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

How plausible is a commercial VTOL service in the modern day? What kind of technological changes might we need?

We already have helicopters so what you need is a demand for some kind of super helicopter. Modern helicopters can't break or even approach the sound barrier due to how the blades on one side are technically moving faster than the other when the helicopter moves forwards.

It's probably coming, actually. Commercial air tech typically lags behind the military by a decade or so. The US just acquired practical VTOL personnel carriers, so that will likely hit the commercial market in a few years.

Personal and mass transit aren't the same thing. The problem with VTOL is that it's horrendously noisy, and rather inefficient, you might use it for places which are too small to really need a major airport, but if you want to go any distance, you definitely want to use a standard-form airliner.

I think we will first see it in corporate settings, heavy lift in remote areas, that sort of thing, like we did helicopters back in the day, and it spreads from there. The more of them there are, the cheaper they get.

Wondering what you thought of the following tank and had any suggestions for change. In one of my settings some fully charged capacitors have energy densities roughly the same as modern high explosives. A future tank has a 10mm gauss cannon which can fire it's kinetic rounds with equal kinetic energy to those of an Abrams tank. Since the future tank's rounds are much lighter than an Abrams' they go faster and thus have a greater range. They are also much harder to shoot down with countermeasures.

This raises some questions about it's anti infantry shells which are fired from the same cannon. Currently the anti infantry shells are called plasma shells. Plasma shells in my setting don't primarily do damage through heat. Most of the shell's destructive power comes from being shot out of a cannon at high velocity. They contain capacitors and a small amount of volatile substance. When the shell reaches it's intended target it runs it's entire electrical charge through the substance and causes it to heat up and thus violently expand, pressure builds up in the shell and blasts the shell apart into a cloud of shrapnel. Would it be plausible that the capacitor and detector mechanism inside the shell would survive the magnetic field in the cannon? This tank made with technology roughly 20 years in our future. If the capacitors in the anti infantry shell are roughly equal to the yield of modern high explosives, would there be enough explosive power in the shell to effectively spread out the shrapnel?

As amount of energy a capacitor can hold improves, they overtake the energy densities of high explosives. At that point these plasma shells start to replace explosives.

On the Sci-Fi forums a while ago I saw a post mentioning that there's modern tactics being discussed there. I'm curious what you thought about the following idea for the forums. We could use the Sci-Fi forums for things that wouldn't be similar to modern warfare or like 2016 with better of faster computers (like in nman's suggestion). We could use this forum for things which are similar to modern tactics or can be closely extrapolated from it. We might be able to put discussions such as those on anti aircraft weapons, the usefulness of bombardment on tunnel systems or discussions on different types of vehicles such as APCs and Tanks on this forum. If for example you want to discuss about whether a turreted design or casemate design is better for a tank that can go here.

edited 17th Jun '16 9:17:09 PM by matti23

What are your thoughts on merging the air force into the navy and army? While aircraft are important in a war, they are usually used in conjunction with another branch of the armed forces. The army can control aircraft used to support ground forces, and the navy can use the aircraft are used to support naval forces, such as those on aircraft carriers.

edited 17th Jun '16 10:43:59 PM by Matm

That's not without preccedent, actually. The airforce is a relatively new thing, before that it was the navy/army air corp and even today all branches of the US armed forces have dedicated air groups.

They acquired their independence with the rise of nuclear/strategic forces. They wanted an independent chain of command that owed little to conventional thinking or experiences. Nowadays, with the end of the Cold War and the spread of asymetric warfare, an independent strategic command structure is less critical. Your idea could be practical again, except for the fact that the US Airforce has a well-entrenched infrastructure and network of political support.

It does seem odd to me though that the army is the only one of the four military forces that doesn't have a C-130 model in its air fleet, having to settle for the C-212 and C-27J.

In my setting ceramic and steel plates were employed as armour from a very early date. Soldiers in this timeline could be seen walking around in it back when gun and sword infantry were still being employed side by side. Armour included leg, body, limbs and head protection. How would ceramic and steel plates (with bullet resistant fabrics such as silk) fare against arquebuses and muskets?

On that note, what is the earliest that a ballistic shield would be able to be produced? Currently I’m imagining police forces in the 15th century using them. In a general sense it’s SWAT in the 15th century. In the current version of my story I’ve also got a ballistic shield appearing temporarily on the battlefield in the late 1200’s to the 1300’s to guard infantry against hand cannons, but falling out of use later on.

