26 replies to this topic

[Hex Pallett]

It seems to me that it is a popular opinion that mechs are not viable in battlefields.

Well, are they?

How about let's try to figure out a scenario that makes mechs viable in battlefield. Note that I'm thinking about BattleTech type of heavy, weighty mechs instead of silly, jagged anime mechs.

Now, let's see what makes tanks superior than mechs: they're short thus harder to spot as opposed to a standing metal giant; cannon shells could bounce off the turret due to its shape; tank treads don't necessarily provide lesser mobility than two legs while provides more support. Also tanks are probably cheaper to produce. That's all I can think of so far.

So, let's try to defuse those situations.

First, visibility. With all those drones, satellites and all that kinds of stuff, at some point battlefields is gonna become transparent. And when that happens, why don't let armored troops give up trying to hide themselves completely and just give them walking, towering tanks instead?

Second, shaped turrets allowing cannon shells to bounce off. Not even an advantage, I would say. I mean, who said mechs can't have shaped exteriors? Besides, if a mech is easier to hit because it's taller, then why not just give it a couple more layers of armor? I'm sure some reactor armors using current technology could eat up a 120mm cannon shell already, imagine what could happen in a thousand years.

Third, the superiority of tank treads. Well...that's kind of hard to say, isn't it? Sometimes you may need the capability to walk over that 1 meter tall short wall. Regarding better support that helps compensating recoil and such, well, I'm sure in a thousand years we're gonna find ways to produce recoil-less cannons one way or the other. Or, you know what, we could use lasers instead!

And finally, regarding price. I'm sure anyone with a bit of business common sense have heard the phrase "economies of scale" - relative unit price decrease as the number of units produced increase. But, one may ask, an initial pitch is still needed to produce mechs in the first place. Well, a mech is practically a tank with a big main turret and two smaller turrets attached to the sides. As long as you have enough firepower, is is really that hard to imagine a mech being three times more powerful than a tank? It's not like similar events have never happened in history - I've watched some Discovery channel show before retelling that. during WWII, it usually takes three Sherman to take down a Panzer.

Besides, mechs have other advantages as well. Since it can be controlled while thinking like a walking human, either neurally or mechanically, a mech takes one crew (or as usually depicted in sci-fi) instead of three, which makes it more efficient in many aspects. Mech pilots will probably have a better view, being up there, which would create a big advantage when co-operating with friendly infantries (regarding this I would like to hear the opinions of army veterans regarding armor-infantry co-operation in urban scenarios).

And of course, giant, stompy mother****ing robots.

Ok I'm done here. I was board and this is in no way a serious argument.

[TheSilken]

Already have recoil-less cannons, it's called a Rail Gun (technically not a cannon but oh well). Currently they are experimenting with them and mounting them onto warships but eventually they should scale down. Imagine a big Gauss Rifle but with far more range, longer charge up, and enormous shell velocity. The solid shell actually hits so hard due to velocity that it causes a massive explosion like effect.

Edited by TheSilkenPimp, 10 January 2015 - 11:15 PM.

[Anjian]

First of all, mechs need to have a purpose. The whole design of something is made to fit that purpose. Its specs, its size, its characteristics.

If you follow right down the earlier Japanese lore for big robots, big robots were originally made to fight monsters (kaiju), which can be natural, alien or man (evil man) made. Big problems warranted big solutions. They were not made to fight other human beings. Big robots operate near a main secret base, which is devoted to its logistics.

Even with Macross, where many of the Battletech designs came from, humans were fighting aliens, in air, land, and space. The Zentraedi themselves were giants, and so the logic goes, you need something big to fight big. Some of the designs that you see like the Warhammer or the Rifleman, were used in that show as antiair mechs, attached to the Macross itself.

The concept of Mobile Suit in Gundam itself is a throwback to Heinlein's Starship Troopers and the suits used by the Mobile Infantry. Depicting these mechanized suits cannot be fitted in the budget of the movie bearing its name, but they were there in the book. The purpose of the suits, once again, are to fight aliens, the Bugs.

The first series, Mobile Suit Gundam, gave another purpose how militarized mechs came to being. Mechs were originally used for construction of the massive space colonies. That created large numbers of them to build these titanic space colonies, which are like worlds in space. But the people born in space, the spacenoids, cannot identify their interests with the people who are born on Earth, the Earthnoids, and so wanted their liberation, revolution and freedom to control their destiny, this led to war between the earthnoids and the spacenoids. When you are at war, you tend to throw whatever you have on hand to the enemy. And for that, all those construction mechs, originally intended for peace, were militarized.

