I'm not going down that rabbit hole, those theories go both ways so many times and basically the only concrete answer I can come to is we haven't done it yet (that I found) and it's supported by Einstein's theory of general relativity. I'm not going to go out and try to build a oscillating electromagnet powerful enough to test this on so we're just going to have to let that one go (until someone either proves it can be done, or performs sufficient tests to prove it cannot within the confines of our limited level of technology at the time) Again, presumably at the point where we're using this level of defense against a laser weapon we're going to have some reasonable understanding of the effects based on material, if at all possible would probably choose particulate material of a nature that is generally inert to thermal expansion. Unless it proved to be a viable defense you'd be unlikely to throw up a wall of popcorn kernels against laser weapons. And yes, combined arms is always why offense tends to be superior to defense, you can't always be selective in what you're defending against, but if you have the time to prepare for an attack you can surely be prepared against the defenses you know about. Laser's are extremely good at retaining their energy, but not perfect, it's not just about dispersion either, but within any kind of planetary distance you could obtain line of sight with it is pretty much a moot point beyond the amount of loss due to travel through the air. Outside of planetary distances it becomes more of an issue seeing as how simply from the Earth to the Moon is slightly more than a light second. Then again, energy loss is significantly lessened, since you're not travelling through atmosphere. Your beam width may go from dinner plate to dinner table but it'll still pack quite a wallop if it's got enough energy behind it.
There is no back and forth. I've never heard anyone propose that photons responsed to magnetic fields. Photons travel linearically with the curvature of spacetime and carries no mass or electric charge. According to 'Jess H. Brewer, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Univ. of British Columbia' the answer to the question "Can a laser beam be bent or focused with magnetic fields?" is: "No. EM fields are linear, which means two can be superimposed without influencing each other." Creating a device with a massive electromagnetic field will result in it carrying a massive amount of electrons and thus increase in mass which can produce a gravitational effect. In space there is no energy loss, photons are stable particles so they just keep on going after being emitted. The divergence angle defines the rate at which the beam will spread thinner past it's focal point. With huge emitters and distant focal points etc. it's possible to achieve almost 100% desired radius for the beam over several light seconds of distance. Further, as the light spreads it is not weakend but it reduces the amount of J/m^2 that hit the surface, while the larger the beam is the more surface it will hit to the point where it can envelop the whole ship and beyond, it's like a shotgun effect, you end up missing with more and more energy but if you're hitting a cluster of objects it is also possible to hit them all. And if there's still enough J/m^2 then you can still blow them all up or at least heat them or make them shine bright and be easy to spot. For beam resistant defense the armor can be expanding. In fact the expansion of the armor can be part of it's obscure effect. When something such as a foam like low density material expands outwards it just creates more mess in front of the beam and the low density prevents the armor structure itself from being hit too hard by any shock since the volume of material dispersed is low due to the low density. Over longer distances kinetic objects are better in space for inflicting high damage over long distance - the projectile will carry the same amount of J/m^2 regardless of distance unlike laser. In theory firing a twin parallel particle beam can produce a helix beam that can maintain it's focus for very long distances and deliver massive J/m^2 at 99.99x % of speed of light, with the notion that this beam's components do respond to magnetic fields; the other half repels it and the other is attracted by it.
