I do want to make one thing clear: I'm glad that some military brass was repeatedly embarrassed over the corner cutting that went on during the project. Endangering people just to get something off the ground and assure everyone that progress is being made so you can cover your ass is unacceptable. It's just appalling that people had to die before anyone remembered that.

Amusingly enough, I thought about citing the M16 earlier.

I'm sorry you got your card pulled Lao, must have been embarrassing and frustrating. First by me on the Osprey, then on the Pinto. Really gotta be careful about pulling stuff out of your nether regions because you heard somebody say something one time. You never know who might be around to throw the BS flag. I mean, you're more than welcome to continue though. I'm done with this particular discussion because I'm sure to get blamed for it. I will post a picture of me riding on an M1 tank since you were nice enough to mention than I have professional knowledge on that as well.

If you end up being Dukakis, I am going to laugh and laugh.

And I check the shot. Those mountains look kinda familiar. That's not out west though, is it? Is that out by Edwards?

Couldn't be.

Kruger, you must be very small! I can't see you in that photo.

Pendleton.

Wow, 3 pages in one day. Thats the highest turnout I've ever had for a thread

Anyway......... This is turning more into a historical conversation/Osprey controversy. I'd prefer to focus more on the current (2070's) state of paratroopers/airborne/air assault troopers.

And I know that the hydraulic jacks wouldnt work for a normal jump, I was imagining something more like an extremely low flyby with cybered soldiers jumping out and landing harmlessly with hydraulic jacks (which would be similar to an air assault I guess). I figured that most actual military operations would work with a combination of HALO chutes and hydraulic jacks (to absorb impact), but I wasn't sure, so I asked the forum.

I like the idea of hydraulic-leg mil-spec armor *with* parachutes.

Don't forget the jetpacks... I NEEEEED them. (We are playing in the future... it's a staple of sci-fi...)

But yeah...: Some kind of transport-plane soars out of reach for anything over the area, when 20 men with huge pack on their back jump out. Just after a few meters fall the packs all expand and reconstruct in sci-fi manner into a nightglider and they easily fly a few kilometers to land on point, with all the equipment to take out a small nation.

No jetpacks! Powered-setup gliders, maybe.

*annoying slow clap* well done, sir. You have out trolled me.

Ahaah.

As for the Iraq jump...technically it was a major drop...of course, the DZ had already been secured first, and the resultant drop had guys trying to get out of waist deep mud for eight hours. And anything resembling a conventional force to oppose the drop was already pretty much done for. And it could have been done just as effectively with a short runway by the novel approach of simply landing the airplanes and getting out. But god knows the powers that be had to have their mustard stain, so they jumped in instead. Now, on to the real topic...

As of 2072 the likelihood of there being any sort of large scale airborne elements that actually parachute/glide/jetpack drop into battle is extremely low. Against a high tech force, stuffing a transport plane, or fleet of transport planes, full of very expensive troops is just asking for the fast movers, SAMs, suicide drones, magic lightning storms, area denial cutter nanites "misted" in the path of the oncoming planes, etc, etc, and so forth to tear great big holes in your organization. Now there's a transport plane big enough to hold and dispense 40+ guys in gear and body augs at once that can move like a fighter ( or at least a supersonic bomber) or you have total air superiority and ample SEAD, you might have a chance to put the unit on the DZ. Of course, in an information heavy networked and magical battlefield, if anyone figures out where the DZ is the unit is going to get butchered where they land. And all that takes it TACNET saying "100+ paratroopers detected from point of origin HERE. At current speed/heading/altitude, enemy forces will land on either fields, x, y, or z in the next three minutes. Targeting data sent to artillery batteries. B battery, 2-15 IN, available for fires in 90 seconds. Recommendation: 113th armored cavalry be dispatched to contest landing. Eta 113rd arrival is orders + 23 minutes." And its not like you can be stealthy. one mage looking to the sky is going to notice 800 astral lights dropping down. In short, against any major player in 2070, the airborne concept for anything larger than small infiltration teams is going to be a disaster. You'd probably do better with air assault elements in t-birds flying in NoE, ripping through a temporary hole you tear with SEAD. Still has disaster potential, but at least it has a viable chance of making it.

Against low-tech opponents, a drop is theoretically viable, but why bother? With T-birds as a basis for air assault elements, you can put more firepower on the ground (unless you want to airdrop your artillery, light vehicles, and super matrix warfare nodes), can insert the force more precisely and with less limitations on where you can insert (do you want to drop 800 elite soldiers into a sprawl or a jungle or a steep mountain knowing that even with augmentations and gliders that a thousand foot drop into those obstacles is going to attrit 3-5% the force?), have a ready method of maintaining some resupply, can use the T-birds to help with firepower, and you can always use the same birds to pick back up and relocate. Now, I could see hydraulic jacks and such making 10 meter drops from a T-Bird in a slow "drop off pass" being used to prevent the bird from having to land and thus being extra vulnerable. And, if its a bush war, chances are you don't need to mass the instant troop density which is airborne's real advantage over air assault, or if you do, its a high priority objective that you can just assign additional t-birds to.

