Military tactics for battle dress

[mike wightman]

Tech level	Infantry equipment	Infantry support	Artillery	Vehicles
13	All infantry is generally now in combat armor and equipped with gauss rifles. Battle dress is issued to selected assault troops.	The PGMP-13 is introduced as a support weapon in battle dress equipped units. The throw-away missile is introduced, incorporating televisual guidance and visual as well as inertial target location.	The first damper fields are introduced, enabling limited neutralization of incoming nuclear warheads. The fusion Y gun is introduced in the direct fire role, with the light plasma B gun taking over point defense. Gravitic compensators enable the heaviest fusion guns to fire on the move, and long-range direct fire by fusion guns executing popup maneuvers becomes standard.	The first damper fields allow protracted storage and transportation of elements with short half-lives. The first major use of the damper field militarily is to enable the manufacture, storage, and transportation of 2 cm californium rounds, fired from auto-cannon mounts in remotely piloted drones. Each round is hollow and collapses on impact, the collapsed round having sufficient mass to go critical, thus causing a small nuclear explosion. More conventional gunships mount plasma C guns or fusion X guns along with missiles.
14	A higher proportion of the infantry is equipped with battle dress, and the standard small arm for such troops becomes the PGMP-13.	At the squad level the PGMP-14 replaces the PGMP-12, while battle dress equipped units receive the FGMP-14 in place of the PGMP-13.	Much more sophisticated dampers enable virtually complete protection of operational areas from nuclear warheads. The fusion Z gun is introduced in the direct fire role.	More sophisticated damper fields render the californium drones obsolete. Gunships now carry fusion Y guns or rapid pulse X guns.
15	Most infantry is by now equipped with battle dress and has converted to the FGMP-14. The gauss rifle remains the standard arm of non-powered troops.	The FGMP-15 becomes the standard squad support weapon.	The prirhary direct fire weapon becomes the battlefield meson accelerator. Although much smaller than meson accelerators used in planetary defense, it is still by battlefield standards large, bulky, and extremely lethal. By now, the standard point defense and direct support weapon becomes the fusion Y gun. Drone missiles enjoy an increase in use as the appearance of meson accelerators linked to an increasingly sophisticated computer target acquisition and fire direction system makes the long-range popup increasingly impractical	Gunships mounting rapid pulse X guns and heavier Z guns are virtually indistinguishable from orbital craft. Lower performance personnel carriers mount rapid pulse X and Y guns and missile systems.

 

[Condottiere]

The point of a military campaign is to achieve tactical and operational objectives, to achieve strategic ones.

Primarily, to break the enemy's will to continue the conflict.

 

[Dragoner]

Glass the planet!

 

[Condottiere]

Point defence.

 

[Deldarius]

Star Trigger ftw!

 

[Dragoner]

Star Trigger ftw!

You have the aptitude.

 

[infojunky]

I think airburst artillery shells would still be killer, and likely (as it is now) the most common fusing.

Think about that. Between the increased protection vs blast effects and fragmentation, the kill radius is vastly reduced. Then couple that with the increased separation between individuals. Now carrier shells deploying seeking munitions, they will become a larger factor.

 

[McPerth]

Not much point to digging in when facing meson artillery...

I know we have discussed this before in other treads, and we don’t agree on it, but I keep not seeing a situation where infantry and meson guns will be both used at once.

Put shortly, if you intend to destroy, you don’t need the infantry if you have the meson guns, and if you intend to capture it minimally intact, you don’t use your meson guns. If you use them, the only thing you will capture is barren territory.

ITTR Heinlein also talks about this in Starship Troopers, saying that the navy may bomb a planet to the stone age (or even before it), but only infantry can capture it.

And in all the history of 3I there’s no such a bombing before Black War, the closer event being the sterilization of Illelesh equatorial zone. Not even earth was so bombed after the Solomani War (for political reasons)

 

[Ekofisk]

"I keep not seeing a situation where infantry and meson guns will be both used at once."

