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To: colorado tanker
It would sure ruin someone's day to have a Stryker full of computers operating a billion dollars worth of air and missle assets taken out by a guy armed with sandels and an RPG.

Some of our new systems are supposed to have automated weapon systems designed to smack down individual soldiers the same way they would attack armor. I know such systems have been tested. A person cannot fire an RPG faster than a computer with broad spectrum IR can identify that threat and kill it. For all I know these new systems may be able to intercept an incoming RPG; it is certainly within the capabilities of our technology to do so. Which is the whole idea. The only thing that will have a reasonable chance against these systems is another more lethal computer-controlled machine. Humans are no longer fast enough to be a threat.

This type of stuff is expected to be deployed by the end of the decade, and much of it has already been undergoing field testing. All weapon systems have weaknesses, but that is no reason to scrap them if they do the job better than the last one. The DoD is very familiar with RPGs, as those things have been around forever. I am quite certain that effective counter-measures and strategies have been employed to deal with that. The US frequently overstates the capabilities of enemy weapons and understates the capabilities of American weapons, but even our "mediocre" weapon systems prove awfully effective in combat.

133 posted on 04/07/2003 12:28:23 PM PDT by tortoise
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To: tortoise
I am quite certain that effective counter-measures and strategies have been employed to deal with that.

Actually, no. None of what you describe in on the Stryker. And it doesn't even take an RPG to kill a Stryker - a heavy machine gun will do.

The future you describe sounds a bit like this:

"A metal foot crushes the skull like china.

TILT UP, revealing a humanoid machine holding a massive battle rifle.

It looks like a CHROME SKELETON... a high-tech Death figure. It is the endoskeleton of a Series 800 terminator. Its glowing red eyes compassionlessly sweep the dead terrain, hunting.

The SOUNDS of ROARING TURBINES. Searchlights blaze down as a formation of flying HK (Hunter-Killer) patrol machines passes overhead.

PAN WITH THEM toward the jagged horizon, beyond which we see flashes, and hear the distant thunder of a pitched battle in progress.

EXT. BATTLEFIELD - NIGHT

THE BATTLE. Human troops is desperate combat with the machines for possession of the dead Earth. The humans are a ragtag guerrilla army. Skynet's weapons consist of Ground HKs (tank-like robot gun-platforms), flying Aerial HKs, four-legged gun-pods called Centurions, and the humanoid terminators in various forms.

SEQUENCE OF RAPID CUTS: Explosions! Beam-weapons firing like searing strobe-light. A gunner is an armored personnel carrier fires a LAW rocket at a pursuing Aerial HK, bringing it down in a fiery explosion. Another APC is crushed under the treads of a massive Ground HK.

A TEAM OF GUERRILLAS in a intense fire-fight with terminator endoskeletons in the ruins of a building. Three terminator endoskeletons advance, firing rapidly. Another (complete cyborg), with flesh ripped open and back broken, gropes for a rifle on the ground.

A Centurion overruns a human firing position. Soldiers are cut down as they run. Fiery explosions light the ranks of advancing machines."

135 posted on 04/07/2003 12:51:25 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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