[X] My Assistant

[hobgoblin]

welcome to modern warfare...

or just a walk down the street, if the reports about mobile phones can be trusted...

[Cthulhudreams]

Whats an ADA laser? if its Air defense artillery, which makes perfect sense actually, maybe atmospheric refraction screws up whatever they have? If you can just swat air units out of the sky things are going to be tricker.

Conventional warfare in SR4 is going to be extremely high intensity, and extremely one sided. One side will be catastrophically defeated in the opening hours, and thats that.

Its because something like eleventy billion UAVs armed with with hellfire missles and sniper rifles flying around will cause wholesale slaughter of the other teams ground forces - in a totally precision fashion. So the game is going to be sweeping the other guys UAVs out of the air, and that will be won by whoever has the best electronic warfare/EMP/EMP hardening technology, something that is decided long before anyone actually shows up. Once you've done that, you have a million billion flying things that can kill any infantry man or vehicle long before the target can A) see it B) react, and total victory is assured.

Unconventional warfare is going to much harder as the other team won't drive tanks around or wear convenient 'shoot me please' uniforms to make targeting easier. The UAVs are still going to be flapping around, so if you attract attention and don't have overhead cover things are going to go very badly for you, but that isn't an insurmountable problem.

So tanks are still going to be driving around for working in unconventional warfare and police actions, as these are the only wars anyone will ever actually fight due to the problems with total destruction in conventional warfare.

[Fuchs]

The US Air Force once thought that planes did not need cannons anymore. They were proven wrong and had to add a cannon to the Phantom. Also, costs are a factor - all the UAVs need a very big infrastructure. Then add jamming, smoke generators, and camouflage, and the army that only uses Drones in a centralised assault might very well end up beaten by the army that has people out there who can act on their own initiative even with communication and sensors mostly down.

[Gerzel]

ah, canister. been in use as far back as, at least, the napoleonic era, but still just as effective (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

Buck and Ball Brother, Buck and Ball

[hobgoblin]

Buck and Ball Brother, Buck and Ball

heh, not surprised that i got called on that one (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Kagetenshi]

If you use buckshot to hunt bucks, and birdshot to hunt birds, do you use grapeshot to hunt grapes?

~J

[Shrike30]

Its because something like eleventy billion UAVs armed with with hellfire missles and sniper rifles flying around will cause wholesale slaughter of the other teams ground forces - in a totally precision fashion. So the game is going to be sweeping the other guys UAVs out of the air, and that will be won by whoever has the best electronic warfare/EMP/EMP hardening technology, something that is decided long before anyone actually shows up. Once you've done that, you have a million billion flying things that can kill any infantry man or vehicle long before the target can A) see it B) react, and total victory is assured.

And we thought the ratio of logistics soldiers to combat soldiers was bad now...

[Wounded Ronin]

Is it can it be SR military sim time?

[Sir_Psycho]

Just wondering, is a 50' Cal Barrett considered small-arms? It's man-portable. Can't you fuck up an armored vehicle with that?

[Kagetenshi]

A fairly lightly armored vehicle, yeah.

~J

[jago668]

A fairly lightly armored vehicle, yeah.

~J

Like a bradley.

[kzt]

Like a bradley.

IIRC, brads are currently good against 14.5mm from all aspects and much heaver to the front.

[jago668]

IIRC, brads are currently good against 14.5mm from all aspects and much heaver to the front.

Have they undergone a change since say 6 years ago? One of my friends used to drive one, and he said a 50 cal would pretty much swiss cheese one. Also he said that you might be able to get a 30 cal round in if you were able to shoot long enough with something like an lmg (he didn't think a normal 30 cal rifle would do the trick).

[Sir_Psycho]

So what's a bradley? Is that a light tank? or is it a heavily armored car?

[hobgoblin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2/M3_Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle

its a "IFV" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[hyzmarca]

So what's a bradley? Is that a light tank? or is it a heavily armored car?

The Bradly is an Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Sort of a combination of a tank a scout vehicle and a troop transport. It carries people, does scouring, has a huge gun and can fire wire-guided missiles. It comes in a variety of flavors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_fight...icle_.28BSFV.29

[jago668]

The HBO movie about it was really amusing.

[kzt]

Have they undergone a change since say 6 years ago? One of my friends used to drive one, and he said a 50 cal would pretty much swiss cheese one. Also he said that you might be able to get a 30 cal round in if you were able to shoot long enough with something like an lmg (he didn't think a normal 30 cal rifle would do the trick).