As for the individual trooper in our theoretical t-bird force? Probably just optimized cyber capable of sustaining a 5-10 meter fall with some 40-50 mph lateral effectively, and whatever the usual soldier load out is for that government, although probably with a higher emphasis on target designation for external support, and a higher than usual load of anti-tank/anti-air man portable weaponry since really only light vehicles can come with them.

Oh, in case anyone doubted the veracity of the tank pic (that kind of surgery can be done on the weekends!), here's a couple of the 120mm shell stumps I use as ashtrays on my deck. You can see one sitting on top of the tank next to the machine gun.

http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/384/tankruno.jpg

Wait wait wait...

You're a machine gun?





-k

Would explain some things.

Dropping in has got to be an elite strategy in 2070, as has been pointed out. Even if you're dropping a few hundred men, that's still elite in the context of massed troops.

OT aside:
Now when you see where the developments are going now, one could assume that even normal everyday grunts in 2070 carry a few gazillion n worth of equipment around with them, but I would contend that: The only reason to do so is when your soldiers are not expendable. With the world in 2070 being far less democratic losing a few men is much less of a problem than it is now. So basically, offensive options should be optimised in cheap, man-portable weapons against all kinds of threats, but defensive options only for elite soldiers worth perserving.

So, the elite stealth/combat drop:

Chameleon coated milspec armour, chameleon coated gliders with a few unmanned slaved behind them to carry equipment. Everything with temperature shielding, too, to stop IR detection and in an anti-radar stealth design. Drop from a really high-flying aircraft out of range of AA, or even from a stealth bomber of sorts, and hope the really low signature of the actual guys dropping will allow them to land unnoticed. You now have a force in the hinterland capable of taking on any non-massed opposition and fade away into invisibility. This is basically a shadowrunner merc op, with better stuff. And I'm assuming it will be mostly recon, with a bit of demolition, but hardly open combat.

Now this is not a tactic in an assymetric battlefield, because you don't need that when you can outmaneuver and outgun the opposition with t-birds. You only need this when you can't realistically break through a front-line in low-flying aircraft.

So what I seem to be getting is a "no paratroopers in 2070 (at least not realistically), but air assault units will probably still exist for special operations." Correct me if I'm wrong.

the UCAS will almost certainly still have the 101st Airborne Division.
I think there will be paratroopers in 2070, but... most likely noone's going to be dropping them out of airplanes to do parachute drops.

If I smoked, my ashtray would be the empty skulls of my ninja enemies.

You still in or did you EAS out?

Ok, just to try put shadowrun back on the topic. Our last run against Boeing was by droping off a banshee in Seattle while it was flying over the building we wanted. Since none of us had any training whatsoever in parachuting (and while I had a BOD of 4, our hacker had BOD 1) the mage said he would take care of this by casting levitate on all of us some dozen meters before the crash. In middle jump, our hacker notice 3 surveilance blimps over the building and hacked on the fly through VR, no less, one of the blimps and ordered it to move its cameras away in order to create a blindspot. IT WAS AWESOME!!!

In short, paratroopers or their evolved equivalent will probably be reserved for very small clandestine insertions (maybe 20 men?). Larger units will probably go via air assault.

Yeah, but this is Cyberpunk.

Which means that, despite all the high technology around everyone, they're still complaining about a lack of jetpacks.

Technically, jetpacks are RAW. See pg. 128 SR4A under the Pilot Exotic Vehicle skill. Now we just need to see some stats instead of a cop-out like the FPMVs in Arsenal.

I would say that paratroopers are probably not used in large numbers. If anything, I'd say they use wingsuits, that would simply be adaptations to their combat suits. Maybe some collapsible memory metal wings like the batwing-glider from Dark Knight.

Air assault is definitely the way to go. Quick in, quick out. Especially with Ospreys, other tilt-wing aircraft and the military helicopters featured in Arsenal.

I don't see HALO or HAHO jumps being terribly different in Shadowrun than they are today (with the possible exception of jumps made with magical assistance). The thing is, parachutes have been refined and new classes have developed but the basic concept has stayed pretty much the same since WW II. Parachutes could become lighter or more compact (or more easily destroyed once at the DZ for covert entry) but I don't see the upper weight limit of free fall troops (about 360 lbs or 163 kg) going up significantly.

