Post Difficult Questions Here

[Lumos]

Fair enough, if having armour hasn't got any drawbacks whatsoever, everyone's probably going to carry one around.
I don't watch anime, so I wouldn't think about shooting holes in atoms, but okay, let's assume railguns've got the effective range of assault rifles - let's say about 250-300 metres. (If their effective ranges are too short, I still don't see anyone deciding it's a good idea to make them standard-issue.) I guess that would lead to simply replacing regular body armour with the new form, and replacing the riflemen's regular guns.
But given that the armour doesn't protect from explosive trauma, and neither does it work against high-calibre bullets... just replace the marksman's rifle with an anti-materiél rifle, and there we go. Putting soldiers into tight formations would be absolute suicide, what with armoured vehicles, air support, and artillery. Besides, with such immensely powerful shots, wouldn't the projectile (what do railguns use for projectiles? Tungsten rods? That sounds painful) simply pierce through the poor infantryman? That would depend on the armour and the projectile, of course, but 2 km/s is a lot of speed. And if the projectiles are capable of piercing through the first rank of troops and harming the people behind them... well, that would be yet another reason not to clump your soldiers in one place.
This makes me think that the skirmishes of today would be largely unchanged, except that conventional calibres would get upscaled a bit to accommodate the new armour, and everyone will probably be even more careful during combat, resulting in "slower" firefights.

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30mm rifle ammo, anyone?

Oh, God. "Shoot this without proper support if you feel like breaking your shoulder."

 

[Jhessail]

Whoa, my kind of question, fantastic!

that fire at higher-than-average velocities (2 kilometres per second, or more)

So your soldiers are going deaf from the sonic boom? Hope they have good ear mufflers in the helmets.

What you described would not work and would not happen without a whole lot of extra hand-waving. Not even because of air forces but only thanks to artillery. Napoleonic warfare could only work because cannons were slow, inaccurate and had very short ranges - yet they still were very lethal. Modern artillery would absolutely wipe out any concentrated formation of troops, regardless of their armour level. Ever since early 80's, artillery has fielded cluster munitions that incorporate a mix of AP and HE bomblets in them, that are strong enough to pierce the top armour of any MBT/IFV/APC/SPG while the high explosive ones are good enough to decimate soft targets like trucks and humans. Combined with proximity fuses, that trigger them while they are still 20-50 meters up in the air, means that they hit foxholes and trenches from the above - one of the reasons why trench warfare was possible in WW1 was that there were no proximity fuses yet, they emerged during the inter-war period and only became commonly used in '42/'43.

So the opposing side would literally only need a dozen spotters for artillery. Again, modern self-propelled artillery units like the M109 Paladin or the PzH2000, equipped as they are with GPS, radios, IVIS systems, gyroscopes, stabilizers and all that jazz, are capable of setting up and firing in just few minutes. Then, after their fire mission, they can scoot to a new location to avoid counter-battery fire. You don't need the slow and arduous process of scouting locations, mapping them with wire and compass, and then spending 30 minutes to set up truck-towed howitzers and bringing shells up and so on.

Artillery is still the Queen of the Battlefield, yet in most fiction and popular culture it is criminally unappreciated. It's almost always the spunky grunts with their rifles or power armour saving the day against the Bug swarm. Instead of using the massive, concentrated firepower of artillery.

There is no amount of armour you can put on and still remain mobile, that could not be penetrated by suitable artillery ammunition. Unless we completely ignore laws of physics. Nanotubes thousand times stronger than steel, lightweight enough to form a suit of armour out of? Stuff of fantasies and we can counter it with anti-matter artillery rounds, which are just as much stuff of fantasy



Now, if that wasn't bad enough, it's also possible to make tracked vehicles that can withstand few shots while bringing overwhelming firepower on their own. Neither AT-rifles nor AT-guns nor recoilless rifles nor RPGs nor ATGMs have made tanks obsolete - they just brought the pendulum back from "tanks being unfairly OP" to "things are more or less balanced". As others said, if a soldier in heavy armour can carry a railgun, you can put it on a tank. A bigger version that shoots more dakka. Say that your railgun is firing 2mm tungsten pellets - a tank could carry 20 of them easily enough. Sure, it'd be a bigger target but it could also be up-armoured to an extent and carry bigger/better sensors and fire from a longer distance.

Then you get supersonic jets shooting guided missiles Beyond-Visual-Range or bombers dropping smart/dumb cluster bombs from 70,000 feet or miniaturized stealth drones carrying railguns of their own and so on.

Sorry to piss on your parade but it's not really feasible at all.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

yeah, I had a feeling artillery would break the model. Either way I've got some quite interesting answers to ponder on for the next few years. Thanks err'one.