So mech combat, wasn't born by design, it was born by accident and necessity. That usually what happens to the history of human invention. Tools for making a living, becomes a weapon against fellow man.

So if you want to design a mech, what should it do, fight other people, or fight aliens and monsters? Different purposes create radically different designs.

If its human vs human warfare, you need to build a mech around logistics, just like tanks are spec'ed around how are you going to fit this in a rail track, or how much weight a bridge can hold. Realistically, you have to build a mech around a transport. Can it be carried and transported by helicopters? By railcars? Trucks and ships? A mech is of no use if it cannot be transported to the battlefield. And transported quickly.







Notice another thing too. Future wars are less and less conventional. It will not be like World War 2 with mechs. Future wars are more assymetrical and irregular. We have special forces raiding and striking deep inside enemy territory to wipe out strategic targets.

In order for that to happen, you need a speedy delivery system and that the mechs themselves must be speedy. Tanks themselves are getting to be an outdated concept, and walking tanks don't improve on the concept. Instead, mech warfare is more like mechanized Navy SEALs or Delta Forces. They go deep, wipe out vital enemy infrastructure and by doing so, leaves the targetted nation to reconsider their plans and make them open for 'negotiation'. This is much better than having a war that kills millions.

[Anjian]

What mechs I would consider realistic in Battlemech for warfare?

Something smaller, something that can be moved quickly and can move quickly, and preferably with some lift off capabiilty, so something with jumpjets. In Battletech, I think the big mechs miss the mark big, but the little mechs actually do get it, like the Commando, the Firestarter, etc,. At least in what i think should be the military objectives of what I expect mechs can accomplish, which is specific infrastructure destruction. Speed and size also matters for survivabiilty.

Edited by Anjian, 11 January 2015 - 02:56 AM.

[StompingOnTanks]

I think to survive, mechs would have to be fast, agile, easy to control and "small" (under 30 feet tall).

I think Anjian nailed it in his first post. Mechs that are fast, mobile, and can be easily transported would be ideal for fast strikes, deep raids in enemy territory and asymmetrical warfare, mainly because they have three huge things going for them:

1.) Mobility. Legs, wheels, tracks, jump jets, lightweight materials and a high power-to-weight ratio = lots of speed. The faster you can move, the faster you can react, and the faster you can take advantage of openings in the enemy's lines.

2.) The ability to quickly and effectively adapt to terrain and mission requirements. How? Hands and hardpoints. Need a 75mm handheld autocannon for close combat in a city? Just pick one up. Need a flamethrower for jungle combat? Got ya covered. What if we're in the desert, and we need a high-powered anti-armor gun to snipe across the dunes with? Bolt it on, baby.

3.) The intimidation factor. Enemies are generally a lot easier to defeat when you can scare the **** out of them while doing it. This is especially true if we're talking about untrained or inexperienced enemy combatants. A column of tanks charging at you guns blazing is scary already, but what's really terrifying is a squad of humanoid mechs right on top of your position before you can even react, blowing things up and crushing your friends underfoot.

I think Code Geass gets most of that right. The mechs in that series are pretty much exactly as I just described. In fact, they specifically mention the reasons mechs made tanks obsolete in that series is because of mech's superior speed and ability to adapt.

[Anjian]

Mechs won't win over tanks in a straight out attritional fight.

1. Tanks are cheaper and more easier to maintain in the battlefield. Tracks are field repairable quickly by its crewmen, mechs are not.
2. Much smaller surface area for the same weight means armor is less distributed --- and much denser and thicker, creating better protection.
3. Smaller size of tanks means they take advantage of positional warfare better.

Mechs won't replace tanks. But mechs will operate on its own doctrine, just like Guderian revolutionized tank warfare with a new doctrine that led to the Blitzkrieg. Before that, tanks were mainly used for infantry support. Guderian emphasized the mobility of tanks as their main weapon. The rest is history, and France, who had tanks more powerful than the Germans, fell in 40 days.

Advantage of mechs:
Speed
Flexibility
Adaptability
Massive firepower
Survivability

Disadvantage
Poor in positional warfare
Uneconomical for attritional or trench warfare.
Poorly adapted for occupational (defensive) warfare

So you avoid the situations where mechs are weakest, and develop doctrines where mechs are the strongest.

