Historical, Alternate History, Modern Era or Future Tech, Weapons, Vehicles, Equipment and Tactics

I had an idea a while back that as war becomes more mechanized you'd get a quasi-feudal system as only the rich would be able to pay for the weapons and vehicles needed for modern war. I say quasi because you'd need a very large middle class to build and maintain that kind of military machinery and unskilled labor isn't going to cut it with repairing the engines of a five million ton aerial battleship.

In the verse manufacturing is essentially fully automated with an upper class still based around people who manage and own production. What passes for a middle class include those who oil the robots and those who yank iron and coal out of the ground. Even farming is done in agro-towers with artificially constructed soils and done by robots. These only feed a few, but then there's seedmeal, that's simple enough to make from about any biological material that it cost gumballs.
In essence, the changes in logistics very much lend themselves to localization of power. It just turned out that democracies did not follow.

The rest of the medieval warfare vision follows domination of campaigns by sieges of cities, the renewed dominance of disease as a decisive factor, a class of heavily armored (though not necessarily mounted) gendarmes protected from conventional, anti-personnel weapons and often unmatched by disciplined infantry, and weak states reliant upon mercenaries and local power brokers to raise armies on their behalf.

The complete nuclear proliferation, besides nightmare fuel, further encourages the kind of decentralized settlement characteristic of the Early Middle Ages/ Late Antiquity (or walls in the case of the main faction). Similarly, the combination of nuclear-scarred battlefields and desertification makes arable land gradually more scarce and occasionally triggers migration or viking-style raids.
In the context of all of this, peace rarely breaks out. Very few of the new states follow or even know of international law, and public pressure's only still a thing in a few polities. Most of humanity barely knows what's going on in the world, until they're suddenly impressed into some magnate's levy.

edited 16th Jan '17 6:11:38 AM by CenturyEye

Sounds okay if you mean "quasi medieval" as society having a feudal arrangement. So long as you've got the production capacity and wealth in the hands of a few people and a way of controlling the populace reliably it's possible to be able to get a setting like that.

If you mean "quasi medieval" as those power armored folks hitting people with sci fi versions of medieval weapons it would depend on how the weapons work in that setting.

The first paragraph is certainly true across most of the world, except for a few scattered, relatively egalitarian holdouts. Among the main faction, the feudal arrangements conform more with actual history, i.e. noblesse oblige, relatively self-governing guilds & LETSystems arranging trade, and property held (temporarily) by grant and coming with duties, including defense, i.e. inspired by Eastern Roma.

The second paragraph...the talosians are not immune to bullets. .50 cal or tank rounds can certainly take them down. And of course the various loose nukes. Their effectiveness comes from having the strength to bust through walls and lift cars while enduring regular, intermediate caliber rounds used by average assault rifles. Then there's the future warrior stuff like computerized interfaces^note Going for the eye won't work, because talosians wear featureless helmets that generate images inside the helmets from miniature cameras on their armor and the helmet itself. They can be damaged by long, sustained gunfire., computer-assisted reflexes and movements, climate controls & controlled air^{if you're American} Incidentally, keeping talosians from overheating and becoming exhausted or being gassed greatly extends their range. They could conceivably run nonstop through poison gas at Usain Bolt speed for miles. , etc. And like the medieval knights, a lack of disciplined infantry—caused by other factors in the setting—inflates the power of the talosians. Similarly, the overgrown, developed environments that contain ~100% of humanity diminish the effectiveness of vehicles. And the talosians use guns, railguns in fact, that have a reputation for sniping crews inside vehicle armor.

As implied by all of the above, talosians are ridiculously expensive to field, and dangerous to rely on. Hence why the main faction lacks them, but expense of enemy weapons is no comfort when facing one. They can still be picked off—and especially burned, a favorite of the central faction—but even going for the eyes doesn't work with intermediate rounds. ^{It Gets Worse} And the Talosians are probably the least dangerous change. At least one faction has quite a few bionic mosquitoes that can stealthily and painlessly poison people by remote control or by tracking DNA (or protein markers based off DNA). Some drone forces are larger than OTL armies. Disease reigns supreme again. A combination of 3D printing and advanced synthetics means perfectly new organs and limbs perfectly integrated into the nervous system to replace injuries—and the same technology sped the development of brain-computer interfaces that turn unliked/unlucky people into remote controlled fighters/toys. Recordings can be perfectly doctored, ruining anything resembling unbiased evidence. Oh, and then there's the loose nukes and the freely available information on the technology behind them...

edited 19th Jan '17 7:29:55 PM by CenturyEye

Would it be feasible to build a low velocity unguided rocket launcher for use as a shoulder mounted mortar? The rocket might burn most of its propellant very early after firing. This would be lighter than a conventional mortar due to not needing a base plate and if the situation called for it the weapon could be used for direct fire.