Try instead searching 'bending light with electromagnetic' you'll see the same arguments I am. I'm not going to go through the list of multiple theoretical arguments, some of them with and some of them without significant research, suffice to say given the nature of the beast even as a 'neutral' entity there's no logical reason why it could not be influenced by electromagnetic forces, we simply have not done so (except possibly Delbrück scattering effect). The fact it can be influenced by gravity tends to imply that it could in fact be influenced by magnetics as well, under the right conditions. Even barring the direct effect of electromagnetic forces it could still be utilized to influence the beam simply by interposing a static cloud of material in the path of the beam that can be destroyed and reintegrated to itself by the electromagnetic field. Theoretically. We have not actively obtained the level of control we would require to perform this, and it may not actually be possible at our current state. Pretty sure that's what I said, though there is no such thing as 100% efficiency, the loss in a vacuum is pretty close to it. It would be quite amusing to cover the ship in those carbon snakes you get for the 4th (in the U.S.) from the moment the laser hits until the material is expended you'd simply grow a giant carbon body shield absorbing heat and energy almost as quickly as it can be delivered. Problem of course being how much material and recovery. Maybe some kind of polymer could be developed that would expand when heated and then quickly retract, absorbing the energy entirely without being consumed but that's certainly asking a lot of whatever armor we come up with. Then again, maybe with vanta black solar array you could just absorb that energy and turn it back XD (probably not, but it amuses me to think about a ship painted vanta black, like a hole in spacetime XD)
I did see things about electromagnetic lensing where the magnetic field can cause lensing in a medium, which would seem like what people would be discussing. For something like a nuclear powered mech or a tank that might be quite interesting if it can as much as cause the atmosphere around the hull to produce any amount of scattering. And that's the thing about defenses, it doesn't need to be flawless and usually cannot be but the difference between first quick sweeping or glancing hit taking you out and your friend with you or you being almost impervious to glancing and sweeping hits and surviving one or more direct hits can make a massive difference because this changes the game and means that your unit can advance into fire and their survivability will allow them to advance that much further while also unleashing hell on the defenders. Essentially why a mech would ever make sense, the ability to raise weapons higher so they are less obscured while also being able to use various effects to increase it's survivability with it's nuclear reactor to surpass that of any conventional vehicle. And axes! The magnetically contained medium is researches as a plasma shield for space travel - and it defends the ship against cosmic rays among other things. The nicety is that you can in theory vent reactor plasma to quickly replenish the field which is contained by the magnetism, creating a plasma cloud which envelops your ship.
vehicle melee weapons are amusing to consider but would really just be another kind of disposable munition, at best you'd get a couple whacks out of it before the mechanics are so damaged as to be useless or bent and twisted out of even practical bludgeoning form. Energy weapons for melee make so much more sense, but are they really practical? I mean, sure you can generate a plasma blade that can cut another mech/tank in half, or you could generate a laser to do the same thing at range! Then again, considering them as completely disposable weapons gives rise to a whole new realm of destruction, rocket hammers, exploding flails, lances designed to penetrate the target and expand or release corrosives or additional explosives etc... fire and forget me melee attacks guaranteed to demolish the target... just don't miss.
Large things don't like to get together, they unleash massive energy, deformation and heat that all reverberate through the structure. Small things like ants coulnd't injure each other with punches and kicks even if they wanted to. They could throw rocks at each others eyes quite safely. They're forced to resort to mechanical shearing etc. and pressure. We're already big enough of a species that our fists can get damaged from striking but that's also due to them being specialized for precision and not for mayhem - if we were a boxer species it would be quite safe since we're not that big yet that the bone would start to melt, crack and maybe even explode.
Actually, that above is the thing about hardpoints. To me hardpoints seemed so long like such an artificial limitation to where weapons could be placed on hulls etc.. Until really getting down to it with the masses and forces involved at such scales where hardpoints are used.
U.S. Air Force scientists developed liquid metal which autonomously changes structure https://defence-blog.com/news/u-s-a...etal-which-autonomously-change-structure.html
Israel Reveals Breakthrough in Laser-Based Aerial Defense System https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/01/...through-in-laser-based-aerial-defense-system/
All a hard point is, really, is the mounting infrastructure and cabling already provided to that point on the mech, as well as the inbuilt loader for any ballistic or missile system, seeing as how frequently the ammunition has to be acquired from elsewhere in the mech. Honestly -that- was the part of mech optimization that always struck me as unbelievable, you can't mount a weapon anywhere you like, but you can toss your missiles into your right foot and your launcher into your left arm and suffer absolutely no complications?!? The omni-pod was really only a standardization of those things to allow for integration of whatever weapon type you chose. Of course in reality this -should- have had a negative impact on the total amount of weaponry you could have at any one location since you're providing the resources for every type to every omni-pod, but that's the magic of impractical rules, at some point you have to say 'this may not be realistic, but making it realistic adds unnecessary complication to the game'
"You failed to pass the Electronics 004 required to proceed in the Mechwarrior selection process. Also your blood pressure is too high, your reflexes are poor,..." "Roll RNG, on a 0.01% chance you will have a birthright to pilot a mech, the catch is that you only get to roll it once and the result will get stuck to your social security number on our servers." As for dealing with the missiles, racks and such.. The real world practical solution might just be to grow them racks ad nauseam. To make life difficult you could also jettison a whole external rack and it would affect your speed. It could also still be connected to your firing computer. And so on. The biggest difficulties about real-life are that the rules become ridiculously complicated and because when your life is not on the line and all and because the rules will still be imperfect there will be no end to possible cheese and one trick pony tactics that are thwarted in real-life by the two fundamental rules of "you have one life" and the sheer persistency of the cosmos - meaning one trick pony tactic works once, you brought a shit ton of cavalry archers and pretended to be fleeing from the field - the next time the enemy has a fricking castle, a cannon and will not chase you from the castle.