So now you take the concept of asymetrical deep strike warfare to the hilt. Conventional warfare, attributed with Position, Attrition and Occupation is vastly inefficient, destroys economies and kills countless. Deep strikes against infrastructure, defined as economic, political, and technological, can render a nation powerless and everything crumbles.

More mech strikes, again showing why delivery systems are important, systems designed to bypass enemy defenses and insert a squad of mechs to wreak havoc on enemy infrastructure.

Edited by Anjian, 11 January 2015 - 06:52 PM.

[Popper100]

Really, it depends on the rules and hypothetical situations of our future selves. The notion of mecha as it is in our current age is impossible for a variety of reasons. Lack of sufficient power, lack of materials with strength to weight ratios in astronomical ranges, lack of defenses to protect such a machine. Now, should we begin adding in a quick subset of rules to this discussion, you can begin unraveling the thread of fate to see how our favorite Jagermech will look like.

So, to start off, power. Sufficient power should be achieved with the advent of sustainable nuclear fusion, albeit with mass amounts of waste heat. This would provide mecha with its first advantage over conventional vehicles. Sustainability in the field. Under fusion power the limiting factor becomes pilot fatigue/subsistence and enables an unending pace in marches or maneuvers. And before anyone begins with tank retorts, there is a distinctive problem with powering a tracked vehicle with electric power, aside from being a small rolling deathtrap most of time. Over coming ground friction is an incredible drain on power, and as you are limited to the output of your generator at any given second, resulting in a severely limited output (albeit immediate and potent enough) for tracked vehicles which have extreme parasitic losses. All these statements assume a 1 MW generator outputting uncomfortable but survivable waste heat. (For reference, the M1 tank has a 1.1 MW power plant outputting killing levels of waste heat.)

Next we need materials that would give us the strength for motor function and mobility while being light enough to ignore general verticality constraints. So far we have nothing close enough to these specifications to structure the machine, but for internals there is a single material that could be used for motor conductivity. Carbon nanotubes are currently being reserched and have been cultivated into "farms" that could be grown at a rapid enough rate for mass production and use. The material has a tensile strength of an observed 63 GigaPascals which is, if my math is right, 434,700,000 Psi. It also has an equally high specific strength. Utilizing this material in composite and natural form for conductivity and muscle-motor function you could essentially have a free skeleton and muscle lattice in you mecha, eliminating one of the large hurdles to building such a machine. Similar composites could be used for the outer structure as well, seeing as a flexibility and rigidity are required for such an area.

Lastly we have a defense to properly shore up the shortcoming of having a tall profile. Here is where a lot falls apart, as common belief is held that offense will always outstrip defense. It is seen in today's fighting doctrines and fire first and fast, it was seen during the arms race of WW2, all defense was eschewed in the gunpowder age for this school of thought. But there have been times when defense held sway. Chivalric knights held sway over battlefields because of their armor, the Roman empire was built on the backs of men in the finest examples of steel work in history, some of the finest swords in the world were turned by lacquered plates in Japan. Things will come and go, but this is one thing that must come again for mecha to be realized. Various portrayals have touched and sidestepped this limitation. Armored Core handled it initially by lavishing the titular mechs in unobtanium armor, but this isn't conducive to modern thoughts and doctrines. Code Geass had numerous reasons, chief among them the road speed of Knightmares allowing for flank maneuvers and a more jousting style combat. MSG initially went unobtanium but later relied on hightened speed augmented by pilot skill. Battletech has reduced everything to a back and forth of weapon and armor design, keeping them in lockstep to insure their relevancy.

But ultimately, the best defense is not being hit at all. To this I return to Armored Core, specifically the 4th installments. In them is a the Primal Armor, a force field sustained by a radioactive phlebotinum reactor that augments the the survivable nature of mechs and allows them to be a proper force multiplier relative to their cost. It is this thing that would be required to make a mecha viable, fusion power, nanotube musculature, and forcefields. That is the point when a bipedal, nuclear powered, autonomous fighting force would be introduced.

And ultimately shape the world to come.

(And for the record, Mobile Suits in MSG are so successful and ubiquitous because of their versatility in land and space combat. In my opinion.)

