Future Soldiers

[Peregrine]

A claymore mine doesn't take trilions of dollars to build and deploy. Additionally, it isn't just some nutjob poorly-organized terrorist group that will face just the least bit of desperation against an army of invincible men.

 

Claymore mines are already being used in large numbers. Improving body armor won't change this fact. Even the terrorists use the much larger and nastier version already.

 

 

And who said anything about invincible? Well-protected against rifle bullets maybe, but far from invincible.

 

Even sites that suffered a nuclear blast are relatively safe now. Minefields that predate nuclear weaponry are still yet to be cleared.

 

Your point? How long the damage lasts is irrelevant, how many people it kills is what's important. Nuking a city off the map causes a lot more harm than the occaisional death to a minefield.

 

Rarely does a desperate foe do exactly that which you would deem as "needed."

 

Yes, because desperation is going to make them use devastating biological warfare against the invading US army, destroying themselves in the process, when a simple anti-tank missle would do the job just as well. Or even a 30mm cannon in the back of a truck.

I don't care about the firepower that the average man on the ground is going to be packing. A Kar 98K will rarely destroy villages, poison water supplies, and make areas uninhabitable for decades -- I have no reason to assume that will change with advances in rifle manufacturing.

 

Then I don't see your point. If we're not talking about the man on the ground, we're already way past the point where we can do all that damage. Improving armor isn't going to change anything. The weapons that will kill it are still going to be much less damaging than the 500lb bombs we're dropping everywhere.

 

However, once conventional methods prove largely futile, other strategies need to be taken into consideration. Those methods are what have me concerned.

 

Conventional methods aren't going to prove futile, that's my whole point. The weapons you'd use to defeat this improved armor are already being used in large numbers.

[loveme4whoiam]

Yes, because desperation is going to make them use devastating biological warfare against the invading US army, destroying themselves in the process, when a simple anti-tank missle would do the job just as well. Or even a 30mm cannon in the back of a truck.

 

So are you saying that it would be better to have the "Communist/Arab/whoever has what the Us want/ peoples use nice normal weapons to kill soldiers rather than have them protected by armour which is by design resistant to biological weapons? The way I see it having these would maake the jobs of, for example, the UN Rapid-Response unit (I forget the full name or size, I just know that some multi-nation task-forcey thing is being set up to act like the US MEC only in the name of something other than US greed) a whole lot easier - in an hostile environment where you are guaranteed to be outnumbered by the enemy having your troops in these would give a serious tactical advantage, which may well effect things on a deterent level; if you know that a battalion of "unkillable" soldiers (save by, as you have put, an anti-tank rocket to the chest of each of them) would you really invade that neighbouring country and kill those women and children?

 

I know I'm being ridiculously over-generalising here but I think the applications of this project out-weigh any potential problems if they were well-managed (ie, not managed by the US).

[Peregrine]

Err, what? I think you misread my reply. That was to Marxist ßastard's suggestion that having armor that can stop rifle bullets means you have to jump straight to biological warfare that leaves your country uninhabitable for years. Which is completely stupid, as there are plenty of weapons that can kill this super-armor without doing that kind of collateral damage.

 

I know I'm being ridiculously over-generalising here but I think the applications of this project out-weigh any potential problems if they were well-managed (ie, not managed by the US).

 

Well, the last part you can just keep dreaming about. If anyone's going to develop it, it's going to be the US.