Cooliest/Uglest Weapons v10 - FAL Pride World Wide
999 replies, posted
Could you have "semi autonomous drones" like tell a drone to go somewhere and the only human input would be actually firing or giving it a new objective?
Feeding semi autonomous drones into the enemy isn't much good if they jam it when it's position to fire and it needs human input to fire, and it sits there like a useless brick.
Assume you can't talk to your drone anymore the moment it's in combat unless you have a wired connection or direct line of sight.
Pros of autonomous drones + manned weapon systems: Less hours spent training pilots to each individual aspect of an aircraft, cheaper & easier to produce, not limited by physical human factors, and if an aircraft goes down you'll still have an experienced pilot alive
Cons of autonomous drones + manned weapon systems: The Comanche helicopter project was cancelled as a result
I think what is more likely in the future is that we'll have semi-autonomous MANNED vehicles, where you have a human crew inside giving input and essentially signing off on decisions, but the information processing, aiming and movements are partly controlled by the vehicle.
To take the drone tank example back - if you send in an a fully autonomous unmanned vehicle, you're essentially creating a slaughter bot where you can't stop it when it starts misinterpreting information because everything is jammed and human input is no longer possible. If you send in a semi autonomous vehicle you're essentially creating a situation where as soon as the vehicle gets into combat and gets jammed, it stops being useful and either you're allowing a machine to take lethal decisions or it's a useless brick the moment the enemy points a jammer at it.
However, if you use semi-autonomous tech in a manned vehicle, you are enhancing human soldiers ability to process information, react and fight - and if the machine goes off script and misinterprets information and starts firing at something it shouldn't - you have a human right there to debug it and shut it down and switch to manual operation. It also means there's a human to take responsibility for it. If your machinegun is set to fire at any heat signatures that pop up in windows in a street, there's someone to answer for it and switch it off depending on the situation. There's a human element that's ultimately taking responsibility and taking decisions.
I mean, how difficult would it be for a drone to misinterpret say, sun-heated cargo containers for enemy vehicles? Sure, maybe you want the reactions of a machine to flag up those anomalies and get the drop on them - but if you're in the tank you can use your human intelligence to moderate the machine.
basically this
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/113069/4dada3cd-b412-41bc-9ce0-5c36b8339d69/image.png
That's why I said autonomous or semi-autonomous. You wouldn't be able to manually remote-control ten thousand drones anyways, even ignoring the jamming problems.
I did some planning for how to operate them safely with some level of on-board decision making. Basically, define several levels of TOE - "do not ever fire without manual authorization", "fire autonomously only when fired upon", "kill anything that appears to be an enemy", and "kill anything that moves that isn't a known friendly". For low-intensity wars like the counterinsurgencies we've been fighting, you'd leave it at that top level - the drone can on-board ID something as unfriendly, and move itself to engage, but won't shoot until a human commander pulls the trigger. For mid-level conflicts like the initial Iraq invasion, or high-intensity combat near a civilian population center, kick it up to the second level. And for WW3, go ahead and have it kill whatever it wants - any civilians caught on a modern peer-level battlefield are pretty much doomed anyways, even if it somehow doesn't go nuclear.
For safety, give them a combat zone boundary as well, programming the drones to not leave that area. Use a combination of GPS and dead reckoning, to avoid problems with jamming or malicious GPS signals. Dead reckoning isn't that accurate, especially in the air, but it's an easy way to stop GPS spoofing attacks like that one Iran did.
For legal and ethical purposes, the human commanding officer who set the TOE would be considered responsible for the actions of the drones (unless in "fire manually only", obviously). So in non-WW3 scenarios, it would only be done in areas civilians are warned not to enter - as the Korean DMZ is now.
That's more or less what I envisioned. You would set everything at launch (can't jam a hardwired connection), and update over a secured channel as needed. If the enemy jams comms, it'll be no different than with humans except in scale - they'll still fight as ordered, but not as a cohesive force, and not as responsively. It ought to be possible to send such updates over a low-bandwidth, hard-to-jam frequency - "MOVE TO <COORDS> AND ATTACK" is forty-something bytes even as ASCII, you could probably get by with just a few baud of data for major objective updates. You would want a faster inter-drone comms system, to enhance performance when not jammed (maybe point-to-point optical?) but it wouldn't be necessary for combat operations.
That's an interesting idea, and will probably happen alongside drone-only systems, but I'm not convinced the military will give up all the advantages of full autonomy just because it might accidentally kill too many people. Particularly not the Russian or Chinese militaries - and once they have them, you can be sure the US will want them too.
It's the jamming issue that makes things weird.
If you have a tank, you could possibly have a drone above you on a physically wired connection, a tight beam or a powerful transmitter. If you have two armoured vehicles facing off against each other, they can both sweep each other with pretty powerful directional jammers to sever connections to any drone fleets with loser connections.
I think it's almost certain we'll see manned tanks with AI targeting and processing. Tanks are in a bit of a dangerous spot right now due to advanced ATGM's, but I don't think it will take long for hard kill systems to catch up in a widespread manner. I expect we might even see something as weird as a return to heavy duty, infantry portable, kinetic kill recoil-less rifles, since sabots are more likely to defeat hard-kill defence system.
I think drones, like every piece of revolutionary equipment, like the aircraft and the tank, are going to experience a period where everyone is simultaneously trying to find ways to counter them, and trying to counter the counters.