[Hex Pallett]

Well, somebody didn't read my post

Marack Drock, on 12 January 2015 - 07:27 AM, said:

-Not affordable
-Easiest targets ever made
-Dropships would be easy to destroy with a few SAMs
-Tanks are lower to the ground and would be faster
-Mechs would not hold balance on uneven ground well for combat
-Why make mechs when tanks will do the job better
-Mechs will not have the mythical missile resistant armor
-Mechs would be hazardous to both sides from Fusion core explosions
-Mechs would not have decent aiming on the arms
-Mechs would be like in Heavy Gear where a few shots a boom
-Mechs would take 10 times more training to drive than a tank
-Mechs would not be good in trench warfare
-Mechs would not have good reaction time

- Economies of scale. Also if you can make a mech three times more powerful than a tank then of course I'm gonna go for a mech
- Sooner or later everything will be an easy target. Besides, mechs are bigger targets from up front but tanks are bigger from above
- Have you seen the latest anti-missile technology? Israel has some major kick-a** stuff and at this rate I would say conventional missiles will not be viable anymore in like three or four decades.
- But still easier to hit on top
- I doubt that would remain the same in a few years. We have some pretty interesting, mind-controlled bionics already.
- That is open to debate
- But...but the future!
- I certainly hope controllable fission reactor can be a real thing. Or better batteries and solar cells.
- I doubt that would remain the same in a few years. We have some pretty interesting, mind-controlled bionics already.
- and that's because it's a game!
- yeah because training one pilot is harder than training a three - four, even - man crew?
- Neither is tank!
- I doubt that would remain the same in a few years. We have some pretty interesting, mind-controlled bionics already.

Dude, it's the future! Everything is possible! Especially so when some of the technologies needed for mechs are already taking forms!

[Hex Pallett]

Marack Drock, on 12 January 2015 - 01:06 PM, said:

Even if it is a machine gun... you expect the machine gun to move fast enough to shoot down a ballistic going Mach 3..... nope not happening in this life time or the near future.

Um, I heard that's exactly how CIWS works. Not that means it's anywhere near useful, but the technology is from the 80s.

Marack Drock, on 12 January 2015 - 01:06 PM, said:

Mechs are too slow and until the future HAPPENS they are not feasible.

Dude, there's your problem Look, we've got entire 1970s-space-programs worth of computing power in our pockets, give it a thousand years anything could happen.

[StompingOnTanks]

Stop ruining the fun guys, the thread is HOW to make makes viable, not why they aren't.

You're gonna make poor Stomping cryyyy T__T

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Bipedal and quadrupedal machines can have a role on future battlefields.

Assuming that the power source issue can be answered, then the first likely roles will be using these machines as power loaders for existing military equipment, so the early generations will likely be human size scales for non-combat missions.

Nevertheless, there can be evolving circumstances from evolving mission parameters to improving / evolving tech that can see walking vehicles be useful for urban combat and in rough terrain where tanks are a liability and other vehicles from aerial drones, helicopters, jets and bombers cannot work well, such as limits from bad weather. Then walking machines can be adapted to function in more evolving roles and as the tech matures.

Remember tanks were first intended to bust through the trenches of WWI, and they've remained a staple for conventional warfare and their design has evolved over time. WWII Bombers were remarkable war machines that even for how sophisticated towards the end of the war they were, they were made obsolete from jets and the potential of rocket technology with many of those highly sophisticated machines getting scrapped and replaced.

And sure we do have bombs that can turn mountains into valleys, that can be fired from a variety of platforms; but how would such weapons allow you to safely rescue a downed pilot or make precision strikes to arrest opfor leaders instead of dropping bombs and missiles and racking up collateral damage? This is where convention vehicles and potentially walkers can fill specific niche roles for the military.

---

And who knows if Skunk Works or another team already has the answer for the necessary power source?

edit:

---

I missed the comment about recoil-less weapons earlier, funny enough that's lostech that is currently seeing use in certain parts of the world right now that the US used to have back up until the 60's.

I'm not sure why they fell out of favor, but I assume range was a major factor along with having other nicer toys available.

Here's one article where I learned about their resurgence on the battlefield.

Edited by Praetor Knight, 12 January 2015 - 05:15 PM.

[Anjian]

1. Recoilless rifles were operational in World War 2 actually. Its hard to believe this can be "lost tech", when essentially, the principles for making one is so basic, its almost primitive.

