[Ultra Tech] Non-lethal warfare at TL9

[Fred Brackin]

The thing that occurs to me after a little contemplation is a sort of "passive aggressive" defense model.

For example, you place minefields of escalating lethality in front of some position that your strategy says you must hold. Then you put warning signs. Then it becomes your enemy's fault if he sends troops into your minefield to clear it.

You could hit that triple digit figure of unsustainable losses pretty quickly.

[seasalt]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Lots of electrolasers, sleep gas and tangler munitions where human vs. human combat is expected.

...

Depending on the level of medical technology available weapons that "temporarily maim" targets might be acceptable. E.g., blinding lasers are acceptable if blindness can be repaired with surgery or cyberware.

If you want to really limit casualties, restrict war to online VR settings with AI computers acting as referees. Alternately, make war similar to low TL ritual combat where impressive threat displays, counting coup, first blood and wins in champions duels are more important than actual combat.

Combat hardsuits make electrolasers, sleep gas, and blinding lasers useless.

As for using entirely drones or restricting it to VR or some kind of extreme sports - I see that as a non-viable solution, because inevitably, one side will accuse the other of cheating, and you'll be right back to fighting for real. I imagine that in a conflict with serious stakes, a lot of the soldiers (and indeed, commanders) actually do want to kill whoever they're fighting against - it's just that the majority population, nationally and globally, doesn't accept such measures.

And yes, this unstable equilibrium applies to the whole setting - it's ripe for someone to eventually just throw out the whole rulebook. But that's a much greater escalation than just moving to using real physical force.

Likewise, in a TL9 society (I chose that TL for a reason), fielding military forces of nothing but robots is prohibitively expensive and carries steep downsides.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The thing that occurs to me after a little contemplation is a sort of "passive aggressive" defense model.

For example, you place minefields of escalating lethality in front of some position that your strategy says you must hold. Then you put warning signs. Then it becomes your enemy's fault if he sends troops into your minefield to clear it.

You could hit that triple digit figure of unsustainable losses pretty quickly.

That's an interesting concept. But I think that in a society where dying in warfare is not normalized, soldiers might not be willing to enter a clearly marked minefield at all. In real warfare, you know that if your side loses, it's very likely you'll be killed anyway. But in this case there is less incentive to take on such a dangerous mission. I'm sure you'd get some macho guys volunteering to do it, but not the whole force.

And besides, minefields need to be covered by fire to be effective, so you still need defending troops with ranged weapons.

On the other hand - in a very casualty averse society it might very well be that "war" is basically a competitive mineclearing contest where both sides mostly just build and attack battlefield obstacles and avoid engaging eachother directly.

Will respond to some of the others later on.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by seasalt

Combat hardsuits make electrolasers, sleep gas, and blinding lasers useless.

And putting retractable superfine blades (treat as Spines, B88, but with cutting damage at +2 damage and AD (2) for being Superfine; that works out to 1d(2) cut) on such will probably shred tanglers in short order (I'd say use tangler dissolving spray or just a few layers of reactive armor paste with detonators, but both of those are apparently TL10; I'm not sure what one does to free a captive of tanglers at TL9, unless it's expected you'll have to just hack away at it). Non-lethal weapons are typically a lot easier to defend against than lethal ones, and if you make all your soldiers functionally immune to them, you're basically leaving OpFor no choice but to go with lethal methods. That or battles basically just wind up with everyone wrestling each other until one side gives up. Even sonic nauseators, which have the advantage of ignoring DR, should be readily blockable with special noise-canceling earpieces (they don't work against people who can't hear them).

Originally Posted by seasalt

I imagine that in a conflict with serious stakes, a lot of the soldiers (and indeed, commanders) actually do want to kill whoever they're fighting against - it's just that the majority population, nationally and globally, doesn't accept such measures.

... do they? They come from a society that is so opposed to killing that they specifically avoid it as much as possible in warfare of all places, so why would their soldiers be cavalier about killing? Sure, in our world the military is an attractive place for people who are inclined to kill, as being a soldier at war makes it legal, but in a world where the military typically isn't allowed to kill, why would such waste their time with it? It should also be noted that a lot goes into training soldiers to be willing to kill (that is, buying off Reluctant Killer), and a society like that probably doesn't invest in doing so. What need would they have for killing machines?

Originally Posted by seasalt

In real warfare, you know that if your side loses, it's very likely you'll be killed anyway. But in this case there is less incentive to take on such a dangerous mission. I'm sure you'd get some macho guys volunteering to do it, but not the whole force.

Most wars aren't existential in nature, at least not like that. When your side loses a war - or indeed in many cases when you just lose a battle - you instead surrender, are made a POW, and if the war is over you'll eventually wind up released unless they suspect you of warcrimes, in which case you'll be tried for such (if the war isn't over, they may keep you there until it's over - although in the far past, it was common to release captured soldiers once they made a vow not to fight any more in the war). Or unless your captors are fond of committing warcrimes themselves, in which case the war probably is existential in nature.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by seasalt

Combat hardsuits make electrolasers, sleep gas, and blinding lasers useless.
n.

This would be where you use a sniper trained to aim for the leg.

If we're talking TL9 Combat Hardsuits that's only DR 30 and you don't even need AP ammo for the 15mm rifle. For the limbs that is. The 15mm won't penetrate the DR 50 Torso without AP.

You could even go for a "minor" penetration on the limbs with the 10mm Storm rifle. That's 9DP+ and 1.5 pts penetrates the DR 30 limb armor and then the P+ modifier increases that to 2 pts. That's not disabling (much less "maiming") but it would make them vulnerable to Sleep Gas again.

You could even go down to 6mm if you used APDS. That'd change 6mm damage to 6D+6(2)P- putting 27 pts against what's effectively a DR25 Torso. So 2 pts get through but are then halved by the P-. So only 1 pt of damage but the armor isn't Sealed any more.

Don't use APEP. You might kill someone.

Also note that heavy armor is somewhat morally dubious as it might defeat defensive weapons during an assault.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by seasalt

I imagine that in a conflict with serious stakes, a lot of the soldiers (and indeed, commanders) actually do want to kill whoever they're fighting against - it's just that the majority population, nationally and globally, doesn't accept such measures.

Eh, soldiers often aren't super invested in killing the enemy even in real world wars; highest priorities tend towards "make them stop shooting at me" and "take the objective".