Purpelia wrote:Manokan Republic wrote:51 pounds (23 kg) approximately, if going by the U.S. military Davy Crockett Mk-54 warhead, although it was rumored the soviets might have 30 pound or so suitcase nukes, although this was never actually proven. At the time, the Davy Crockett was fired from a recoilless rifle and had too short a range to be useful, but considered the warhead size is only marginally larger than a javelin missile that is well outside the range needed, a man portable rocket using a javelin launching system, well outside the range needed of several miles, may actually be viable. That also being said rockets have developed a lot since then so, it would be pretty easy to launch the 51 pound device from a relatively small vehicle mounted rocket that has fairly good accuracy, despite it's small size. At that time small precision guided missiles were rare and expensive, today it's not really the case, and even laser guidance for a relatively cheap guided missile is available, among other things like inertial guidance. A cruise missile has a 2000 pound payload, so 50 pounds is pretty easy to field in the modern day.
I'll even put it to you another way. The 155mm howitzer uses 100 pound (45 kilogram shells). So in theory, with a warhead that weight, although perhaps not that shape, you could launch it from a 155mm howitzer. So nuclear artillery is a possibility.
Ok, so to sum up what we have so far. A tank using an atomic fueled sterling generator with uranium armor around the crew cab and only the crew cab (It's green, just not in the traditional sense) and a 155mm main gun firing guided atomic shels escorted by swarms of medium sized destroyer drones aimed at hunting down enemy torpedodrones. Hm... we are going to need some sort of carrier tank for those drones. Probably something largeish in size, but still not too large so that it can maneuver. Like a medium sized truck sized maybe. And with like AA machineguns to shoot at incoming torpedodrones. Or is that maybe better left for an escort tank that just gets lots of AA or is that AD now?
Hmmm.... well, a tank with torpedo drones mounted on it would work, but a large truck behind it to launch and control them makes a lot of sense to keep it separate. So a drone that is fired off of a tank, combined with a truck that has a bunch of drones on it, so the tank has it's own drones under it's immediate command in addition to the drone swarm army also operating separately from it.
So basically both!
Use a large tank cannon to fire off atomic shells, ideally in 155mm howitzer form and blam, you have the nuclear powered battletank! A land aircraft carrier that can also go in the water is possible if you made it a hovercraft, so it can go both on the beach and over land. Since it's atomic powered, it would just always hover above the land, and could go both ways, maybe with wheels on it to keep it from moving around too much and allow it to park places. However a bunch of smaller trucks with drones is probably easier to make, rather than one big thing, which would be an easy target for enemy fire. If it's too big, it's too big of a target essentially.A nuclear powered, amphibious hovercraft carrier. Seems legit.
