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TinkerGnome
I'm currently thinking heavily on what the standard soldiers in the UCAS armed forces would look like. Are there stats anywhere that I can adapt to my ends? Failing that, does anyone know what companies hold the production contracts for weapons, armor, etc.?

If there are books out there with this info, I'd appreciate the references as well smile.gif Otherwise, it's time to start making things up (which is still fun).
Dim Sum
Canadians are sent out ahead of the main line of battle in compact formation as mine sweepers - they stick their fingers in their ears, tongues licking their lips as they use their right feet to probe ahead one step at a time.

The Americans bring up the rear with tanks and shit.
Tanka
I slap Dim Sum with my Trout of Infalibility...
Fortune
IIRC, there is information and examples of UCAS soldiers in Super Tuesday and either Brainscan or RA: Sutdown.
Fortune
QUOTE (tanka)
I slap Dim Sum with my Trout of Infalibility...

It can't be too infallible! biggrin.gif
Dim Sum
The Trout of Infallibility??? eek.gif

Whoa! Is that, like, a major artefact?!! Can my 18th level half-elven fighter/macho tree hugger/monk of Chaotic Indifferent alignment use it?

*runs away with the fish*

biggrin.gif
Tanka
Curse you spelling, curse you!

It's the fact that a girl I know (and who I think is quite hot) isn't sending me a picture that she keeps telling me about.

Or maybe because it's midnight.
Dim Sum
Midnight?

It's just gone 1300 over here.

A-hah!

Proof that time travel is possible! I'm 13 hours ahead of you in the future!

grinbig.gif
Tanka
Silly Singaporian. Or person in Singapore.

Ha! I read the little thing on the side! I win!

Or not.

Oh, yeah, topic...

Uh... Wasn't there an entry in one of the Neo-A books? If not, maybe Target: UCAS or somesuch.
Dim Sum
Citizen of Singapore = SingaporEAN smile.gif

However, I am, thankfully, not one. I just work here ... live here ... married here. More to do here than in Pencilvainia (isn't that something to do with being vain about your pencils?). biggrin.gif

On topic ... TinkerGnome, I don't recall any canon material on the subject, dude.
mfb
i hate to be the one to put this back on-topic, but:

Colt's got the contract for the M-22/23. other than that, i'm not sure--but given the insanely unpredictable state of SR's financial world, i'm willing to bet the UCAS renegotiates contracts for fungible goods (ammo, MREs, clothing, etc.) on a yearly basis, if not more often. in SR, governments have to maintain some level of financial viability, or they'll lose all of their independence from the corps (instead of just most of it).

what i'm saying is that you can make up the manufacturers of military goods, and still be correct--maybe the same manufacturer doesn't have the contract this year, but it's easily possible that they did last year and might get it again next year.

as far as grunt stats, i think--and many people agree--that most militaries will be going towards smaller, leaner, meaner militaries. therefore, don't be afraid to give all your grunts a smartlink-1, formfit layered under armored camo, and EX-X ammo (or whatever gear floats your boat). everyone should have ARs at 5 or so, and sergeants should have SUT at the same level. they should be medium-badass, probably around the proficiency of a starting-level runner. i tend to give them professional ratings of 3 and karma pools of 2 or so.
moosegod
A lot of this stuff gets covered in the thread on magic users in the military.
Bulldrek
Wow, closing the lounge really upped the ante round these parts. Jeesh I take about eight months worth of vacation and look what happens to the joint?

Moosegod is correct that this very topic has been very well covered in the past, and if you are interested in some pretty serious answers i'd start my search at the old forums, and the Shadowrun Archive-I can think of at least a dozen really good threads that I have seen over the years, and the Archive has some decent ideas to kick around.

MFB is correct about the Colt contract, although I seem to recall, and someone fact check me here, that Colt is a subsidiary of Ares? Is that even close to being correct? Either way, expect Ares which maintains close ties with the UCAS government to supply a great deal of their day to day beans, bullets and drekcetera.

Also expect Ares at the minimum, and probably some other corps to cross train with UCAS forces at all levels. (Well maybe not Flagg rank staff...but you never know.)

I agree with the downsizing remark, as far as it goes, although I caution you to remember that the balkanization of North America means that everyone keeps their people active and training.

