn them into tanks.
Regards,
> At 11:11 AM 11/29/99 -0500, you wrote:
I don't understand what you are saying that ortillery will take longer than
ground based? (Could be depending on how many assetts they are covering).
Maybe my intial statement wasn't very clear: I believe groundbased fire
support will be more accurate and relaible than ortillery though maybe not as
powerful or convenient in the early stages of an
invasion. Everyone around here seems to wave a hand non-chalantly, oh
well resistance will be futile when you won orbit. That's a load of major
bullshit. Unless you are in one of the few circumstances where you just don't
give a fuck about anything on the planet and you have no political restraints
on anything and you have perfect intelligence and and and.... hey we can
obtain air supremacy over most any nation in the world right now including
really small insignificant ones that can't fight back but it doesn't seem to
scare them to often.
A square targetting bracket, of course. ;-) [the 1 face of a die...]
Neath Southern Skies - http://users.mcmedia.com.au/~denian/
[mkw] Admiral Peter Rollins; Task Force Zulu
> -----Original Message-----
> On 30-Nov-99 at 10:22, Los (los@cris.com) wrote:
> >request it?
I always thought it was pretty obvious, if you want to nuke the population of
a planet back to the stone age and make it uninhabitable then you don't need
ground forces, you just need space superiority, a few tugs, and a big rock. If
you need the planet or want to "save" the people ground forces are the only
option. I really don't see how that can ever change. Maybe someday we'll have
robots to do the ground forces job, but if we ever have machines smart enough
to deal with the chaos of a battlefield they will probably be replacing us
shortly anyway.