UCAVs

>From the website for the model:
 The container has several interface ports to 
allow maintenance checks to be performed on 
the stored vehicles, or to download flight plans. 
The current idea is that 50 to 100 UCAVs will 
be stored at a depot, with all the containers 
hooked up to a central computing station to 
monitor their state. 

--> Now that, my friends, is Aliens(TM) level 
technology. Being able to monitor the state of 
your combat vehicles while they are 
containerized via an access port. Even neater 
would be 802.11 or something like that - a 
wireless way - just walk buy the crate and it 
tells you what is in it, what state the contents are 
in, etc. Now THAT is technology put to an 
interesting use. 

UCAV will have a twenty-year shelf life, one of 
the more unusual parameters for a combat 
aircraft design by traditional standards, with 
removal for tests every five years. 
--> This too is interesting and probably a model 
for some stuff in sci-fi universes where long-
sleep shipping lasts for months or years. You'd 
need to be able to have vehicles you can store 
and leave on the shelf and maintain infrequently. 

(On the long sleep topic, a book from the 
eighties - sci-fi novel - was called "Seeds of 
War" and it featured a multi-national human 
force dispatched somewhere that took years to 
get to. They had to train in huge ships along the 
way and the real neat part was near the end 
(SPOILER>>>>>>> STOP NOW>>>>>>>>>>)
...
...
...
OKAY You've been warned.
....
....
Near the end, they find out after going to the 
planet, kicking butt (taking some big losses 
along the way) for a while that the boffins that 
determined where the enemy that attacked human 
space came from were WRONG. They'd kicked 
the crap out of the wrong planet. So they had to 
kit up and head elsewhere.... to repeat the 
performance....

And one last OT thought: 
Elves. A race? Yep. One to be pitied: Most of 
them don't have the strength to hand-cock a 
_REAL_ missile weapon (unlike the Dwarves!) 
and most of them have a glass Jaw (unlike any 
Orc or Half Orc that survived to puberty). 

For a slightly different view: In my campaign 
world (probably 13 years old now...), they are a 
an Eldar race who pretty much live forever if 
you don't kill them. They value balance with 
nature, art (as they see it), and magic. And they 
don't like the local Gumans who keep cutting 
down their Old Growth Forest to put up fields. 
In fact, some of them are downright xenocidal as 
far as any of the "temporary" races are 
concerned. And a xenocidal warrior who has 
been perfecting his technique for 400 years is 
not a pretty thing. OTOH, they aren't very fecund 
and when one is killed, you've taken out a few 
hundred or a thousand years worth of potential 
so its a pretty huge loss. They make the alleged 
American adversity to casualties look positively 
mild. They strike from hiding, from a distance, 
and avoid battle in open terrain or in close 
order. I try to make them more than a two 
dimensional bunch of pointy eared tree hugging 
fairy boys. They just have (like any good alien) 
a different outlook and a different set of goals 
and motivations than humans. :) 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304