Would you be able to feed the weapon from a Iron Man Backpack type arrangement? Could the length of the rockets be decreased to a workable level by increasing the width of the rockets, changing it's shape or decreasing it's yield or range?

Due to the decreased recoil from the use of rockets the weapon could have a rapid fire mode.

edited 22nd Feb '17 8:27:40 PM by Matm

Accuracy would kill such a weapon. Indirect fire is inaccurate by nature. Too much travel time. Shooting from the shoulder is a lot less accurate that shooting from a tripod. Rockets are too bulky to carry many of them so massed fire is out. Shrink down the rockets and you don't get the Ao E which puts even more load on accuracy.

Maybe a guided missile could work but I don't think that's what your thinking about.

My ow question. How does one expect governments to react to future drones that aren't miniature fighter-bombers but swarms of mechanized mosquitoes that assassinate opponents by injecting them with poison. (The Geneva and Hague Conventions are ancient curiosities in this future).

Defensively, puncture resistant fabric. Offensively, incendiaries. Microdrones like that would produce a lot of surface area per mass and there's an additional benefit of the poisons denaturing under the heat.

edited 23rd Feb '17 9:56:34 AM by Belisaurius

Thanks. What can one do to protect civilians though? That's the main question I'm trying to tackle.

Also, you're having tea with Cthulhu? I was invited to his tea party first, let me tell you.

Most microdrones won't have the range for a strategic strike. Small size means small batteries and such. This means you need something to transport the drones. This means an airplane, a rocket, or even a truck but the mosquito drones need a ride.

So kill the ride with high explosives.

And this is the Lord of Ryleth we're talking about. He can be inside the box, outside of the box, both, or neither as He sees fit. Cthulhu can have tea with both of us without us having tea with each other.

edited 24th Feb '17 11:52:18 AM by Belisaurius

Had an idea in a story I'm writing for a system of Gamma Ray satellites. Their main use isn't raw power but precision and special operations. The weapon system works on a similar principle to our current Cyber Knife radiotherapy machine. A single satellite can adjust the width of its beam and generally emits a sub lethal dose of radiation. Several satellites overlap their beams such that the target area is bathed in a lethal amount of radiation.

The beams are minimally affected most most obstacles in the environment such as buildings and system can destroy a target standing among your own people. This system can hit a target even if they are standing in an area conventional weapons can't reach, surrounded in every direction by people you don't want to hurt. The accuracy of the weapon is mainly limited to the sensors in the area or intelligence on the situation.

The satellites have photovoltaic panels but not just to receive energy from the sun. There is a limit to how much energy you can get from the sun per meter squared of surface area. They are designed to receive energy from ground based lasers whose intensity is just below what the panels are designed to handle (which at the current tech level is much higher than what you can get from the sun).

The satellites are created before humanity colonizes space. Later on during space battles similar weapons prove useful for capturing enemy spaceships as you can fire a lethal amount of radiation into the interior and kill the crew. If your intelligence or sensor data allow you could do this with minimal danger to any prisoners from your own side or hostages aboard the ship. The beams move at the speed of light and mostly ignore armor plating.

edited 24th Mar '17 8:00:44 PM by matti23

How long would it take an average soldier to rise to the rank of General? How long would it take to reach each successive rank of the way?

What is the longest plausible period for a country to deploy it soldiers overseas in one go? Is 10 years away from home way too much if soldiers are given regular yearly breaks in the country of deployment? This would be in the context of the World War where the nation is facing what is considered an existential threat. The soldier starts as a member of the General Infantry.

That might be a question better suited to the military thread. You will need more information for the first one though like starting point for the person to become general.

What would the viability of a space program be that primarily uses a sea launching system such as the Sea Dragon rather than the land launching system currently used now?

For one it would be a lot more mobile, it's easier to carry around 6,000 pounds on a boat than taking it apart and putting it back together. Plus space craft are more likely to fall in water than land.

Thanks for the feedback.

On another note. If we started trying now, roughly how long would the world take to construct our first Sky Hook?

What effect would a cheap and quick way of refining Titanium have on a world that is mostly at World War 2 level (it's now roughly the same difficulty and cost of making steel)? If we assume that besides the Titanium process most technology is still the same, could you use it to make a practical form of body armor (Kevlar hasn't been invented yet and the common use of ceramic plates in body armor is yet to begin)? How strong do tanks become?

It would make it easier to make but it wasn't until later in the Cold War when sufficient quantities of it could be obtained by those interested that it became truly useful in that context. You could of course hand wave known deposits including the ones found in Australia and parts of Africa and mesh that into a WWII setting.

