Re: To Grav or not to Grav?

Hi Folks,

As another listee said, Grav vehicles that can do surface to orbit open
a
*huge* can of worms from a doctrine point of view.

My take on it is that the success of grav comes down to several
important
factors, the main one being the air defense vs. vehicle defense balance.

If the air defense systems can *always* shoot them down, then grav
vehicles
don't have much advantage in tactical use over other more mundane
vehicles.
 They'll still have to hug the earth for cover.  The best example of
this
(in fiction) is the Hammers' Slammers stories, where the tank main guns
can
be used to fight spacecraft, shoot down satelites, etc.

If the vehicle defense is more effective, then why not, as Beth said,
have
one-size-fits-all vehicles that act as troop transports and their own
fire
support?

I think the answer to that one is going to be economics.  A small
tactical
vehicle (say, a recce afv or a "jeep" or a tank) will cost a lot less
than
a vehicle designed to drop a platoon, or a company, into battle.  If
your
force is made up of just a few vastly capable but enormously expensive
multi-purpose vehicles, then losing just ONE is a *big deal*.  And the
roles they have to undertake are quite different.  Direct fire support
in a
tactical environment calls for one set of features.  Dropping a platoon
from orbit calls for different features.  Combining the two gives you
one
helluva expensive fire support vehicle.  Be *much* less expensive, I
imagine, to have large-ish transport-type vehicles to get the fighting
stuff to the surface, and then smaller stuff for tactical use ON the
surface.  Maybe your APCs and tanks can get to orbit if they need to in
an
emergency, but will there be enough for everyone on the ground?  If you
drop your APCs and Tanks from orbit, assuming that the air defenses are
not
going to shoot them all down, then you need pretty capable vehicles, and
certainly need really well trained crews.  Your tank drivers would have
to
be trained equivalent to our attack helocopter or fighter pilots -
unless
there are dramatic increases in training systems and methods AND smart
systems onboard to make the vehicles easier to pilot (which is probable
-
but the silliest extension of this idea is seen in that show "Space
Above
and Beyond" where all the members of an elite infantry unit were also
all
trained fighter pilots... or maybe it was all the pilots in a squadron
also
happened to be elite infantry...).  Anyway, my point to all of this is
that
yeah, high tech will lead to some interesting stuff, but I'm getting a
sense of "too many eggs in one basket".

OR, the nature of ground warfare changes *completely*.	If you have
survivable vehicles that can fly ground to orbit, do tactical
manoevering
at surface level at 100 - 300 kph (or faster) for thousands of km
without
needing to fuel, etc etc., then we probably going to be talking about
*completely different* battle doctrine.  Again, it comes down to the
effectiveness of air defenses.	If I can fly from orbit right to your
door,
kick it in with big guns, and then drop off a few troops to clean up the
mess, then I'm going to need a very different force structure than if I
have to fight you cross country to get there first.

And as to communications - that'll be determined by who controls the
space
above the planet.  If you control space, you can use your fleet to relay
comms, set out relay satellites, etc etc.  If you don't, then you're
limited largely to what we use now. Maybe boosted with UAV relays or
whatever, but a radio is a radio is a radio... 

My own personal taste toward all this stuff is to limit grav tech both
in
it's expense (it's *expensive* so is only for high-value units...) and
have
the air defense vs. vehicle defense balance such that the vehicles *are*
vulnerable, but not overwhelmingly so.	Not to the extent of Hammers'
Slammers - so you can use grav assault vehicles to get to the surface
and
grav apc's and tanks when you're there, but effective enough that tanks
don't want to fly over the terrain if they can avoid it.

Otherwise the game changes rather a lot...

But then again, I mostly play Stargrunt, and when it comes right down to
it, the battles I play are going to be set *after* the troops have got
out
of their fancy grav vehicles anyway.

>OK just to play devil's advocate, be contrary etc.... ;)

Ah, so you're doing something different today then?  ;)

>OK dumb question, but why have different designs at all? If they've
broken
>with the effect of gravity to a large extent then does it really matter
if
>they're streamlined or not? Why not just use exactly the same kit for
>everything from shuttle to tank?
>

Cost and role.	I imagine that a shuttle is going to cost a lot more,
and
not be expected to have to put up with the punishment that a tank will
take.  You'll need more tanks (and so cheaper, or really deep pockets)
'cuz
you'll expect to lose more, 'cuz they're doing the fighting.

Of course, besides the effectiveness of air defense issue, there is the
cost of grav tech.  If it is *cheap* then why not have lots and lots of
one-size-fits-all vehicles...?

I tend to think that the military mind won't be that much different from
now, though, and you're still going to try to get the most out of
limited
interstellar carrying capacity.  If you have X space in your transport
spaceships, you'll want the maximum combat effectiveness in that space.
That might mean having surface-to-orbit capable vehicles of all types
(APCs, Tanks), but they might be really, really expensive (thereby
limiting
how many you can afford to carry, and afford to lose).	If the fighting
is
likely to be heavy, it might be more effective to have grav transports
(big
ones) and higher numbers of slightly less effective but much less
expensive
APCs and Tanks, that are perhaps limited to how high they can fly, etc.
Maybe you need really big and effective grav generators to get something
as
heavy as a tank into orbit?  Maybe for effective use in space, you need
big
vehicles, so while grav tech allows you huge mobility improvements on
the
surface, you are limited to the 100 meter altitude someone else
mentioned...

>Assuming the gee-whiz gizmo that keeps the thingimee going on the
do-dat of
>the grav tank isn't impossibly hard to get in the boon docks and can't
be
>easily replaced with a bullet casing or some such. The one thing
growing up
>on a farm taught me was that the more "techo" stuff got the more it was
>likely to be %^&@# useless if something went wrong in the bush. E.g. I
>accidentally put our aged truck in a dam once, but it was very easy to
get
>myself out (roll down window and exit), but when the guy up the road
did the
>same with his flashy new one he ended up having to smash a window...
he's
>exact comment went something along the lines "$^%@! electronic window
>control wouldn't $%^! work would it?!!" ;)

Yeah, that's a really good point.

If the grav tech is zoomie and wonderful, but breaks a lot, and you're
out
in the arse-end back of nowhere at the end of a really, really long
supply
chain, maybe you want to have some easy-to-fix stuff along too...

Like I said, my personal taste is toward limiting grav tech.  That way I
can keep a good lid on the worms...

</ramble>

Adrian

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Adrian Johnson