4 ms·
> But the basic concept of combing firepower, mobility, and protection is not going away any time soon. This reads like the gist of it. I imagine them getting
by dgb23 4y ago
> But the basic concept of combing firepower, mobility, and protection is not going away any time soon.
This reads like the gist of it. I imagine them getting lighter, heavier, more sophisticated/expensive, cheaper, slower or faster. But the basic archetype seems to be almost timeless as long as there is some utility for armor, mobility and projectile weapons.
- lumost 4y agoIs there going to be value in projectile weapons in the future? An autonomous quad copter with a grenade attached seems like a much more dangerous weapon than an automatic rifle. An armored truck may have equivalent ability to defend itself using active systems with much greater mobility and firepower than a tank. A converted autonomous econovan might be even more effective, bypassing the need for defense entirely.
- mr_toad 4y ago> Is there going to be value in projectile weapons in the future They’re cheap. One of the reasons the Russians use so much conventional artillery is that it’s cheaper than missiles or air strikes.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoThe typical generic tank round is 120 mm and around 50 lbs. This is interestingly mostly the result of the intersection of ergonomics (soldier needs to be able to hurk the round around) and metallurgy/engineering of the barrel. Anyhow, that's a whole lot of pain for any vehicle that's not a peer tank, any sniper/hmg/rpg team set up in a strong point, etc, for a very reasonable price. A good tank crew can fire these at a rate of about one every 10 seconds including overlapping recognition of new targets. This is what tanks are built to do, and it's not equivalent to what drones or man portable smart missiles/munitions can do, as interesting and increasingly novel as those latter are.