The XM30 described in SR4 reminds me of several RL designs examined as "future trooper" weapons by the USA Army, and even look much like the RL XM8 while being more similar to the XM-29 OICW. On the other hand, Ares might have a tighter grip on the Washington/Atlanta decision-makers than HK (being deeply involved in the North American military industry and in the Chicago debacle of the late 2050's), and push their excellent Ares Alpha as the standard-issue arm of the UCAS and CAS forces.

So, what personal weapons - Pistols, SMGs (if any), Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Sniper Rifles and LMGs should the UCAS and CAS Armies and Marines use in 2070?

Well, as of 2064, I have them using the M23 and Browning Max-Power.

Well, IIRC Street Samurai Catalogue and Fields of Fire (early to mid 2050s) presented the Steyr AUG CSL as the CAS military's assault rifle while the UCAS used the Colt M22A2 and M23 for regular troops and the Ares Alpha for Special Forces.

IRL militaries don't change guns often.
The M1911 was only replaced by the M9 after ~70 years.
The M16 has been used since the early 1960s (and now the XM8 has been cancelled while the SCAR is planned only for Special Forces use).
In Germany the G3 was used for almost 40 years before replacement with the G36 began.

The Walther MA-2100 is listed as the sniper rifle of choice in the CAS in both CC and SR4. I'd agree with My$t1c (just don't want to type out the symbol ) that it probably hasn't changed much since the 2050's on the grunt end.

Basically, the military is going to try for the most bang for their buck as far as the "average" soldier (i don't think an "average" soldier exists) is concerned. The gummint doesn't have unlimited cash. Kindof on that note, I doubt military planners would see much need for every soldier to have an underbarrel grenade launcher.

Special Forces and other elite units are going to use the tool best suited to the job based upon the specifics of the mission. Usually cost won't be an issue so much as availability. SF soldiers have stepped into the field carrying Ak-47's on more than one occasion not because there wasn't anything better, but because ammunition would be easier to find in the field. Obviously, this isn't an issue in the world of SR since all AR's appearantly use the same type of ammunition

Since as Frosty said cost is important, I figure the average platoon would be made up of guys carrying M-23's with the grenadiers having an added grenade launcher but none of the other bells and whistles like Gasvent or scopes the M22A2 carries. For the SAW's the only two canon choices are the Ingram Valiant and Ares MP-LMG. The Ingram is slightly heavier but seven hundred nuyen a unit cheaper, so unless Ares uses its influence - although for all we know they also own Ingram - I'd see the DoD taking the Valiant.

In my game, the US Army will be picking a new AR in the next 5 years, 2010, say, then going right through to the M23 in the 2050s. That should take them well past the SR4 era.

Thanks for your help!

So far, this is what I'm leaning towards:
- Armor: Camoflage Suit.
- "Grunt" (i.e. non-SF) Assault Rifle: Colt M23 (using NightmareX's conversion from Cannon Companion).
- One "Grunt" per Fireteam: M23 + Underbarrel Grenade Launcher.
- SAW: Ingram Valiant X (or whatever its called in SR4, I don't have the book next to me right now).
- Service Pistol (Officers? Non-combatants? Vehicle crews?): Ares Predator (VI?).
- Special Forces Assault Rifle: Ares Alpha.
- PDW/SMG: HK-227X? HK MP5X?

My understanding is that the Spec. Ops. guys would actually choose their weapons from mission to mission based on the Who, What, When, Where criteria, so I would just use the standard charater generation availability rules and a fixed budget for them. Your basic Infatry Equipment looks good, though I would probably go with a Light Pistol (maybe the Colt America) rather than a heavy, except for MP units (from what I understand the army is issued a 9mm now, and only MP's are allowed to carry the M1911A1)

Personally I see Armies going more and more towards todays model of better, not bigger armies. So I see them all equipped with Ares - with a variety of grenade types throughout the unit.