It's possible. Consider Adventure 7: Broadsword*: if you can draw the opposing forces into an area where you don't mind vaporizing the landscaping, the planetary meson gun is a potential asset.

*: NB I'm aware that Adventure Seven has issues, None of these are relevant here as this describes a situation, not a specific set of rules or rules violations.

 

[Dragoner]

Think about that. Between the increased protection vs blast effects and fragmentation, the kill radius is vastly reduced. Then couple that with the increased separation between individuals. Now carrier shells deploying seeking munitions, they will become a larger factor.

Depends on version, as usual. Target DM is going to be -2 for BD vs 7+. On a 9, they are going to take 6d. Med Howitzer, 11.5 km distance, RoF 2, blast radius 9 m. That is a lot of toasty troopers. Maybe not the most realistic, range should be double, etc.. Though in reality, thermodynamics is not your friend, probably only limited protection could ever be achieved by wearable armor, the human shape was not made to be armored. Protection would be by digging in, or some other built up fighting position. BD's real actual advantage is mobility, not protection. Guderian stated that the engine is as much a weapon of the tank as its gun, and he probably was quoting Fuller. War is just physics, how much energy you can put into an area to cause enemy casualties. Industrialized war carries this further to ask how many shells or tanks, and boots can you put in the line tomorrow. I'm running down a lot of this, including tactical maps, chargen for specialized units. Another thing is robots, they can take up a part of the support tail. Auto-Cannon it gets even worse for BD at +4/+6 DS/HE, and that is very long range, long and medium are even worse.

In my game I give BD AV 18, though an HE round still does 6d6, raises survivability a bit, though through a heavy barrage those troops will still get worked. Other weapons such as loitering munitions it depends, they still need to dig in. Magnetar or Singer (Meson in all but name) is killer, though at that point when do the nukes get used? Just glass the place and move on. However that hasn't happened.

 

[mike wightman]

Artillery has always been used to attack infantry. Artillery was, up until the advent of air power, the means by which you soften up objectives before sending in your troops.
Napoleonic tactic - send in cavally to force infantry to adopt square, bring up horse artillery.

The current war in Ukraine is being fought mainly by artillery .

My BD troops are going to scout out targets for my meson artillery, your meson artillery is going to be used on my advancing BD troops.

The Zhodani may lack battlefield meson artillery, but they can put 100t meson bays on strike cruisers to do the same job.

A unrestricted war between TL13+ forces will be a lot more brutal then dropping some TL15 marines onto a TL8 colony world.

 

[whartung]

Put shortly, if you intend to destroy, you don’t need the infantry if you have the meson guns, and if you intend to capture it minimally intact, you don’t use your meson guns. If you use them, the only thing you will capture is barren territory.

You need to root out the infantry. Buildings and rubble are quite artillery and bomb resistant, especially once they've collapsed, and quite nice at concealing infantry. Infantry and vehicles tend to not mix very well, so you place infantry even in bombed out ruins to prevent advances.

All that bomb and artillery resistant rubble and trenches and what not, are not a problem for meson guns. There is no cover from a meson gun, only concealment.

The Striker meson gun takes out a 100m x 100m square, so about two football fields. Imagine a wave front of destruction in front of the main route of advance. That 1000 ton ship with 10 bay weapons taking out a kilometer of terrain every minute. Just ravaging huge swaths of land while the column advances. None of those pesky ambushes hiding in cover.

It's really hard for me to wrap my head around this capability. Cities were blasted and burned to smithereens in WW2, but not this efficiently, and with no pesky hard lingering aftermath (I do not belive the meson gun irradiates its zone). And the hits just keep on coming as long as there's power. Meson gun, Mr. Fusion, and a crate of bananas, and you are in for a dark time. Oh, and you have no idea where it's coming from. Let's put some in a submarine and park it offshore. A small one in a container sunk in a lake, or dropped in a lonely valley, remotely operated. I have no idea what the range is for the one in Striker, but we know that the ones on starships have very long ranges indeed.

