David replied to me: > > Taking a helicopter directly over enemy positions is a bit daring, > > I'd say. But swamps or forests are no problem for the chopper, > > while they slow a Mecha. > > > > > Depends on the enemy you're engaging. Consider a situation like what the > US > is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Big areas of territory that are not firmly in > friendly hands, but with an enemy that doesn't have terribly good AAA.
Insurgency/Counterinsurgency has become a key form of warfare in recent decades, but I'd rather not optimize my fictional future force that way. > > * Shaped charges can be discouraged by EM armor, but can indirect > > fire use KE rounds? Maybe, if the arc is high enough ... > > I can see a sub caliber projectile, mounting a rocket motor. fire > ballistically, acquire the target at the top of the trajectory (or get > guidance info from a spotter), and fire the rocket. That means putting the projectile onto a high arc, where it can be detected and engaged. There was a chapter in the Falkenberg books by Pournelle and Stirling where the mercs witnessed a KE missile fired that way -- the target couldn't dodge. > > But if arty can replace Mecha, can it also replace tanks? > > > In a lot of cases, tanks are used as artillery. Armored, mobile, and a > bit > more direct fire, but the idea is the same. If you have a tank handy, by all means use it as artillery, but to bring it along for that purpose is a waste of energy. > For a given percentage of mass as armor, a better ratio between surface > area > and volume means higher DR. conversely, if you pick the level of DR > required, it'll be a smaller percentage of mass. It's conceivable Magick > (force fields or something) could change that. If the future AFV is 10% armor and 60% engine, doubling the armor area with the same DR requires a modest increase of engine efficiency. If the future AFV is 60% armor and 10% engine, doubling the armor area with the same DR is impossible, or it requires a major increase in armor efficiency. > It's possible to build radio communications systems that have transmitters > that output less power than the background noise. If you don't know the > code with which the transmitter is modulating its transmissions (and a way > to sync with it, but depending on the length of the code being used, you > can > look in parallel) , you can't detect it. Note that's not just "figure out > what's being transmitted" it's "detect it". Figuring out what's being > transmitted is a second problem. This is TL9 stuff, and trivial at TL10, > but the theory involved is WWII tech.... Avoiding any pattern would require a key as long as the message, and the synchronization of the transmitter and receiver without a (detectable) signal could be tricky, too. Detecting that pattern can be extrememly hard, even with TL10 computers, but "impossible to detect" is a terribly absolute statement. Consider the effort that went into breaking not-quite-proper one-time-pads ... _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