Tactics might include having anti hand cannon infantry very early on armed with a hammer and ballistic shield. They quickly became obsolete and are replaced with another tactic. Some special units of gun infantry were equipped with shields. In a defensive situation these infantry deployed in a block like formation with the front row using their shields to provide cover for the rows behind. If these infantry needed to advance under fire they formed a shield wall whilst moving. Eventually both ballistic shields and block formations fell out of use on the battlefield.

edited 27th Jun '16 11:07:00 PM by matti23

How practical would it be to build a modern destroyer with its bridge in the center of the warship, much like a modern destroyer’s CNC, possibly even placed besides it or merged into the CNC . On one hand without any external windows the destroyer’s bridge would be less likely to be destroyed during a battle. On the other hand steering the ship would have to be done using the ships external sensors and video cameras in the hull possibly arranged with overlapping fields of view so that knocking one out doesn’t remove part of the ship’s field of view. These cameras could be arranged to provide a 360 field of view. Some of the cameras are positioned where a bridge would have been, particularly to provide vision forwards and to the sides. The visual system is similar to the visual system of an F-35.

edited 26th Jun '16 6:42:57 AM by Matm

Part of the reason for putting the bridge where is has good visibility is because it allows the Captain to track damage to his own ship in real time. You would need a very reliable on-board damage sensory package to replace eyeballs, and then the cost probably wouldn't be worth it.

^ Plus it has some damage mitigation of its own. If your ship takes a torpedo to the side or blows under the keel, which do you think is more survivable (for the command crew anyways...)? A bridge that is more internally placed? Or a bridge on a high perch or tower?

There's a big reason why the number of (non-Imperial Japanese) Captains and Admirals killed by torpedoes is pretty damn low.

Indeed. In space however you're better to bury the major command post as deeply as possible in the hull.

Would it be theoretically possible to build glasses and earpieces that could protect soldiers against the effect of flash bang grenades? The earpieces would block any sounds louder than a certain volume from entering the external ear canal and the glasses would not allow light higher than a certain intensity to pass through.

Theoretically? Yes. We already have earplugs designed to block specific frequency to be used in heavy saturated sound environment (enables you to talk while blocking more annoying/ dangerous sound, and material that can block visible light when they reach certain intensity.

Is just that find materials that can handle sudden, intense burst of light and sound is kinda hard.

How about some kind of futuristic video camera system at the front with screens for each eye? A microphone system with speakers in each ear?

edited 1st Aug '16 11:39:25 PM by zepv

Active noise cancellation is actually pretty old tech. The upper limit is more a problem of output and safety. If you're not in phase with the noise you can actually make it louder.

Protecting the eyes is both easier and harder. In theory, all you need to do is set an upper limit to the output of nightvision goggles. In practice, you're stuck with night vision goggles. No color vision, limited peripheral vision, a huge camera suck to your head, etc. Technological improvements will help but it's still less conveinent than the mk1 eyeball.

Would it be possible to make a jet plane that can take off and land on the water, like a jet version of a seaplane?

Boats can actually start to generate significant lift if they get fast enough. It could use its jet engines to get up to speed with some kind of tech installed to keep water from flooding the jet engine components. It might just have the main body of the vehicle held an appropriate distance above the ground by landing gears with floats on them. Maybe it could use a separate engine such as a water jet to get up to speed.

Sure is. To name a few, the Saunders-Roe SR.A/1, Convair F2Y Sea Dart, Martin P6M SeaMaster and several by the Soviet/Russian Beriev Company, among them the Be-10, A-40 and Be-200. The A-40 and Be-200 are actually amphibious, capable of landing of both water and land. oh and those are just the turbojet aircraft, there's probably a bunch more turboprop ones.

edited 18th Aug '16 2:18:25 AM by MattII

Would it be possible to build an aircraft carrier that launches these aircraft? Using the surrounding water as a runway would free up some space on the ship. Instead of an elevator that moves planes to the top of the ship, they could move them to the bottom. The ship would be able to launch as many aircraft at once as it has elevators.

edited 18th Aug '16 4:53:03 AM by zepv

Water tends to retard speed so taking off from anything less than ideal seas was difficult at best. Most navies used floatplane catapults to get the planes into the air and then had them land on the sea. After that the planes were winched back onboard with a crane.

The elevators are an interesting proposition but most navies tried to avoid launching from the sea for a reason.

On that note, could you create a carrier ship that can hold torpedo boats inside it when they are not in use and launch them as it needs? Would it be better to hold the boats inside the carrier until they are needed or just have it there to resupply boats when needed?

edited 19th Aug '16 6:41:55 AM by zepv

You'd need to winch the torpedo boats in and out of the ship. Most weight upwards of 50 tons. Not impossible but also not easy. Having a supply ship that can reload the torpedo boat's fuel and ammo would be easier although sea conditions might be prohibitive.

edited 19th Aug '16 7:41:47 AM by Belisaurius