Personally I'd tailor the NPC"s to fit my campaign-if you're running starting characters, at lets say 123 points, then make your average grunt oppostion run at about a 110 points, but keep in mind everybody in the military has a buddy, and the fire team is the basic level of Unit Organization. So encountering 4 or more dog faces at once would be a real easy thing to do. Play up the coordinated fields of fire, and combined arms and you can make even the lamest grunt a real threat. (Yeah i'm a plebe, but a plebe with artillery support and my bud here has a Stoner HMG, wanna find out why its called a general purpose weapon?)
Dogsoup
What about APDS? How common is it among the common troopers?
Tanka
It's probably reserved for special forces and snipers. No use throwing APDS in an automatic weapon. Too many wasted bullets when regular ammo works just as well. (Excluding the 1/2 Ballistic)
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (tanka)
No use throwing APDS in an automatic weapon.

IRL, APDS ammunition is mostly -- almost exclusively -- used in MMGs and HMGs. M948 7.62x51 NATO SLAP rounds in M240s and M60s as well as M134 and the odd sniper rifle, and M903 and M962 SLAP and SLAP-T .50BMG rounds for M2HBs. I'm under the impression that Barretts and the like cannot fire APDS ammunition, probably because of the muzzle brakes?
Tanka
The Barret considers its special ammo APDS, IIRC.
Austere Emancipator
I was talking IRL all the way through, I'm sorry that was a bit unclear. The REAL Barretts cannot fire APDS ammunition. At least that's what the nifty realmedia video that used to be (and might still be) on Raygun's site said.

Yes, Barrett M121 ammunition is automagically considered APDS ruleswise in SR canon. Those cost a lot more than normal rounds anyhoo (7 vs 20 nuyen a pop), and have an extra bonus of halved Barrier Ratings too, which normal APDS ammo doesn't have (IIRC). And the Barrett M121 is pretty screwy anyway -- like the moronic +2 Recoil on the first shot, or the integral silencer, or the fact that it can't fire AV ammunition... WTF?
TinkerGnome
Thanks for the book references. I also found another recent thread here that covers a lot of my questions. If the search function didn't make me foam at the mouth, I'd probably have found it before posting wink.gif
JongWK
Aztlan SB states that Aztlaner (or Aztek, as in Shadowbeat) troops use the big clumsy weapons, while Aztechnology has all the cool stuff (i.e, SotA Laser Weapons, Militech Armor, etc). Aztlan's military is 50.000 strong, while Aztechnology has 150.000 in uniform.

Then again, that is a special case.

I'd imagine the UCAS military to be heavy with Ares and Novatech equipment. Lots of soldiers, too, maybe not as many as the CAS (check SoNA's CAS & UCAS chapters).
FlakJacket
IIRC the CAS has the largest standing army in north America, sitting mainly down in Texas playing a game of who blinks first with the Azzies.
moosegod
Largest, yes. However, their equipment tends to be lower par than everyone elses (YotC p. findityourself).

The UCAS is famous for its airpower and use of expensive gear.
JongWK
APDS is standard for both Aztlan and ACS (Aztechnology Corporate Security) forces.

The lower end troops from both tend to have a by-the-book approach to problem solving (little imagination).

On the other side of the coin, the Azzies compensate with superior firepower and armor: when Lone Star cop would use Amor Jacket and Thunderbolt, the Azzie beat cop uses security armor and assault rifles... kinda makes you worried, doesn't it? nyahnyah.gif
Crimsondude 2.0
Nope. It only worries me South of the border, down Aztlan way... Oh, sorry, that if ACS kills someone while shooting at you, YOU'RE liable.
JongWK
Oh yes, that too. Add to that the fact that they like to switch (without warning) their elite troops with the standard beat cops.

PC: "Ha! I attack the cop"

DM: (Rolls 4d6+14 Initiative)

PC: "Errr..."
Crimsondude 2.0
Unless you have a bastard PC who laughs at a 38 init.
mfb
let him laugh as he mows down the first one.
Chodav
There are some fascinating things going on in the modern infantry world. To cite a few examples, the next generation of infantry rifle will have a camera linked to a helmet display, a mini-grenade launcher, and a rangefinder. The aforementioned helmet display will have maps, communications, etc. And there are currently drugs (called Go and Stop) issued to certain units under certain conditions that act as tailored stimulants and sleep-aids for long-duration operations.