I mean, I guess the idea was that the machines are so massive that you can have these systems running in parallel with the mechanics and still not cause too much issue. I'd go a step further and assume that the ammo is carted en masse which fits the circumstance, explains why there's the 'kachunk' and you have fully loaded weapon again. Though it'd be more efficient for continuous firing to load on demand (and probably more space conservative, moving one missile at a time takes up way less space than a box of 20) I'd love to see someone take what we know now and do a new version of Robot Jocks or something similar, You could totally go nuts with the CGI capability, like the House with the Clock in the Walls, or Mortal Engines (which was a silly premise, but a great show lol)
For maximum realism I would think few alternatives match simply having all of your ammo stored on open racks or racks with hatches. If it's stored, why not have it launch ready while it's already taking up space? The counter-argument is that it needs to be stored deeper internally under more armor but really the hatches themselves could be armored and the arrays could be on the rearside. Another fun launch system is the stack with sideways ejector, essentially catapulting the missiles from a magazine one at a time per launcher. This way the launcher does not need to be visible from front but the missiles also don't need to make a tight turn. Then again the curving vertical launch tubes make for great visuals! The main issue with ammo stores in legs etc. to me is that from a design point I loathe having unspent ammunition still in a vehicle when it goes down. Doesn't mean that I'm alpha-strike maniac but rather that I'd like the ability that if I see myself going down to just empty all of the ammunition in the general direction of the enemy while also having the ammunition to start long range harassment and indirect fire from earliest possibility. I guess I don't demand the mechs to look like infantryman or humanoid in shape. More of an utilitarianist in that sense, to me utility carries an aesthetic of it's own. More hunched like designs, designs that are narrower from front with a certain length in the design and ability to bring the hull further down to ground or near ground and with ballistics and energy weapons mounted high, missiles on the rear section. Being able to then take a hull down position, only expose weapons and sensors, even going as far as exposing only energy weapon mirrors, sensors and firing ballistically with the ballistic weapons and curving arcs for missiles being the preferred mode of engagement but also having heavy frontal and top armor for assault, with the small surface area in front relative to mass making the armor that much thicker. And then add the two systems, electromagnetic field to defend against shockwaves from HE weapons and plasma windows to protect against kinetic penetrators and other AP weapons. While HE is useful against the plasma windows - where the HE blast can damage the plasma window frames with the shockwave - the electromagnetic field can be used to defend against the HE attack, protecting the plasma windows. I fear the two won't work simultaneously because of interference caused by having a powerful EM field would likely disrupt the ability to hold the plasma window in place between it's frames. Thus perhaps the AP weapons themselves might be equipped with a EM field tunneling ability and a HE warhead to first knock out the plasma window frame while the tunneling penetrates the EM field, allowing the second warhead to actually make contact with armor. On the other hand, tall fighting machines with nuclear reactors could be more feasible with the two shielding technologies - considering they add an additional defense on top of armor and then the added height of the weapon system (mech) would allow engaging more distant targets further away with less obscuring from terrain features, the smaller vehicles unable to carry nuclear reactors being completely outclassed in terms of energy available for both shielding and attacking. And with nothing but armor plate serving as defense against laser weapons while fighting vehicles can carry nuclear reactors - even if a smaller vehicle had somehow a plasma window shield the mech could just incinerate through it's hull with it's powerful lasers.
