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[umiman]

Yeah, I'm sure you guys know it but it's plenty obvious that while cool, giant bipedal robots in the style of Japanese anime are terribly inefficient at their jobs (read: kill stuff). There's so many reasons for that and I'm sure you don't need me to go into details about it.

Anyway, I wanted to see what you guys thought would be the best replacement to the giant robot as our alternative for future method of combat. In WW1 it was trenches. WW2 was tanks. Vietnam was all about helicopters. Etc. Etc.

Say we're in the year 20XX and we can damn well do whatever the hell we want because professor Genius von Lieberman created a device than can create anything out of nothing. What do you think is our best choice of waging war? Superhuman android robot things? Master Chief? A friggin bigass tank?

I'm sure you guys don't need to know what my idea is. Keep in mind that the rule of cool will not apply to this thread (because if it did, giant robots would be the number one solution).

[Jreengus]

A device that can create anything out of nothing? What the hell do we need anything else for?

[umiman]

A device that can create anything out of nothing? What the hell do we need anything else for?

I dunno. Because say... there's only one of these things on earth and it can't be replicated even through itself. Who cares.

[Rooster]

X-men

If it creates anything out of nothing it can also create immortal and indestructible human DNA.
That's why people still use swords in FF series

[Grek]

The realistic answer for what we'll be using in 20XX is orbital missles, jeeps with high power laser beams and remote controlled bombers/remote controlled patrolling robots.

[Aqizzar]

This is my huge, completely serious take.  I know it sounds trite after all the ways the Pentagon has ran crazy any time they get a new buzzword, but I still believe that abundance of information gathering, processing, and accessing will be the ubiquitous tool of war in the wars of tomorrow.

Until artificial intelligences can react as humanly as humans, and more importantly interact with civilians as humanly as humans, the living infantryman will be still be the main arbiter of combat.  I consider any prediction of AI development moot until I actually see a thinking bot, so I'll just set that entire line of discussion aside.  Infantry tactics, training, and socialization will become ever more important as wars become faster to deploy, and continue to take place in population centers.

Parallel to the importance of infantry brains, is infantry brawn.  Development of weapons has completely outstripped most ability to defend against them, and this trend will only continue.  People already talk about the obsolesce of the concept of Tanks, and aircraft have been susceptible to well-armed infantry for thirty years.  Armor and close-air-support will soon go the way of trenches and bayonets - any vehicle within an unobstructed mile of hostile infantry will be as good as dead.  This in turn will be augmented by off-board weaponry, targeted and guided by those infantry.

All battles that aren't superweapon exchanges will be fought and won by infantry.  Those infantry will be assisted by drone planes, hovering spybots, deployable crawlers and cameras, gunsights, command-control centers, and complete networking.  Despite my predictions about the death of vehicles, infantry will still need transports.  The best combination, and quite likely given advances in propulsion technology, will be the infamous Flying Car.  Hovercraft that can rise up to match the speed of helicopters, but maneuverable enough to sink down and negotiate streets like a car.  They'll survive by dumping their passengers and staying out the line of fire.

The astute will recognize my predictions as essentially what the American army evolved into 45 years ago and has mostly augmented since.  What separates this prediction from Viet-Nam with shinier toys is that everyone will have such forces and reasons to use them.  That is the future of war - a thoroughly networked aircav/artillery army, pitted against it's stylistic equal, fighting both against each other's materiel, and fighting for the support of whatever populace their disrupting, to deny the other side safe passage and harbor.  I can't see that dynamic being upset by anything short of the invention of personal teleporters.  The biggest change will be the electronic battlefield - ECM and ECCM.  The physical battle will just be half the fight, and infantry will have to be cross-trained to fight without all their fancy info-systems when the lines occasionally go dark.

I even extend this to "Third World" armies.  Eventually, industrial efficiency and overproduction will turn the Stinger-toting, Hilux-riding militias of today into something comparable to a wealthy national force.  Infantry will be ill-trained but battle-hardened natives with native sympathy, probably still carrying AKMs but with networked cell-phone cameras tapped to the barrels, riding industrial hovertrucks, receiving technical support from former tech-support people linked to dirt cheap robo-planes, data gathering, and hacking, with surplus or scratch-built guided missiles and pre-planted explosives available for fire-support.

[Muz]

Lol, interesting. I was thinking of starting a thread like this since I'm looking for inspiration for my killer robots game (the one that the avatar comes from). I was also going to do something with giant robots for my thesis too, but due to a bunch of issues, I have to choose something else

Anyway...
Giant robots in movies and anime are lame. They have this tall thing and what does it do? Shoot lasers and guns and missiles from their body. It's a waste!!

No, a giant robot should do what a person can do, but better! A giant robot shouldn't be 20 meters high, just about 10 meters would do. Too big and it'll be like fighting off ants. You want it to have the advantage that humans did throughout their early years.. where they fought off dinosaurs with obsidan swords.