Now fast forward 60 years and let your imagination run wild . . . The "average" grunt in the 2060's will have personal commo (possibly implanted), a "smart" weapon (even if it's only plugged into the helmet display instead of cybered), far better body armor cum NBC protective gear than today, and very possibly access to stimulants. And not one bit of that is particularly expensive, nor does it require surgery, though surgical implantation would make some of it work better.

Example light infantryman (a walking grunt) of the UCAS or any other reasonably wealthy country (note that the brand names are from the books - I'm only using them to help you find the listing - each military undoubtedly would have preferred equipment providers):

Victory Industrious Jumpsuit with Insulation 2 and Non-conductive 2 (-2 power against contact-vectored chemicals, fire, cold, and electric attacks), plus a flak jacket equivalent to a Secure Ultra-Vest. Total armor 4 / 2. Drop the Insulation 2 in warmer climes, and don't forget it's camouflaged for +2 (or more) to Stealth open tests to hide.

Security Helmet or equivalent with inhalation-vector chemical protection, BattleTac communications gear (including basic land navigation, maps, and compass), smartlink-II goggles, low-light and/or thermographic vision, flare compensation, and hearing protection.

Colt M23 with regular ammo (200-250 rounds), HE mini-grenades (6-10 rounds), smartlink-II, and a bayonet. (Show me something in canon that says the Geneva Convention isn't still adhered to by the first-world nations.)

Dog tags (or a bio-monitor, more likely), trauma patch, 3 antidote patches (like the 3 atropine injectors of today, and for the same reason), bandage(s), 2 1-quart canteens, and assorted personal items (like a good knife, 100mph tape, and 550 cord).

On the down side, most governments would probably not pay for the ECCM upgrade from the standard 1 to something better.

Personally, if one of my characters saw four of these individuals walking down the trail with their low TN's and presumably immediate and lethal air support (it's all about combined arms!), said character would be using the Running specialization of Athletics until he ran out of stamina, then using the Hiding specialization of Stealth until he was found, and then using the Fast-talking specialization of Negotiation until they got tired of his yammering and capped his a**.

It doesn't pay to mess with the biggest gang in town, and that's unsually the police or military, depending on where you are.
Siege
Actually, the M22 comes with the integral grenade launcher.

The M23 is the naked version.

Other than that, your assessment is pretty much on the money -- if they scale back the numbers of active duty troops, the remaining units will see an escalation in the training standard.

The ranks of bodies necessary will probably be pulled from the ranks of National Guard units.

The dogtag probably wouldn't disappear for the simple fact that electronics break. Dogtags are harder to fold, spindle and mutilate.

Although an integrated biomonitor in the suit along with an autoinjector would probably also be standard issue -- the equivelant of a trauma patch, stim patch and a broad-spectrum antibiotic.

Given the Army's belief (95% of all combat takes place at close quarters), it seems likely that smart hardware would see standard issue, although datajacks would also be reasonable standard issue to grunts.

-Siege
Dim Sum
I think every American soldier in the UCAS would come equipped with his own Canadian minesweeper .... grinbig.gif

Other than that, I can't fault Chodav on his "look into the future" but I think that implanted ware would be slightly more common among the more elite formations (not spec forces, but those units with distinguished histories like the 101st and 82nd Airborne, 1st Armoured Cav, 10th Mountain, etc.), in particular the line combat soldiers. The implants don't have to be anything horrendously expensive but give enough of an advantage to overcome the cost-benefit ratios.
Chodav
Additional food for thought - in this day and age, many young kids join the military for "adventure" like they see in the movies. In the 2060's, many young kids will do exactly the same thing . . .

An infantryman can enlist or re-enlist nowadays and get a bonus of $2,000 to $10,000, depending on exactly what sort of infantryman he is, what other schools he's completed, and so on.

During Vietnam, soldiers who enlisted were guaranteed NOT to be assigned to Vietnam if they agreed to serve four years instead of two. (They went to Korea or Germany instead.)

