sounds like this can only end with lobotomies to make their soliders feel nothing and question nothing
this is just wild conjecture, but i think that wearable technology is going to be more feasible than anything implanted. AFAIK one of the main issues with implants, especially those that have to interface with nerves, tend to be treated by the immune system as invasive bodies, and scar tissue is formed blocking the neural connections, and AFAIK we haven’t made any significant progress to overcome that.
more feasible than cyborgs, i think enhanced AR equipment and wearable tech like non-invasive brain activity reading equipment will be easier to develop and deploy in a realistic way. helmets with comms, air filtration/oxygen supply, AR visuals with aimpoint tracking and display, gun-cameras linked to helmets and goggles to fire without leaving cover, even indirect vision systems (instead of goggles, the helmet has external cameras linked to an interior feed) to protect from certain weapons and systems like eye-targeting laser weapons and flashbangs. ‘smart bullets’ that work kinda like JDAMs maybe, able to be guided to a specific GPS coordinate after being fired into the air (like with ‘plunging fire’ on traditional MGs but more accurate). infantry-portable drones and drone control systems and drone defenses (thermal camouflage, EW weapons, etc.). drug injectors sure, even implanted, they don’t need to interface with nerves. thats the kind of stuff i would expect, not this robocop shit.
bonus content edit: oh yeah and i also expect exoskeletons, especially non-powered or passive exoskeletons for bearing weight, to be more of a thing relatively soon. and, as much as i want mechs to be real, we are probably a few generations of tech away from that kind of thing being a mature enough field and economical enough to deploy in place of traditional equipment, and even in the unlikely even they prove to be useful tactically they are probably not going to be as large as a gundam or mechwarrior battlemech or star wars AT-AT or anything, more like a robot ATV or jeep with legs and arms, maybe something approaching the size of an armored car at most. anything bigger will have too much trouble with ground pressure compared to a tank. in fact before legged mecha i bet we will see tanks and other traditional combat vehicles with exterior mounted robotic arms to help with reloading externally mounted weapons and other tasks, like tank or armored car centaurs. we already have indirect vision systems on tanks and cars, its a natural evolution to have indirect manipulators. even given the possibilities of ground combat drones with no human crew, i don’t think it will be difficult to convince militaries to strap a budding young war criminal inside to take all of the legal blame if things go wrong (to protect weapon manufacturers from liability) and to guide or override the machine software in ambiguous situations (snow, dust, tactically or politically sensitive situations, contested electronic warfare environments, etc.), after all we still put teenagers in tanks, and an automated or at least semi-autonomous remote piloted tank seems relatively feasible with todays tech, i’m sure militaries would do it if it was viable tactically/politically/socially.
AR visuals with aimpoint tracking and display
You should check out the new scope by Vortex that was recently adopted by the military.
they just have to make sure the implant isn’t rejected before the end of their deployment.
tanks and other traditional combat vehicles with exterior mounted robotic arms to help with reloading externally mounted weapons and other tasks, like tank or armored car centaurs
Are you telling me that armored core mech with tank tread legs is actually a viable idea?
maybe if you replace the mech torso with a more traditional turret, i’m thinking something more along the lines of a normal tank with 1 or 2 arms on the outside, maybe 1 on the top or side or rear of the turret for reloading the MGs or AT missile tubes without exposing the crew, maybe 1 on the front or side of the lower hull for picking up debris, equipment, or wounded friendlies and the like, or maybe bigger arms on the lower hull for combat engineering tasks like digging, moving obstacales, EOD, etc.
in a bipedal or even quadrupedal mech the torso height could be less important, because a legged mech could hypothetically go prone or otherwise take cover/adjust posture to reduce its profile. on a traditional tank chassis however a tall torso would probably be a liability, unless it was unintuitively flat in design for what we might expect from a mecha torso
ALTHOUGH even on the AC style tank-legs humanoid-torso-and-arms mech, if we put the main weapons somehow in the arms or held by the arms and hands of the vehicle, it could hypothetically hold its weapon in such a way as to shoot without leaving cover positions, assuming the weaponry has remote camera gunsights linked to crew station screens. this is true for pretty much any mech design and is almost never considered by mecha media or fiction. but even a basic-ass ‘tank with a huge robot-arm-with-a-gun for a turret’ kind of vehicle could shoot ‘around cover’ like this without the neccesary advances in robotic legs we probably need for bipedal or quadrupedal (or even more legs) mechs. additionally putting weapons in or on robot arms would allow greater freedom of movement, allowing the vehicle to aim the cannon higher than any traditional tank turret design.
