[gurps] [Vehicle] TL8 "Pigeon"

[Onno Meyer]

I'm offline for a couple of days and immediately there are a
load of vehicle posts on GURPSnet ... well, it saves time to 
give my inevitable two cents all at once :-)

Even more than the inventors/proponents of real-world weapon
R&D projects, a technothriller writer can create exactly the 
right conditions for his clever idea and gloss over problems. 

* It might be possible to organize the complete sweep of the
  target area and the avoidance of double attacks with local
  communications protocols, but that is tricky. 

  "If the nearest pigeon to your left is closer than the 
   nearest pigeon to your right, shift right."
  "Before an attack, tell the pigeons to your right and left 
   that you have taken the target. Have them tell their 
   neighbours."

  If pigeons are programmed to flock towards concentrations
  of targets, that almost assures that isolated targets are
  missed. If they are programmed to spread out, the attack
  on concentrations suffers because the swarm tries not to
  be suckered.

* The flock also has to determine the effectiveness of the 
  attack. If the pigeons go after warm engines, a burning 
  decoy will be a real killer. Not re-attacking a surviving
  target would be just as bad.

* As described by DataPacRat, the flock communicates by a
  single radio per bird. That means a single frequency (or 
  rather a single sequence of frequencies, with frequency-
  hopping) for the flock, right? To talk on two nets at the 
  same time, you need two radios. If you switch the radio 
  from net to net, you change from one intermingled flock 
  to the other.

  Making sense of thousands of stations on one net will be 
  a killer application, even with robotic radio discipline.

  And radios can be jammed.

For some real-world thoughts on killer flocks, check the LCAAS 
mentioned in http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1398/

Of course that could change with more optimistic assumptions
on computer power. Microbot flocks work in Transhuman Space, 
but not in Traveller, to name two extremes.

* If the pigeon has no biomorphic camouflage, ornithopter 
  drivetrains make no sense. A little prop or jet engine 
  is much more reasonable.

* Why bother with sound baffling?

* It makes little sense to design a dedicated anti-pigeon 
  defense. Pigeons are just one special case of a saturation
  attack by small targets. For the defender, lasers might be
  workable - the attacker would leave any anti-laser-aerosol
  cloud behind as he advances.

* Last but not least, the deployment of cluster munitions
  has led to stronger overhead armor on AFVs. Don't assume
  that everything stays the same and only YOUR pet weapon 
  adapts. When it comes to cracking armor, ten little bangs
  are not nearly as useful as one big one.

And robots of this size really bring the Vehicles rules and 
even Robots to their limits, of course. Have you considered
to use a brilliant missile seeker from VE instead of a robot
brain/sensor?

Regards,
Onno