In 2060, I can easily see soldiers enlisting or re-enlisting in exchange for cyberware, or spending their bonus on cyberware that a military ID card makes easier to get. ("Here, have your CO sign this form.") Young, eager studs would likely be drawn towards boosted reflexes, dermal armor, and the like. More "boring" stuff like commo gear and smartlinks would be done by the Army, probably. And one sort of implant you will NEVER see in a UCAS soldier (except possibly SpecOps)- implanted weapons! The Army likes to be able to take the toys back at the end of the day. Barracks fights can be ugly as it is - imagine if you added spurs . . .
Dim Sum
Exactly. And after a good tour of duty, join a organisation like MET2000 or the corps, become a Desert War vet and market your skills in the lucrative private security market with all the whiz-bang gear already acquired!
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Chodav)
Colt M23 with regular ammo (200-250 rounds), HE mini-grenades (6-10 rounds), smartlink-II, and a bayonet. (Show me something in canon that says the Geneva Convention isn't still adhered to by the first-world nations.)

I more or less agree with most of what you said, but I would like to point out that APDS is in no way banned by the Geneva Convention (though you most likely knew that already). And since armor piercing small arms ammunition technology has obviously advanced significantly (since APDS does not have any kind of Power of DL reduction), APDS is quite likely to be the standard ammunition type even for grunts. Explosive rounds would be right out, though.

In my games, APDS ammunition DO have a significantly reduced Power level, and so aren't army standard rounds for anything smaller than MMGs/GPMGs.

The only cyberware soldiers have IMG are Smartlinks, Biomonitors, and Datajacks, basically what people have been saying. A set like that is well under 10k, so it could easily be implanted on the average line soldier. Special operations forces might have ware like Boosted-1 and others in that price range. Only units like 1st SFOD-Delta are likely to have ware much more expensive than that.
Siege
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
QUOTE (Chodav)
Colt M23 with regular ammo (200-250 rounds), HE mini-grenades (6-10 rounds), smartlink-II, and a bayonet. (Show me something in canon that says the Geneva Convention isn't still adhered to by the first-world nations.)

I more or less agree with most of what you said, but I would like to point out that APDS is in no way banned by the Geneva Convention (though you most likely knew that already). And since armor piercing small arms ammunition technology has obviously advanced significantly (since APDS does not have any kind of Power of DL reduction), APDS is quite likely to be the standard ammunition type even for grunts. Explosive rounds would be right out, though.

In my games, APDS ammunition DO have a significantly reduced Power level, and so aren't army standard rounds for anything smaller than MMGs/GPMGs.

The only cyberware soldiers have IMG are Smartlinks, Biomonitors, and Datajacks, basically what people have been saying. A set like that is well under 10k, so it could easily be implanted on the average line soldier. Special operations forces might have ware like Boosted-1 and others in that price range. Only units like 1st SFOD-Delta are likely to have ware much more expensive than that.

Probably low-light mods and flare comps as well -- unless night-goggle tech has advanced to the point where they aren't such a pain to use anymore.

From a strict price comparison,

Datajack 1,000
smartlink 2 3,500
biomonitor 5,000
lowlight 3,000
flare comps 2,000

Based on the whopping 5k for the biomonitor, I'd assume they'd use an external variant and integrate it into the suit.

Which begs an interesting question -- how many electronics can you integrate into a suit of armor? A biomonitor, a HUD, a smartgun adapter in the gloves, vision enhacements in the helmet: image mag, lowlight, a transceiver in the helmet and an autoinjector in the thigh. Oh yeah, a trode rig in the helmt. grinbig.gif

-Siege
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (Siege)
Probably low-light mods and flare comps as well --  unless night-goggle tech has advanced to the point where they aren't such a pain to use anymore.

Well, 20x Thermo + L-L goggles have negligible weight and a concealability of 6, so I guess there has been significant advancement in tech. On the other hand, those goggles would cost 2,700 nuyen.gif which isn't that much less than L-L or Thermo Retinal Mod cyberware.

That suit is looking good... If you really can put all that in a suit without making it too complicated, it would make things a lot easier -- no need to implant soldiers.
FlakJacket
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
Well, 20x Thermo + L-L goggles have negligible weight and a concealability of 6, so I guess there has been significant advancement in tech. On the other hand, those goggles would cost 2,700 nuyen.gif which isn't that much less than L-L or Thermo Retinal Mod cyberware.

Except that they can't take them back the period of enlistment is up. Well you can, but it gets a bit messy. :/ Although I could see people getting them on their own, with the military paying part of the cost or with implantation if it complemented their MOS.
Utahraptor
If your looking for information on the topic, I suggest you go to the topic at http://invision.dumpshock.com/index.php?sh...topic=1793&st=0

It's collected alot of good information and speculation on Shadowrun Militaries.

