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Originally Posted by warellis
So you might more see lightweight-ish APCs/IFVs and transport craft and gunships than say WW2-ish tanks?
How would aircraft be affected over the 3 decades with these technologies?
Do you think intermediate cartridges like the 5.56 NATO or 5.45 Soviet, the small-caliber high-velocty types, might be adopted earlier here?
I've noticed for some pulpish worldlines, that often a 5.71 Skoda intermediate cartridge is seen in use, like for Gernsback in Alternate Earths. |
If the "APCs" are rocket-powered maybe. The torch drive is a TL10^ or 11^ propulsion system. It would leapfrog a lot of intermediate developments.
You might eventually see winged rockets instead of brute force lifters but not airplanes as they existed in OTL. Those are one of the things that get totally leapfrogged.
A general technophilia and radical change in how wars would be fought almost certainly accelerate the pace of personal weapons development. I don't know that they'd end up in the same place we have though.
A path towards evolved firearms that I didn't not mention last night is scaling up velocity wise from sub-machineguns. Our Soviets started on that path when they began hotloading the Mauser 7.63 for use in the PPSh-41. A few hundred feet per second more and they'd pass the P- barrier.