We had this technology in Iraq, at least a crude form. We would send B-1s on CAP, just loitering, waiting for an impromptu sortie to drop a 2000lb JDAM bomb onto some hotspots head. We don't need to take out all the buildings, but THAT one is being problematic. 1-800-BONECAP. "Hold, on its way."

This was novel, you don't send bombers on patrol. They tend to have well planned missions and routes and the whole thing.

Mesons are a precision area destroying weapon, and could be used with a heavy hand, or a light touch, especially if the charge can be tuned. Imagine close support, 5m bubbles of ruin, delivered precisely at the speed of light. Used like big hand grenades in urban areas. Me and my map box and a mouse. "Kill that, and that, and that, save that, kill that...click click click." "Taking fire from that corner apartment, 3rd floor!" *click*, bright flash, smoke..."Not any more, NEXT!"

 

[McPerth]

The Striker meson gun takes out a 100m x 100m square, so about two football fields. Imagine a wave front of destruction in front of the main route of advance. That 1000 ton ship with 10 bay weapons taking out a kilometer of terrain every minute. Just ravaging huge swaths of land while the column advances. None of those pesky ambushes hiding in cover.

Sure, but if that is what you intend, you don't send the infantry, just use your ship's MGs to scorch the area.

If we accept the generalized use of Meson Guns in land warfare, all this thread (and all threads about dirtside combat) are moot, and armies would simply be inxistent (or very limited for minor uses).

And never understime the political repecrcussions this may have... It's just for this (and the risk or retaliation) that there's only a single reported case of such large scale use in the 3I history (Illellesh) until the Black War.

Another reason is that against near peer enemy, you'll face retaliation if you use Meson Guns against ground targets, and on an asymetrical war, you don't need them and they are too destructive.

I see the MG use against ground targets more or less like the nuclear weaponry in the second half of XX Century: a thread too destructive to be used agains anyone who can retaliate, and even against those who cannot due to political repercussions.

 

[mike wightman]

How is blowing someone up with a meson gun worse than using 1000lb bombs and artillery barrages?

 

[Ekofisk]

you don't send the infantry, just use your ship's MGs to scorch the area.

You're missing an important point in that post:

Mesons are a precision area destroying weapon, and could be used with a heavy hand, or a light touch, especially if the charge can be tuned

Meson Accelerators are tuneable; the rule for it is in Striker. This makes it a weapon of unparalleled precision, capable of using limited force to achieve a specific objective.

 

[McPerth]

How is blowing someone up with a meson gun worse than using 1000lb bombs and artillery barrages?

Because, aside from being even more destructive (and, being a sphere of effect, even underground), they irradiate (not sure how this is represented in Striker, but in HG they roll on radiation table)

Meson Accelerators are tuneable; the rule for it is in Striker. This makes it a weapon of unparalleled precision, capable of using limited force to achieve a specific objective.

And how long does it take to aim them (honest question, I don't own Striker)? Would they be useful against moving targets, or they will be fired to an area to affect everything on it?

 

[mike wightman]

Radiation is cleaned up after an engagement, using nuclear dampers.

 

[Condottiere]

My feeling is that meson targetting to such a degree would need dead accurate coordinates, and a platform that is steady, and unlikely to be moving, in either regard to the target, or it's current surrounding environment.

 

[mike wightman]

You mean the sort of accuracy that computers capable of calculating jump parameters are capable of? TL9.

Or targeting computers that can hit a dust bin at one light second.

By the TL BD is in use - TL13 - the 100t bay ship mounted meson gun is available. By TL15 you have 50t bay meson guns.

 

[Dragoner]

Marc wrote that if one side has Meson Guns and the other doesn't, they just surrender. If the battle is only "blow everything up with Meson Guns" that is beyond the scope of BD tactics.