And personally, I bleieve that the service weapon for the UCAS would be the Browning Max-power. I know Bug City states it's the Beretta 101T, and New Seattle says it's the pred, but the 101T is too weak, and the pred is to large. THe Max-power is a powerful, light weight, cost-effiecant design, without a lot of needless extras.
capt20
Okay, people. Heres how I see it, with my horribly meager amount of research on the topic.

1) When it comes to cyberware, there right, the military does like to take its toys back. Now think how much an Army Doc is gonna have to work to get the drek /Outta/ the PFC after hes discharged. So think Radio, Commlink, and mabye a datajack. Things that are reletivly cheap and that they wouldn't /need/ to take back, mabye just edit some encryption codes. Biomonitor is damn expensive, so they might just do that the docwagon way, or with nanites. Thermo and Low light might be given to infantry fighters, but not the tankers or nothing. SLs would be implanted, again in infantry. Remember, the Army's not just a bunch of 11-X's. PLenty are mechanics, tankers, cooks, admins, etc.

2) Equipment wise, yes, they would use the M22A2 for the infantry soldiers on the line, but mabye they would use the M23 as a stripped down version, mabye in BRM, or for the standard troop or MP to be issued. Sidearm wise, Preds too large, Manhunter is a little expensive and has electronic doohickeys. Best guess would be the Browning Max Power, which I have randomly titled the "M15A1" in some of my RP. Just made up a number.

3) As far as the UCAS Military goes, sure, the Army's not as large as the CAS, and they might not have the best equipment, but if you people will look in Rigger 3, the UCAS still has one kick-ass navy. Theres a Carrier battle group stationed in Seattle at the Everret Naval Yards, centered around the Powell class carrier, the USS Koontz, led by RADM something or another.

And just as a personal side note, the UCAS Military is preatty Equal Oppurtunity. Not only when it comes to Orks, Trolls, Dwarves and Elves, (Were talkng Federal Troops by the way, not the 'Plex Guard), but also with Male-Female. How do I know this. The commander of JTFS, and the commodore of the carrier battle group in Seattle are both women.
Siege
QUOTE (Utahraptor)
If your looking for information on the topic, I suggest you go to the topic at http://invision.dumpshock.com/index.php?sh...topic=1793&st=0

It's collected alot of good information and speculation on Shadowrun Militaries.

And personally, I bleieve that the service weapon for the UCAS would be the Browning Max-power. I know Bug City states it's the Beretta 101T, and New Seattle says it's the pred, but the 101T is too weak, and the pred is to large. THe Max-power is a powerful, light weight, cost-effiecant design, without a lot of needless extras.

I've always learned towards the Colt Manhunter-- it has an integral laser sight, reasonably priced at 425:nuyen: and it's produced by the same company that produces the primary assault rifle used by the ranks (assuming they indeed use the M22).

Although, if the groups are indeed smartlinked, the Predator might be an acceptable "off the rack" weapon, unless Colt creates a special military-issue variant of the Manhunter with smart capabilities.

As for the integrated armor, there aren't any canon rules for how much gear can be packed in -- although we do have examples in the sec and military-grade armors.

I'm speculating that the professional soldiers of 2060 would resemble, at the least, Army Rangers in terms of training and ability. Smaller armies mean better trained, better equipped and better motivated troops. Which means at least minimal cyber and expensive gear.

National Guard units would take the place of standard army units in the Rapid Reaction Force model. These poor sods might have a datajack at best and recycled external gear.

Commo gear
The radio would probably external, but a datajack with subdermal speakers and a subvocal mic. Spec-ops would get transducers -- probably external variants as well.

If only because upgrading crypto circuitry and multi-channel bands on implanted models would be a royal pain.

-Siege
Chodav
I can only think of one thing that a soldier needs that he can't carry or wear, and that's boosted reflexes. Commo, vision mods, shooting improvements, all are available with gear that can be reassigned to the next grunt when the first one's time is up (one way or the other).

For that matter, I'm not sure they need boosted reflexes either. I'm with a previous poster. Let the opposition with the Int 38 laugh as he cuts the first one down . . .

Rather than spending nuyen on cyberware (barring the soldier getting permission to buy it on his own), I'd spend it on gear. I would also give soldiers pills to take when they know a firefight is imminent, allowing them to temporarily have the Adrenalin Surge edge (Rule of 6 for Initiative).