There were armor upgrades (part of the A2 set) in 1988 or so that are supposed to stop 30mm AP cannon rounds. There were further upgrades in 2000 as part of the A3 set. My understanding is that it should be be good against 14.5 from all aspects, though I can't find any support for that in brief search. Global Security says it had 14.5mm protection on all sides initially, the A2 upgrade provided 30mm protection from all sides, with titanium roof armor added in the A3 upgrade. There is a reason that damn thing weight 33 tons without the 3 tons of add-on reactive armor tiles. It's also why the loss rate in Iraq has been fairly low. It's very tough, and quite lethal.

[jago668]

I'm just relaying what a guy that used to drive one in the late 90's early 2000 ish range told me about them. He told me, "...a 50 cal will pretty swiss cheese one, and if you catch AV rocket you might as well forget it..."

So whatever the stats say they are supposed to do, maybe the 2000 A3 upgrade you mentioned fixed it right. When he reupped 2001-2002 I don't remember which, he decided to switch and be a medical equipment repair guy. So the only thing I knew was what they were like before that time, and even that second hand.

[kzt]

The army doesn't magically upgrade all the vehicles in inventory when an upgrade comes out, particularly during the "peace dividend" that gave us the Les Aspin memorial shootout in Mogadishu because we didn't need armored vehicles. It takes years, if not a decade+, to get upgrades to all deployed systems, and some never will. Reserve units tend to be screwed that way. Knew soemone who still had M60 tanks when M60A4s and M60A5s were supposed to issued to all units.

[Cthulhudreams]

The US Air Force once thought that planes did not need cannons anymore. They were proven wrong and had to add a cannon to the Phantom. Also, costs are a factor - all the UAVs need a very big infrastructure. Then add jamming, smoke generators, and camouflage, and the army that only uses Drones in a centralised assault might very well end up beaten by the army that has people out there who can act on their own initiative even with communication and sensors mostly down.

But a UAV with a fairly large gun costs 8k, and a real soldier costs like 800k (based on current costs for a US army soldier. You can adjust depending on what you think the nuyen to dollar conversion rate is, but a car is 14k yens and a racing bike 6, implying that yens are worth more than dollars). And that drone needs a repair guy at an airbase (which in shadowrun is another drone) and a supply line to an airbase. Airbases are much easier to supply than infantry guys running around who need to do stuff like sleep and eat, and are in contact with the enemy. You can even have drone controlled artillery batteries that provide automated fire support as prioritized by a cyberlogistican - again great fire support for the guys on the ground, and doesn't require many people, and is easy to supply.

You can even get a drone to maintain other drones, so the logistics tail doesn't blow out hugely. You'd probably even need less guys, because a half squad could easily oversee a facility with 100+ dedicated maintanence drones running 24/7. Just put up a tent. They can even maintain each other.

It's not like you'd forgo your conventional soldiers either, I see them as a huge force multiplier, with each soldier/jet fighter/whatever backed up by an assortment of related purpose drones. So you don't have a single flight like today, you float dozens of drones.

[Ed_209a]

One of my friends used to drive one, and he said a 50 cal would pretty much swiss cheese one. Also he said that you might be able to get a 30 cal round in if you were able to shoot long enough with something like an lmg (he didn't think a normal 30 cal rifle would do the trick).

I don't mean this directly towards your friend, but I talked to lots of combat arms guys when I was in the service. It was funny how many of them had crackhead ideas about at least one of the pieces of equipment they were supposed to be expert in.

A USMC NCO once told me that the secondary MOS of all enlisted personnel was to whine and complain. Making up reasons why your gear is a POS ranks at least in the top 5.

A guy in my unit was convinced our body armor was POS because it would not stop rifle ammo without plates!

You can't believe the manufacturer 100% even though they made the gizmo, and you can't believe the user 100% even though they use it every day.

[Kagetenshi]

A guy in my unit was convinced our body armor was POS because it would not stop rifle ammo without plates!

WTF? I'd agree with him. If you aren't getting issued at least 25cm of RHA, you're getting ripped off.

But then some pansy'd probably start whining about "being able to move" or "standing up"…

~J

[Fuchs]

But a UAV with a fairly large gun costs 8k, and a real soldier costs like 800k (based on current costs for a US army soldier. You can adjust depending on what you think the nuyen to dollar conversion rate is, but a car is 14k yens and a racing bike 6, implying that yens are worth more than dollars). And that drone needs a repair guy at an airbase (which in shadowrun is another drone) and a supply line to an airbase. Airbases are much easier to supply than infantry guys running around who need to do stuff like sleep and eat, and are in contact with the enemy. You can even have drone controlled artillery batteries that provide automated fire support as prioritized by a cyberlogistican - again great fire support for the guys on the ground, and doesn't require many people, and is easy to supply.