Definately they'd have smartlinks, audio and visual magnification. I'd have each squad in an APC, probably a citymaster for mechanics purposes. In the CM is the 2 or 3 man crew of the vehicle. A rigger/driver, a rigger/gunner both of whom can run drones and some sort of "hacker" type only with mostly anti-hacker skills.

The job of the squad would be to close with and destroy the enemy whlie the people in the citymaster provide recon, backup heavy firepower, and defend the wireless network.

The UCAS in the Shadowrun world I run is equipped by Ares almost exclusively.

Sure, the gun might have the STATS of an Ingram White Knight, but it has a big ass "Ares" logo branded into the pistol grip.

The CAS is a little more discriminating, and refused an exclusive contract for better prices.

IIRC, Colt is an Ares brand. Also I would tend to agree with Ben's Mechanized Infantry model, though a variety of vehicles could be employed Citymasters, Devil Rat APC's, ARes Dragon Helicopters, T-Birds. Also keep in mind that Artillery or Air support may be available and probably at the behest of a field spotter, who would most likely be a hacker with slightly diminished weapons skills to make room for some electronic warfare skills. This hacker may have some drone piloting skills as well as access to the vehicle teams network.

Wouldn't training and employment costs far outweigh those equipment costs? Hell yes.

I could see them all having that nice gear, because it isn't that expensive, and you can be sure they get a discount for buying in bulk.

I'd have a harder time seeing them affording the ammo for the guns, since in Sr4 you can buy a gun for 500 bucks and spend 1k on ammo for it.

3500 for a helmet with all the vision and audio enhancements.
19000 for a fully modified full body combat suit.
4000 for an Ares Alpha with ammo/grenades and a backup pistol.
Figure 8500 for a nice commlink with a great signal rating and basic other gear like med kit, stim patches, etc.
-------------
35,000 per soldier x 12 soldiers in a Citymaster = 420,000.

A stock citymaster is 50,000. Maybe add 30,000 worth of mods/weapons to it.

Add in 3 specialists for driving, shooting, and running the network. Mostly they'll have survielance drones, but they'll probably have a lot of programs at a high ranking. Figure 500k worth of programs, recon drones, and maybe cyberware (control rig especially). The backup riggers should have their own programs to back up the hacker same as the hacker can back up the rigger.

That's 1 million for a team of 15 people inside an APC. A stock cost now IRL for an M2 Bradley is around 1.5 million and that's just the vehicle.

So yeah, I DO think that they'll have all that equipment. Equipment is cheap, training soldiers to use it is much harder.

I remember in one old SR novel that that was pretty much the way things were described for the UCAS military. Can't remember the name of the novel, though I can remember that the plot was about a plot between a few members of the UCAS brass and the CAS brass to... do something. I remember that there was a shadowrunner wannabe rigger/decker that became a real shadowrunner as the main character.

Oh, in my group we always figured it was 1=1. Where is that written?

At any rate, it's not like each member of the military has hundreds of thousands in cyberware. All that equipment is cyberware free.

1 might equal 3 to 5 2070 UCAS dollars, but it would equal 1 2005 US dollar.

i wouldn't personally include program costs. i'm sure the UCAS military developes their own programs, and can make as many copies as they need. thus, only the original development cost has any relevance.

Or, more likely, buying bigger and better bombs, or outfitting the special forces with t3h ub3r cyb3r.

No, I was right the first time.

"I'll be happy the day schools have all the money they need, and the air force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber."

Equipment costs are dirt cheap in SR, compared to salary and training costs. Drones especially -- I'd image that they'd use drones instead of people wherever possible. Training and salary for a veteran soldier could reasonably top .5 to 1 million nuyen -- or you could send in the 10,000 nuyen steel lynx w/ a few military upgrades.

Mechanized Infantry seems to be the direction towards which modern militaries are leaning - though Motorized (i.e. riding Jeeps rather than APCs) is possible as well, and, for example, is widely used by the RL IDF (Israeli Defense Force) in addsition to Mechanized Infantry.