Note that I am talking about line grunts, not elite ones.
Black Isis
I have thought about this too, mostly because most of my characters are ex-military. The way I see it, there is still going to be a lot of grunts -- not everyone is going to be a Ranger. Hell, there's a lot of Rangers now, but there's not THAT many. Not enough to do everything the military needs to do (and then you've got tons of logistics folks too, don't forget). So the vast majority of the military is going to be grunts still. They aren't going to get cyberware (even the cheapest cyberware on thousands of people is expensive), and likely they will carry the M23 and a durable, but no-frills heavy pistol (when you might be fighting orks and trolls, nothing else cuts it). In my games, I use the Silhouette system, and the standard pistol for the military is an 11mm (heavy enough to drop an ork or troll, but not quite as gigantic as a 13mm). Let's face it -- if you're down to your sidearm, you're either in dire straits already or you're in a situation where you didn't think you'd need to be in a gun battle. So you need something that takes down whatever it coming at close range.

The main battle rifle is going to be a no-frills thing too -- I am not sure this new "make the gun supercomplicated" trend the military is on now is going to last that long. The OICW is very cool, but it seems like all that stuff is going to mean the gun is prone to malfunction (which, in its defense, means that it simply acts like a normal assault rifle with some dead weight). So the M-23, in Shadowrun, I guess. Though my bet is that the integral grenade launcher is going to see a lot of use, more than now, so probably the M-22 or whatever.

Definitely a good commo suite, etc. Not sure if everyone would have BattleTac -- once again, the more crap you pile on a soldier is just so much dead weight if it is not insanely reliable. I see military technology aiming more for making things incredibly tough, durable, and reliable, as opposed to super-gee-whiz. Electronics gear with easy to replace, standardized parts, resistant to damage and weather effects, etc, not a satellite uplink on everyone's back. Everyone's probably got a GPS -- although I think having them report their location to a central source is unlikely (too dangerous if the central source is compromised). Maybe reporting to the platoon commander or company commander though, since that may be decentralized enough. Night vision equipment, stuff that we have now in limited deployment is probably around as standard -- only smaller, longer battery life, and more durable. APDS is right out as standard issue. Bullets are going to be a gigantic expense for the military -- doubling or tripling or whatever the cost is not going to make them real happy.

Okay, so that's the general infantry. For Rangers or other elite, but large-scale units, probably some cheap cyberware is not out of the question. Smartlinks, cybereyes, datajacks, chipjacks, etc is all fair game (after all, you're now looking at only tens of millions of dollars instead of hundreds of millions of dollars). As a result, they'll probably have more advanced weapons like the Predator or Predator II, possibly with something like the Ares Alpha in limited deployment (although it's still got to prove it's reliability).

When you move up to small, elite teams like SEAL teams or SAS commandos, you're looking at people who are putting their time in for the long haul and who need all the edges they can get. Low-end reflex-enhancers, muscle augmentation, and other mid-range cyber/bioware and physical adepts are probably pretty common. Every team is going to have a magic specialist in addition to the usual commo/linguist/medic/demolitions mix.
Siege
I used the Rangers as an example of the upgrade in general training that the professional, full-time soldier could expect.

It makes no sense to cut down, stream-lining the Army if you're going to leave them in the standard training program.

High level of training <-> Moderate level of training <-> low level of training
Rangers <-> US Army infantry <-> National Guard troops.

In 2060, the current US Infantry would be promoted to the level of skill of Rangers and the National Guard would receive an improvement in training, but as necessary they would serve as rank-and-file units.

This is assuming they move to the "Rapid Reaction Force" model and away from the current "Let's be prepared to fight a WW2 scale land battle with either the USSR or China" model.

To split it even further, professional soldiers serving a minimum of four years could expect to see some cyber upgrades while the weekend-warriors would hardly receive any upgrades as standard issue except for perhaps the near omni-present datajack.

And let's not forget the Military's habit of buying in bulk, so the overall price of upgrading all the infantry with datajacks would be even cheaper than the book list price, although if true to form the doctors would burn more essence than usual in the implantation process.

However, as canon suggests and Isis points out, spec ops units -> SEALs, SAS, Delta force and Green Berets would all see some major upgrades as standard issue.

-Siege
Utahraptor
I do argee with the notion that higher level units, longer time in service people would get upgrades, but we've only talked about infantry here.

