Why mecha?

[fectin]

"Loiter time."

[kzt]

"Loiter time."

Israeli Herons have an on on-station time of something over 40 hours, with a 250 kg payload. While they currently are unarmed (carrying a big surveillance package instead) I'll bet you can fit some 4kg PGMs in 250 kg and still have decent a surveillance package.

[Fuchs]

Those don't do anything against low tech enemies. Yes, you can fly around and shoot up villages full of low tech wogs and rack up really big kill counts, but so what? The "bad guys" don't really look any different from the civilians, so the ability to fly around with stealthy drones accomplishes very little. Maybe you can identify some targets to shoot missiles at, but maybe you can't. In any case, until you actually have men and machines on the ground, you don't actually control the area.

Power armor and larger mechs are more adapted to taking and holding ground against what we actually face: an insurgency of people who look exactly the same as civilians with various amounts of man-portable military hardware and little training. There is a place for aerial drones. They are great for recon. They can tell you everything aerial recon can tell you and are much much cheaper than manned planes. But if having really good aerial recon made you take and hold territory, we would have conquered Vietnam in 1964. You need to send actual men and vehicles into villages and cities, and aerial drones do not count for shit against that requirement.

-Username17

I'm not talking about the mini-quadcopters, but predators and similar drones, which do have a greater range than vehicles, and can carry ATMs.

Edit: Looks like the correct english military term is "UAV", not drone - me bad, German and Shadowrun use "drone"

A predator can, according to wiki, fly for 40 hours.

A mecha has the same - or worse - problem with identifying threats from insurgents as a flying drone has. But a drone pilot can take more time to make sure that those things getting pulled out of a car are missile launchers and not ikea packages while a mecha pilot has to react faster or he gets shot at. A drone though can fly around, take another look, and even if it gets shot down it's just a drone, not a pilot. And much less expensive. A drone has greater range too, which means you need less support in the field, and less supplies being moved through possibly hostile (and IED'd) terrain to the outposts and bases. A mecha is far more difficult to armor than a vehicle too, which negates a lot of any advantages it may have compared to choppers.

To hold terrain you need infantry (supported by armor, artillery and aircraft), not mechas. Maybe power armor infantry can have a place, but no damn Battletech rejects.

Though the best tactic to battle insurgents is to not try to conquer a damn country full of potential insurgents in the first place.

[Previn]

A mecha has the same - or worse - problem with identifying threats from insurgents as a flying drone has. But a drone pilot can take more time to make sure that those things getting pulled out of a car are missile launchers and not ikea packages while a mecha pilot has to react faster or he gets shot at. A drone though can fly around, take another look, and even if it gets shot down it's just a drone, not a pilot.

There isn't much of a reason to assume that mech are going to have pilots, UAVs are just the easiest start for that. Computers with some human oversite from a remote location are going to be what real future warfare looks like. It's just less of a romantic image.

To hold terrain you need infantry (supported by armor, artillery and aircraft), not mechas. Maybe power armor infantry can have a place, but no damn Battletech rejects.

Actually, robots would be better. Little to no logistical support, no need for sleep, 100% vigilant, faster, stronger, tougher and able to carry more. What you really want humans for is as faces for local populations, not fighting or holding anything anywhere.

[Vebyast]

A mecha has the same - or worse - problem with identifying threats from insurgents as a flying drone has. But a drone pilot can take more time to make sure that those things getting pulled out of a car are missile launchers and not ikea packages while a mecha pilot has to react faster or he gets shot at.

The mecha has direct line of sight to the people shooting at it, a side view, and is 300 meters away instead of 30000. It also has things like fire-control radar and acoustic gunfire detectors. Drones can track vehicles and spy on people you've already identified, but mecha are just plain better sensor platforms for checking whether people have guns.

Additionally, you have to worry about time-to-target. It could take minutes to get a drone into position to take a shot. Remember, the bad guys are probably shooting out of the second-floor windows of an occupied building, and you need to get an angle that will hit the correct face of the building at a large enough angle that it goes into the window instead of coming in through the ceiling.

A drone though can fly around, take another look, and even if it gets shot down it's just a drone, not a pilot.

A mecha is far more difficult to armor than a vehicle too, which negates a lot of any advantages it may have compared to choppers.

Except that, against an enemy with modern MANPADS, a Predator that goes lower than 30k feet has an expected lifespan measured in minutes. If you accidentally run into range of an actual SAM, it's game over no matter how high up you are. Mecha may have not very much armor, but current UAVs have no armor and no cover and can't even dodge. As for helicopters, their strategy is to go low enough to not be targeted, which the mecha can do quite a bit better, particularly in urban environments where helicopters can't fit between buildings.

