TITLE:
Tanks for your Consideration
VALIDITY:
sizeable armed forces
DESCRIPTION:
The nation's armoured fighting vehicle formations are being regarded by some military experts as increasingly obsolete in modern warfare, and your chief strategists are discussing how to remedy this.
OPTION 1
"War has moved into new arenas, with new levels of mobility," argues futurist General Elom Nusk, who the military-industrial rumour mill would have you believe is a clone from the secretive Orphan Purple experiment. "Modern AFVs should embrace principles of cyberwarfare, tech superiority and out-of-the-box thinking. I'm talking autonomous robot units, coordinating networked turret drones, with machine learning algorithns, carbon nanotube chassis, flexible configurations... Spare no expense, and create an armoured division for the 21st century!"
OUTCOME:
the army is near unstoppable so long as the wifi signal doesn't drop
OPTION 2
"A vehicle that wins battles isn't the same thing as a vehicle that wins campaigns," counters pragmatist General Barbara Rossa, fixing you with an icy coldness. "Over-engineered tech can fail in the crucible of war. Instead, history shows that you get more strategic clout with cheaply-produced and easily-maintained vehicles of moderate quality, fielded in maximum quantity. Let's face it, most land battles these days are against low tech opponents, like rebel warlords or jumped up tinpot dictators. Create armour that will win down-and-dirty wars, and you expand the nation's hard power."
OUTCOME:
the national main battle tank is armoured with corrugated cardboard
OPTION 3
"What you really need is a tank that goes faster than the speed of sound, can strike targets from hundreds of miles distance, and can bypass any terrain with ease," observes Air Force Major Lee Snide. "Oh wait, those are called planes aren't they? It's about time that you allocated the bulk of the army's budget to the air force. We call it air superiority because when it matters, we're simply better at war than those footsloggers."
OUTCOME:
the sky's the limit with wars of conquest
OPTION 4
"My dear @@LEADER@@, my dear friend, once again why are you fighting at all?" asks Joan E Mitchell, your Minister of Seagulls and Cloud Management. "It's not just tanks that are obsolete -- war is obsolete. Escalating conflict means human extinction, and there's no future in fighting. Trade the fist for the handshake, and turn your army of war into voices calling in unison for peace."
OUTCOME:
peaceniks chanting "the world is watching" are proving a somewhat fragile defence against enemy tanks
