From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 21:52:50 -0400
Subject: [SG] Scalist Heresy, Heavy Weapons, Vehicles and Infantry
Chris said: Another convert! Long live the Progressive 6mm Popular Revolutionary Front! Down with the 25mm Enemies of the Proletariat! [Tomb] I note that progressive popular revolutionary fronts are usually a mask for murder, mayhem, and terrorism. Enough said. Heavy Weapons: Allan, I find it odd that the artillery of 2183 should take a double action to aim and fire. It might even (possibly) have autoloaders. Or multiple feed types to allow on the fly ammo selection. Especially if vehicle mounted. You make a good point for a one action shot, though I think it almost applies to artillery as well. [Tomb] Vehicles and Infantry.... Chris raises an interesting point about the tank driver having a synthetic vision environment (VR like) that means the commander doesn't need his head to peek out the hatch. Possibly true, but then you give yourself to blinding by EW or some types of weapon systems, and to trusting to enhanced electronics over the human factor. I think people will always want to stick their head out for a look. This seems to be the same logic that prevades the GZGverse in terms of why we even have fighters that might be manned or why we have soldiers instead of shoebox sized hunter-killer bots. I assume the tank has such vision systems. Radar (mm wave), thermal, etc. all blended into a synthetic vision system with automatic threat categorizations. However, at the end of the day, the commander of the tank still needs to know he can *see* things in case someone is spoofing the system. And he needs to know he can make the real threat assessment, in case the computer is loopy. He has more Situational Awareness than any commander today, but his enemies have more spoofing tools. And the poor grunties have countermeasures like phototrophic camouflage battle dress, active chameleon systems on hardshell armours and PA, various jamming and blinding technologies, IR and Electronic signature masking, and perhaps even something in their jammies that block mmwave or larger battlefield systems that screw up the mmwave systems. For every action, a counteraction. This of course is all appended with the famous Atkinson IMU.