The Akasha Colony wrote:Radiation emissions are extremely easy to detect at range. The US and other NATO nations have had nuclear monitoring satellites in orbit for decades, sensitive enough to easily detect even a few-kiloton nuclear detonation. The US Vela Hotel satellite of the famous Vela Incident could detect nuclear detonations via gamma ray, x-ray, and neutron emissions from orbit as small as 2-3 kilotons, and was built with 1960s era technology as a 'small-budget' project. Given the amount of observation being given toward Iran and North Korea for their nuclear programs and the last two decades of the Cold War, you can bet detection has advanced significantly since then.
Even if the Minovsky field does not generate radiation, the readily-observable effects of disruption would allow for relatively easy triangulation by any sensor unit outside the range of the field. Figure out part of the field's geometry and you can calculate the point of origin. Simple math.
Putting even that aside, the fact that you need handwaving of such a blatant magnitude to even attempt to justify a Gundam-type mecha is an indication of how ineffective they would be in any realistic setting. To make just this one model plausible in your head, you have to alter the laws of physics themselves. This isn't a matter of just making technology better, like many claim, this is a matter of changing reality. In which case you might as well make up arbitrary physical rules that make tank treads suddenly less useful, or somehow make more complex machines easier to maintain.
Now, I like Gundam (except Gundam 00). It's one of my favorite franchises, and in less hard SF versions of my nations, they sometimes even make appearances. But it's just not practical once reality sets in.
You do know that sceinctists have discovered a particle that mirrors what the M particle does right?
Alright now that bit of wisdom has been imparted let's assume this particle could be created and thus be emitted by some sort of warfare engine to remove detection, And less also assume that this techology has been common place enough for most Modern militaries employ it.
Alright you following me so far? Good. Listing off the reason why such a machine if it was applied in the techology of its time into actual battlefields using said techology is not HANDWAVING.
I have repeatedly stated yet people continue to ignore apparently that in the current day this would be a major boondoogle assuming it could be done at all and what with the fusion reactor being needed to power the systems and computer equipment and weaponry along with the propulusion system? you would need fusion or fission for that in my opinion but anyway i am open and i will state this again i agree that this would not be the weapon it should be today, With techology being what it is Mecha are not needed, when techology advances to the level it is within the universe this machine hails from assuming it ever does?
I believe this would tbe ideal artillery piece for that world.
Perhaps people will actually read the agrument now.
