Joseph,

With the Aslans, I tried to think like a feline.
The felines come in two hunting varieties: chasers and stalker/ambushers.
Ambushers are the more successful; the leopard is the only feline that has increased its habitable range since the 19th century.

Much of the ground warfare is based around the chaser mindset': find the prey, chase the prey, kill the prey.
The ambusher mindset is simpler: wait until the prey is in very close proximity, then kill.

With anti-gravity vehicles, why would one want to employ chaser mindset?
Generally there are tactical targets, operational outcomes, strategic results and theatre aims.
A chaser commander may choose to progress through these, but an ambusher will simply drop the entire force in on the theatre objective, orbit-to-objective movement. [The USMC original 1990s forcible entry concept was called Ship-to-Objective Manouevre, STOM. It was a program, i.e. a STOMp]

No need to worry about taking intermediat objectives or maintaining phase lines.
Its the ultimate in the vertical envelopment, where there isn't even envelopment.

Then I looked at all the illustrations of anti-gravity vehicles, Traveller and other sci-fi games, films, figure makers.
They were all designed based roughly on the chassis/turret configuration of a classic 1930s 'tank'.
Why? Because none of the designers thought about what problem their design was solving for the military professional.
In all my conversations with military professionals, and those that got shot at anyway, there was common desire, which is that combat should not last any longer than absolutely necessary.

Einstein expresed a similar idea when he said "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
The tank was designed as a simple vehicle to deal with a specific combat problem. That problem changed in 1940.
Why would the TL-10 anti-gravity armoured vehicle designs continue to emulate the 1940 designs?!

So I designed my own anti-gravity assault vehicle for the Aslan mercenaries. It roughly resembles the ax-head in shape. Underneath and set in the 'blade' part is a circular weapon station that floats in a magnetic field.
The tactics are simple - the entire unit drops from orbit onto the most obvious location of the planetary seat of Government at about 50km/s.

Combat takes 1 minute, surrender negotiations 59 minutes.
An hour later the contracted mission is completed and the unit goes home.

Greg

On 22 June 2015 at 08:36, Joseph Paul <josephnjody@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

On 6/21/2015 8:57 AM, Greg Chalik wrote:
Brett,

I used to work in IT until the 90s, mostly supporting engineers. I then moved to databases in banking/finance/pharmaceutical industries while doing a university degree.

I never served in the military and I don't have an engineering or a design degree.
None of these things particularly bother me since the one thing I did learn in university is that experts can get stuff really wrong.
Many great discoveries were made by amateurs.
My degree was primarily in economics and international relations, so you can perhaps see how I got that idea.

My interest in military 'stuff' started when I was still a teenager, though I was never really attracted to guns or extreme sports.
What interested me more is why certain high ranking officers made certain decisions that led to certain outcomes.
Based on my reading I soon decided that chess was a really 'limited' game.

I took up wargaming in the 80s, and was enticed into Traveller in the late 80s, though I wasn't really into RPG because I found quite a few participants were er...'unstable' and often irrational for my 'taste'. My interest in Traveller persisted for only a few years because the one game master (i.e. the only person who was interested in writing up adventures) moved away/disappeared.

However, I did persist with Striker for a time, and even bought the 2nd edition rules though by this stage I had definite ideas about wargaming also.

My military history/warfare research started in the 70s generally focusing on the Second World War Eastern Front, which led me backwards in sourcing Soviet doctrinal thinking to the American Civil War, and forwards into the (at the time) AirLand Battle.

My current activity is, or rather was, focused on 'selling' the USMC a doctrine and vehicles designs, however the USMC colonels have a huge problem in listening to a civilian. They would rather lie, including to the Congress, and go one wasting time and money than admit that a civilian has a better idea than they do. The USMC share this trait with the US Army.

So I'm not a stranger to being told it isn't possible that I should know something that 'everyone' disagrees with.
This used to bother me quite a bit until I discovered research by Greg Berns (see Iconoclast).

Along the way I made a few peripheral discoveries, so I'm considering going into consultancy, helping companies with innovation.

Greg

So you are the guy with the Next Big Thing? I will note that you make an awful lot of assertions with out going into any detail (and the detail you do go into doesn't seem to pan out - see my earlier reply to you as an example).

Getting back to Traveller why don't you describe what you did with the Aslan that you are so proud of?


Joseph Paul


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