Tanks

A respected listite with whom I may somewhat disagree spake thus:

A one man tank crew is a BAD idea. One set of eyes hands, and one
attention
span is woefully insufficient. If the option is to eventually go to an
auto
loader, the best idea would be a semi-remote turret  The autoloaders
system
is locked away from the gunner and commander by partition and cannot
injure
anyone - though a malfunction will make the whole tank a "tech
casualty".

** Or at least require the gunner and commander to hop out and take a
look. But yes, I'd favours such a system.

Semi-remote rather than truly remote because while the gunner can be
tucked
awy in the hull away from the auto loader problems, the commander really

NEEDS to be able to unbutton and stand up where he can actually SEE what
is
going on around him.

** Hmmm. This hinges on the belief the Mark I eyeball is magical. Simply
put, there is no reason synthetic vision aides inside the tank and RPVs
over the battlefield and combat datalink between the tanks can't give a
FAR better picture than a tank commander has by looking. If we took your
theory, planes would not be heading (as they are....) to closed cockpits
with synthesized vision which composites FLIR, TI, Radars, and other
sensor suites together with some AI and fancy graphics.

** I think in the long run the human being will still *want* to take a
look, but it will give him, if anything, less information about what is
going on.

>From the hull he cannot get tall enough

** I'm thinking his RPV (linked to his tank by a fiber optic - about the
size of a pie plate - stealthed) will let him see a heck of a lot. Or
whatever analogous system is installed.

- he can't
unbutton and holler across the intervening hundred yards to another tank
in
the platoon -

** We invented comms for a reason. And I assume he always COULD do this
if he had some reason to.

the adjutant's Hummer can't pull up next to him and give orders
verbally across the distance where they can see eachother's faces and
evaluate the reality behind the words

** Interestingly enough, you CAN see body language and a lot of the
intangibles through vid. Especially hi-res vid. A fact most folk may not
know is that AT&T tested vidphones of various types and concluded that
many were *too good*. The reproduction of sound and video let the
receiver pick out all the nuances of tone, of facial expression, etc.
and thus made the person called kind of more "immediate" than a normal
phone call - almost to the point of being there - something you might
not want in a home phone but you might well want on a battlefield squad
data net.

- there are way TOO MANY reasons for
not letting the tank commander seal himself away inside the tank where
he can
get truly tunnel-visioned and forget the complexities of his
responsibilities
by focusing on fighting his tank, to the exclusion of surviving the
battle.

** Not saying this can't happen, but there is no reason why it has to.
The idea that wearing a bulletproof vest makes cops supercops has long
gone out of vogue, and the same would be true here. At first, people
would worry about this, but then it would be old hat and everyone would
know that the tank is still vulnerable. I don't think a modern tank
commander would expose himself to sniper fire if he had equal or better
sensory data available.

If you go to tiny tank crews, the platoon can no longer tend to their
own
maintenance, security and scouting and you will have to permanently
assign an
IFV and squad to the tank platoon.

** If my tanks are built well enough, maintenance is minimized. I'll put
in motors like detroit claims to be building that don't require service
for 100,000 km. I'll put in drive units that fail 1 time out of
1,000,000 instead of 1 time in 1,000. If an extra 200 years doesn't make
our technology more robust, some engineers are snoozing.

** And if my tanks are on their own - I'm a very unhappy formation
commander!

This means it is no longer an armor
platoon at all and while task-forcing the company level is an asset, I
am not
in any way sure that it is a good concept for the platoon.

** ? It is till a platoon of tanks. Can they run without fuel today?
Without food brought up by supply? No. This only changes (and not all
that much) the role of the logistics train. Don't try to make it sound
like today's armoured force can survive without infantry (thanks Harold
Coyle...) or without support. That's nuts.

The grunts will
also get stuck with helpin maintenance on the other three vehicles in
the
platoon besides their own - whil volunteering to do such with one
another is
a good thing - it is still a dirty job to be assigned routinely.

** Sure. It might not be choice, but OTOH if the equipment is built
right, that isn't so big an issue. If I had a choice between spending an
extra 30% on my tank, or paying for an extra 2 crew and their logistics
over the vast ranges of space, I'd spend the money on a more reliable,
less maintenance intensive MBT. Plus it helps minimize losses of trained
crew when a tank IS lost.

They would
also get stuck with security and scouting routinely which would not
promote
the idea of cooperation in the platoon very much at all.

** No, of course shared duty would be a bad idea... ?!?

There's is simply
too much for a tank crew to do in  24 hours in the field and still
insist on
reducing the size of that crew.

** Do you think maintaining an F-14 is analogous to a Spad-IV? The tank
of 2180 will have about the same commonality. It'll either
A) have been built real robust to require not much attention, thus
limiting interstellar supply or
B) be built super tech complexo in which case there WILL be a logistics
train of some size.

** But everyone is welcome to have a divergent opinion.

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