Armored Core explains the lack of cover-tactics as a change in combat doctrine that occurs as a result of the effectiveness of speed and aggression that the mechs are capable of. The cover based tactics stopped because any mechs hiding in cover were quickly overrun by hyper-aggression. Hyper-mobility becomes the only way to oppose hyper-mobility. With cover only functioning as a temporary visual block or way to place objects between yourself and incoming missiles.
Imagine tank warfare where you fire your shot but between firing your shot and killing one enemy vehicle now all of the remaining enemy vehicles are behind you while you stood still in cover.
This all results in a process of stripping armour in favour of mobility and avoidance countermeasures, and a new combat doctrine is born. It’s like cavalry-archers but mechanised.
i agree that eventually a paradigm shift like that might occur, but armored core has some wild tech we are probably a long way away from developing, plus i don’t think the series takes into account the true ranges for modern let alone futuristic weapon systems (at least handwave at me about passive/active defense systems shooting down projectiles if they have enough time to calculate or something) or the possibility of smart munitions that can track moving targets (not to mention laser weapons with near-instantaneous ‘projectile’ speed). imagine the havoc that could be wreaked with a smallish mech or even power armor equipped with something like a davy crockett nuclear recoilless rifle and a drone swarm launcher system, one or two of those every few hundred miles could saturate an entire border region land sea and air and no matter how fast you are you can be got with a big enough area of effect weapon. basically even if we had the ability to make armored core style speedmechs covered in infinite/regenerating fuel thrusters (could we do this with miniaturized nuclear reactors maybe? idk the specific physics of how jets/thrusters work), i think they would fill a specific role on the battlefield rather than replacing everything else, like any other kind of remotely feasible mech i don’t think they will make tanks and artillery go anywhere - which they don’t in the game, cool enough.
maybe instead of infinite use jet-thrusters giving smaller mechs wheeled or hovercraft shoes/foot units could achieve a degree of the speed-cavalry effect in a pretty feasible way… no reason a humanoid mech has to be constrained to humanoid limitations, limbs can fold in and wheels or hovercraft units could be put anywhere from feet to knees to the underside of the chassis. like a transformer but somewhat reasonable and not a car advertisement, or a skate-mecha.
on a related note, i can totally see legs and or arms being added to jets and helicopters as the technology matures and becomes lighter, more durable, and cheaper to produce and maintain. at least a basic task arm could make mid-air refueling and stuff like that easier, and legs could let a VTOL capable jet or helicopter land basically anywhere regardless of uneven terrain.
Oh you’re definitely correct in that they have a “role”. I think nukes are generally off the table because the combat zones the mechs are deployed to are always locations that they wouldn’t want to completely and totally destroy. Generally speaking anywhere that mechs are deployed to is the kind of location you would have deployed infantry to traditionally because you can’t just blow it to pieces.
Anything you want to shoot a nuke at you’d just use an ICBM or shoot with a laser from a cruiser or battleship at high altitude. The deal with mechs is that they’re deployed in places where the only thing you can deploy to fight against them are other mechs.
I’m not too sure about the whole adding of things to them that are impossible on infantry, like wheels for knees or whatever. I think the whole point of mecha is that it’s very close to the human form which makes it totally natural for a human controlling it. I think inhuman features make more sense on AI drones specifically designed for them instead.
putting nukes on mechs would be a limited scenario thing but they could hypothetically infiltrate close range less detectable weapon systems into place for a surprise attack to take out nuclear response facilities.
