Tanks

<<
 How do you differentiate a one man tank from an infantry man in combat
armor
 or a mech-walker.  Do you lose the spirit of the tanker?   How
important is
 that?
  >>

There's even more to it than that - history shows that the average
infantryman is fasr more concerned with keeping his own skin intact and
reac
ting to the horrors ofwar that sometimes he is less likely to actually
fire
his weapon and engage the enemy. Crewed weapons are entirely different
psychologically. When acting as part of a crew "serving" a weapon system
-
you are one more step removed from the concept that you are killing
fellow
sophonts. Ship weapons, artilery and missile units and TANKS are much
more
liely to service targets and not immediately face the situation that
they are
killing. This can get a man through his combat initiation and allow him
to
function as a soldier - noit a human. He'll pay for that later on in
life,
but he will tend to the business of fighting your war right now, instead
of
balking at the act.

** you don't just suspect this has something maybe to do with
A) The fact the infantryman is feeling pretty vulnerable while the
tanker is fairly cocooned in his vehicle? I've heard of tankers feeling
pretty vulnerable when they realized they were against an enemy that
could kill their weapons system (the tank) relatively often and doing
things like backing up, turning tail, running away, bailing out of a
perfectly good tank, etc?
B) The fact the infantryman is more likely to kill his targets where he
can see them and the tanker is only killing other weapons systems?
and
C) The fact the infantryman is kiling his targets at closer range ergo
its a far more personal experience? I assume tankers getting close
assaulted by limpet mines, AT ordinance, and molotovs and with infantry
aswarm their vehicle are more likley to deal with those threats than go
out to "engage targets".

The further you put a man from the direct feel of combat, the more
likely he is to do his job without looking at what it is exactly
(killing other people). Confronted with that immediacy, he can't deny
it. Mind you, the downside is a fantasy sense of the situation which
*might* get out of sync with reality. But you get the good with the bad.
So plane crews, tank crews, arty crews, etc. are more likely on a per
capita basis to engage the enemy. But put any of them in the same
situation the average grunt was in (stress wise, and in terms of seeing
the foe) and they'd perform about the same I expect. And making a tank a
two man crew or even a one man crew won't remove their disconnection
from the outside world - if anything, it'll heighten it (I don't think
so... but it could) and that (according to my best guess) would make
them MORE likely to engage a target and MORE likley to fulfill their
primary role rather than worrying about saving their own ass.

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