2. The Romans built their empire on superior organization and tactics. The Celts actually had better metallurgy then them, and built better swords --- the Gladius is actually a Celtic sword, the Roman sword is really the Spatha, where the word "spada" would be derived from. The Romans though could not beat the Parthians with their skilled archery and cavalry.

3. Although they are not the exclusive users of such, the Parthians are noted for their Cataphracts, which are also used by the Scythians and other Asian peoples including the Chinese. Cataphracts are the direct predecessors of European knights one can say that a Knight is essentially a medieval Cataphract. A Cataphract consists of a rider and his horse covered with mail armor, essentially looking like this.




Cataphracts displaced Chariots as the "tanks" of the ancient battlefield. They themselves also ushered a revolution in warfare.

The Greeks had their Phalanx and the Romans had their Testudo formations, but how will they last against a charge of Cataphracts? The concept of the mobile heavily armored cavalry proved to be so successful that they would be adopted by the Romans, then Byzantinians, then all over Europe, and the Cataphract becomes the Knight.

[Anjian]

The inefficiencies of a tank:

It needs to be crewed by at least three people, four or five for optimum. That extracts a heavy human cost if blown up.

The inefficiencies of infantry.

Limited firepower, the limits set by the weight of the weight and the ability of the human to carry them.
Limited mobility, due to legs, fatigue, stamina, running and marching speeds. Humans also need to be fed and to rest.
Vulnerability to NBC agents (Nuclear Biological Chemical).
Limited armor. Being squishy and unable to carry heavy armor without carrying fatigue.

The next stage is to mechanically enhance infantry, to have the advantages of infantry and tank without the disadvantages of each other.

An exoskeleton designed to handle more powerful weapons that are too heavy for humans to handle.
A movement system.
An environmental protection system.

Which in turn requires a protection system for these components and the human occupant.

A viable mech however, probably won't anything close to what you expect in Battletech.

To maximize protection, the armor will have to be heavily sloped and angled to maximize deflection. You have to use flat angled surfaces instead of curved ones to maximize radar stealth (curved surfaces create a visual highlight, and radar like light, is made of photons).

This Polish "stealth" tank has the armor configuration that I have in mind.



The mechs from Knights of Sidonia are the closest to what I have in mind when it comes to armor.




Armore and frame construction? Probably multilayered composite, using graphene and carbon nanotubes. It is also completely nonmetallic, further reducing radar reflection.




Graphene armor is 10x stronger than steel, and yet only weighs a fraction of the weight of Kevlar.

In future, people are planning to use carbon nanotube to build frames from airplanes to bicycles. Ounce to ounce, 117 times stronger than steel, and yet far far lighter.



Stealth is a vital part, so we have to be reducing thermal signatures, and noise as well. No heavy stomping sounds, no squeaky joint sounds, this thing has to be quiet as a ninja.

Optical aka active camouflage to create near invisibility.



I personally dislike the Airbus noses of some mechs like the Timberwolf, or the idea of mechs that have windows on them. Its just pure sniper bait.

The best place to put the pilot would be in the most protected part of the mech, which is somewhere in the torso. The mech will use a sensor pod as its head, which is going to be optomechanical. The pod is connected to the pilot's helmet, and is synched to it, so if a pilot swivels his head, the pod swivels with it too.

The helmet should be able to read the pilot's eye movements if he is trying to look far or close.

There should also be auxiliary sensors through out the mech which can project images on the cockpit for a full 360 degree view, and perhaps even drone support.

Edited by Anjian, 12 January 2015 - 09:36 PM.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

Anjian, on 12 January 2015 - 08:05 PM, said:

2. The Romans built their empire on superior organization and tactics. The Celts actually had better metallurgy then them, and built better swords --- the Gladius is actually a Celtic sword, the Roman sword is really the Spatha, where the word "spada" would be derived from. The Romans though could not beat the Parthians with their skilled archery and cavalry.

The Roman Empire did win battles against the Parthians and did severely weaken their military forces. They too were occupiers since they came south from northern steppes and they lost ground to the Sassanids that really gave the Romans a run for their money after conquering Parthian lands. And if it weren't for incessant war with Rome and insurgencies, they maybe could have a better chance to survive the invasion that swallowed them up afterwards.