So one APC per squad or one HUMVEE (sp?) per Fireteam is totally reasonable. Helicopters would be reserved for Airborn Cavalry and Special Forces.

A high-tech helmet is a must; probably Low Light, Image Link and Flare Compensation, with the cooler mods (magnification, thermo, ultrasound) reserved for SpecForces; if a smartlinked weapon is used by non-SpecForce "grunts", they will have a smartlink in their helmet as well.

Camoflage Suits make sense to me more than Full Body Armor; keep the FBA for Bomb Squads, higher-grade Riot Cops, some SpecForces and Corp units.

The rifle would remain the M-23, with an underbarrel Grenade Launcher given to one soldier per fireteam.

And an Ingram White Knight seems like a reasonable SAW; would the Army use Gyromounts and Smartlinks with them as well?

Pistol-wise, I think I'll accept stevebugge's suggestion and give Colt America L36's to the troops, and Predator-IVs to the MPs.

What about a sniper-rifle?

Seeing as that 1 SAW accounts for a hefty percentage of the squad's sustained-fire capability, I'd expect it to have some bells and whistles. The gyro-mount I'd doubt just because it affects mobility so much.

FBA has environmental options. What soldier doesn't want his own air conditioner or heater on his armor!

Besides, then the UCAS has to hear it from the democrats about how not everyone has the best body armor available...

At any rate it's up to the GM what the military uses in his world. IMHO militaries are going to be smaller, with considerable firepower and technology available to the individual soldier.

I don't think I'd give regular forces any cyberware, but I'd give them the best available of the non-cyberwear gear. It gets passed on to the next generation of soldiers when the previous leaves. Ares Alphas were around in the 3rd edition book, maybe earlier but I never played them. So that's about 20 years worth of use the military could have gotten from them.

Yeah, the thing is, when your unit of 20 guys in FBA can take down their unit of 100 guys in less advanced armor, and then march through any terrain without worry of most diseases, animal bites, overheating, etc etc, that smaller army full of FBA seems really nice. Also, the recruits will be of a much higher quality, as the military can afford to only accept the best, and indeed cannot afford not to.
As for border patrols, which require larger militaries, that is mostly computerized already, it is far cheaper to set up drone patrols and surveillance and have a rapid response unit go in to take care of it.

I see it more like this.

3 "Grunts" Medium Milspec FBA, Ares Alpha, trimmings incl Smartlink (this is a 5,000 upgrade, there is no reason to skimp there). They all have the underbarrel grenade launcher, as it is not all that expensive for the new smaller army. Battletac system is a must.
1 "Hard Target Specialist" Mitsubishi MRL w/ Anti Vehicular and High Explosive rounds, Heavy Milspec FBA, HK MP5TX w/ smartlink replacing laser sight.
1 "Squad Assault Weapon" Heavy FBA, Ultimax-HMG-2 w/ gyromount. You can find someone strong and big enough to carry, use and remove recoil for the heavier weapon, so there is no reason to go with the lighter weapon in the new trimmed army.
1 "Squad leader/communications" equipped as per standard grunt, but as detailed in SR4 is equipped with a top of the line milspec commlink, through which his entire squad is subscribed and closed off to outside access. Has the Battletac command unit.

Finally, you will have a mage in every spec ops squad, trained and included in the unit. The other magical support will be in a general pool, and trained in working with several units in a support role, and able to integrate in standard tactics. Any unit investigating a disturbance or going out to the field will have magical support, even if in the field you tend to have one mage per 3-4 units.

"Magical Support" equipped with Light Milspec Full Body Armor (they cannot afford to turn down magical assistance because of being less physically able) HKMP5-TX, smartlinked through helm and trode rigs. Battletac unit. Various foci and fetishes as needed. Bound spirits on hand usually around F4-6 for standard squad, 6-9 for spec ops. (They have plenty of time generally to summon and bind spirits, and support to assist in the rituals in case things go wrong)

So really, don't mess with the military, especially in 2070.