The two biggest industries to make use of Titanium are Aerospace and Marine applications. For aircraft, titanium and aluminum alloy's are relatively light weight, high strength, resistant to cavitation, and corrosion resistance make it ideal for manufacturing aircraft, especially jet aircraft. It would also be useful in making of missiles, submarines, and chemical production where resistance to highly corrosive chemicals is needed. Naval applications would be much like the ones for aircraft and make it a highly desirable metal alloy.

So if you wanted, some of the wunder waffen from all sides could possibly be pursued. Such as better missile and engine designs. The theoretical antipodal bomber craft, super submarines, exotic ships etc.

edited 31st May '17 4:19:15 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Thanks for the prompt reply Tuefel Hunden IV

Good points. I'm guessing the WW 2 weapons mounted on the planes, ships and tanks would still be able to penetrate the armor on those Titanium planes, ships and tanks so we're not going to end up with 2 tanks for example taking ages to blast through each other's armor.

Wondering if the following strategy would work. So there's a faction involved in a civil war when a neighbour's army invades. When news of the invasion is received, the two sides in the civil war stop fighting and rush to fight off the invaders. Main army is far away and somebody needs to distract the enemy. Rocket artillery rush out and bombard the invading force from outside the invader's maximum range (the defender's artillery out ranges the invader's). Every time the defenders chase one of the rocket artillery groups, it simply runs back out of range. The rocket artillery are very lightly armored and have high engine power relative to their weight so only the invader's lightest vehicles can catch up. The rocket artillery are reloaded by auxiliary vehicles carrying additional ammunition which also have a high engine to weight ratio and can keep up with the rocket artillery. This is intended to aggravate the enemy and cause one of two things to happen.

One, they can continue to chase the rocket artillery and thus the rocket artillery can lead the enemy away from key infrastructure until the main force arrives. Two, the lightest of the invader's vehicles can separate from the enemy's main force to try and catch the enemy. The rocket artillery will run into a prepared ambush site of either heavy tanks or infantry with anti tank weapons, destroying their pursuers. After this the rocket artillery will return to attacking the main invading force. Would that be a viable tactic?

edited 27th May '17 9:03:24 PM by zepv

Exactly how big of an advantage would a single nation possessing a launch loop be in a world which was otherwise at the modern level of development? Because we're at the modern level of development, outside earth there's going to be no humans except for a couple of people on orbiting space stations and minimal assets such as a few mars rovers and probes.

I'm guessing that nation's going to get pretty rich launching satellites into space and that launch loop is going to become the main way to resupply and add additional components to the space stations. The people of that world are also discussing a manned mission to mars in a few decades which could bring in quite a bit of money for that project.

State of the Earth military as a whole in 1937?

The world would be still be in The Great Depression so the military could be in a pretty shabby state. I guessing somebody else in this forum probably knows quite a bit about this area.

Got a question of my own as well. Would a stripped down version of the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte ever be practical? It would be designated not as a tank but a special purpose artillery mainly to be used for destroying a Maginot Line style defensive line and several Flak Towers assembled in key defensive French positions.

Because it's now just an artillery piece most of the armor has been stripped off so it's now only able to resist limited small arms fire, it possesses only one 280 mm 54.5 SK C/34 cannon instead of two and all secondary armament has been removed and it's chassis made smaller. In order to further reduce weight most of its ammo is carried in auxiliary vehicles. Would this be enough to make it practical for it's purpose? Would the weight still be too much to go across bridges?

The shear bulk of the Ratte made it wider than most bridges and the weight of the engines alone would be hard to support. Being such a large target with no AA defense and minimum armor would mean it would suffer strafing runs from air power more or less constantly. Loosing most of the armor and all of the secondaries should give it some legs, though.

If we're just talking about a naval grade artillery cannon then I suggest breaking it into pieces and building up an immobile structure for it. The recoil alone could toss a tank if it wasn't nailed down.

Thanks for the help.

So would a cannon of that caliber be effective in destroying Maginot Line style fortifications and Flak Towers? How many of them would you need to destroy these fortifications in a reasonable time frame? Would the assembled on site version be practical to build or would it be better to simply use the resources to build more smaller, conventional artillery pieces?

I'm not really qualified to answer that, but pieces of the Maginot Line were recycled into the Atlantic Wall. So, the planning for Overlord should be a good guide. (And don't neglect the Pacific Theatre, with well-documented cases of USN (and allied) firepower pitted against island fortifications.

My own question concerns an Improbable Weapon User. Does a government have any proportional countermeasure^note An after-event countermeasure, that is the bombers have already left should a rival just drop money or gold/platinum/supplies^note to collapse local agriculture from a glut[[/note] ]etc. onto its cities and countryside. (Actual, legal tender money that it had for some reason).[[note]]I'm imagining an indirect attack on an economy of course, not a charity operation).