for fighting in close terrain, i think slower mechs using traditional cover based tactics (modified to account for tactical and comms options and equipment specific to the mechs) would be better than super fast thruster mechs. in armored core you take no damage from impacting walls, but in real life flying a jet at 100ft above ground level is incredibly dangerous, let alone lower. i doubt a human could withstand the g-forces and pilot accurately enough to maneuver in urban combat for example without drugs or cybernetics, and even then the risk of crashing would be significant. thruster-mechs if we could build them would probably be better for aerial interdiction (missiles or aircraft) or for launching hypersonic missiles as a first stage launch vehicle. they could hypothetically out-maneuver airplanes (airplanes can’t strafe and mechs can have thrusters basically anywhere) if not match their speed which could help them avoid anti-aircraft missiles. i could see them being carried by aircraft carriers or missile boats as close-range air defenses. maybe even as ground-based missile/aircraft defenses.
the non-humanoid design elements might make more sense on mechs that are semi-autonomous where the pilot more or less just guides and overrides, but even a humanoid brain-interface mech could have some kind of removeable, collapsible, or retractible wheel attachment for logistical movement purposes at least, but also i think skate-style movement with wheels or hovercraft on the feet/legs could be intuitive as well for humanoid control.
instead of goggles, the helmet has external cameras linked to an interior feed
Ironically enough, all the work done by Meta and Valve on VR headset lense technology is what has pushed feasibility on that forward. It’s difficult creating a set of lenses that fit within the 1 inch zone between eyes and screens to bring them into focus, while also having it be universal for all face/eye types. Gonna laugh my ass off if Meta or Valves patents on that tech results in one of them becoming military hardware vendors.
I mean yeah this is scary, but this is also some neom ass shit
One of the bullet points is “able to regrow limbs and heal quickly like a lizard”
Which is something I would write as a 12 year old drawing cool space soldiers in class
If you’re in combat and your squadmate in front goes down you have to pick up their prosthetic nekomimi and tail, graft them to yourself and keep fighting
Second annual Torment Nexus convention
It’s been rebranded as the AI Torment Nexus convention.
This is Sci fi shit and even if the technology wasn’t magic atm it would still be a bad idea if it worked as planned. That gives you Star Wars Prequel Battle Droid soldiers. Taking away an aspect of someone’s psyche generally doesn’t make them better at stuff that is incredibly complex and chaotic like modern war is.
Also who would sign up for this? Maybe a few ultra chuds, maybe they could sell it to some idiots, but recruitment in general is down. Getting a mandatory emotion wipe for joining isn’t gonna boost numbers.
Taking away an aspect of someone’s psyche generally doesn’t make them better at stuff that is incredibly complex and chaotic like modern war is.
A factor in why the Soviet Red Army, Vietnam People’s Army, and Chinese People’s Liberation Army proved better at winning wars of attrition against enemies like the US, Germany, and Japan. The US, Germany, and Japan since the WW2 era have dosed their frontline soliders on high doses of amphetamine. Methamphetamine was first used by the Japanese military, it was also adopted by their German allies who gave it to all their soliders in WW2. For Germany methamphetamine was a major factor in offensives collapsing, German military units would push non stop without sleeping for days, after a week their frontline units were hallucinating and having full psychotic breaks deep behind enemy lines.
https://time.com/5752114/nazi-military-drugs/
The US at the same time had discovered another amphetamine, dextroamphetamine aka dexedrine and its more potent form adderall. Returning US soliders after WW2 were so addicted to it that dexedrine was sold in grocery stores and gas stations until it was finally made prescription only in the late 1970s early 1980s. It was used by most Americans and we just blackholed the fact that the US issue with amphetamine abuse started as a result of pumping all US service members full of it in WW2.
https://www.wired.com/2003/02/the-u-s-military-needs-its-speed/Dextroamphetamine is still heavily used by the US military for air force, navy, and special forces— discussion of it only comes up after US fighter pilots lose their shit after being kept awake flying combat air patrols for over 48 hours, start hallucinating and drop all their ordinance on Canadian ground forces. The US also feeds their JSOC forces (seals, delta, etc) a cocktail of nandrolone (19-nortestosterone) and dextroamphetamine, which goes a long way to explaining the insane violence (murder sprees, dismemberment, decapitation) that they are always getting up to when terrorizing the communities living within 50 miles of Fort Liberty (formerly fort brag). Like what do they expect after pumping already violent men full of anabolic steroids and amphetamine at the same time?