 

[Ambalon]

Thinking about it almost not at all, I'm not sure we've ever seen an example of improved technology leading to older battle models. Didn't we have exactly this issue in the beginning of WWI?

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

You mean old tactics being used with new equipment, going horribly right? Because Jhess might've mentioned a "Verdun with Assault Rifles," happening somewhere in Africa a fair long while ago.

What I've always been wondering, however, is what would light, portable railguns mean for tank destroyer operations.
(And if it would mean a resurgence of AT rifles, even if only temporary.)

 

[Ambalon]

You mean old tactics being used with new equipment, going horribly right? Because Jhess might've mentioned a "Verdun with Assault Rifles," happening somewhere in Africa a fair long while ago.

Well, that depends on what you think is "right" in a warfare context. Anyway, I meant enormous troop casualties.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Thinking about it almost not at all, I'm not sure we've ever seen an example of improved technology leading to older battle models. Didn't we have exactly this issue in the beginning of WWI?

I guess pike & shot was a little bit like the pike phalanxes of Alexander. But large-scale warfare hasn't really been around long enough to adopt more than a few unique sets of tactics, so it's not like it's that likely to revert to something that's already been around.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Well, that depends on what you think is "right" in a warfare context. Anyway, I meant enormous troop casualties.

Well, the best thing you can hope for with entrenching yourself silly is incurring horrible losses on your enemy when they attack right? So, if both sides hope for that, and then the first one manages to repel the attack...you can say it worked.
Until you launch a counterattack and realize your sitting with thumbs up your bum let your foe do the exact same thing on their side of the fence.

 

[Jhessail]

You mean old tactics being used with new equipment, going horribly right? Because Jhess might've mentioned a "Verdun with Assault Rifles," happening somewhere in Africa a fair long while ago.

Well, that depends on what you think is "right" in a warfare context. Anyway, I meant enormous troop casualties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrean%E2%80%93Ethiopian_War

Yup, that war was basically WW1 with modern weaponry. Note that while the total casualty numbers are quite light, the actual fighting bits of the war only lasted four weeks or so. So from 200,000 dead to 600,000 - depending on which authority you believe - in four weeks is pretty "good". That means 50,000-150,000 casualties for each week of fighting.

For comparison, Verdun weekly casualties were around 17,500 and Somme weekly casualties were around 83,300.

 

[Ambalon]

****, that's... pretty bad. Anyway, I asked thinking about Jacbo's question, still, where the technology-tactics valley would be even deeper.

 

[Almalexia]

You mean old tactics being used with new equipment, going horribly right? Because Jhess might've mentioned a "Verdun with Assault Rifles," happening somewhere in Africa a fair long while ago.

Well, that depends on what you think is "right" in a warfare context. Anyway, I meant enormous troop casualties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrean%E2%80%93Ethiopian_War

Yup, that war was basically WW1 with modern weaponry. Note that while the total casualty numbers are quite light, the actual fighting bits of the war only lasted four weeks or so. So from 200,000 dead to 600,000 - depending on which authority you believe - in four weeks is pretty "good". That means 50,000-150,000 casualties for each week of fighting.

For comparison, Verdun weekly casualties were around 17,500 and Somme weekly casualties were around 83,300.

The Iran-Iraq war would fight into that model as well, right? Hell, it was even complete with chemical warfare and human waves.

 

[Frankish Sinatra]

What you described would not work and would not happen without a whole lot of extra hand-waving. Not even because of air forces but only thanks to artillery. Napoleonic warfare could only work because cannons were slow, inaccurate and had very short ranges - yet they still were very lethal. Modern artillery would absolutely wipe out any concentrated formation of troops, regardless of their armour level. Ever since early 80's, artillery has fielded cluster munitions that incorporate a mix of AP and HE bomblets in them, that are strong enough to pierce the top armour of any MBT/IFV/APC/SPG while the high explosive ones are good enough to decimate soft targets like trucks and humans. Combined with proximity fuses, that trigger them while they are still 20-50 meters up in the air, means that they hit foxholes and trenches from the above - one of the reasons why trench warfare was possible in WW1 was that there were no proximity fuses yet, they emerged during the inter-war period and only became commonly used in '42/'43.

What about a mobile, Sifi-esk AA/ anti artillery platform? Something like iron dome times a million, that could reliably intercept artillery fire and aircraft. With such a device, the tactic would be to have as much manpower protecting and protected by the weapon in question. I imagine that the weapon is very large and slow, and thus rail-gun armed infantry can march along side it. Tanks and other mobile armor would still be a factor though, just like cavalry was in the Napoleonic Era.