Oh and I can't wait to find out what the Sioux Wildcats are like. They clean up against the Tir Ghosts, unless they manage to trick them well enough. Sioux Wildcats are the #1 spec ops teams in the Sixth World.

I guess it probably varies wildly depending on mission. The current US military seems to be going through a lot of growing pains adapting to the evolving mission.

• In the 70s and 80s, they were built to counter massive Warsaw Pact offensives with combined-arms battles in Europe. (Large numbers of moderately trained troops with less mobile heavy equipment - tanks, artillery, apcs, air support.)
• In the 90s the vision was that we should trade in our huge mechanized force for smaller specialized strike teams that could insert covertly in and conduct 'low intensity operations' (raiding contras and taking out drug cartels, etc.) (Small, highly trained teams with more focus on mobility than firepower.) (We never really switched over to this, but we did cut the Army head-count in have, and enlarge the Special Forces to division-sized.)
• Now there's some discussion (which probably won't go anywhere) about making the military more effective for police-action type missions. (Would require larger percentage of light infantry and mech infantry, with little or no heavy armor.)

CAS and UCAS both have a lot of border threats, so I'd guess that they'd be back in the 70s model, with lots of tanks, mech infantry, and air support (though at a lower level to reflect their weaker economies), and that soldiers' individual weapons, armor, and enhancements wouldn't get as much attention. Anything that penetrates the armor 18 (hardened) skin of the Neo-Bradley isn't going to care much about the milspec armor an individual soldier might have inside.

The problem is, in SR4 mass warsaw pact combined arms craziness gets trumped by highly trained and equipped specialists.

The greatest threats are not overt offensives, but rather small infiltrating strike teams. The best defense against this is drone coverage to quickly suppress and pin down while rapid response strike teams move in to take out the threat.

The nice thing about this is even with an invasion, you can do the same thing. Harrass and pin down with drones (they can be infiltrated by powering them down and leaving them in the path of the army until activated) and quick strike teams take out strategic targets to compromise the structure of the army as a whole.

The battlefield is moving to mobility and information, that is where the war is fought.

As for the antitank missile penetrating the bradley and the milspec armor inside, if it has to go through the tank than the milspec has a really good chance of surviving, much greater than lighter armored enemies. As for directly targeting them, milspec armor is virtually immune to everything below APDS & sniper rifles/grenade launchers and antivehicular weaponry. Even if it does not ping the assault rifles rounds, they will be making their body test on 2s anyways.
When you have to use anti-vehicular or APDS for every enemy you face, it makes things very painful and tricky.

I'm new to the forums, and thought I'd throw a "Hi" out on this thread, and throw out a question/comment.

I was under the impression that the various goverments were far more at the mercy of the megacorps in Shadowrun than in real life, so it stands to reason that standing armies that have the real power of a nation behind them are really not condusive to the Shadowrun world as envisioned by the original developers of the game, as they would seriously pose a threat to the continued bottom line of the megacorps... A government that has the ability (military might) to tax an entity (Ares or SabreCorp) will do so.

To that end I see UCAS having a military that is numerically weak, but not altogether underfunded... with some highly trained and specialized spec-ops units that are the real threat deterants with the Billy Bad @ss equipment you'd expect to see in a military unit.

Well, I'm probably a minority in this respect, I have really enjoyed the mechanics of the new 4.0 of Shadowrun, but any hopes of the authors of the book trying to update the history of the SR world to take into effect the decade since the original story came out, was squashed when I saw that they had repackaged the storyline that feels like a bunch of Seattle 7th graders' "History of the World" part 3.

Setting my gripes aside, what kind of military force do others see UCAS having? From what I can tell, the source books spend more time talking up the CAS military (like who sets their story arcs in Dallas or Atlanta when we've got hundreds and hundreds of pages on Seattle?) than the capabilities of the UCAS military.

Apathy beat me to it regarding the capability to hold objectives.

