Mechs.

Originally posted by mdiinican
reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

 

So why does it make sense to build walking platforms to carry nukes to strange areas, than it does to clear out some dirt roads in the back country to expand the places you could drive an ordinary SRBM carrier?

Because it is much easier to observe and much more expected to clear out a road. War is based on deception.

As for the crew, there should only be a crew of one and it's not hard to sustain a single person on their own for long periods of time.

That mech is squeaky. It sounds like it's made out of regular sheet metal. And is it armed with ping pong ball launchers?

Mech it may be. Battle mech, I do not think so.

Originally posted by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
Because it is much easier to observe and much more expected to clear out a road. War is based on deception.

As for the crew, there should only be a crew of one and it's not hard to sustain a single person on their own for long periods of time.

But that's just the thing. It's FAR easier and cheaper to clear roads into the back country than it is to invent and build nuke-lobbing giant robots for plowing into the backwoods. And you can use the money you save to buy more ICBMs and launchers. If you're really wholesale into deception, buy hundreds of decoy trucks with fake missiles. Nobody today can afford to point the bulk of their strategic arsenal at individual launchers separated from any other strategic target by a distance greater than the blast range of any single weapon.

Anyone really serious about having nuclear weapons available stealthily anywhere in the world uses submarines, though.

Also: putting any nuclear ICBMs under the command of one person who's stuck in the back country for months at a time with no human contact besides a radio isn't going to fly very well with anyone sane.

reply to post by Omega Pickle


Interesting thread and a subject that was asked on a mech 4 forum back in the day when I used to enjoy online gaming for relaxation.
The consensus then was the simple reasoning of centre of gravity and weight footprint. It is easy to imagine a sixty ton tank rumbling about and not becoming bogged down in soft ground yet try to imagine a mech on two legs of a similar weight and it is easy to imagine the same machine becoming bogged down and stuck fast as sixty tons being pressed down through two legs would be something that would not be feasible (highly inefficient weight distribution).

Just to give the machine a semblance of useful mobility, you would have to give the mech something that would look to all intents and purposes like clown feet or supersized granddad slippers to enable it to walk over soft ground. Then there is as others have mentioned the problem of silhouetting on the battlefield. One anti tank round and that mech is going down no matter how awesome and intimidating that mech might look to the infantryman. Repairs to such a thing would be a nightmare also. Take off a leg with an anti tank weapon and the metal man is a right off. Take the track off a tank with the same weapon and it is still probably serviceable.

Also I would imagine that in a tank versus tank scenario the machine that is more likely to survive is going to have to factor in several things like crew experience/training, which has the tactical advantage and of great importance would also be which tank has the lowest profile via design and terrain advantage. A mech would have no such advantage and the best training in the world would not be much of an advantage if you have problems using terrain to your benefit in the context of cover/dead ground. A mech would always be seen and thus always be a nice juicy target for anti tank ordnance.

I have worked with tank crews (2RTR) but I was a combat radio operator so I cannot say if these things are something that is of high consideration among crews but I would imagine it is considered in some way. I think therefore that if a mech was to become a reality it would have to be something with a low profile and many legs and resemble an arachnid. Even then it would not have the speed that many tanks have plus the cost involved in research and development may be a hindrance to it becoming a reality.


[edit on 7-10-2009 by SmokeJaguar67]

reply to post by mattifikation


At this point in time, a mech is a mech. That is the purpose of this discussion (whether mechs are possible). So the answer is yes, we already have a crappy ping pong ball version.

reply to post by DaMod


It skates around on hidden wheels instead of walking. it only bears an outside resemblance to mechs. It isn't gen *anything*. Any real mech that actually walks instead of using a shuffling wheeled amble will have nothing mechanically in common with this. It's an independent dead-end development made to look like a mech because people think that walking vehicles look really cool, but can't develop real bipedal walkers that are safe to operate for the cost they're willing to pay.

reply to post by mdiinican


So basically what you are saying is, it won't be a mech till it does this.

reply to post by DaMod


Yeah. Generally, when people think of walking, they think of taking steps, not skating forward on braked wheels.

Originally posted by mdiinican
But that's just the thing. It's FAR easier and cheaper to clear roads into the back country than it is to invent and build nuke-lobbing giant robots for plowing into the backwoods.

Anyone really serious about having nuclear weapons available stealthily anywhere in the world uses submarines, though.

Also: putting any nuclear ICBMs under the command of one person who's stuck in the back country for months at a time with no human contact besides a radio isn't going to fly very well with anyone sane.

That doesn't make sense. You build a road and you'll be exposed to satellites from the start. You use mobile launchers and chances are they'll be under watch too considering they need support vehicles for ammo, com, etc. I'm not saying this is ineffective, but the Russians have been doing it for decades and I'm sure most leading nations have found ways to keep track of some of their mobile Topol M's.