Also, those UAVs are actually pretty damn expensive. First, they're way bigger than they look. Second, they're aerospace. Aerospace is ridiculously fucking expensive. They need higher-quality components than anybody else and they're incredibly conservative with methods, materials, safety margins, and even basic design, all of which push costs through the roof. The MQ-9 Reaper, our modern combat-capable UAV, has a 70-foot wingspan and a unit cost of almost $40 million dollars. As comparison, a modern M1 Abrams has a unit cost under $9 million.

To hold terrain you need infantry (supported by armor, artillery and aircraft), not mechas. Maybe power armor infantry can have a place, but no damn Battletech rejects.

The useful niche is in infantry support. Armor is actually pretty bad at supporting infantry because infantry are so much more maneuverable.

[hyzmarca]

Also, your enemies are not the Russians. The Russians do all kinds of cool shit, where they have people with laser range finders that input numbers into GPS databases and then have indirect fire missiles torch your vehicles. The Americans will do that too. And you know what? That doesn't fucking matter. All that shit can be done with tank destroyer aircraft and it's very effective at destroying tanks, and if you want to do that you don't want or need a land vehicle at all.

But see, your actual enemy is a bunch of dudes who happen to have some rocket launchers and small arms. And they are mixed in with normal civilians, and don't even look different until they get the weapons out of their truck.

According to the Red Dawn remake, America will be conquered by the North Koreans. I find this somewhat plausible.

Most major mech games presuppose war between powerful nation-states, not COIN.

[kzt]

Except that, against an enemy with modern MANPADS, a Predator that goes lower than 30k feet has an expected lifespan measured in minutes. If you accidentally run into range of an actual SAM, it's game over no matter how high up you are. Mecha may have not very much armor, but current UAVs have no armor and no cover and can't even dodge. As for helicopters, their strategy is to go low enough to not be targeted, which the mecha can do quite a bit better, particularly in urban environments where helicopters can't fit between buildings.

If you want to compare modern in-service UAVs to mecha, please provide me with a exactly what in-service mecha you are using as the baseline.

Which is going to be pretty damn hard as nobody has fielded mecha. Ever. Nobody even has one that is viable in concept. So essentially your saying how your imaginary friend could beat us up, if he were real and could do all the things that he can do in your imagination.

So lets go back to mission. What is the mission? What is this thing designed to accomplish?

Other useful questions to answer: How much is it supposed to cost? In what sized unit does it deploy in? Is it part of a combined arms team or is it supposed to be a gold-plated "multi-mission" wonder weapon that can do it all by itself?

[Vebyast]

If you want to compare modern in-service UAVs to mecha, please provide me with a exactly what in-service mecha you are using as the baseline.

As with any of these future-tech discussions, I was using real data and my own expertise to get a ballpark estimate. Looking at my lab's robot-building budget and comparing the costs of modern armored vehicles, combat UAVs, and other combat aircraft suggests that mecha won't be ridiculously expensive, particularly because the mecha can survive combat better. Besides, I'm not the one that started looking at price tags.

So lets go back to mission. What is the mission? What is this thing designed to accomplish?

Anti-infantry and convoy defense, basically. I'm still saying that there'll be a side role as a highly mobile indirect assault unit, but Frank's "bigger badder infantry" is a good niche.

Other useful questions to answer: How much is it supposed to cost? In what sized unit does it deploy in? Is it part of a combined arms team or is it supposed to be a gold-plated "multi-mission" wonder weapon that can do it all by itself?

Unit cost somewhere between $20m and $30m. More than an MBT, less than a current-generation aircraft, about as much as a last-generation aircraft. Probably two or three of them to a unit, mostly as support for infantry units. "Combined arms" doesn't really mean much now that everybody has internet-connected hats, but I don't think it'll spend much time away from friendly units unless it's out hunting.

The big advantages are that it's almost as terrain-capable as infantry, almost as fast as an MBT (or faster, if we go with a tachikoma-style wheely-knees design that uses the upper leg links as suspension and the drives the wheels using the knee actuators, though still probably not as fast as the M1, which has a major WTF engine), carries extreme-range anti-infantry weaponry, and has the kinematics to point a gun at anything in range in seconds. Those point to a role where it defends stuff from insurgents and attacks enemy infantry groups. If you're asking if it has any disadvantages, there's one simple one - mecha run like fuck if they see tanks. They might try set up ambushes if they're really stuck, but a mech is in major trouble if anybody manages to line up a big gun on it. Helicopters are also a problem, being the only thing around that's faster on the draw.