From: John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@y...>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 07:56:43 +0430
Subject: [GZG] C-IED/COIN in SGII/DSII
I'm doodling here, so here goes nothing... Presumptions: No nanotech "magic wands", technology levels roughly equivalent to Drake's Hammer's Slammers, Jerry Pournelle's CoDo series, and similiar novels. Volume matters when shipping across space, mass relatively less so. All colonies will have widespread light industrial capacity, frequently in extremely small packages, because initial colonization pattern includes dropping folks near easily extracted resources. That doesn't mean they will have rocket fuel or other exotic substances, but they will have precision machining and fuel, as well as relatively abundant precursor chemicals. Space travel is only used for high-value goods, basic bulk necessities must be manufactured on each planet. IED challenges in SG/DS 1: "Sniffers" -- vapor analysis which detects traces of explosive. This is dangerous for the insurgent in several ways. Depending on the size of the unit, this can protect patrols from direct attack and be used to discover caches of explosives. Problems - false positives, won't detect gunpowder (must be set to ignore any propellant used in the weapons of the troops using it), issues screening out nitrate fertilizer. Built into a drone, this can give you a mine detection dog that doesn't get tired, isn't bothered by heat, and can move faster than human walking speed for the length of a patrol. 2. If Thermals are down to the size of goggles, and image analysis software is far more powerful and accurate, spotting IEDs is going to be significantly easier. Camoflage is going to be much more necessary and hence they are going to be more time consuming to emplace. 3: Concentration of chemical industry. Fertilizer production is not something that is going to be spread out all over the planet, but primarily concentrated in areas easily accessible to major agricultural areas. Smuggling is going to relatively difficult, because presuming you are talking about an invadar attempting to take the whole planet, there is no "safe haven" in a Pakistan equivalent where you can load up some donkeys and cross a mountain pass with a bunch of weapons. At least on younger/smaller colonies, if there's a second, foreign, colony it will presumably be relatively distant and with underdeveloped transportation network (cf. Spanish colonies, which at least one book claims tended to be so badly connected it was actually cheaper to ship something to Spain then ship it back to the other colonies than to ship directly from one to the other) 4: Should be plenty of non-nitrate fertilzer, or fertilizer which is not a useful precursor. For instance, Urea is legal in Afghanistan because turning it into explosives requires bulk quantities of nitric acid. Ammonium Nitrate is generally CAN, which requires some processing, but that's illegal because it only requires minimal processing. Of course, it's produced in quantity in Pakistan and smuggled in, but that would not be an option if there are only three fertilizer plants on the planet, all surrounded by counter-insurgent troops. 5: Grav vehicles have a physical seperation from the ground, so they are less vulnerable to blast damage. Any wheeled or tracked vehicles are likely to built mine resistant unless sniffers are so accurate as to make underbelly explosives completely ineffective. Not sure it is even theoretically possible to build a mine resistant GEV, since they have to have exposed fans and skirts. I suppose you can build in corrugations in the hull to stiffen it, and make the skirt and fan portions so that they are easy to replace. But recovering a GEV or a GRAV vehicle presents some significant challenges of its own. They can't be towed, they will always require a 'lowboy' of some sort. IED trends 1: Passive electronic sensors are primary means of activation. Command wire is dangerous, radio controlled can be jammed too easily, pressure plates are too detectable. Widespread light manufacturing capability means ability to make relatively simple electronic devices will be more widespread. 2: Simple blast IEDs will be limited -- need massive ones for a solid kill and again, sniffers make them difficult to use. 3: The precision machining capacity for EFP disks will be far more widespread. You really do need a better grade of explosive than can be done with fertilizer and diesel fuel, ability to produce explosives that are of high quality and in which the blast wave propagates evenly is a question for discussion. But if it's possible, this will be preferred technique. You can park them 80 meters off the road and shoot them off, almost a one-shot HKP. Anti-personnel method of choice, again, to beat 'sniffers' is going to be DFC/DFFC (aka grapeshot). These can use HME (Home Made Explosives) that are fertilizer based. 4: If I have to support an insurgency by loading a limited-volume spaceship and using it to run a blockade, I'm going to pack it full of things that give me maximum bang for volume. This means military grade explosives, blasting caps, anti-tank weapons, and ammunition. Not pallets of fertilizer bags. You're getting a data chip with the specifications for EFP plates and assembly, and specs for some electronic sensors for activation. The rest is on you. Wildcards: Science fictional interrogation techniques: If accurate lie detectors are possible in a 'hasty' situation, or safe and reliable drug interrogation exists (see David Drake's short story about the interrogator, can't recall title, I'm sure someone else can) insurgency is pointless, making IEDs is pointless, and you're completely unless you have tanks to take the other guy's tanks in a head-on fight. Insurgency requires deception. If I can dope up a random local and find out where all the IEDs near his village are, who the insurgents are, and who their relatives and supporters are, it's Game Over. Nationalism: The Ground Zero Games universe seems to presuppose the death of the concept of nationalism. I know it's an ingrained part of a modern mindset, but it is not fundamental to human nature. If changing one set of off-world tax collectors for another which actually provides the promised protection in return for taxes doesn't bother most people, an insurgency would never get a whole lot of traction in the first place. Many of the cultural and linguistic issues can be settled with the assumption that someone assigned to work on a Francophone colony would have the finest French-translation software money can buy in his earpiece, and 'sleep learning tapes' that implant a deep knowledge of the cultural mores and sensitivites of the subjects.:) So that's a cultural question which would have to be answered before we consider the technical details. Civil Rights: If I can dope up random locals and squeeze them dry, is it likely that I will be permitted to do so? I'm betting yes, because media will be far less immediate (unless you assume non-ship FTL communications, which changes the game a great deal), and because honestly, most people could care less about stuff happening on the other side of the our planet when it's the only one we have, they aren't going to care about stuff that happened six months ago on someone else's planet.