A mech can walk through forests and bush in a large and mostly uninhabited country and hide well. I hate linear thinking when it comes to mechs too. Who says they have to be two-legged bi-pedal tanks anyways? What if they were four-legged mobile drones that can deploy strategic warheads somewhere remote?

And the point I was making about MGRex is that it is a bi-pedal tank so it can move anywhere on land. It is equipped with a railgun that fires nuclear warheads to avoid satellite detection systems of ballistic missiles, making MGRex a very dangerous and stealthy weapon. Obviously MGRex is not real but it makes a lot of sense. An SLBM can be detected and a quick analysis will pinpoint the launch location, intended target, and the national signature of the weapon (so the target to attack in response).

And I disagree with your last comment. For one, obviously you wouldn't send Private Dickhead to pilot a mech carrying a nuclear payload; every nation has its handful of elite and reliable soldiers capable of this job. Secondly, the lock on the weapons probably isn't local. For instance there are 15 mobile Topol M systems with the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, that could be up to 90 550kt MIRVs in the hands of nationalist Russians.

you won't catch me piloting a Mech, if for nothing other than the fact that height tends to = target priority.

a tank can sit behind a hillside or one-story building and be nigh-invisible and extremely well-protected. a mech will just stand there attracting RPG fire (or its future equivalent).

and furthermore, does nobody remember the Battle of Hoth? one well-placed tripwire and it's all over.

i'll stick with treads, a low profile, and a 160mm main gun, thanks.

reply to post by mdiinican


So this is not an aircraft?

reply to post by Lemon.Fresh


That flies, so it's an aircraft. The landwalker rollerskates on wheels, so it's some kind of freakish car offshoot. It's not hard to understand.

It's a mech in the same way your car is a mech, except it's made to look more like one on the outside.

If we were to make a mech, if we wanted to make one that would be very mobile, it would have to have a skeletal and muscle structure of a human I think, unless ur making an animal mech like zoids, which I think is more easier to make for some reason.

From the article at Berkley about DARPA's exoskeleton:

"The Exoskeleton allows a person to comfortably squat, bend, swing from side to side, twist, walk and run on ascending and descending slopes, and step over and under obstructions while carrying equipment and supplies."

.....And fall the f#ck over...I don't want to be in one of them with 1/4 of a ton of gear on my back when it slips in the mud or doesn't pull up in time to avoid plummeting over a cliff.

to above poster:

Which is why YOU won't be driving it!

Full blown mecha I really can't see ever being super useful but in other threads I've advocated the single man battlewalker and exo suits. However the battle walkers I envision are lightly armored very fast units capable of supporting infantry in non wheel friendly terrain. They are also not to become platform glorified behemoths like fighter jets or tanks which are now so mystique oriented and HUGE that they no longer serve their purpose as integral parts of a tactical big picture.

What this means is your average pilot of a 2 meter tall 250 thousand dollar battle walker will be totally expendable. (and not an officer maybe not even an NCO) They'll be armored enough to survive hits from crew served weaponry and most likely mount a dual use GMG type weapon that can tie into it's other fire control suites to serve as an APS for incoming ordnance. (don't forget electric armor pretty easy to protect something from one or two rpg's these days) But the key will be building LOTS of them and deploying them even when you know you'll lose them. They are to support and protect infantry from marauding helo's and other threats that are hard to defeat reliably with shoulder launched firepower. give them an exo suited little brother and give both units the ability to bounce and you've got MOUT monsters...

In open terrain, yup they'd get slaughtered. But that's the fallacy of modern military procurement you can't build ANYTHING that's good for every situation. the swiss army knife of modern military combat doesn't exist. you deploy a variety of platforms and tie them into a larger command structure so they work together synergistically to complete objectives.

Well Exo-skeletons are the first step and they're slowly being used more and more.

If Mechs do finally become mainstream for wars it would only be used for specially selected Hit and run missions to decimate a large force in a short time.

Originally posted by Agent47

Originally posted by AlnilamOmega
i dunno...

i still like to think that Japan has a few mechs in their protoype laboratories.

Are they made out of plastic, cause dont they spend about as much on defense as a nation as Mississipi spends on road repairs?

For a country that has had it's armed forces severely limited in the number of troops they can field, that probably adds up to about 20 times the cash per trooper than the U.S spends on equipment and training.

reply to post by aegis80


The JSDF's budget is about 42.1 billion dollars, and it employs 238,000 active duty people. The US military has a budget of a bout 613 billion dollars for 1,473,900 active duty personnel.

The US spends about three times as much per soldier as Japan.



EDIT: whoops, used the number for the US reserves instead of US active duty. They're very close, though, so the math comes out the same with rounding.

[edit on 23-1-2010 by mdiinican]