bear
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Post by bear on Sept 8, 2019 1:15:46 GMT
So I'm writing a military engagement and I kind of need help figuring out/fleshing out what a "reasonable" loadout for a professional soldier ought to be in this setting.
A group of pirates has captured small elite forces of half-a-dozen to a dozen soldiers from each of about sixty different outfits at a summit meeting where these guys were the security details for their delegations. But now these guys have suddenly managed to get all their standard-issue military hardware back, and they're getting ready to do some fast, dirty, on-board, close-in fighting to try to take the spaceship they're on from the pirates.
It is 'reasonably' important that the pressure hull should not be opened to space - basically, keeping holes down to a size that somebody can go around afterward and patch is okay but opening the whole side of a room to vacuum is not.
They have approximate twenty-second or late-twenty-first technology to work with - awesome high-temperature supercapacitor batteries and electromagnetic accelerators, for starters, which have largely obsoleted gunpowder cartridges. Most military sidearms are flechette pistols that fire ridiculously small projectiles (tenth-gram to half-gram) at ridiculous muzzle velocities (1 to 2 km/s) in large herds (selectable burst fire modes of 10 up to 200 rounds, because even 200 rounds is still less than full autofire would send before your grunt could get his finger off the trigger).
The downsides are that 'needle gauge' or tenth-gram rounds, while delivering the kinetic energy of about a .22LR, are very short range (air resistance kills the teeny rounds) and ineffective against even lightly armored targets, 'nail gauge' or quarter-gram rounds while delivering about the same energy as a .44mag are still short range and ineffective against typical military-uniform armor, and 'spike gauge' or half-gram rounds, while usable at medium range, can cause unintended collateral damage, including dangerous ricochets, occasional holes in even armored bulkheads, and spalling.
Bullet-size or 'slug gauge' rounds are for anti-materiel jobs, heavily armored enemies, long-range shooting, or "trick" rounds that carry technology like explosives, incendiaries, cameras, fin and/or rocket guidance, radio transceivers, proximity fuses, heat seeking, etc. They might detonate before hitting a bulkhead to prevent collateral damage, or when they hit their target to prevent overpenetration, or at a particular range to prevent downfield damage, etc. They might transmit camera images back in-flight or even camera-and-sound after coming to rest. They might fill a network coverage gap with a local-area hub. Et cetera.
But troopers don't like the slug-gauge rounds because they're used to magazines that hold fifteen hundred needle-gauge rounds or a thousand nail-gauge rounds. Standard pistol-grip size magazines don't fit more than 30 slug-gauge rounds, the muzzle velocity is so low that they have to think about things like windage and aim around curved gravity in centrifugal-gravity environments, and whatever 'trick' bullet they have loaded will, inevitably, be exactly the 'trick' they don't need at a particular moment. They tend to be a secondary weapon carried by specialists.
These guys will all have body armor and HUD displays that allow them to 'see through walls' anything that one of the others, or one of their drones or gadgets, can see. They have some real-time AI coordination, some version of a standard sidearm, and maybe three or four other pieces of kit like goop grenades or taser batons or taser nets or something. But they've never trained together or even been unified in forces with the same military doctrine. Their equipment will have a lot of similarities, but the details of their loadout are based on decisions made by a bunch of different governments based on different doctrines, who weren't talking to each other or anticipating that their guys would ever be in a fight together.
So here's my basic thoughts... what are yours? What other pieces of kit will these guys outfit themselves with for an anti-pirate fight that starts already onboard a ship?
They have the advantage of surprise, the pirates have the advantage of automatic shipboard security systems. The soldiers know they're about to be in a fight and get to make preparations, and the pirates are generally aware that a fight is possible. The pirates are taking 'reasonable' precautions but at any given moment some will be ashore, some will be in the head, some will be eating dinner or cleaning decks, some will be on an off-duty shift, etc.
Interested to hear any inventive ideas you've got.
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Post by karfston on Sept 10, 2019 7:37:55 GMT
What load outs they start with will probably depend on some factors... what engagements do they typically fight? What engagement did they actually equip for.
Weapons for zero-g combat may include some things that don’t work in gravity.