Warhammer 40k is satire guys…
they literally used a picture of master chief in some social media advertising for this panel. a man who was kidnapped as a child by a militaristic state to be made into a living killing machine stripped of all humanity he ever had. they’re definitely not being subtle about it.
That is basically the plan and they alreay have people with experience doing things like that
Isn’t this the back story for the Evil Empire’s army in every FPS game?
And most of those are made with DoD support
Also several JRPGs
: “Evil Empire? You believe in evil? Pah, morality is for the weak! This will make us better at war and that is all that matters! You’re too caught up in your feelings, and that’s weakness! Yes, I am a traditionalist Christian, why’d you ask?”I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the right likes to brag that they’re chaotic neutral, but they’re the textbook example of lawful evil.
I always get confused with these things like I understand what you’re saying, but what’s the difference between lawful evil and chaotic evil besides writing it down in the big book that says “the law” on it?
deleted by creator
scientists creating people who feel nothing while killing
yakub invents the whites
Incorrect.
White people don’t feel nothing when killing, in fact for the most white of whites, it’s the only thing that can make them cum.
soooo… special forces soldiers with bombs implanted in their heads?
like Speed but instead of a 50mph bus, the super-soldier explodes if he doesn’t kill a brown child within the hour
has the pentagon considered investing in diplomacy and trade?
“however, there are some real-world fears and ethical questions that need to be asked”
Yes, real conundrums like:
- Who is doing this research?
- Where are they?
- How long will their prison sentences be?
Homo Robocopus
Lamest shit I’ve read this week
This is literally the premise of a Robert Evans novel
Ahh yes Skullfucker Mike.
great idea. i mean, what could go wrong?
“What could possibly go wrong?” might as well be
’s motto.
If your goal is to not look like fascists and undeniably the baddies then pictures like this are not the way to go about it:
Seriously, if you want to provide complete and total moral justification to every single resistance movement in the world then this is the way to do it. Literally making yourself into a caricature of the science fiction baddies that are opposed and eventually defeated in every piece of science fiction ever.
The Pentagon is looking toward a future where the U.S. deploys “super soldiers” directly inspired by Captain America and Iron Man, officials said at a recent conference.
I think this is necessitated by the fact they have fewer and fewer and fewer people willing to do it. So what they want to do is get the same value out of fewer men.
The thing about super soldiers is also that they’re just as likely to coup you as your average soldiers but you’re making them significantly more capable of doing it.
The thing about super soldiers is also that they’re just as likely to coup you as your average soldiers
This is vibes based analysis, but I doubt this. How often are special forces types involved in coups elsewhere? My impression was that the tactical operator types in the US were given carte blanche to run wild and do whatever they want. Why would they revolt? Lower level grunts that are paid and trained worse, exposed to more regular danger and are lower in the military hierarchy seem more likely to do cool stuff. Again though, vibes based analysis so I’m open to being wrong.
Lower level grunts that are paid and trained worse, exposed to more regular danger and are lower in the military hierarchy seem more likely to do cool stuff.
That’s not usually what happens, typically it’s a group of high-rank officers that split the military while having profiles that are large enough among the rank and file for them to remain loyal as they’re trusted more than the politicians that they’re opposing. This kind of thing usually requires someone to have a necessarily high profile among the military in order to split the armed forces in such a way that your split is stronger than the side that remains loyal to the existing government. You don’t really get that by being nobodies in the lower ranks.
You are right. Coups almost never are the lower ranks rising up but a handful of high ranking officers and elite military units backing them. It’s elite units like modern special forces loyal to a specific high ranking military commander that end up the muscle and shock troops for coups, the storming the presidential palace and congress buildings taking the government into custody. Their elite status is what keeps the rank and file military along with law enforcement from making serious efforts to get in their way.
Just look at how it often goes down over the last few decades across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Even funnier when you find out many of those special forces units were trained by US special forces. This isn’t new and goes all the way back to the Roman era, when the elite Praetorian Guard units would regularly be the get-your-hands-dirty muscle for coups.
And if you turn those elite units into bioweapons that obey orders perfectly then you vastly increase the ability of those officers to perform those coups. They no longer have to think about whether or not they will have their support, they will obey the orders given to them.
Concentrating too much power in the hands of too few people is a recipe for disaster.
