yet more Striker...

Kellogg:

>In my opinion, The Infantry is generally going to be less and less a
>part of front line operations.  Sure they are needed for securing areas
>and pacification, but even a man in TL 16 Battle Dress hip deep in
>sensors will be no match for a 10 ton 6G fighter with a 250MW laser
>functioning as a tank.

Probably not.  Will 30 men in battledress be a match for such a weapon?
That equates cost of the two systems to deploy.  Probably still not.  30
infantry with normal weapons today are not a match for an F15E either,
but they still are needed on the battlefield.

>Primarily, the man in the battle dress is mainly gonna be a forward
>observer.  Armed with the most deadly weapon known to man:  The Radio.

I can agree with this without reservation.  That is his primary purpose
today, and at all times since WW1.

Keep in mind the primary advantage of infantry as opposed to armour:
Infantry has a much more finely developed sense of self-preservation.
They hide a lot better, too.  Infantry are pretty hard to root out if
they don't want to be, as Iwo Jima and other battlefields (Vietnam comes
to mind) have shown.

>On the other hand, there is one weapon I have been turning over in my
>mind as an idle thought.  How about a man portable meson accelerator?
>After all they are currently meson accelerators in surgury.  In Striker
>there is a 250MW meson accelerator for use as artillery.  It has a HUGE
>destructive power.  Well, a small one wouldn't need all the power.  And
>once you are inside the armor of a tank, you don't NEED a lot of
>destructive energy to bring it down.

Lovely idea.  Fire control would be somewhat of a bear, though.  Still,
all in all, as a TL16 infantry weapon, it has a lot of promise.



Bertil:

> > > In fact, the M1 Abrams is essentially invulnerable to hand held
anti-tank
> > > weapons.  So is the British Challenger, I am given to understand.

> > Yes, and it can be worse in Traveller, since I can arrange things so
that
> > the M-1 equivalent is armored all-around, instead of mostly in the
front.

>  Which will invalidate both the advantages of good tactics (catching
>the tank from a less protected side) and innovative weapons (that
>strike the tank in a location where the armor in thin, like roof,
>bottom or rear).

It sure will.  So what?  Tactics and design theories change as
technology does.  Fact of Life.



>   I think all PD weapons has to see the rounds for at least 50cm
>(500m?) to be able to counter them. This is stated explicitely for
>countering direct fire rounds, but it should be true for all rounds. I
>think they didn't mention this when talking about artillery PD because
>most artillery will easily be seen for much more than 500m before
>impact.

PD weapons must see the rounds for at least 150m (15cm).
Nuclear Dampers do twice as many dice of interdict as a point defense
weapon of the same TL.

>  So the infantry could use recoilless rifles with nuclear rounds to
>take out almost any target no matter how hard it is.
>
>The 'Davy Crocket' nuke bazooka rides again:)

More likely a nuke-tipped tac-missile, but you have the general idea.

BTW, Rob, when you determined the pen59 maximum, did that include IR
follow-up missile, which increase penetration by 8?  And presumably the
SECOND IR follow-up, which does 8 more.  And the third, and the fourth,
and...

And don't forget to extend the HEAP penetration table down 7 more places
for those TL13+ 36cm HEAP rounds.  Penetration should jump to 66, then.

And if you design the ultimate armoured vehicle using MT (instead of
Striker), keep in mind that MT armour has NO VOLUME.  It distorts
reality slightly, to say the least.

Later...

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I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
                                    --W. von Braun