Quote

3. Although they are not the exclusive users of such, the Parthians are noted for their Cataphracts, which are also used by the Scythians and other Asian peoples including the Chinese. Cataphracts are the direct predecessors of European knights one can say that a Knight is essentially a medieval Cataphract. A Cataphract consists of a rider and his horse covered with mail armor, essentially looking like this.

Spoiler

Cataphracts displaced Chariots as the "tanks" of the ancient battlefield. They themselves also ushered a revolution in warfare.

The Greeks had their Phalanx and the Romans had their Testudo formations, but how will they last against a charge of Cataphracts? The concept of the mobile heavily armored cavalry proved to be so successful that they would be adopted by the Romans, then Byzantinians, then all over Europe, and the Cataphract becomes the Knight.

It was combined arms though that won many of those battles, a blend of Cataphracts supported by Horse Archers and Skirmishers.

And Chariots were displaced much earlier though, they were very specialized and saw little service over time due the need of open and level ground, also people overtime kept breeding bigger and bigger horses, to the point where a horse could carry a rider and his gear instead of pull it; and eventually horses got big enough so that they could also be fully armored themselves. The big thing was that by having an entire force on horses and no infantry made such forces very formidable and able to operate in more terrain.

For example, Phalanxes were intended to be anvils to hold the opfor in place and make counter cavalry charges ineffective so that the Greeks / Macedonians could charge with their own Cavalry in from a flank or rear as a hammer and disperse enemy formations. They were often successful since many forces did not have a good counter. It was what Alexander used to defeat the Persians and helped sustained the Successor States immediately after his death. But to work it required a lot of men and it was vulnerable to being flanked, so overtime it lost ground to other strategies and tactics.

So in the west, due to terrain and not having charging war horses available, it was eventually Heavy Infantry supported by Screening and Skirmishing Cavalry and Infantry Skirmishers that were the most common armies that were used in the western states like Rome. But still, the main problem with slow moving infantry was that they could be out maneuvered as what happened as Rome pushed East.

Even the Byzantines eventually tried their best to transition and adopted Heavy Cavalry for their own feared Cataphracts. If it wasn't for inept leadership who knows how history could have been different!

---

What I think is really cool is learning about the highly specialized war horses that were breed for combat, that are unlike normal contemporary horses, and from what I understand are basically extinct breeds today, was their aggression and willingness to charge, being a weapon itself.

There's little I've found for the breeds used by the Greeks for their charging Companion Cavalry, but they might have been the first or second people to find ways to breed and train horses that would be at least willing charge at and into a mass of people.

Then for sure the Nisean Horse is credited with most likely being the first charger, which would mean that Phillip of Macedon could have brought those over, being the ones used by Alexander in his invasion of Persia.

And there is evidence to suggest that these sorts of war horses would also kick, bite and trample at least their later decedents like the Destrier breed.

[IraqiWalker]

Anjian, on 12 January 2015 - 09:33 PM, said:

The inefficiencies of a tank:

It needs to be crewed by at least three people, four or five for optimum. That extracts a heavy human cost if blown up.

The inefficiencies of infantry.

Limited firepower, the limits set by the weight of the weight and the ability of the human to carry them.
Limited mobility, due to legs, fatigue, stamina, running and marching speeds. Humans also need to be fed and to rest.
Vulnerability to NBC agents (Nuclear Biological Chemical).
Limited armor. Being squishy and unable to carry heavy armor without carrying fatigue.

The next stage is to mechanically enhance infantry, to have the advantages of infantry and tank without the disadvantages of each other.

An exoskeleton designed to handle more powerful weapons that are too heavy for humans to handle.
A movement system.
An environmental protection system.

Which in turn requires a protection system for these components and the human occupant.

A viable mech however, probably won't anything close to what you expect in Battletech.

To maximize protection, the armor will have to be heavily sloped and angled to maximize deflection. You have to use flat angled surfaces instead of curved ones to maximize radar stealth (curved surfaces create a visual highlight, and radar like light, is made of photons).

This Polish "stealth" tank has the armor configuration that I have in mind.



The mechs from Knights of Sidonia are the closest to what I have in mind when it comes to armor.




Armore and frame construction? Probably multilayered composite, using graphene and carbon nanotubes. It is also completely nonmetallic, further reducing radar reflection.




Graphene armor is 10x stronger than steel, and yet only weighs a fraction of the weight of Kevlar.