My view on Military Riggers: Few and far between. THe essence lost and cost of the nescacrry cyberware would be something the militry would be hard pressed to pay. My guess is that trodes are used for all drone/security rigging, as the 'rigger' would probably be in a secure location. Now, I'm not saying that VCRs are nonexisitant. A pliot or whatnot could probably sign up to recieve one, on the condition of a certain term of service, a certain mission provided, and/or, most likly, the obligation to be recalled to active duty at any time during his natural lifespan (Why install a new VCR in a 20 year old, when we got a forty year old in SEattle with all the training?).

BattleTac Cyberlink/orientation package with internal GPS, I think would go to SpecOps and those attached. Internal commgear would be a nono to me, seeing as Personal Comm Units are less subseptible to jamming.
Fortune
QUOTE (Utahraptor)
My guess is that trodes are used for all drone/security rigging, as the 'rigger' would probably be in a secure location.

I highly doubt that this would be the case, considering the low cost of a Datajack.
Siege
Considering the amount of time, money and effort taken to train chopper pilots and similar vehicle pilots, I suspect at least some rigger-enabled pilots to be available.

If for no other reason than delivering spec ops teams into possibly heavy-fire situations would encourage a certain amount of rigger skill and control.

I'd also point out that given a smaller, more streamlined military, highly skilled operatives that can maximize their vehicles will be of more value than the mass-produced infantry that have a greater amount of expendability.

Watching one rigger-controlled Apache carve through three similar, non-rigged vehicles would motivate at least a couple of rigger-enabled pilots.

"Men are cheap, tanks are expensive."

-Siege
Black Isis
With regard to riggers, I think they are going to be used only for high-tech, high-priced vehicles, not for everything in the arsenal. Most tanks, helicopters, and aircraft will probably have the rigging gear installed in the aircraft -- after all, it's a relatively inexpensive upgrade. However, I think actual riggers will only be flying things like the 2060 equivalent of B-2s, F-117s, and Pave-Low special forces insertion helicopters. Some elite, front line units might have riggers in more common positions, like flying gunships or driving tanks, but I think that's probably few and far between. Does anyone have any idea of the difference between the cost of say an M1A1 and an F-22? My guess is that aircraft are much more expensive, and because of that they are probably going to be where most of the riggers are placed (since the 60k or whatever for a VCR is realtive insignificant compared to a 20 million dollar airplane, and agility is life in the sky -- not so much in a panzer slugfest).
capt20
My best guess is that, when you go for an aircraft pilot, your gonna have a rig. The time to train one, and the training itself is intense enough for that. Tankers, probably not.
BaronJ
Please check out Tzeentch's take on things. The link has compiled stats for soldiers for a majority of the North American militaries, culled from sourcebooks and extrapolated from novels.

From what I remember, he had a pretty good spiel on his DSM website about what he figured militaries would have in the way of cyber (not much paid for by the Gov't... why invest in someone if they're gonna die.. and there's a pile of money in a heavily-cybered soldier). Cyberzombies are a different thing entirely, since those can be repaired, and (if it comes to it) re-implanted into someone else. Sadly, those articles have been pulled from his website, but there still are some Google Caches of his stuff, but not the whole thing (as I remember it).
Siege
The First Gulf War demonstrated the capability of a smaller number of better tanks against larger numbers of inferior ones.

Given the smaller sizes of armies in 2060, they would have to be able to optimize the effectiveness of any vehicle, especially the expensive ones.

An M1A1 costs more than an APC, for example. Which means the APC probably wouldn't qualify for a rigger but given the M1A1's role on the battlefield would make it amazingly beneficial and one rigger-controlled tank would be a match for three or four non-rigged vehicles, making it decidedly cost-effective.

-Siege
FlakJacket
QUOTE (Siege @ Dec 3 2003, 08:56 PM)
This is assuming they move to the "Rapid Reaction Force" model and away from the current "Let's be prepared to fight a WW2 scale land battle with either the USSR or China" model.

Well, if you think about, wouldn't they revert to this even more? Now you've actually got potentially hostile foreign powers on the same continent and right next to them. They'd still most likely cut down some numbers and improve quality of course. But with the state of the UCAS, would there be any real need for large expeditionary forces?

Edit: On a sidenote, what do battletac receivers cost per unit? Figure they'd hand these out since with battlefield information being so important and all. Hell, probably integrated into the low light/smartlink goggles if they went that way.
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