Things I could see them bringing along/doing for a raid against a more numerous opponent who has weaker weapons and training, in no special order:
- Drones to map the place and zap unshielded cameras as they go. Depending on RoE and treaties, these may also blind combatants they find without eye protection.
- breaching charges expressly for cutting big holes in walls of spaceships, cause the fastest way is through the hull, and because one hole is easier to patch than one thousand tiny holes. Think 4 feet of shaped charge detcord in a loop, normally packaged as a somewhat large baseball until needed. Ideal for bypassing hard points or making airlocks unusable. ‘Who cuts a hole in an airlock door? Just jam the door open. Waste of a perfectly good door...’
- some snazzy kit for quickly patching one thousand holes. Cause someone on red team will invariably think holding down the trigger with a thousand round clip will somehow stop blue team from killing all his buddies.
- if you’re going to let people see through walls, they’re going to find things worth shooting through walls, vacuum be damned. Like the power lines to the defense turrets. Expect appropriate weapons for this. Expect the fancy turrets to have backup power supplies and shielded lines that may be hard to shoot or spot.
- expect some ‘low-tech’ solutions for getting high tech things to do what you want. Why hack a reactor? Have a small drone place a couple americium samples by sensors in the reactor to have it scram, cause ‘reactor leaks are bad’.
- Swarms of tiny sacrificial drones that go all thermite on sensitive equipment of opportunity. Such as weapons and doors. Cause pirates will be amused any time spot-welds hold the armory door closed during an unplanned defensive action.
- noxious chemicals - tear gas, if you would.
- harmless stuff - smoke for defeating sensors and rendering lasers useless. Defense Turrets that can’t see opponents can blind fire, but would they see reason to do so, and if they do, would the fire be useful?
- rockets, cause recoil in zero-g is not fun. Think big like stuff to kill vehicles. Think small like stuff to kill individuals (gyrojets). Physics suggests these may be ineffective at very short ranges and possibly not brought for boarding actions.
- bullets, cause not all combat is zero-g, and smart people brace themselves when firing guns.
- recoilless weapons - things that fire in two or more directions at once to yield zero net recoil. These are a thing today, and they’re just as dangerous as they sound.
- weapons that incorporate gyroscopes to help with torque from recoil - and because gyros in them mean the weapons can aim-bot for you. ‘Headshot’.
- frog anti-armor grenades - grenades that when tossed into a room, juggle their orientation to land ‘feet down’, then leap towards the nearest identified threat and lance it with a self-forging warhead. Likely only semi-effective again turrets (turrets would be good vs skeet), but if things can be blinded first and the grenade relayed targeting data...
- RF/IR jammers - both teams probably have drones. Jammers make sense.
- jammer countermeasures - drones that do something about jamming, like breaking stuff.
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bear
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Post by bear on Sept 14, 2019 18:00:21 GMT
The mission they originally loaded out for was 'security detail of one of the delegations at a major diplomatic summit meeting.' Which means try not to look excessively threatening (which would indicate your delegation is insecure about its alliances and relationships, and anyway might get your security excluded from some sensitive areas where the delegates really want to have them), but also make sure that as security they are both capable and clearly visible. Even the guards from places where security is "secret service" that goes in plainclothes, are wearing brassards or something clearly marking and identifying them. Places that sent "royal guards" or "praetorians" have particularly ostentatious uniforms, but most of these details are regular navy (or regular army).
Nobody will have disguises of any kind available, unless (a) they were preparing to be on some kind of covert mission against the other delegations and (b) their COs are willing to admit it to each other now.
The summit meeting was being held in a zero-gravity environment. About half the diplomats and delegates they want to rescue are zeegee-adapted and too physically frail to withstand or function in more than lunar (1.7 m/s^2) gravity. The troopers themselves are in better physical shape; most are trained to function in at least martian (4 m/s^2) gravity and about half are trained in full (10 m/s^2) gravity.
Zero-gravity is part of the rationale for the use of flechette guns btw; the needle-gauge flechette at 2 km/s has more energy than a .22LR, but only about 20 percent of the recoil. Somebody will want to brace when shooting 200 rounds in burst-mode, because that adds up to about the same recoil as three shots from a .44mag. But it's a 'shove' more than a 'kick' because it's spread over at least a half-second or so. Burst-mode of ten rounds is a standard lethal-force shot on an unarmored target, and the 'kick' from that is easy to manage.
