Sunday 10 May 2015

Sci Fi Railguns, Lasers, Drones, Energy, and Food

I haven't posted for awhile, but I'm still reading and writing.  I'm about to set a new deadline of a year for my next novel again.  It has been about a year since I completely went off track on my fiction writing due to the random nature of life (sometimes you just roll snake eyes).  Anyhow, the big news here in Alberta is that hell froze over after the left leaning NDP won the provincial elections against the conservatives this May as it snowed the next day.  The NDP had about half the support of the voters, mine included this time, and they are kind of left of center party, but almost all Canadian parties would still be classified as centrist/socialist even if they are right or left wing.
Gundam Pods from a Japanese Arcade, but imagine banks of these things with pilots flying attack drones or a squadron of drones.
Going back through my various news feeds, there has been a number of interesting articles that have popped up.  From some of my previous posts you can tell that I think the science fictional future of a great deal of military SF is pretty near future.  Basically, a great deal of the mechanisms, and plot devices that authors use now are going to look really dated as they are obsolete already if they occur in any kind of timeline derived from our present.

A long time ago (back in 2000) I wrote an article about Science Fiction Infantry Warfare.  Most SF writers haven't advanced much beyond the marines from the 1990s described here.  If we're lucky they are wearing enclosed combat / powered armour.  However, experimental exoskeletons and improved body armour and weaponry are both in the lab and being field tested today so future soldiers are going to be more like Heinlein's mobile infantry than anything else.

A few links about some of the tech involved:

So here are some of my characteristics of a near future infantryman.  I expect the infantryman in a heavy assault configuration to be pretty darn tough after they are suited up.  In the far future - infantrymen could be completely obsolete or even tougher.
  • Wears a powered exoskeleton that runs all day on the move to double the weight the soldier can carry at a run.  A soldier can lope at a powered run faster than  a man can run for an extended period.
  • Soldier has head to toe protection from small rounds - impervious to 9mm pistol fire and wears nano-weave armour with ceramic plating to stop rifle rounds.
  • Suit is climate controlled for tropics to arctic with the right environmental modules and sealed from gases or toxins with filtered air.
  • It is a smart suit that will administer stimulants or antidotes if necessary to keep a soldier functioning.  Possibly the nano-weave can contract to tourniquet a limb wound, or offer self-sealing capabilities.
  • Suit is a chameleon suit that can blend into the background and be thermally camouflaged for a short period of time.
  • A soldier will have a 360 degree view in his helmet for high-situational awareness with thermal, low light, telescopic, and superior hearing / shotgun mike capabilities.  This system will integrate with his weapon sights to designate targets and smart-track them.  Mapping capabilities with drone / squad mates / live data feeds will vastly reduce the fog of war.  
  • Will carry a smart rifle and grenade launcher.  Smart rifle will auto range and adjust for windage to have a high percentage hit capability at 500 to 1000 metres especially with steerable bullets.  Semi-auto grenade launcher with sub-40mm rounds that are guided and smart fuzed to engage defiliaded targets.  The exoskeleton allows for a heavier weapon and larger magazine capacity for these weapons.
  • Possibility of railgun / coilgun type weapon firing either small or large penetrators and hundreds of light weight projectiles.
  • Will be able to carry grenade-size rolling ball robots for recon down hallways or rooms.  Will have several toss and fly type drones to scout ahead.
  • Suit can be configured to carry anti-tank weaponry or heavy anti-material rifles that link into the suit's helmet for targeting.
All that sounds futuristic, but if I think far future, I'm thinking that this is obsolete and the infantryman would be even deadlier, more nimble, and lighter in weight too. I'd be thinking unlimited ammunition, energy weapons, a cloud of nano-bots to protect, jam, hurt enemy combatants, robotic support units, ultralight powered suit with some type of shielding, and smart AI to control all this stuff.  It would be a one man army.  Then there could be the augmented human body aspect too.

After talking about infantry, lets talk about the air force and navy.  There will be no more manned fighters as survival in an environment with drones and lasers is too low.  Manned fighters would also be like a magnitude of order more expensive to build and wouldn't maneuver was well as a drone.  Aircraft carriers are impressive platforms to project air power, but they are also expensive and high-value targets to sink.  If you are trying to protect your high-value asset you are probably not getting the maximum use out of it as you will not put it into risky situations or are diverting too many of your forces to protect it.  Laser weapons as anti-missile defences also seem to be making big advances too along with railguns for lobbing projectiles to do bombardment.

A few links on this topic:
In my writing, I think of drone carriers, but they are smaller vessels that can mass launch attack drones via a vertical launch system and do a trap and recover on a small deck, or they are like stealthy flying airships that have drop bays to mass launch attack drones.  I already use coilguns for my HARM units main weaponry, and I don't have manned fighter aircraft so I'm already ahead in the few items of military SF I've written.

Finally, today, let's talk about food and energy!  Food is something that isn't imagined too well in SF.  Protein bars, ham sandwiches, and odd colored fruit.  What is the next exotic breakthrough or food concoction?  Just think about the impact of new world crops like potatoes, avocados, tomatoes, corn (as in maize), chocolate, etc., on the world.  There was no tomato sauce in Italy.  Greek salad with tomatoes didn't exist.  Avocado sushi wouldn't be around.   No french fries or chocolate cake either.
So what kind of food innovation, next great crop, or types of food stuffs will exist in the future.  What is the next big thing to replace a hamburger or pizza and will it be of earthly origin?  Will we eat meat or think it is barbaric?  Will we all eat healthy to boot?

Energy is going to be cheap and renewable.  There will be a distributed grid and every building will have its own batteries and solar panels / vertical wind turbines.  It is just a matter of decade(s?) for this to happen now.  Remember, this is the now, not the future, and you never can get the genie back into the bottle after letting it out.  We'll have super-batteries and ultra-efficient solar, with energy possibly being beamed down from space-based arrays.
Everyone have a great day, this post turned out far longer than I expected.

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