Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

Ahh, Old-School Dogfighting with swarms of drones spamming EM?

Skeet shooters firing explosive/incendiary buckshot.

You want to go two technical revolutions into the future? Thats like predicting the weather on a particular day next year.

What can we best extrapolate? I mean Microdrones may be the future, they can't last forever.

De Marquis: You have to remember sci-fi has a strong tendency to do just that. Extrapolate and guess, with varying degrees of accuracy, the future. H.G. Wells was somewhat famous for his fictional speculation, often exaggerated but still notable, in that regard. While not exact his various stories have had some amazing parallels.

edited 21st Jul '17 10:14:40 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Even HG Wells never got farther than 20th century military tech (with the exception of the time machine). Anyway, I'll try (seeing as micro-drones have been my pet prediction here for a number of years- glad to see y'all have come around at long last).

I'm going to go with machines literally made of smart particles, that can redesign themselves on the fly, a la the Terminator T-1000. They won't necessarily be humanoid, however- they will take whatever shape or size the tactical situation requires.

Which day at which time of year? There are several times during the year in Colorado where you can reliably predict the weather for say the First Tuesday in June upwards of 5-10 years in advance. (Hint: It's always hot and dry in early June.)

I live in Michigan. We can't even predict the weather next week, let alone next year.

^ In March and April however, you can't predict the weather even a few hours from now. That's how Colorado works. Some times of year it's kinda reliable, others it's so unpredictable you plan for all four seasons in a single day.

Boy that sounds familiar then again our two home states are next to each other so no surprise there.

Drone swarms are already being looked at now and there are some ideas on countering them from jamming to hard kill mechanisms. It will depend on how the various drone swarms wind up working.

edited 22nd Jul '17 7:35:10 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Come to SC where it's hot all year round.

I live in Auckland, New Zealand, and our weather prediction ability is similarly lacking. We don't get snow, but for the rest, seasons only predict general trends, so you can go from bright sun to thunderstorms and hail any day of the year.

Like the old saying goes: "If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute."

Arizona right?

To get back on track. Do you think we'll push so far along that eventually we'll have to start moving back?

For that to happen we'd need to use Dune-like personal shields. And while I don't think that they are impossible I do believe that they are so far beyond our current technology that we'll have FTL far earlier.

But what you shouldn't forget is that when that happens, there will still be all the other technologies around. Medieval melee formations with drone swarms as air support, fuck yeah!

Its never happened before, why would it happen in the future?

That gets to an issue of mine. Would viable ballistic shields—or better beehive barriers make shield walls a viable tactic? (I assume that's not an invitation to being blown away by artillery in certain terrain...)

edited 22nd Jul '17 2:42:39 PM by CenturyEye

We have covered this a couple times. Unless the shield wall is a bunch of people in some sort of encapsulated shield or something similar there is always a way around it. The problem winds up being the fact that infantry have easy access to AOE weapons on the individual scale in abundance. Everything from mines, demo charges, satchels, hand grenades, launched grenades, Weaponized Drones, explosive bullets, incendiary weapons etc. etc. etc. That there are plenty of options to possibly deal with a directional shield. If you can't go through you go over or around.

The first salvo may not be even light artillery but some grunt fired weapon of some sort that could go over the tops of the shields or in the case of LAM and certain guided weapons ^note Loitering Attack Munitions basically weaponized drones these days. could fly around behind or to the flank and pop a unit from them an exposed angle.

Shields are used in modern combat to a limited extent that can eat .30-06 AP bullets but they are more urban combat than open field.

If we are talking more a ball, dome. or bubble shield kind of approach and there is no exploitable gap then yeah you could form a "shield wall" it might not look like the one most people think of when that term is used though.

edited 22nd Jul '17 3:05:42 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Now, police, on the other hand, might find such a capability useful...

So, let's talk about military robots. Specificaly the ones that are humanoid and can fight almost or as well as any human soldiers.

How many do you have?

Do they outnumber your own soldiers?

What tactics and strategies do you use to deploy them en-masse?

Yes, and yes they do outnumber human soilders.

As for tactics, simple, they have all the same gear and equipment that the human soldiers do, and use similar tactics of cover and advancement that the humans do because of the simple fact.....

Those ones are for the same principle of fish in a school, they mainly serve to keep there human commanders safe through being indistinguishable at a range.

If there is one human, and 5 robots per squad, you are after all less likely to kill a human without the robots.

I wonder if they would work better as autonomous robots, or as humanoid drones.

My soft Solar System only scifi war story has lots of robots. They're mostly used as buffers for actual troopers and are brick tier in intelligence.

Mostly because making them smart enough typically gets you a self-aware being who rarely wants to be helpful and would rather explore the solar system to discover who they are.

Heh, you should write that story instead.