Drones to map the place and zap cameras. God yes. They'll have to be there, in a variety of sizes from gnat to fruitbat.
Laser blinding weapons. I hadn't thought of it but that's a good idea. Medical technology in-setting is good enough to grow new eyes or limbs, so the Hague convention on blinding or permanently disfiguring weapons is not operative in-setting. It'll take six months to grow you new eyes (if you're not a clone that has new eyes for your clone line available over-the-counter) and six months or more for your brain to sort out the neural connections so you can actually *see* again, but it would be considered *more*, not *less*, humane than conventional weapons. It's just another less-than-lethal measure that takes someone out of the fight.
Of course that implies that standard kit for any soldier will include a visor that can block most blinding weapons. And I need to think about how a laser blinding weapon will interact with people who have HUD eye implants. We could wind up in a situation where they can see what their HUD projects in their retinal implants, but can't see in natural light.
Some of these forces might have breaching charges. They're not really consistent with a summit delegation security detail, but they're small to package, and likely to be something that security forces in general have trained with on account of security forces often being deployed in anti-piracy roles. So they could easily be part of some specialist's kit, and of course the specialist would bring the whole kit rather than picking-and-choosing within it; that's what kits are for. I have to think about whether there's any problem in this particular engagement that those could be a correct solution for. There might be some applications against internal bulkheads that need one or two more doors than they have. That's a good thing to have in mind though, and I hadn't thought of it.
Hole-patching kits. Yeah. Built into every ship, and the military/rescue guys will have more.
Darn right people will see things worth shooting through walls. I've already got a focused bit on one guy, in fact, whose main mission is taking out some tactical cameras, and he gets one of them with a through-the-wall shot. He's using a needle-gauge fletcher, which doesn't normally penetrate walls but 200 rounds on a one-square-centimeter spot will *melt* through a metal bulkhead, and when your rounds vaporize on impact you don't have to worry about ricochets, so he can stand there and fire point blank.
Kamikaze drones. I'd thought of hummingbird-size exploding drones as weapons and I'd thought of gnat-sized intel drones, and I'd thought of thermite/acid/whatever in anti-materiel roles, but I hadn't thought of gnat-sized drones in anti-materiel roles. So I hand't considered them with those loads. And that definitely works!
Rockets. At short ranges rockets don't have time to build up the speed for a kinetic-kill projectile. I've already got grenades being jet-propelled rather than explosive-launched, and jets/small rockets are good for drones that have to be guided. Rockets give you an effective way to deliver a payload in a bullet-size package, but won't arrive at lethal bullet speed at restricted indoor ranges.
Scope-mounted gyros, for stabilization and aimbot purposes. Check, already present on most things bigger than pistols.
Self-directing 'frog' anti-armor grenades. Nice idea. Perfectly plausible, highly effective. Like a hand-delivered "bouncing betty" mine.
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Post by freeflier on Sept 15, 2019 3:32:20 GMT
Hole patching: plugups are little balloons of hole-patching goop that float around in microgravity until they get sucked into a hole, whereupon they burst and set up, plugging the hole. You'd turn them loose any time you're in microgravity and there's a possibility of hull breaches.
And you wouldn't want to use plain old army/navy personnel, but specially trained types with the special skills needed for this kind of mission, though they may have (probably would have) come up through the regular military.
--FreeFlier
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bear
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Post by bear on Sept 15, 2019 23:44:30 GMT
Yes, these guys (and gals) are all fully trained for security in zero-gravity; that's their main job. And coming up through the ranks (whatever rank structure their outfit uses) to a security job will mean most of them have trained, more than once, for shipboard combat scenarios not too unlike this. When I think about the logistics of spacecraft I can't come up with any circumstances in which you'd be sending marines to breach and board another ship during a fight. The "boarding action" as such simply doesn't exist much longer after the age of wooden sailing ships. But there's still ship invasions, where people sneak in through the locks (or with that breaching charge) while someone is in port or crippled, or where people "sneak" onto the payroll with forged employment papers, or something. And occasionally security forces on ships have to deal violently with crooks no matter how they got there. Anyway, no worries about a lack of appropriate training for these guys.
