UCAVs

> From the website for the model:
The container has several interface ports to allow maintenance checks to be
performed on the stored vehicles, or to download flight plans. The current
idea is that 50 to 100 UCAVs will be stored at a depot, with all the
containers hooked up to a central computing station to monitor their state. 

--> Now that, my friends, is Aliens(TM) level
technology. Being able to monitor the state of your combat vehicles while they
are containerized via an access port. Even neater
would be 802.11 or something like that - a
wireless way - just walk buy the crate and it
tells you what is in it, what state the contents are in, etc. Now THAT is
technology put to an interesting use.

UCAV will have a twenty-year shelf life, one of
the more unusual parameters for a combat aircraft design by traditional
standards, with removal for tests every five years.
--> This too is interesting and probably a model
for some stuff in sci-fi universes where long-
sleep shipping lasts for months or years. You'd need to be able to have
vehicles you can store and leave on the shelf and maintain infrequently.

(On the long sleep topic, a book from the
eighties - sci-fi novel - was called "Seeds of
War" and it featured a multi-national human
force dispatched somewhere that took years to get to. They had to train in
huge ships along the way and the real neat part was near the end
(SPOILER>>>>>>> STOP NOW>>>>>>>>>>)
...
...
...
OKAY You've been warned.
....
....
Near the end, they find out after going to the planet, kicking butt (taking
some big losses along the way) for a while that the boffins that determined
where the enemy that attacked human space came from were WRONG. They'd kicked
the crap out of the wrong planet. So they had to kit up and head elsewhere....
to repeat the performance....

And one last OT thought: Elves. A race? Yep. One to be pitied: Most of
them don't have the strength to hand-cock a
_REAL_ missile weapon (unlike the Dwarves!)
and most of them have a glass Jaw (unlike any Orc or Half Orc that survived to
puberty).

For a slightly different view: In my campaign world (probably 13 years old
now...), they are a an Eldar race who pretty much live forever if you don't
kill them. They value balance with nature, art (as they see it), and magic.
And they don't like the local Gumans who keep cutting down their Old Growth
Forest to put up fields. In fact, some of them are downright xenocidal as far
as any of the "temporary" races are concerned. And a xenocidal warrior who has
been perfecting his technique for 400 years is not a pretty thing. OTOH, they
aren't very fecund and when one is killed, you've taken out a few hundred or a
thousand years worth of potential so its a pretty huge loss. They make the
alleged American adversity to casualties look positively mild. They strike
from hiding, from a distance, and avoid battle in open terrain or in close
order. I try to make them more than a two dimensional bunch of pointy eared
tree hugging fairy boys. They just have (like any good alien) a different
outlook and a different set of goals and motivations than humans.:)

Yes, but knowing what you know about computers & networks, would you believe
what you read from the computerized readout without double-checking
anyway? Or, more to the point, would you trust your life to it? Hearing
something like, "According to Microsoft Monitor(TM), everything checks out
just fine. Lets go!" would put a chill up my spine...:)

-- Rick Rutherford

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