In future, people are planning to use carbon nanotube to build frames from airplanes to bicycles. Ounce to ounce, 117 times stronger than steel, and yet far far lighter.



Stealth is a vital part, so we have to be reducing thermal signatures, and noise as well. No heavy stomping sounds, no squeaky joint sounds, this thing has to be quiet as a ninja.

Optical aka active camouflage to create near invisibility.



I personally dislike the Airbus noses of some mechs like the Timberwolf, or the idea of mechs that have windows on them. Its just pure sniper bait.

The best place to put the pilot would be in the most protected part of the mech, which is somewhere in the torso. The mech will use a sensor pod as its head, which is going to be optomechanical. The pod is connected to the pilot's helmet, and is synched to it, so if a pilot swivels his head, the pod swivels with it too.

The helmet should be able to read the pilot's eye movements if he is trying to look far or close.

There should also be auxiliary sensors through out the mech which can project images on the cockpit for a full 360 degree view, and perhaps even drone support.

Allow me to give citations for some of the systems you mentioned:

1-"An exoskeleton designed to handle more powerful weapons that are too heavy for humans to handle."

Such as the current exoskeleton being developed for the military (already working and allows soldiers to lift several times their normal capacity with little effort, power supply problem is the only issue we have.)









2- "Stealth is a vital part, so we have to be reducing thermal signatures, and noise as well. No heavy stomping sounds, no squeaky joint sounds, this thing has to be quiet as a ninja.

Optical aka active camouflage to create near invisibility."

We already have all kinds of noise dampening material, used in insulation, it's available at hardware stores like ACE.

Thermal camouflage also exists already in man portable sizes, the material would be easy to use either by integrating into the armor itself, or as a module that can be slapped on or off (so as to not interfere with the anti-radar armor configuration). Although, we already have ways of integrating it onto armor for vehicles.

For example:





Humvee with Intermat armor





As for optical camouflage: While it's a bit convoluted, we're already doing it to an entire sky scraper in South Korea.

Article on it



3-"The pod is connected to the pilot's helmet, and is synched to it, so if a pilot swivels his head, the pod swivels with it too."

Like what the AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter has been doing since day 1?



The chain gun, and the sensor array (including a camera with multiple view modes such as thermal, night .. etc.), are synched with the pilot's helmet and move with it. Wherever the pilot looks, the gun can point, and fire.


Did I miss anything?

Cuz I think at the very least, power armor is extremely plausible and will be coming along within the next few decades.

Praetor Knight, on 12 January 2015 - 11:23 PM, said:

The Roman Empire did win battles against the Parthians and did severely weaken their military forces. They too were occupiers since they came south from northern steppes and they lost ground to the Sassanids that really gave the Romans a run for their money after conquering Parthian lands. And if it weren't for incessant war with Rome and insurgencies, they maybe could have a better chance to survive the invasion that swallowed them up afterwards.



It was combined arms though that won many of those battles, a blend of Cataphracts supported by Horse Archers and Skirmishers.

And Chariots were displaced much earlier though, they were very specialized and saw little service over time due the need of open and level ground, also people overtime kept breeding bigger and bigger horses, to the point where a horse could carry a rider and his gear instead of pull it; and eventually horses got big enough so that they could also be fully armored themselves. The big thing was that by having an entire force on horses and no infantry made such forces very formidable and able to operate in more terrain.

For example, Phalanxes were intended to be anvils to hold the opfor in place and make counter cavalry charges ineffective so that the Greeks / Macedonians could charge with their own Cavalry in from a flank or rear as a hammer and disperse enemy formations. They were often successful since many forces did not have a good counter. It was what Alexander used to defeat the Persians and helped sustained the Successor States immediately after his death. But to work it required a lot of men and it was vulnerable to being flanked, so overtime it lost ground to other strategies and tactics.

So in the west, due to terrain and not having charging war horses available, it was eventually Heavy Infantry supported by Screening and Skirmishing Cavalry and Infantry Skirmishers that were the most common armies that were used in the western states like Rome. But still, the main problem with slow moving infantry was that they could be out maneuvered as what happened as Rome pushed East.

Even the Byzantines eventually tried their best to transition and adopted Heavy Cavalry for their own feared Cataphracts. If it wasn't for inept leadership who knows how history could have been different!

---

What I think is really cool is learning about the highly specialized war horses that were breed for combat, that are unlike normal contemporary horses, and from what I understand are basically extinct breeds today, was their aggression and willingness to charge, being a weapon itself.

