Per Ardua Ad Astra

PopSci’s Jan issue focuses on the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, it’s AI-equipped vehicles and their future applications. Of course, the future autonomous vehicles that are currently envisioned are still wheeled or tracked (no surprises there). But right at the end of the article, the long distance goal are legged robots. Now, I had a few friends who seem to think that mechs are the next revolution in warfare, so I bet this is what comes to mind instantly in their minds…

US Armed Forces of 20XX…

classicbattletech.com

I think mechs as fighting vehicles are a cool thing (nobody would want to mess with the big bad boy, that’s for sure), but the thing that has been nagging me at the back of my mind is : Are they practical? The mechs in the Battletech Universe are cool; you can run, jump-jet and pack a whallop with these heavily armored behemoths. With DARPA also conducting directed weapons research, why should the vision of mechs equipped with missiles (MLRS systems is a good candidate), pulse and small, medium, large lasers (to be developed), machine guns and tank cannons not be possible, mech-ers would reason. All right, there is no jumpjets, Gauss cannons or PPCs since nobody has yet to come up with that yet. But close enough right?

So, from the weapons standpoint, it’s a piece of cake. But those friends of mine haven’t given me a darned good answer for one thing, and that is propulsion. How the hell are you going to move a 35 to 100 ton walking machine? In the Battletech universe, they have cold fusion reactors. We don’t have that, at least not for another 20 more years so it’s back to square one right? But if this exoskeleton and backpack idea comes to fruitation, we might have human sized mechs coming to an American barrack near you in the near to mid future.

Ok, so what is the problem now? Let us assume for a moment that we can build mechs. Mechs that are heavily armored, can walk and fire missiles, guns, cannons and lasers at anything that stands in its path. Pretty invincible eh? Ok, now imagine that the US Army has a Mechanized Division equipped with them. And imagine that they go off to war (North Korea for example). Now how is the Pentagon going to send them over? Walk underwater across the ocean floor ala Pirates of the Carribean style? Fly them there? No dropships at the moment gentlemen, and a crash would kill thousands in a densely populated area! Ekranoplans? You’ll carry only one mech per plane, and could you win a battlefield (the DMZ will be the main objective here) with just a dozen mech or so (I’m using an inflated number of 12 100 ton mechs)? For logistics planners, that is going to be a major headache. In Matrix, having the APUs is logistically possible since they’re used in home defence, not expeditionary missions.

Now how about urban warfare?

 

battletechuniverse.org

As you can see here, the mechs are gonna have a problem in patrolling cities and insurgents will have a field time tripping up those mechs, especially in tight corners. Besides, how are soldiers going to build rapport with civilians when the mechs are trampling all over the place and the pilots ensconed in the cockpit high up above the civillians? Mechs are going to be too clumsy to handle in these situations, and the Pentagon is bound to be painfully aware of this situation (Iraq sure helped them do that).

If that isn’t enough, what about air strikes and artillery? Fine, there are technologies in the labs that can kill mortar shells and missiles, so you’ll have to tack them onto the Mech. So, the end result? One freaking huge logistics nightmare. And since you are dependent on so few fighting machines, a mechanical failure is going to be a big problem, especially in fast skirmishes and in protracted fights. A problem of too many eggs in one basket, don’t you think?

My conclusion : Dream on kiddos, it’s not gonna happen for a long while more. But if it does, that’s going to revolutionary! That’s for the Battletech universe mechs. What about Titans and Wolverines from Tiberian Sun? Much more plausible, but still a maybe. Powered armor? Bigger batteries required. That more or less sums up the whole situation.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 5:09 am and is filed under Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.