This thing was designed in the 60's, to take stuff to Mars. It could lift 550 tons to LEO and it's payload lift cost was set between 59$ and 600$ per kg, depending on design and variable considerations, costs etc. The whole Future Projects branch in entirety was scrapped with budget cuts, all work on super-heavy launchers for Mars missions ended there and then.
I mean it's a brilliant concept, eliminates entirely the need for a land based scaffold and support structure as well as several other concerns, of course if the system is recoverable there are some new concerns with oxidation, salt damage and other things, but still a brilliant concept. Launch windows might be a little choppy (pun intended) unless you could find a deep enough water source in an area with almost no wind whatsoever. The biggest problem with ammo in the legs is the pathing, in order to transition from the legs to the torso even, you have no choice whatsoever but to move munitions through your hip joint into your center torso and from there to whatever point on the mech you are moving to. It's bad enough how common legging tactics are in the game as it stands, imagine if a large quantity of these mechs decided it was a great idea to put a munitions shuttle through not just a critical weak structure point, but a critical weak structure point RIGHT NEXT TO THE REACTOR. Real Mechwarriors wouldn't aim for the CT, they'd aim for the crotch. Because all it'd take is a single lucky crit and BOOM, if it doesn't take them out entirely they're crippled and limping and that much easier to hit the next time. -AND- you've cut off some of their ammo. It's just a terrible idea from a number of angles.
Never mind having all-manual input and placing the pilot on an elevated protruded windowed cockpit. Promoting the infamous tactic of aiming half the missiles at the crotch and half on the cockpit.
I don't necessarily agree with the statement about drone's (currently) exceeding a human pilot's capabilities but a lot of the arguments he makes are specious. Anything you could do in a physical fighter jet you could 'simulate' for a pilot of a remote drone if it is of value to simulate it. About the only actual drawback to remote piloting is latency, the time it takes for a command or data to travel to/from the drone and pilot. This really is where the actual physical pilot has an edge over a remote pilot. However, at the end of the day, if a drone gets shot down it's just a machine we can rebuild, if a pilot gets shot down and is unable to safely vacate the vehicle, or is shot themselves, end of game. This is really where the drone value comes into play, -not- having to completely start from scratch with a new pilot per unit potentially every time one is lost. One real argument is simply the remote vulnerability, if you're connected to a device remotely, someone else can be too. At least with every system we currently have available to us to date, there is no perfect remote pairing that cannot be hacked, cloned, or simmed short of a (currently theoretical) quantum pairing system. He also talks about ECM vulnerability which is a big thing, there's also simply connection failures, I mean, we've gotten loads better than the 90s but I still have signal loss on my phone, slow data, low bandwidth etc... If that happens during a combat situation? Basically it's the video game where your monitor shuts off mid fight, except there's a couple (hundred?)million dollars sitting on the other end of that connection that's suddenly useless and probably going to crash. This doesn't mean we won't do it, we spend huge bucks on missiles and such that are clearly one use vehicles, but long and short if we actually -need- a fighter, for all the purposes we would currently deploy a person, a drone simply isn't going to be a valid alternative.
We will definitely employ drones, it's not about that. It's mostly that to build a drone that does all the same things that a fighter does - you're likely looking at roughly 1:1 cost for the drone, because it needs all the same things. What it gains from ditching the pilot and any possible life support and cockpit it loses in setting up very robust high power communication system. The remote pilot problem is three fold * Sensor data - Bandwidth limits how much data you can stream back. - In theory we could build a VR cockpit with 360 by 360 view but the bandwidth requirements would be enormous and there's the inverse square law to fight too. - The sensors need to transmit as good image as a human eye to match it, many pilots have amazing eyesight as well as ability to tell distances of objects etc., also you can with eyes see the plume of a missile 'glow' against background which isn't visible on camera etc. = We aren't anywhere near providing the remote pilot with the same level of awareness and perception that a pilot has in the cockpit, also by adding sensors the local pilot benefits from them more than the remote pilot. * Jamming - Even low levels of jamming will hit the bandwidth available and will quickly impact the signal quality and strength. - Aggressive and strong jamming will range from sporadic link and significant reduction in bandwidth to complete disconnection. - The hardest thing to pull off is to be able to imitate control signals and seize control of the vehicle, this can work well with the combination of jamming the distant signal source and establishing an alternate local signal. - If the drone has certain 'RTB' or so procedures for the loss of signal these themselves can be exploited. * Mission - If your mission is just to hit a target or so and you really don't want to use a pilot you can just use a missile, like you said. It has all the advantages of not having a pilot but since it doesn't need to return to base it can travel at a multiple of the speed and have a much more robust and minimalistic design. - The missile is always more effective in terms of payload, speed and cost than a drone. - Drone carrying missiles will be unable to launch it's missiles if it gets jammed. It simply has to return to base with it's full payload of weapons. Yet they will have their role. Airbus for example envisions that a pilot will fly a latest model stealth fighter that acts as like a squad leader and can issue orders for it's own drone swarm. This allows the pilot himself to use his own sensors and discretion but he can also sacrifice drones instead of his own neck where needed. Also he has a shorter command distance which means stronger signal from him - he may lose contact with the ground control but he may still have enough of a signal to command his semi-autonomous drones - which can simply fly close enough to him to get a signal across.
