Would bipedal mechs actually be useful?

[PicassoCT]

I think we should make war more personal and human.

Robots need strapons and the ability to blow themselves up for the greater good of robot heaven.

[KDR_11k]

The natural enemy of tanks is the rocket or bazooka - fired from helicopters - which show a behaviour of sneaking up behind hills , peaking out and firing.

No reason given thus far by KDR , why a rocket-rodcricket stalking the terrain wouldnt win against a tank.
And while we are at it.. anything that keeps dangers like tanks or planes far away and at bay is going to win the battles of the future. So a carrier that can stalk the lands and have anyhting within miles supressed with robot drones, can look ridiculous to the max, and nobody will care, cause nooboditys wont be there.

You've got a barrel and sticks, you've forgot to add an engine, fuel, sensors, ammo, ...
Once you have all that you get a significantly bulkier drone. Obviously a solo tank is useless, you'd want smaller gun drones (equipped with a machine gun or something) roving along that engage soft targets while the tank either draws fire from small arms or fights enemy tanks. It's the good old rock-paper-scissors game, if you bring only RPG drones you'll lose to MG drones (armor that protects against a HMG isn't exactly lightweight, you'd be building some fairly heavy vehicles if you're trying to deflect machine gun fire), if you bring only MG drones you can't stop a tank and if you bring only tanks you're vulnerable to RPG ambushes. In open terrain most of that goes out the window, if your RPG drone cannot get around the tank without being spotted it'll just get gunned down by the tank's MGs and if you fire from the front or sides your RPGs won't penetrate the armor (hell, even the rear might not be enough against current gen tanks, you might need to hit the top or bottom). Nobody's saying that tanks are the be-all-end-all of warfare (they're very vulnerable to gunships, for example) but compared to a plane they're still relatively cheap.

As far as carriers, missiles can attack from a very long range and one or two hits will disable the carrier, you'd need to vastly improve anti-missile tech to really make them invulnerable. Carriers are generally an unpopular concept due to the high cost and vulnerability.

Besides, a carrier isn't better than a land base so it won't really dominate the land.

Speaking of cheap though, your drones probably won't be cheaper than handing a starving kid an AK-47... All the awesome tech in the world won't win a war if you can't afford it.

Ah theorycrafting... When the real problem today isn't making something dead but spotting the dudes you want dead in a crowd of innocents...

[PicassoCT]

well, you can spot the bad dudes in the crowd by providing stimulus.. suddenly near naked babes advertising.. crowd stands and gazes, or is annoyed, torrentourist is shocked cause they didnt learn about those in boot camp.

Another stimulus could be percived fanatics of the same kind, so while on your way to plane, there was this salafist preacher, beeing hated upon by thre crowd, and you cletched your fist and they came from the mist, to drag to a place really loud..

Just saying, you dont have to be a passive watcher, you can have algos watching reactions to stimuli and even look out for bad actors. Im not here to discuss the disability called secret services. Who might be able, to forget about a terrorist strike if it suits there aims - i mean who is better suited for a inside job.

Back to mechas. Fuck realism.

The Concept was all about reducing targetable surface.. Not everything in this pipe is rocket.. also dont forget, when this is made allmost completely of carbonfibre.. hugs to the ground, deactivates its electronics to wait for vibrations for reactivation- would you still see it?


Now mechas.. you can increase the resistance of wet ground by shockfreezing it..

Also speed of contact makes even non solids semisolid, so extreme fast contact with extreme many legs, should result in a (fast moving ) Swampwalker (in theory)

One last thing.. if those rocket-crickets could combine into a tomahawk like multisegment rocket, they could get interesting..

[KDR_11k]

The Concept was all about reducing targetable surface.. Not everything in this pipe is rocket.. also dont forget, when this is made allmost completely of carbonfibre.. hugs to the ground, deactivates its electronics to wait for vibrations for reactivation- would you still see it?

When you have multiple patrols of MG wielding drones? Sure.

Also the pipe is too small to contain all the systems needed to build a drone, plus putting it behind the rocket means the rocket's backblast has nowhere to go. Never mind that your drone cannot reload so it's not much of a ground troop. You might as well throw down some landmines or ditch the drone and just launch a cruise missile from far away.

Lurking in wait can do defense but it won't help when the enemy isn't coming to you.

The closest comparable thing might be the CapTor sea mine, basically a single use torpedo tube that is thrown down onto the sea floor and listens passively for appropriate targets before launching its single torpedo.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

I'm not sure the stick insect anti-tank concept is workable. Warfare is always getting more mobile, and these would have a very limited range & speed- this function could be largely replaced with a stationery device that is planted by a soldier, which could be more robust and cheaper. The inability to carry ammunition and general bulkiness of AT weapons also makes them unsuited to this.

[Anarchid]

I don't see why you couldn't make a multishot antitank sneakbot with ammo that would have smaller size and lower profile than a human. It would also have longer operation time than a flying drone due to much smaller energy consumption of its propulsion system.

Of course, all this is basically replacing the autonomous bipedal combat biomechs with autonomous multilegged combat robots.

It has been said here that a carrier is something you don't do in such a setting, but what if your carrier is the swarm? just send some maintenance/repair/supply bots in :)

[PicassoCT]

Actually if we go full sicif- the best bot would be some that attaches to the tank, learns to immitate its electrical emissions and then then kills the tanks interior, taking over and then - while continuing to babble the idiot, turns on the enemy..

[1v0ry_k1ng]

why have bots at all? Just have a grassroots army of humans and make the opening move of war a blanketing EMP strike!

[Anarchid]

Why fight at all if you can win instead. Seriously if we're going full Sun Tzu and Klausewitz the entire "cool robots shooting each other" things goes away because these tools are just carriers of will, and wars in the forseeable future will be about whoever is the sentient controller.

Regardless whether the controlled instruments are meatbots or toasters.

[hokomoko]

That just means that the real devastation will come from small nano bots who sneak into the control rooms and turn humans into a moderate pile of gibs.

[PicassoCT]

but what will they inherit - a nuclear wasteland.. red button beats it all..
suck up to this nanobots

[raaar]

why have bots at all? Just have a grassroots army of humans and make the opening move of war a blanketing EMP strike!

googled and found this

armor made with conductive materials and surge protectors may make military hardware very hard to damage with EMP.

unprotected civilian gadgetry with sensitive circuits and plastic covers would possibly fry, though

[PicassoCT]

we had -------, we had bride dresses, we had jeweleryl we had fashion, and now makeup.. is there a springrts oddience we dont know off?

The silent majority of the spring comunity is female?