Re: PA availability, was: [semi OT] Women wargamers

charles gray (?) wrote:
>	In addition, remember the problems you are going to have with
repairing
> and sustaining the suits.  Today, one of the arguements against
> autoloaders in tanks is that three men cannot maintain an MBT in the
> field.

absolutely. modern tank-gun autoloaders are not reliable 
enough. in twenty years, they will be. i'll put money on 
it. PA suits will advance to the point where fixing 
cracks and dings in the armour consists of slathering on 
some putty (made of self-organising carbin naofibre 
subunits in a boron nitrate paste, or summat) and having 
at it with a blowtorch (boron nitrate + heat -> boron 
nitride, one of the hardest known materials; bargain!), 
and the 'muscles' are a self-healing smart plastic. 
again, we will be able to see several ages of PA. just 
as once tanks were a highly limited shock weapon, and 
have now become general purpose, widely used war 
machines, so will PA. there will be proto-PA used in 
tunnel assaults only, then early-PA used in shock units, 
then late-PA used by all foot troops.

>	I see powered armor, at least for the very long haul as being a
"shock"
> force, that is designed for very high tempo, short term operations.

you might make the case that the majority of operations 
in the future will be such operations.

>  In
> fact, you could make a case for police getting PA before soldiers
would
> since a SWAT team is never far from support, and seldom is in action
for
> more then a few hours at a time.

absolutely - proto-PA could well be a system in law 
enforcement, exploration, ship-ship boarding actions, 
etc.

Tom

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