Yeah, there's tons of technical restrictions to the concept, but those also apply to the human pilot model, assuming square foot for square foot design adding in the cockpit for the pilot reduces the amount of available physical space for those additional sensors and other technical equipment. Remove the pilot and you've got a fairly sizable pocket for putting in a suite of sensors enabling your remote pilot not only to see what the cameras can pick up, but what any camera on any spectrum available to us can see. The standard camera may have difficulty pinpointing the flare of a missile against the cloud form, but thermal would pick it out like a giant red spot on a blank canvas. Sure we could install the same cameras on a standard cockpit but at some point we're simply going to run out of room and it's not like they're bursting with space to begin with. Jamming depends entirely on the method of communication and the factors therein. We use the term in a blanket sense because it really is just a electronic blanket designed to interrupt as many different types of signals as we know about, but there are still plenty of ways to mitigate that fact. Particularly if you know what the enemies capabilities are, or use a different method of remote control than is covered by typical jamming techniques. Foremost, -most- forms of jamming are entirely RF based, white noise, signal distortion, RF floods etc... these work really well on most radio communications as long as you're covering that bandwidth, and it's easy enough to recognize a bandwidth in use even if you don't know specifically what it's being used for. It's not so easy to catch more directional signals unless they happen to be directed towards you, like most of your microwave transmitters tend to be very directional. On top of that, there are wireless methods that are not RF based at all such as laser, which while it has it's own problems, unless you're quite literally between the source and the target, it's nearly impossible to interfere with or detect. Or more importantly, hack. All considered though, I suspect you'd be right, when it comes to using drones in a theater the most effective model would be a pilot controller operating a fleet of semi-autonomous drones from high altitude, like an AWACS or similar aircraft. Probably using a series of communications systems in order to allow for the strongest possible signal under a variety of conditions. Semi autonomous meaning the pilot can issue commands, the drones can execute the command without further input and then returns for further commands requiring a laser authentication in order to accept the next command. It might be possible to simulate such a system, but given the current tech available it would be quite difficult to intercept and hack a laser signal between pilot and drone and then recreate the cipher necessary to authenticate the pilot etc... I mean nothing is impossible, but it could be made to be next to impossible without actually having the exact same program and systems. So James Bond might be able to do it once he infiltrated the base and stole the command module etc... Drones vs. missiles is a more complex concept, most worry about the idea of weaponized drones etc... but honestly drones are far more valuable as a surveillance vehicle than as a kill method. Sure you could and probably will put guns and/or missiles on them, but that's simply expedient, once you've located a target of value it'd be nice to be able to deliver a result immediately rather than waiting on another source. However in the event said drone gets interrupted before a kill command can be issued, you still got missiles and other methods to deliver your message. Really the drones purpose is seek and survey, deliver if possible. Honestly the only significant difference between a drone and a missile is purpose at this point, you could just as easily load a drone up with explosives and magnets and turn it into a remote vehicular mine. Smart missiles can do some wildly crazy things, and they can remote control missiles too, it's just dependent really upon the desired result. I'd say the more significant difference is delivery speed. Drones don't necessarily want to go crazy fast, they might miss something important.
