Re: Some FT rules ideas(Longish)

> 
> I remember reading, a few years back, of an Anti-Radiation Cruise
Missle
> that would, if it's target ceased radiating, loiter in the area
waiting
> for the radar to be turned back on again to look for the missle...it's
a
> neat idea: ARM incoming. Switch off radar. ARM can't destroy radar,
radar
> can't see strike aircraft/second wave of missles incoming. If radar
lights
> up to look, loitering ARM turns it off again...permenently...

I have heard of US military tests of similar systems for breaking 
massed armour assaults which include some amount of loiter time over 
the MPI (Mean Point of Impact) for the clustered submunitions giving 
them time to acquire a target and to assure they didn't acquire the 
same target as another submunition. Now those are smart missiles that 
might be feasible in the next ten to fifteen years. Imagine a few 
hundred into the future. 

GDW in its 2300 AD ship combat system proposed a paradigm for space 
combat where the main combat component was a semi-intelligent, user 
directed missile which was much like a bastardy of RPV (drone) and 
missile - it loitered around, fired, had fuel to maneuver, was 
smaller than a conventional fighter and didn't include life support 
or a pilot - now you'd think that this would be very succeptible to 
ECM on the other hand.	These missiles are used as sort of fighters, 
recce vehicles, and conventional shipkillers combined. Nasty.

If you remember Star Fleet Battles has a concept of a Captor Mine 
which is of some interest too - an intelligent mine that is basically 
a weapons platform which can either be command activated or set for 
target profiles - mean mean mean. Not something you want an assault 
to run into (especially if you can set it to stay EM invisible and 
passive and only engage capital ships or transports....)
 
> (Speaking of PopSci/Mech, has anyone else read the latest thing on
> semi-autonomous, cheap, camera-mounting drones...SG 2, anyone?)

Might give you some kind of "peak at enemy counters" or make spotting 
rolls at same (a la airborne unit spotting rules) in advance of entry 
or during the scenario if you have an RPV deployed - of course 
accurate modern AA missiles (The Stinger 2250 or whatever you wish to 
call it) might make short work of such RPVs. Or even a good old 
direct fire plasma gun fired accurately....


 
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