You can even get a drone to maintain other drones, so the logistics tail doesn't blow out hugely. You'd probably even need less guys, because a half squad could easily oversee a facility with 100+ dedicated maintanence drones running 24/7. Just put up a tent. They can even maintain each other.

It's not like you'd forgo your conventional soldiers either, I see them as a huge force multiplier, with each soldier/jet fighter/whatever backed up by an assortment of related purpose drones. So you don't have a single flight like today, you float dozens of drones.

From my experiences with maintenance in the military (only on the "when can we get our APC back? Anytime this week?" end) I am not sure that this will work like you wrote. There are parts to ship for all maintenance, and any drone that maintains drones requires maintenance too. You'd end up, in my opinion, with a huge supply train. As far as I know, aircraft curently are operating, in püeace time, in a 2/3 active, 1/3 down for maintenance mode - and they have much more than one tech per craft.

I can't really see a huge army of drones operating as efficiently as a mixed force of soldiers, vehicles and drones, and then we have hacking to deal with.

[Cthulhudreams]

I'm thinking a mixed force of drones, people and vehicles, probably in a 30-40?/50/10 expenditure too, I think we just have slightly different ideas of how much the costs are going to be (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Remember, the drones can actually maintain each other too, humans are really not required at all for that process, except to make tactical/strategic decisions. The only reason you actually need humans is to make tactical and strategic decisions that are beyond a drone, SR has them more than capable of putting any human devised plan into action.

The supply train today is huge, and no reason to assume that would change in the future - and yeah, a combat readiness of vehicles in wartime of over 80% is pretty exceptional (US just tipped that in WWII in late 1944/1945, germany was running at about 60 percent from 1939 -> 1941, dropped to about 40% after that), though the US in GWI managed over 90 for both ground vehicles and aircraft.

However, there are huge logistical benifts to be made by the use of drones. Supply chains will be orchestrated by humans, but implemented by drones. A big bottleneck in GWI was the drivers for trucks to move the immense amount of crap around, drones have no driver fatigue so you can run the truck 24/7 except for servicing intervals.

Another major GWI bottleneck was the port facilities, but SR has a much more advanced supply chain management capability than we do. Part of the problem was the 'intresting' approach that US based logistics personnel had to things like shipping manifests, and putting what they'd said they put in the box. SR doesn't have this problem, everything and its dog is RFID tagged, so you can see whats in a container at an electronic glance. If the US guys cocked up the order and put 400 M-16's in instead of toliet paper, you'll know about it before you sent the M-16's to the guys with bowel problems. Another GWI problem was the (in)ability of the US forces to get the electronic supply chain management system working (civilian contractors actually deployed with US forces to get this going), but SR4 has a fantastic interworking matrix that enables all sorts of technology solutions - and ties into the capability to see electronic into shipping containers.

There is every reason to assume the entire port operation would be automated, with some humans to make overall supply routing decisions, and then a legion of drones (automated ships, handling equipment and trucks) to implement these directives. Drones don't get tired either, though they do break down, but they can easily run the place into the ground, and you're going to get much more accurate cargo manifests and supply requests enabling more efficient dispatch.

And yes, I'm thinking idealized solutions, and like always the supply chain is going to choke up in all sorts of places for all sorts of reasons. It's just that with the labour multipler you have in drones - one technican can oversee and entire team of maintainence drones and just step in for the tricky bits, and one foreman can manage an entire work crew of docker drones - you're going to ride them and ride them hard.

To look at it in 'fix my APC now' terms, you might be the only human on your 'team' (You'd still have a team, just stepped up the ladder one. You'd effectively be a work crew leader and your team of work crew leaders would be lead by a shop foreman), but you'd have a maybe a dozen or so drones with fully independant decision making and modest capability (probably the level of a junior technican, but they are fully qualified to operate all your equipment and conduct the majority of repairs), and a computer based parts ordering system that would automatically route parts from the closest location, give you an ETA, and then use a drone to ship them into the shop. Additionally, you could call up expert assistance at a moments notice from division or army level, or even from the US via matrix links.

Depending on the repairs, you might be able to work on half a dozen vehicles and drones at once, which is a neat capability. So a 'team' of 5 guys can work on 40-50 vehicles at once (assuming some are waiting for parts etc), which is probably a regimental level repairs facility. I'm not sure how many vehicles you'd expect in the shop at any one time.