Because assault cannons are not useful against general targets, and light infiltrating insurgents. Or rather, not as useful as more standard weaponry.

As for what happens when a HEAT round hits a vehicle and the people inside it are wearing hardened milspec armor, no I do not know. Are you saying that you know how resilient the armor is? How resistant to heat and pressure? You know exactly what will happen when this fictional body armor comes up against a HEAT missile after expending it's energy through the hull of the vehicle?

We don't actually know, which is why we have rules. The rules say that the armor of the bradley helps reduce the damage to the passengers, at which point they have to deal with the vehicle exploding, if it does so. Is there rules for that? I imagine the explosion will not be enough to vaporize anyone in milspec armor, but I have not brushed up on my 3rd in a while.

As for taking and holding terrain, that can be done similarily. Use your recon to detect incoming troop movements. If it is small enough to go undetected, it is small enough that you can effectively combat it when it gets there. If it is large it will be detected well in advance, and you can raid them on their way there, keep them held up, that sort of thing.

After vietnam, the world realized that guerilla style warfare was the greatest threat and asset to an army, and mobility, intelligence and not just sitting and holding the line became the most important part.

I imagine after the attempts to wage war on NAN came about, there was similar things learned. With the advance of milspec armor, that was immune to the basic weapon of almost every trooper in the world, things changed again.

This is almost off-topic, but what about the metatype of the army? I would imagine that the army targets Orks heavily for recruitment. There are a lot of orks in the slums, the military would promise money (some of which could be sent back to their families), a career, a SIN. Not to mention they're tough. Trolls are perfect heavy weapons platforms.
I'm not saying that the military would create units comprised entirely of a particular type of meta; the troll-brigade, for example. That just reeks too obviously of the South Park movie's operation "Human shield" and operation "Hide behind the darkies." or whatever it was called.
But one Troll in every squad to carry the HMG would be nice.
Thoughts? Flames?

I don't think they'd target orks directly, any more than today they specifically target minorities.

They would target economically disadvantaged individuals, especially those in good phyusical shape. That would cover a lot of meta-humans.

if a human is big enough and tough enough to handle the HMG, he will. but yeah, probably more of them will be trolls or orks.

But what about man-portable ordinance that simply cannot be considered by our human military. If we're talking about a MG that a beefy human can carry, what can of gun can the beefy troll carry? We're talking about a whole new league of man-portable weaponry, here.

I don't think it would be efficient for standard infantry to have in their inventory weaponry that only a Troll (or cybered human) can use.

now, spec ops would different.

of course, nothing in the rules supports some wpns only being useable by trolls. technically, even a ST1 human can "rambo" a machine gun

It's magic hardened steel that doesn't shred into the occupants or something...

It's a game, when talking about what fictional equipment fictional nations would use we have to take into account how that equipment works in the game world - IE, the rules.

I found this:

Army Grunts Will Be ‘Million-Dollar’ Men
The cost of equipping soldiers has escalated dramatically since the beginning of the war in Iraq, says the Army’s top deputy for acquisition. Some troops in specialized jobs today carry more than $100,000 in gear.

Equipping a soldier with basic gear for Vietnam cost $2,000. The same equipment now costs $25,000. “When we start adding other things—such as communications gear—you get close to $100,000,” says Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac.

The trend is alarming, Yakovac says. “I believe eventually we are heading to the ‘million-dollar’ man.”

This could create huge financial problems for the Army, he warns. “If this nation wants this Army to be capable … our dollar requirements will continue to grow.”

The casualty rate is still less in mechanized forces than foot soldiers IRL. So even though your chances of dying in mass numbers are greater you're still safer overall.

And, while a HEAT round that penetrates is quite deadly there are a ton of ways to defeat it without putting in a foot of armor.

FrostyNSO doesn't know what he's talking about. haven't you ever watched GI Joe? those Cobra planes are always exploding into massive fireballs, and the pilots just calmy pull their ripcords and parachute to safety. GI Joe wouldn't lie to us--after all, knowing is half the battle!