NS Military Worldbuilding Thread No. 12

[Gallia-]

Regardless, it falls back to the question of "should we even have an entirely automated army, navy and air force?"

lol

The future "soldier" is a mechanic who fixes the combat machines that fight the enemy themselves.

86 but unironic robots instead of Untermensch.

[Dtn]

everybody knows commanders and soldiers are kantian moral agents and not effectively inhuman

who will take responsibility for the bad robots when they kill pistachio farmers based on flawed pattern recognition

[Gallia-]

Yes, a very serious quandary, which is probably why higher leadership will insulate themselves from blame by keeping men in the loop.

It will also help if the ATR performs less than adequately like the Longbow did in 2003.

[Gonswanza]

Oh yea this reminded me of clone soldiers. The problems there are more comedic, assuming this is a sci-fi world where you can make vat babies by the hour to remove the glaring problem of needing a living mother and later raising the child to adulthood.

Per my own words, plus what little I know of the process, mutations can and will occur. These will be exagurrated if they are not taken care of, assuming genetic material is cycled (taken first from a donor for [n] batches, then randomly selected from a clone donor and modified slightly for [n] batches). If not, mutations will STILL occur due to obvious errors in genetic coding and replication.

Then theres the fact that you need to train them, by any means. It would be easier to grab and train willing people instead, given that again they wont suffer from glaring genetic defects that may be exagurrated due to technology being used to replicate genetic material.

Finally, they are still human. They will be prone to errors under stress. Even more so with little exposure to daily life unless they were somehow brainwashed. In case of the latter, they may be more zombie-like instead, better suited for slow, almost redundant tasks.

[A Billion Stars]

who cares

[Inner Planets]

who cares

what

[Gonswanza]

who cares

what

Its spam, let it pass...

[Inner Planets]

what

Its spam, let it pass...

ok

[A Billion Stars]

No, literally who cares

Clones are either a literary device used as a social critique or to explore the concept of personal identity or a dumb NS grimdark meme like salted bombs and 25-90% defense budgets.

Nobody cares about genetic errors or whatever.

[Cossack Peoples]

Even if you have the clones suffer through endless growth pains during their studies and training to produce a crop quicker than training a human child soldier (a la George Lucas), they still won't have the experience and training that a factory settings brass-balled human professional would have. Clones, IMHO, would only be used if a civilization either had a very developed human trafficking industry that has evolved beyond the need to kidnap naive tourists and combat Liam Neeson, or, if the civilization does not have the genetic diversity to sustain casualties which puts them on pretty shaky foundations to be fighting a war, interstellar or otherwise, in the first place.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Even if you have the clones suffer through endless growth pains during their studies and training to produce a crop quicker than training a human child soldier (a la George Lucas), they still won't have the experience and training that a factory settings brass-balled human professional would have. Clones, IMHO, would only be used if a civilization either had a very developed human trafficking industry that has evolved beyond the need to kidnap naive tourists and combat Liam Neeson, or, if the civilization does not have the genetic diversity to sustain casualties which puts them on pretty shaky foundations to be fighting a war, interstellar or otherwise, in the first place.

iirc, Lucas was implying more of the latter than the former, although the reality was the Jedi order was more the former than the latter.

[Gonswanza]

Even if you have the clones suffer through endless growth pains during their studies and training to produce a crop quicker than training a human child soldier (a la George Lucas), they still won't have the experience and training that a factory settings brass-balled human professional would have. Clones, IMHO, would only be used if a civilization either had a very developed human trafficking industry that has evolved beyond the need to kidnap naive tourists and combat Liam Neeson, or, if the civilization does not have the genetic diversity to sustain casualties which puts them on pretty shaky foundations to be fighting a war, interstellar or otherwise, in the first place.

Indeed. Overall, it's far more impractical than sending in humanoid drones, which has it's own complications but overall is a better solution to the same problem...

... Dodging around the obvious solution of just "use the population and train them!"

[Austrasien]

Even if you have the clones suffer through endless growth pains during their studies and training to produce a crop quicker than training a human child soldier (a la George Lucas), they still won't have the experience and training that a factory settings brass-balled human professional would have. Clones, IMHO, would only be used if a civilization either had a very developed human trafficking industry that has evolved beyond the need to kidnap naive tourists and combat Liam Neeson, or, if the civilization does not have the genetic diversity to sustain casualties which puts them on pretty shaky foundations to be fighting a war, interstellar or otherwise, in the first place.