There's little I've found for the breeds used by the Greeks for their charging Companion Cavalry, but they might have been the first or second people to find ways to breed and train horses that would be at least willing charge at and into a mass of people.

Then for sure the Nisean Horse is credited with most likely being the first charger, which would mean that Phillip of Macedon could have brought those over, being the ones used by Alexander in his invasion of Persia.

And there is evidence to suggest that these sorts of war horses would also kick, bite and trample at least their later decedents like the Destrier breed.

Europeans as late as the crusades still had charge horses that were bred for that purpose. We always said that our Arabian horses are better because if you fall in front of them, they will try to stop or jump over you, while a European charger (usually also bigger) would just plow through you and keep going.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

IraqiWalker, on 13 January 2015 - 01:24 AM, said:

Europeans as late as the crusades still had charge horses that were bred for that purpose. We always said that our Arabian horses are better because if you fall in front of them, they will try to stop or jump over you, while a European charger (usually also bigger) would just plow through you and keep going.

What I thought was neat was that cavalry charges were used up to WWII by Polish forces against the Germans with even a cavalry vs cavalry fight as late as 1939.

[IraqiWalker]

Praetor Knight, on 13 January 2015 - 01:10 PM, said:

What I thought was neat was that cavalry charges were used up to WWII by Polish forces against the Germans with even a cavalry vs cavalry fight as late as 1939.

Oh yeah. Horses were still used in WWII, mostly for the back lines, but there were specific cases where they saw front line combat. As for the polish cavalry thing. The unit actually didn't have horses. It was one of the ones that were modernized and had full on anti tank weaponry, and everything. They still retained the designation of being a cavalry unit, which is where a lot of confusion about polish soldiers charging tanks with lances comes from.

[Nothing Whatsoever]

IraqiWalker, on 13 January 2015 - 04:09 PM, said:

Oh yeah. Horses were still used in WWII, mostly for the back lines, but there were specific cases where they saw front line combat. As for the polish cavalry thing. The unit actually didn't have horses. It was one of the ones that were modernized and had full on anti tank weaponry, and everything. They still retained the designation of being a cavalry unit, which is where a lot of confusion about polish soldiers charging tanks with lances comes from.

Oh, I know that is a myth, just propaganda; they never charged tanks like that with horses.

I read that there were skirmishes where soldiers on horse back had weapons to deal with lightly armored vehicles, since they had to use everything they had available to slow the German advances. But horse cavalry was effectively used again infantry a few times and are recognized as famous battles, since it took the Germans by surprise in most of those engagements.

[BloodyProphet]

Okay i read alot of this and i also think Mechs could be viable.
1 if it is built along humanoid lines, then it will or should be able to Crouch, eliminating the argument about tanks being lower to the ground, Missiles aren't gonna be a problem, Go look up Metal Storm, something ALREADY available now, mount one of these on a shoulder with a 360 degree swivel and some form of radar to detect a missile or missiles, it locks on computes the angle and lets see you missiles fly through air filled with tons of bullets and Not blow up mid flight. Lasers are also already available, the US navy currently has one and has the OK to USE it in combat, its smallish, and doesn't need huge amounts of power like a lot of people think (yes it does need a lot, but not an insane amount)
Maneuverability, those of you who keep trying to point out that a tank can outmaneuver a mech are kinda silly, A mech is based on Your body, a tank can go forwards or backwards, turn left, turn right. I personally can go forwards, backwards, turn left, turn right, strafe left, strafe right, Jump, Crouch, climb, go prone...so if a mech is based on the human body i would think it would at least be able to do most of these. (kinda upsets me that i cant crouch down in my Mech in game.


(Metal Storm)

(LaWS system)

Edited by BloodyProphet, 13 January 2015 - 05:08 PM.

[Anjian]

Real mechs, for one thing, are going to be ugly. Remember when spaceships looked like this?




That is how people imagined them to be, a long time ago. It didn't turn out that way.
When mechs become real, they probably won't look like anything close to Battletech or anime. They might not even be called mechs at all. They may originally be called exoskeletons, and shortened to exos. They may end up looking ugly, disproportionate, a mass of frames and tubes with loose hanging armor. They won't be stompy robots but move with supreme agility and flexibility.

Edited by Anjian, 14 January 2015 - 01:34 AM.