Hydrocarbon Fuel Cells for 3e

[GURPS Fox]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That still has all the firepower of a 40mm grenade. A rather core and rather large component of an ATGM is an actual anti-tank warhead and the means to move it. Unlike guidance tech, that's not really shrinking dramatically or likely to.

From my understanding, it's something of a 'yes and no' answer when it comes to guidance packages, largely due to the fact that

So you're building a LAV, not a humvee.

Tell that to the Humvee's replacement... minus the numerous sensors.

And multiple defense turrets is still overkill.

Then tell that to modern ADS systems, which have multiple turrets/launchers as standard. Even APCs get this treatment.

You cannot fight an actual war on that basis. There's absolutely no way GDI operates under no-acceptable-casualties rules. (You can't run a training exercise on that basis either.)

Militaries of the west are starting to have to do that sort of thing today (I distinctly remember the vocal discontent the moment bodies and limbless soldiers started showing up back when Afghanistan first started). Hell, the eventual end-doctrine of GDI before TW3 was 'use units to flush out Nod, send Nod to hell via ion cannon' largely because GDI didn't have the manpower to pull much in terms of casualties.

While this sentiment has eroded somewhat in my 'remake' version of the setting, it's still powerful enough to influence doctrine. For better or for worse.

For them to even get close you'd need to give them a lot more tech, and make this thing unmanned. Or at a minimum make it a behind-lines drone-control station rather than a front-line recon vehicle. And forget about the dismount infantry.

Canonically, drones, as we know them, are a dead end in CnC Tiberium-verse unless you decide to slap AGIs into them... which they don't because of CABAL's little rebellion in Firestorm.

While the 'remake' version is a bit more relaxed than canon (and that GDI has its own AGI in the form of GOLAN, a byproduct of EVA improvement research, and is -in setting- very excited at proving itself), drones, as we know them, are a dead-end. Add to this that AGI mass production is still relatively new...

Then it's impossible to do at all, because your drive train and many of your sensors need to be partly or entirely outside the sealed compartment.

Somehow GDI and Nod canonically found a way to NBCT-proof their vehicles that they simply dispose of affected vehicles by TW2 instead of dealing with Tib-poisoning victims after every deployment. Remember in the GDI campaign, one of the missions started with 60% of GDI's troops either suffering from or already succumbed to Tib-poisoning despite the protection that NBC kits provided (GDI's SoP when it came to infantry and Tib fields was, essentially, load up in an NBC-equipped APC, cross the field, unload a fair distance away, and in that order). At least, that's the implication.

Also, all the fun carbon stuff (CNTs, various carbon composites, the like) is also useless as Tib loves to screw around with carbon. Most common case? You die and become a giant pile of tib. Worst case? Becoming a Vicceroid, which requires anti-tank weapons to properly kill.

How do remote weapon systems/stations, assuming that's what you're abbreviating, induce missile proliferation?

Also, we've had them since WWII. Primarily on aircraft, where there was a stronger motivation to separate the gunner and the gun.

RWS means, in this case, the Remote Weapon System, and from my understanding, ground-side RWS were first tested out by the Nazis with at least a project to give the Hetzer some anti-infantry weaponry. Aircraft using them is something new to me, as I've only seen one tiny blurb of the B-29 having 20mm-armed turrets that were remotely controlled and that was that.

My understanding was that it induced the need for longer-range weapons (because pilots and planes are expensive) and since cannons won't exactly work, missiles became the go-to weapon to bypass aircraft RWS systems, leading them to be retired on anything resembling a modern airforce.

On the ground, the majority of the vehicular weapons were already deadly to soldiers, leading to a situation where Joe/Ivan/Hans/[insert common first name of any language here] the AT gunner has to hope to whomever god he worships that his shot rings true or he and his squad will die very messily to return fire (HE rounds, despite Hollywood downplaying them, are no joke). This led to the USSR developing a viable ATGM system, which was (comparatively) more accurate and had a greater range than many recoilless rifles.

This presented a conundrum for everyone. At this point, the idea of making an RWS system on a vehicle stayed on the back burner because there was no real need and various required technologies (mostly in cameras and view-screens) weren't all that developed yet. The vehicle armaments killed infantry quite well, and usually at a far greater range than what infantry could muster. ATGMs change that equation, and probably at the worst possible time as composite armor wouldn't be practical until the early 1970s and wasn't mass implemented until the late 1970s at the least. Add to the fact that most pintle-mounted guns still used iron sights instead of various scopes and you still have to pop your head out to use it (which means, well, your tank commander is one moment away from someone blowing his head off, and in the chaotic battlefield, that's a matter of when, not if). Note the latter problem was having the old standby of 'throw darts at the board and see what sticks' RnD causing things like the M60's turret cupola system.

As ATGMs improved (and tanks struggled to keep up), this requirement became more and more prominent. By the 1980s, the first of what we can see as RWS stations started to appear... but it was a bit of a "too little, too late" situation as the Cold War ended. So, they went to the back burner again... then 9/11 and Afghanistan happened, causing the mass implementation of the RWS systems we see today.