 

[Baguette Eater]

Oh hey here comes Jhess bashing the infantry and putting artillery on a pedestal.

 

[Almalexia]

Well they are statistically the biggest killers on the battlefield as I recall.

 

[Patchouli Knowledge]

Well, the infantry is just for people not smart enough to get into the artillery.

 

[Almalexia]

Or for people who want to hear after they are finished with their military service.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Well, you could also go into armour for that and a whole lot of fun, but you have to be careful if you have a Soviet-built heavy machinegun on the thing.

 

[Jhessail]

The Iran-Iraq war would fight into that model as well, right? Hell, it was even complete with chemical warfare and human waves.

Very difficult to calculate as the war lasted eight years and there is no consensus on the casualties. Estimates range from the low of 1,541,000 to the high of 2,273,000. We would have to agree on what authority to rely on for the figures and then count just certain campaigns or battles.

Oh hey here comes Jhess bashing the infantry and putting artillery on a pedestal. 

You know it, Mr Cannon Fodder 

What about a mobile, Sifi-esk AA/ anti artillery platform? Something like iron dome times a million, that could reliably intercept artillery fire and aircraft. With such a device, the tactic would be to have as much manpower protecting and protected by the weapon in question. I imagine that the weapon is very large and slow, and thus rail-gun armed infantry can march along side it. Tanks and other mobile armor would still be a factor though, just like cavalry was in the Napoleonic Era.

You would need an insane amount of coverage.

For example, the CBU-100 cluster bomb (Mk.20 Rockeye) used by the Americans for thirty years carries 247 bomblets. A single plane can carry anywhere from four to multiple dozens of them- I think the B-52's were modified after Cold War to carry these as well. You'd need a system that can not only track them - and they are pretty small, around the size of a football or smaller - but also to engage them and to actually "cook" them, meaning a pretty powerful laser. You don't want fragmentation explosions up in the air because the shrapnel will still fall on your troops and could cause casualties. Though perhaps this sci-fi armour makes that a moot point.

BUT JHESS THAT'S AN AIRPLANE BOMB - YOU TALKED ABOUT ARTILLERY!?!?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-Purpose_Improved_Conventional_Munition

Each shell carries 42 bomblets. Now, this is old tech and they are notorious for a high failure rate but the Israelis have been developing improved versions that work much better, which is logical since the Yanks don't really have a need for this kind of system after the fall of the USSR while for Israel it's still very much a useful thing. Anyway, a single M198 howitzer can fire 2 rounds per minute, sustained fire, meaning that the crew can keep that rate up forever (well not really but enough for our purposes). That means that every minute you get 84 bomblets from just a single gun. An artillery battalion usually has 18 tubes so that's 1,512 bomblets a minute, every minute, for as long as ammunition remains. During WW2, US Army fielded 238 separate field artillery battalions (that's not counting the FA battalions that were organic to divisions) just in Europe as of 8th May 1945. You do the math.

My point is, Iron Dome works because it only has to intercept a few - maybe a dozen - fairly big rockets every now and then. It would fail spectacularly under a sustained bombardment. Of course you can hand wave this all away by making chemical lasers that draw energy from cold fusion and are somehow kept from overheating (maybe the crew members drink a lot of Bud Light and thus can constantly pee on them?)

And hey, this is all 60's and 70's tech that I'm using here as examples. There's no telling what kind of advancements artillery would have enjoyed by the time man-portable railguns and powered infantry armour are affordable reality.

Anyway, I asked thinking about Jacbo's question, still, where the technology-tactics valley would be even deeper.

I actually remembered two examples: Forever War by Haldeman and Dune by Herbert. In the former, there's an invention called stasis field that prevents anything with too much kinetic energy from penetrating. So the human soldiers use it as a last ditch defence/shelter when the aliens overrun their base. This forces the aliens to march inside and engage the humans in slow-motion hand-to-hand combat. And in Dune, there are personal and area force fields that negate lasers and even chemical propellant weapons to an extent, which leads to the resurface of fencing and other melee arts. Neither example uses them on the scale that jacob imagines, though.

 

[Cyborg Eastern European]

Also, in Dune, if I understand correctly, Lasers are banned because the results of them coming into contact with shields are...thermonuclear.

Said shields are, however, useless in the desert of the eponymous planet because ?airborne sand? or just sand in general, so everything goes, and the fighting styles are a 'bit' different with the classics.

 

[Úlfheðinn]

Negative, shields are "useless" on Arrakis because they attract sandworms, which would be "enraged" by the vibrations of the shield, leading to a berserk sandworm.