Dogfighting over Mars
New Guardian Times, Fort Willhays, January 10th 2194
I'm one half inch too tall to be a fighter pilot; the unfairest half inch ever
in my opinion. I have wanted to be a fighter pilot since I can remember. When
I found out I was too tall I even considered corrective surgery, my mother
talked me out of such drastic action. You can only imagine the joy I felt when
I found I'd been embedded with a squadron of the Royal NAC Airforce. Me riding
VR shotgun with an NAC flier!
My pilot was a quiet unassuming kid, one of those good looking aristocratic
kids they always have on public school adverts with sandy hair, perfectly
straight smile and sharp chin. He didn't seem affronted
to be saddled with a VR fly-on-the-wall, though he did ask rather
politely if I could remain silent during any combat so as not to break his
concentration.
The force you feel in your gut and ears as you take off is quite astounding,
despite the many compensators built into the latest gear. The forces are even
stronger once you're in combat, which we were surprisingly quickly. An
initiation by fire, live fire, in the biggest dogfight you can imagine. As the
armour battled below, so we battled above. We had a few initial jockeying
passes and then we found a mark. Driving nose on at this Krak fighter slewing
this way and that as it hosed us with all its cannons. We managed to chew up
its nose well enough that those cannons didn't work anymore, but not before
the Krak monster got a homing rocket headed our way. The kid's response was to
dive; dive right into the thickest shellfire I think anyone has ever seen. He
said later it was the only way he could think of getting that rocket off of
us, as he'd found out right before the mission that our decoys are no good
against these alien munitions. I've never seen a flyer so good, scooting
through the fire, rolling and turning until the rocket was blown from the sky
by a tank shell. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen it with
my own baby blues.
My head pounding with the pressure I fought to stay conscious as the kid threw
us through this fight with apparent disregard for life and limb. He brought
down five marks before we got slammed from the side, ending in a spin no one
could've survived.
Being shot out of VR is not the most pleasant of experiences, but its one hell
of a lot better than dying in a fighter wreck; which is what would've happened
to the kid if he hadn't been flying VR remote. As it was his nose bleed had
bloodied up his smock front and he must have lost a good deal of fluid, he was
sweating so badly. Quick wipe up and a cool drink and he was strapping in
again, picking up a new bird. Remote VR banks like these were pretty standard
in the last solar war, but Krak EW is streets ahead of ours and most times
we've had to resort to real human pilots again. Bit of a shock to the old
airforce system; the loss rate in those live body fighters is horrendous,
especially amongst VR pilots who either get caught up and forget they don't
have any second chances, or become so aware of their mortality that they
hesitate until the freeze up. Guess that's one advantage to fighting so close
to home. Big booster stations and the best tech we have to offer means we can
still use VR drones here, at least for now. And boy am I glad about that!
Beth.Fulton@csiro.au schrieb:
> Dogfighting over Mars
Nice piece. I especially liked the VR bits - something we have been
discussing on this list several times ;-)
Are any of your posts based on real games you have had, or is it pure
imagination?
Greetings Karl Heinz
I'm one half inch too tall to be a fighter pilot; the unfairest half inch ever
in my opinion.
This reminds me of my grandfather who was sent home after signing up during
WWI. At 5'1" he was deemed too short for the trench warfare. He considered it
a slight while everyone else in our family considered it a blessing.
Later,
Loved this one! Great job, Beth.
You know, I read some interesting articles about the pace of the air war in
Iraq where it sounded like the only time the pilots had to rest on some days
was when their planes were being refuelled. What happens when even that time
is cut to near zero by technology like this?
nick
[quoted original message omitted]
> From: Nicholas Caldwell
You'll have one pilot driving a flight from launch until it crosses the "hot
line", when the rest of the pilots will come in and take over their individual
craft.
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 03:01:01PM -0500, laserlight@quixnet.net wrote:
Even then, they might well be dropping out of another "live" situation
directly into the new one. Both the Soviets and (more recently) the US Army
have shown their willingness to overlook major amphetamine abuse by pilots who
wanted to prove they were up to any schedule that could be thrown at them...
R
You just cycle pilots on and off duty faster, perhaps 2 hours on, 10 hours
off. As soon as your shift ends, you are taken out of combat and allowed to
rest. You'd need 6 shifts of pilots, but you could then maintain a high pace
(probably higher than the mechanics can keep up) for extended periods of time.
Remember that current combat flying is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror, remote
piloted aircraft will have a much higher action rate with the boring parts
taken over by computers and AI's while the human pilots are only called in for
the "exciting" parts.
Burn-out for a teen-ager is not much of a problem as most can run 12-16
hours playing video games, sleep a couple of hours and go at it again. If you
limit them to 2 hour stints, they could probably go indefinitely, and you will
more than likely have more of an issue of keeping them away
from video games during their off-hours than them burning out from
flying.
In addition, if physical attributes are less necessary to fill the position,
then you have a much larger potential pool of pilots than current militaries
have (i.e. you don't need perfect vision, you can have a heart murmur, you
don't have be a certain height or weight etc...) and with VR training, you
could have thousands of combat pilots on tap. Or you go down the street of
Ender's Game and don't tell the trainee's that they are flying real planes...
--Binhan
[quoted original message omitted]
G'day,
> Nice piece.
Thanks
> I especially liked the VR bits - something we have been
May well be where I got the inspiration;)
> Are any of your posts based on real games you have had, or is it pure
Games provide the basic layout of key events (e.g. the fighter stuff was
actually from the moves of an Attack Vector game we had the other day and for
the land based stuff we fight out a small part of what I go on to say is a
huge battle), but the rest is imagination. For the
space/airborne stuff its all imagination on write up, but for the
land-based stuff to try and get the tone I was after I have been reading
a lot of Guardian articles of the day on the Boer War, WWI and WWII... I'm not
sure I'm getting exactly what I'm after, but its going reasonably and I'm
learning. Unfortunately I go back to real work in two weeks so only knows how
much time I'll get for this kinda fun after that
;)
Have fun
> Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
A bloody superb pair of short stories!
Ta, Beth.
Energy Drink stock holders get a nice Christmas bonus
> --- Nicholas Caldwell <nicholascaldwell@earthlink.net> wrote:
> rest on some days was when their planes were being refuelled. What
Anyone else remember a certain movie with Robin Williams in it?
> --- B Lin <lin@rxkinetix.com> wrote:
> In addition, if physical attributes are less necessary to fill the