Wonder Weapon: n. An over-engineered, over-priced piece of crap that leaves you wondering if it'll get you killed

I had an old-school CO when I was in Aviation. He would routinely take a bird out with FUBAR'ed avionics, make a grease pencil mark on the HUD combiner glass, and win bombing derbies. When I was in Armor, we'd shut down the ballistics computer and fire our qualification tables. My crew and I won a Land Nav exercise competition by shitcanning the GPS, and using dead-reckoning, augmented by three compass sights. I freaked out my hunting buddy when he saw me shoot better with iron sights than a scope.

The added capabilities are great, but the weight and complexity are a deal-breaker, and the gadget doesn't do jack for you if ( read, when) it goes tits-up. I'm inclined to side with the Alpha Company troopers - give me more weapons and ammo, and less kludgy, unreliable, crap to lug around.

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From the opening description of Alpha... it looks like the Network equipment is too much of the wrong type of info.

A Map of the area with your buddies marked... like the Minimap in BF2142... Not useful in the actual firefight, but okay outside that.

I'd say, a full HUD unit with icons marking buddies would be better. Maybe if it were coupled with something like a automatic calibrating thermographic overlay that you can turn on and off for quick PREDVISION.

Get rid of the GPS map, chunk the non-essentials.

Them maybe add on something to the unit that can 'red-tag' an enemy like in 2142 so the rest of the squad can mark it.

Ditch the computer, we don't need that shit. Just the essentials. Simple equipment, faster interface, quick displays.

Really, the government should look at games like HALO, Metroid Prime, and Battlefield for a better idea of an interface that delivers.

Soldiers want to know one thing.

Where to point the gun.

"Map of the area with buddies marked?"



Are they *trying* to kill the troops? Just imagine what happens when one of those fancy shit things is captured by an enemy. Ya-huh.

*shakes head in disbelief*

What soldiers, especially infantray fer chrissakes need is *mobility*, not SF shit like this. All else being equal, a half dozen terrorists with AK's and nothing else can flat-out outrun a dozen marines weighed down by 80lbs of crap.

Give this type of equipment to a commander maybe, or the guys in the tank/lav, to the guy on the ground it's way too likely it's just going to end up a fatal distraction. If your eyes are on the hud, they ain't on the enemy, and then you die.

Exactly. The HUD should be built in a way that enhances or increases the ease of the information you need most, not draw your eyes from the badly camo'd jihad nutcase.

Who plays 2142 here?

http://lsd.sakura.ne.jp/cow/up/060901_bf2142a.jpg

MUCH simpler.

Just remove the game elements. (Lifebar, an ammo count you can't have... stamina bar. Message Log)

And you're left with a map of very simple icons. You can see the squadmate in front of you, makred with little green icon. You can see the tiny little minimap. (Useful in the game. But not in a real setting.)

And in THIS ONE...

http://www.4gamer.net/review/bf2142/img/01-04.jpg

The nice red diamonds mark your enemies.

Non-intrusive displays.

I like the idea of a wrap-around visor with a projected heads-up display. If I remember correctly, something like this is already being developed for fighter pilots so they can just look and shoot. All an infantryman really needs is FOF tags and maybe image-enhancing.

That look and shoot thing is already in the F-22 Raptor and the F-24 JSF. Now what the hell are these very expensive planes going to shoot at when all our enemies are land-bound?

As for the landwarrior system, they need to power soldiers body amour so they can carry heavier loads. Starship Troopers anyone?

Negative.

Put your money into troop training first. Get your boys trained up and hard to the point that you can dump 'em out in West Bumfuck with a KA-BAR and an '03 Springfield and they still kick ass and take names. THEN you can start to buy up and give 'em the kewl toyzz, after they know how to be combat-effective with compasses, paper maps, iron-sighted rifles, and analog imaging and commo and crypto (binos and AM Radio and shackle sheets). After that, they can exploit the additional capabilities without being dependent on them.

Col. John Alexander predicted conventional-pumpedElectromagnetic Pulse weapons back in 1999. A) eight years is a geologic epoch in technology matters, and B) Abdul'nda'Boyzz are not stupid. I can't discount the possibility that a brilliant physicist in West Bumfuck might find a cheap-and-easy method of pumpingt a local-effect EMP munition, then selling the blueprints to AndBz.

Add in Murphy's Law ("Anything that can go wrong, willgo wrong - at the worst possible moment)", and you can see why we practiced "degraded-mode" Gunnery and Land Nav, and why we still trained on shackle sheets, despite having Low-Intercept frequency-hopping, scramblers, etc. that'd make James Bond sick with envy.

Bottom line: "Every Marine that serves after me is my son." I don't want my kids so dependent on wonder weapons that they're screwed the first time the batteries crap oout...

Yes - after they make it as easy to use as the MI armor...And that is what I'm driving at. Until you get them so user-friendly that you just wear the SOB, you can't afford to give them to your kids to use. Heinlein himself had his charas learning hand-to-hand and knife-fighting in that novel...

Amen.

Also: http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb.htm