Mechs are bad for real war conflicts

[Лесное хозяйство]

Tall, slow target easy to shoot. Pls discuss)

[RaelM]

Лесное хозяйство a écrit :

Tall, slow target easy to shoot. Pls discuss)

Tall - Yes but that can be a good thing, the taller you are the farther you can see along the horizon, be it with Mk1 eyeballs, binoculars or a radar system. Your only issue would be aircraft IMO as you'd spot most ground vehicles long before you're in range of their weapon systems. Lets take the L30A1 weapon system on the Challenger 2 for example, it's longest confirmed kill was at 5 km.

Now the equation for max view distance to the horizon is √(a x 13), a being your height in meters.

So for a Challenger 2 that's √(2.49 x 13), which comes out as 5.68946394663 km view distance from the commanders hatch. Now lets take an Atlas from the Battletech universe, I'm going to use 1/300 scale for reference, that would make the Atlas 16.8 m tall so using the above formula, √(16.8 x 13) = 14.7783625615, that's almost 3 times the range of the longest confirmed kill of a Challenger 2 and 4 km more than the current world record that required specialised software, a drone spotter and several shots to zero in on the target.

Now being tall doesn't sound so bad now does it? This is how warship conning towers work by the way.

Slow - Not at all, they are roughly as fast or faster than a modern MBT, depending on weight. I'll use the two examples again for this, a Challenger 2's max speed on roads is 59 km/h, an Atlas's max speed is 54 km/h according to Sarna and that's not putting into consideration things like MASC or Superchargers. Now the Challenger 2 weighs 62.5 tonnes but can weight up to 75 tonnes when in a combat ready state, that's ammunition, add-on armour etc. So lets look at a 75 t Mech as an example, the Warhammer can go 64.8 km/h, that's faster than the Challenger 2 and almost as fast as the Leclerc and Abrams which are much lighter.

Not so slow now are they?

Easy to shot - Debatable depending on the chassis, camouflage paint design used, whether or not they are venting heat, how fast the chassis is (tanks aren't exactly easy to hit moving targets at range), etc. Unless you're a Ukrainian drone pilot and that circles back to my previous point of aircraft being your biggest weakness but that's true for any ground attack vehicle. Although a Mech, depending on loadout, would have the ability to strike at the incoming aircraft unlike an MBT that relies on combined arms for that.

The biggest issue for a Mech in the real world would be pressure, as in the pressure applied with each step. The reason why we went with caterpillar tracks in the first place, when it came to tank design, was because it spreads the pressure exerted by the tanks weight over a greater surface area, this stops it from sinking into the ground and getting stuck. Getting stuck after all wouldn't have been very good considering the terrain they were initially designed to fight across, very muddy, very uneven, dotted with trenches, of the European front of WWI.

If you watch any modern MBT drive off road, they have no issues navigating the rough terrain despite their weight, the Challenger 2 is a very good example as it outperforms most MBT's despite being vastly heavier, in some cases 20 t heavier. Now let's take a look at nature and unfortunately there aren't any bipedal megafauna alive so I'll use the Elephant as an example despite it being a quadruped, which means it's weight is more evenly distributed. The Elephant can leave a footprint as deep as 30 cm, depending on species. Elephants can weigh roughly between 2.7 - 6 t, so at 6 t it can leave an impression in the ground that's as deep as a 2 L fizzy pop/soda bottle. Let that sink in (pun intended), that's a 2 L bottle deep hole with 4 legs to distribute the weight, now imagine a 75 t Mech stomping on the ground... it would leave craters with each footstep, that means it would have serious difficulty traversing terrain an MBT would have no issues at all with.

So while the arguments of too tall, too slow and too easy to shoot aren't valid, the fact they can't traverse open terrain well due to their bipedal nature, at least at the weights described in Battletech, makes them nonviable on the battlefied.

Now if they were perhaps around 10 t then it would be a different story, the T-Rex weighed roughly 10 t and it had no problems running on open terrain, they thrived after all for 2.5 million years but anything heavier required the use of 4 legs to distribute its weight to avoid difficulty traversing terrain. Being 10 t though wouldn't leave much room for weapon systems, armour, etc. though.

[LockedandFiring]

At the moment, I can see that. But electronic warfare and technology in general is advancing to a point to where size and speed will become irrelevant. We've already reached a point where the lines between cover and concealment are nearly non existent and then detection systems make concealment more of a set of guidelines than actual rules. We're at a point where the US Navy has taken the aegis system and put them on F-18's. the Aegis has a longer range than what the F-18's radar can see. The us military is focusing more on urban warfare and subterranean fighting. We may very well get to a point where militaries, like in NATO or the Kremlin, will have to find ways to support infantry within locations where tanks or IFVs are not able to reach. or platforms that can have greater views of the battlefield and to carry more and heavier loadouts to combat more threats, such as that of drones or heavier armored systems. Clearly we aren't their yet, but it's interesting to think about

[Kexin]

Лесное хозяйство a écrit :

Tall, slow target easy to shoot. Pls discuss)

If we sent a squad of Atlas instead of F16s, this war would be over.