Like, just as an example, say drone fighter jets replace manned fighters. Research into ECM is increased to cut the link between the pilot and the drone. Intelligent Autonomous AI is developed to counter that. Stealth technology to hide from radar and FLIR is improved to confuse autonomous drones. New detection arrays and cameras are developed to counter that. And so on and so forth.
I simply wonder if it's ever decided that all the trouble updating the drones and their software and hardware ends up being more expensive than just using human pilots in that case. I dunno, it's something i think a lot about. What do you guys think?
there's going to be someone dumb enough and foolhardy enough to build the fully automated killing machine, russia probably will take that cake, so I think when that does happen it'll force a reevaluation of these systems
That's a reasonable take. I think drones are one of those technologies that have a technology ceiling that they will hit sooner or later where the battlespace is just so non-permissive towards drones that they make the circle from the Hot New Thing to Effectively Worthless. I just wonder what that will look like, and how far away that reality is.
eh I just think something along the lines of an ED209 is going to happen and a bunch of soldiers will get killed by their own drones, it probably won't matter to russia or china but the US will be pushed to respond to those developments and will deploy its own autonomous drone system, there's only like a few lines of code separating a global hawk type system from doing this now anyways.
Ian got to shoot the Cobray Terminator. It's every bit as bad as it looks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYf1SXBY_E4
And old RIA video on it, complete with his classic theme music (I sort of miss it, even if it is a bit long)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnpOis10NyQ
It'd be a moderately impressive garage-built gun, but as an actual factory-made firearm, it's the worst without a doubt.
Hey all, I hate to post without any content but I got a question I feel like you'd be best suited to answer, anyone know of some good gun trucks/half tracks? Preferably ones with two guns, one in the cab one in the bed, not self propelled artillery, infantry support guns like MGs.
For some reason this looks like it'll fail the moment it has to go over anything bumpy, yet if you were to take off the panelling (assuming it's a simply buggy underneath) I'd say it's the opposite.
Dunno how good it was, but the Universal Carrier is cool. Not a half track of course, but it does carry two guns like that.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1808/dde7aab5-77c8-42b4-a90e-b9160322c71c/bren-carrier_mk1.jpg
I should have said "good looking" rather than "good" I'm trying to build a desert themed stormtrooper platoon for my Imperial Guard army, as part of that I'm trying to make this eldritch abomination into something decent looking
https://spikeybits.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Taurox-Prime.jpg
I'm already planning on replacing the front track set with wheels, making the bed open topped, and replacing the turret with something more like the shielded pintle found on the M113 ACAV.
Does the Quad count? It was for anti-aircraft but you could turn it on infantry and light vehicles with devastating effect.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1811/1c95af55-f5ac-407a-b7dc-41afe77c75db/image.png
There's also the SdKfz 251 which sounds right up your alley, it had mounts for machine guns on the front and back.
https://img00.deviantart.net/ffe9/i/2010/221/d/a/sdkfz_251_d_german_halftrack_by_blokkstox.jpg
The 250 series had a lot of configurations, this one retains the forward machine gun, but adds 2 flamethrowers.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/63/a8/f3/63a8f3139811026e85e563b8f20e8ba9--armored-vehicles-military-vehicles.jpg
Not that its a half track but you could take some inspiration from the Vietnam Gun Trucks
https://s14544.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/guntruck4.jpg
"Hey sar'nt, I got the M113 loaded on the back of the deuce and a half, like ya asked."
"Good shit. You chain-and-bind it the way I asked? We gotta download that thing pretty much as soon as we hit RP."
"Yeeeeaaaah, 'bout that, sar'nt..."
You all laugh but if it was a bad idea they wouldn't have done it again
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/241569/943ac97d-a64b-4158-b9ff-147777a8ef11/hemett.jpg
I know, I know. I'm just used to thinking of gun trucks as any vehicle with a turret and maybe an armor kit, which describes a fair number of stock vehicles currently in inventory. With armored-cab LMTVs, MRAPs and everything else, you just don't see that these days. I think after this war, hillbilly armor's going to be a thing of the past for a long time coming.
Modern gun trucks will generally look something like this:
https://www.militaryaerospace.com/content/dam/mae/online-articles/2014/05/FMTV%209%20May%202014.jpg
Hillbilly Armor is just the result of taking unarmored cargo vehicles and placing them into vulnerable positions. When they were made, we designed them with the idea that they'd be moving shit around behind the lines in Europe. In the Middle-East, the lines are blurry and trucks can be hit anywhere. Also we started strapping machine guns to Humvees and placing them in combat roles, adding armor was a natural next step.
Yeap. And having spent the last 17 years in constant, low-intensity asymmetrical conflict (Jesus, this war's almost old enough to vote), we've got a pretty good supply of purpose-built convoy security vehicles.
still hasn't changed our love for an MBT that needs a train of gas haulers behind it to advance.
I wonder if it's pro or anti war. Does war hate itself and want to end, or does it have a will to live on? 🤔
It don't care, just as long as they don't outlaw fidget spinners.
Probably an edgy Trump-voter like all GenZ'ers.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/206566/8bf2621c-63d6-45fc-82d6-24a7fd74a064/6cd444f02d9bc45b25b9f37e585de69e.jpg
Just found this beast online
Doesn't the PK use a non-disintegrating belt?
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Cooliest/Uglest Weapons v10 - FAL Pride World Wide