By the way, karfston and freeflier, thanks for your responses.
It's hard to write large-scale fights for me; everything is happening at once and I want to hit my plot points without having anyone do something obviously stupid.
Well, except for the crook who turns on the other crooks without allying himself with anyone; that's obviously stupid.
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sean
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Post by sean on Sept 16, 2019 2:50:08 GMT
I am neither military or police, but my gut feeling is any protection detail will prioritize survival and movement over hurting the other guy. That would mean armor, possibly armored blankets that can be wrapped around the principal, a full medkit, with blood already typed for the principal, and anything and everything for moving away from the problem. Smokebombs, breaching charges (to cut a hole through to where you want to run), gear for dealing with bombs, and sensors for detecting weapons, including bombs and small-arms.
There might also be something for quickly welding doors shut in a hurry.
If there was an extraction team, I'm guessing they wouldn't be standing next to the principal during meetings, but rather, sitting around the wardroom of the diplomat's ship, watching every feed that comes from the meeting, while hoping they don't have to earn their pay today. They would probably be equipped similarly to how special force are today, but with a special focus away from anything that might over-penetrate and get the guy they're trying to keep alive. This would probably mean no shotguns, too. And no frag grenades.
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Post by Nic Verbo on Sept 16, 2019 3:19:51 GMT
As a security detail you need to consider both what you are securing and what you are securing against.
In this case guards for VIP diplomats in an indoor low G environment.
Two main threats - (1). The security details of the other VIPs. You can not trust the other delegations
not to have a stupid idea or an infiltrator.
(2). An outside terrorist group seeking a violent disruption, (assassination, bombing or hostage taking, etc)
Likely twin goals of damaging selected VIPs and discrediting either a delegation or the whole summit.
Use of live bodyguards rather than robotic or tech guard systems as these can be suborned and used against you.
The security detail will include techs with sniffers and scanners to face chemical, biological, ballistic and hacking threats.
Obviously direct bodyguards to physically screen the VIPs. Since these are elite teams it is normal for the guards to be tech trained
on their equipment rather than separate tech staff.
So I would suggest
- Scanners etc the best possible, but more passive mode gear. Full suite ECM defensive gear.
- Armor able to defeat a sniper round. Seriously expensive protection. Actually worth a lot of money in a black-market.
- Stun batons or narrow field immobilizers. Plus sidearms and sub-machinegun equivalents not squad support weapons.
No auto grenade-launchers or machine-guns (unless grabbed from pirate sources). Bringing in a sniper rifle or AP bomblets
would be a very aggressive act diplomatically.
I would expect the external security to be handled by a separate force of the host nation.
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bear
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Post by bear on Sept 16, 2019 5:13:53 GMT
They have a lot of less-than-lethal gear; they have a lot of very lethal gear too, but by default, I think most are armed with less-lethal devices wherever they're effective.
There's basically two kinds of grenades that are "reasonable" to use inboard in a pressurized ship, and I don't think anybody's brought lethal gas grenades to a party where the objective is to keep the VIPs alive - your own VIPs because that's your mission, everybody else's because nobody wants the international incident of your country's security forces accidentally killing some other country's crown princess.
The grenades (at least the ones everybody we've seen so far is kitted with, if they have any) are 'goop grenades': Essentially a net strong enough that people can't tear it, soaked in a more-than-generous coating of something epoxy-like, which hardens in a few seconds into something hard enough that people can't bend it. Mounted on a compressed-air jet that launches the fairly-massive thing without momentum transfer to the user. Favorite narration line: "The grenade hit him square in the pit of the stomach and detonated with a sound like the thunderous wet fart of some obscene god." Favorite character line: "You're actually lucky, idiot. Webbed up like that there's no need to kill you. Your only problem now is your nose is going to itch the whole time."
A cool thing about goop grenades is they're effective against armored opponents (mostly - assumes no power armor).
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jay
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Post by jay on Oct 18, 2019 15:15:32 GMT
I'd think the grenade should deploy away from the target, otherwise full coverage would seem unlikely.
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