What I would see is much of the necessary equipment for High altitude jumps (mainly oxygen tanks and rebreathers) as well as the equipment needed when actually performing the mission either made smaller and lighter or integrated into cyberware/PAN. This makes it conceivable for human and elven troops to have enough weight left over to don Light Milspec Armor and not drop like rocks or be so unwieldy when coming down as to make the jump useless or too dangerous.

Another possibility is Low Earth Orbit/suborbital jumps using modified suits (or even modified milspec armor) designed to withstand reentry. There are tremendous strategic benefits to being able to do this since they'll theoretically let troops land anywhere on the globe without the risk of violating countries' airspaces. The downsides are not only the difficulty and danger of these types of jumps but the fact that they are very inaccurate. Of course between all the different cyberware, armor modifications, technological gizmos, and magic many of the dangers and difficulties can be lessened considerably from what they are today (though I doubt they would be eliminated completely.)

And who knows what the deal would be for the lighter dwarves and heavier orcs and trolls.

Amusingly enough, I don't even smoke. Those are all from my friends who came over to watch the football game last weekend. There's just nothing else to do with those and they're too cool of a memento to just throw away.

While the realism of this is debatable, the "universe logic" of SR says that a T-Bird is the ideal vehicle to penetrate a heavily guarded border. And given this premise, an APC Banshee should be the new platform of choice for airmobile forces.

Powered milspec armor should also be popular for extra carrying capacity. The limiting factor for paratrooper equipment often is not what an aircraft or parachute can carry, but what the troopers can haul on their backs for days.

"Do they watch their roof as closely as their first/ground floor access points? Do they lock the maintenance door or any other windows/doors above a certain height? Is our objective actually below ground in the basement? What are the utility access points? Where does their HVAC draw air from the outside? Is anything else nearby watching the skies? Could a nearby tall object be easier to access and then jump/zip/swing/glide across to the easier access?"

Here are some more random thoughts I have when I think of parachuting in SR 2070s...

- If you low jump from a heli insertion, can you wear something that will bounce and roll when you hit the ground so the heli can have more height and velocity when it drops you? Could you do the same with a glider or parachute?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI7vz9Bd664

- Can you disguise yourself as a harmless drone? How many mods and weight can you get away with while doing a stealthy air insertion to your target?

- If you are using parachutes, does that mean someone already fragged your ride? What is your back up plan to convince them they killed you and are just another piece of flaming scrap?

- Want to ride an air hook to get away from your target faster? Better than driving because you don't get caught in traffic or more likely to get fragged by the airborne corp sec/military drones/vehicles?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrlwTs5pATY

- How do smugglers go by air past borders without getting fragged?

- How low do parachutes/gliders work in SR 2070? Can I combine rappelling / abseiling with it? Perhaps a powered grappling/mag hook? Or the bouncy ball?

Hmm, 2070 paratroopers... I think I need to go watch something like James Bond's HALO, Batman Begins, Dark Knight, Mission Impossible, or Mission Impossible 3 again, think about how a Shadowrunner gets the upper hand, so slips in and away unnoticed if the military/corps control the skies/orbit...

Perhaps planning to use some sort of underground tunnel to escape notice from the air and get out of the target zone if the paratroopers/ODST are coming to get you. Viet Cong were big on tunnels and they faced off against plenty of air superiority, correct? I think I also remember stories of gliders being used in WWII and Vietnam. Wasn't there a story here once about some Canadian thief that used parachuting to land on the roof of his target to steal some gems because they didn't lock their windows that high up or something?

If you're looking for movies, Drop Zone is about a US Marshal trying to stop a team of criminals that use parachutes to break into a DEA office (forget the exact details). Its a pretty good cinematic reference to shadowrun for parachutes.

For a smuggling operation maybe, in open war, I doubt it. LAVs should be good at taking advantage of terrain to underfly sensor coverage. But in open warfare there should be a whole lot more afoot than when just securing a border against smugglers. Also, the most dangerous thing to a ground-hugger is the eye in the sky. I'm not sure anybody thought about high powered aerial radar in SR, but...

So theres heavily guarded, and MORE heavily guarded. Of course T-Birds are really cool, and hence it makes sense for them to be useful. Commando operations should use them by all means. But there's got to be hilly terrain to take advantage of. You simply couldn't use a T-Bird to invade the Netherlands . Also, as soon as you're entering densely populated areas, a T-Bird isn't subtle at all. It's big and most probably really loud, too. I'm not 100% certain of the mechanics, but I'm sure the sensor signature can't be that good.

You mean like in Azzieland, the Tirs, [new name for Siberia I forgot], the NAN/UCAS border...?


Yup, rule of cool. I mean in Hardwired panzers are used for running across the (desertified) Great Plains, realistically Cowboy would be trailing a dust plume that could still be picked up by the radar in Thule.