Indeed. Overall, it's far more impractical than sending in humanoid drones, which has it's own complications but overall is a better solution to the same problem...

... Dodging around the obvious solution of just "use the population and train them!"

Are psychics more powerful than sorcerers?

It is a literary question.

[Spirit of Hope]

Got bored and redesigned my Marine Brigade.

It now consists of two Marine Battalions, a Mechanized Company, and a Landing Support Force. Each battalion has a Scout Team, two Infantry Companies, and a Heavy Weapon Company. Under surge circumstances a third Battalion can be added to the Brigade.

Under normal circumstances the Brigade will have 960 members, with 14 LAV's, 10 AAV's, 20 HUMVEE equivalents, 36 4 seat UTV's, and 4 7-Ton Trucks. Designed to fit in a Wasp or America Class LHD.

[Dtn]

Indeed. Overall, it's far more impractical than sending in humanoid drones, which has it's own complications but overall is a better solution to the same problem...

... Dodging around the obvious solution of just "use the population and train them!"

Are psychics more powerful than sorcerers?

It is a literary question.

Rick Deckard should have had a climactic battle with a malfunctioning washing machine because a vat-grown genetic underclass is impractical.

[Gonswanza]

Are psychics more powerful than sorcerers?

It is a literary question.

Rick Deckard should have had a climactic battle with a malfunctioning washing machine because a vat-grown genetic underclass is impractical.

I'd pay with my left kidney to watch that

[Gallia-]

Give me your kidney I guess.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Consider:
A metallic hydrogen powered torpedo.

[Gallia-]

There are better solid fuels. Like lithium. Or uranium.

Metastable metallic hydrogen would be nice for a space rocket though.

[Kassaran]

At what stages did nations of the world start seeing standardized logistics vehicles and transportation standards such as ball-hitches of specified < G I R T H > and whatnot? I've recently been playing a lot of Snowrunner and the ideas of adapting games like it to the WW2 setting for redball and being a poor shitter on the Ho Chi Minh have just gotten me thinking more and more as to the aspects of military logistics trains.

I'm kind of getting the feeling that most of this standardization, as most things military and logistics-related in this world, came about in the cold War due to the then large need to ensure the USN and it's cargo could reach any corner of the globe and reliably work there for 'x' amount of time.

[Dtn]

Militaries don't use ball hitches but the NATO hitch was adopted in the early 60s.

Whether a civilian or other military pintle hitch will be compatible is hit or miss, and trailer connectors most likely not.

I suspect standardization, containerization, etc, had more to do with reducing transaction costs in increasingly nationalized and then globalized markets rather than the USN since military standards are kind of a mess.

[Austrasien]

Consider:
A metallic hydrogen powered torpedo.

I think you'd get more power density out of an oxygen-aluminum or oxygen-boron powerplant in a torpedo. Hydrogen-oxygen combustion produces water and this will have to be exhausted against backpressure. A boron-oxygen (or oxygen-aluminum, oxygen most metals) burner will produce solid boron oxide, it does not increase pressure, and so will function equally well at all depths. Since this is an external combustion engine you'd need something like a stirling engine to drive the propeller.

[Gallia-]

For real life examples there's Mk50 that uses that fancy lithium solid fuel for equal performance at all depths but it's not particularly futuristic I suppose since it was conceived in the early 80's.

Someone else can post the picture because I'm lazy and linearting.

[The Technocratic Syndicalists]

Stirling engines have a fairly poor power density and so are a poor choice for a torpedo, you want a closed rankine-cycle system like HYDROX which combines wakeless operation and depth independent performance with a power density several times higher than that of an open cycle otto fuel II engine. The steam produced by the hydrogen-oxygen combustion doesn't have to be exhausted against backpressure, it can be condensed back into water (the condenser being built into the structural pressure hull of the torpedo) and recycled back into the boiler/combustor. Which is also how SCEPS/ADSCEPS works, although HYDROX has a higher power density because it uses an aluminum/lithium-seawater vortex combustor to produce steam and hydrogen gas (which is then reacted with oxygen produced by a lithium perchlorate fuel cell) rather than using a boiler. 100 knot, 100+ km range meme torpedoes here we come. RIP Bozo to all surface ships.

[Gallia-]

thamk