A giant robot needs to utilize its strength and computational powers. The control systems allow it to wield anything as a weapon - you should give it claws for melee attacks and let it rip apart buildings.

Legs are a disadvantage for balance.. but give three advantages:
1. Better force (torque): They can swing things much better than any wheeled device.
2. Speed/weight: higher center of gravity, but they can walk over small obstacles
3. Dodging: Tanks can not dodge. A giant robot, with a giant computer in its head can anticipate attacks, calculate the possibility of success when dodging, calculate the perfect dodge, and the effects of a misdodge. With legs, it can twist its body to deflect AP missiles. Like a human who can block arrows!

With all these advantages, they should only be as big as needed to give it the strength.

Giant robots are not battlefield devices, like tanks or infantry. They are SIEGE devices. They can smash tanks, throw them, easily smash walls with no ammunition. They are thick enough to handle some heavy damage.

Power is a severe disadvantage, but cold fusion should be available by 20XX. The biggest problem with giant bots are humans. Humans heavily limit its computational potential and speed.


Since we're not just talking about giant robots, I offer a better, cheaper alternative: Small bots.

These things will be small, and inter-connected by a wireless LAN in their heads. They can be equipped with any small weapon, bullets, or simply claws. They're perfect for urban combat. They can crouch quietly near bins. When detecting an opponent, they can alert the others to its presence and strike.. like zerglings, but with more strength, power and speed. With a proper processor, they can even dodge attacks as mentioned above.

What's cool is that our technology is not far from making them as it is.

[umiman]

I agree with Aqizzar's sentiment. Failing giant orbital weaponry, infantry are our best bet for warfare. It's the cheapest, most cost effective way of getting the job done. Also, infantry look better on the front page than some $10 billion dollar robot plane.

Considering the miniaturization of weaponry and our rate of technological advancement, I'd go so far as to say that the tank, the combat helicopter, and most regular army stuff are going to go extinct soon. Everything will be replaced by infantry troop carriers (if even that), and drone carriers. It's really not that hard to imagine even our current generation predator drones doing everything in a war other than fight indoors.

Ideally, I think the best weapon we could possibly make would be impossibly undetectable, impossibly powerful, and impossible to destroy. I have no idea what that is, but that would be the best weapon.

[Aqizzar]

Ideally, I think the best weapon we could possibly make would be impossibly undetectable, impossibly powerful, and impossible to destroy. I have no idea what that is, but that would be the best weapon.

Sentient dark matter superball!

[Rilder]

Tiny Androids wielding black hole generator rifles.

[Muz]

Ideally, I think the best weapon we could possibly make would be impossibly undetectable, impossibly powerful, and impossible to destroy. I have no idea what that is, but that would be the best weapon.

It already exists. It's called a virus. It can kill people. It can spread to others. It's extremely difficult to destroy (hence why quarantines are an easier alternative than vaccines). Biological warfare FTW.

Infantry does have a huge cost though: Popularity. The main reason precision weapons and robots are being developed is to keep people out of direct combat.

[Ampersand]

I'm going to go for the less pipe-dream route.

In WW1 it was trenches. WW2 was tanks. Vietnam was all about helicopters.

But war didn't end there. I consider the real transitional moment in war from the paradigm of Vietnam to the present was the first Gulf War. Specifically, the bombing of Iraq by the first clunky stealth fighters. However, something changed in the nature of war between now and then. That is, the enemy is now something more amorphous, indistinct, just as stealthy as those fighters, and not afraid to die an explosive death. The problem is attrition, standing armies cannot stand against such an enemy forever. The cost in lives and material wealth is too great, and no amount of man to man combat will defeat the enemy.

I see the future of warfare already beginning to show itself. Predator drones launching precision bombings, small ground based tactical robots, unmanned helicopter drones. Replaceable, and the aerial ones clearly difficult to fight against if all you have is an AK-47 your uncle pulled off a dead Russian decades ago. Expensive, certainly, but a drone does not require the support systems of a soldier.

Also, Umiman, I wouldn't tell all that to the Japanese.

[Jackrabbit]

A machine that can make whatever the hell it wants? Some sort of system that can deliver an unstoppable payload of some sort of gas that kills everyone and everything we want it to, like entire goverments, and nothing we don't want it too. Assuming we own the only copy of this machine.

Also, a stick with a nail in it so big that it can destroy anything it comes into contact with. And a giant robot to swing it. Because it's just fucking cool.

[Il Palazzo]

I would put my money on nanmachines. Seems like a logical next step after small-smaller-miniature drones.
"Ideally, I think the best weapon we could possibly make would be impossibly undetectable, impossibly powerful, and impossible to destroy. I have no idea what that is, but that would be the best weapon." Clouds of nanorobots fit this description quite well.
Of course it'd require a lot of technology we don't have yet, and who knows if it's even obtainable, but then that machine in the opening post can make anything, so...

[Heron TSG]

I say the Death Star.