[holi_shet]

Tregarde a écrit :

Realistically, giant robots would have a severe number of disadvantages, far outweighing the advantages.

BUT this is MechWarrior. Who gives a ♥♥♥♥ about realism? Give me my Timber Wolf and I will tear a swath of destruction across the Inner Sphere!

realistically did you made any giant robots ? no ? i mean you cant talk about future without knowing anything, maybe giant robots will be build with much more durable metal that withstand tiny tank or tiny rocket launchers etc. who knows ?

[RustyRed]

Well, we haven't made miniature fusion reactors and Myomer yet so there is hope.

[IronMagus]

mechs on flat ground are toast but give a mech truly broken terrain or a mountain to climb and then they really do have a role honestly if they ever did become reality they would likely not be towering 100ton behemoths but more along the lines of a locust with jump capacity at 20 tons this is probably the limits of feasibility for mechs and even then a locust sized mech would have some pretty bug feet and get bogged down in soft terrain but if we ever get anti gravity tech this just might be a thing

[AlexintheVerse]

china secretly has an army of Battle Mech's ready to be deployed very soon.

[Rhophius]

Лесное хозяйство a écrit :

Tall, slow target easy to shoot. Pls discuss)

Mechs are used due to the nature of the enviroments they fight in, take a look at some of the planets they fight on, not to mention the massive weapons they need to use to counter bases etc, its nothing to do with an easy target, they use ECM, Stealth and AMS systems to counter threats to name a few.

Source info on all mech info here....

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page

[RiseAgain]

In real life, the ♥♥♥♥ of a giant mech in the battlefield far outweight the pros.

But mechs from the Battletech universe have a number of characteristics that not only negate most of the ♥♥♥♥, but also give them an advantage over other types of military vehicles.

Battletech Mechs are big and easy to hit, but they aslo posess EXTREME resistance to damage when compared to other types of armored vehicles, such as tanks. A Battletech mech can resist being hit multiple times by several different types of explosive and armor piercing weapons, including APFSDS rounds and rounds fired from howitzers, while a modern tank is often rendered combat ineffective after being hit once or twice by these types of weapons.

They also have an easier time navigating in rough terrain and even the heaviest ones can move really fast given their size.

A super heavy mech (like the Atlas, for example) is essentially a walking mini-fortress.

[Alrik]

Лесное хозяйство a écrit :

Tall, slow target easy to shoot. Pls discuss)

No.

[Ralkahn]

RaelM a écrit :

Now let's take a look at nature and unfortunately there aren't any bipedal megafauna alive so I'll use the Elephant as an example despite it being a quadruped, which means it's weight is more evenly distributed. The Elephant can leave a footprint as deep as 30 cm, depending on species. Elephants can weigh roughly between 2.7 - 6 t, so at 6 t it can leave an impression in the ground that's as deep as a 2 L fizzy pop/soda bottle. Let that sink in (pun intended), that's a 2 L bottle deep hole with 4 legs to distribute the weight, now imagine a 75 t Mech stomping on the ground... it would leave craters with each footstep, that means it would have serious difficulty traversing terrain an MBT would have no issues at all with.

It's not the number of feet but the surface area of those feet that you have to take into account. I'm not nearly a big enough Battletech expert to say this for sure, but I'm confident that all four of an elephant's feet would fit inside one footprint of almost any single mech.

Granted, the problem you're describing could still very well be a problem; but if you're gonna do the math, may as well do it accurately.

[Harmless]

Mech has so much more surface area than a tank, it would be a nightmare to add armour and leave room for anything else. Not to mention the weight, you would be getting stuck in mud nonstop. Some sort of hybrid mech/exoskeleton might be viable, on a smaller scale.

[Kriszhao]

dna a écrit :

VDmitry a écrit :

You should read the background to understand how and why mechs had appeared.

To be fair, it is just a pile of mumbo-jumbo technobabble, McGuffins and thingadomagiks with one goal: "Universe needs Mechs" (specifically Mechs with ridiculous low range).

I always figured is range limit is due to ECM warfare.

[Green Goblin]

like all jokes aside, its because rule of cubed. we physically cant make a fighting mech that wouldn't just be a taller tank.

[KharnTheKhan]

Лесное хозяйство a écrit :

Tall, slow target easy to shoot. Pls discuss)

technically you can use a mech as an artillery piece and it would be perfect as a fast moving artillery gun, "Tall, slow" is only for heavy+ and even then its faster than an immobile artillery gun