Are mechs viable as weapons of war?

Funnily enough with the bradley redeemed it became obvious say a vehicle with an autocannon and a SRM battery would be incredibly effective, particularly against enemy APS protected systems which in the fast short distance evasion humanoid frames bring would become more and more important.

This is why we have helicopters.

There's no need for a vehicle that steps through very thick mud.

>but having mud-walking come part and parcel with an extreme terrain handling excavator is merely icing on the cake
Not really worth it given the maintenance it would require. Marines already tried using a mech and it was too much of a pain in the ass to bother with.

>Maintenance costs will fall as technology improves.
Never said anything about the costs. It's about expertise. You can't expect every single Marine travelling with a mech to be a robotics engineer. It's too difficult to repair, takes too much time, and they weren't even able to find a role for the mech they had so they just ended up leaving it behind most of the time.

>You get the Motor Pool to take care of it along with all the other humvees, Bradleys, and Abrams.
If a humvee loses a wheel on the road you can just replace the wheel. When a mech's leg breaks you have to call up a specialist to fix it.

When a mech loses a foot it can walk on the stump. When a humvee throws an axle you scrap it.

Which ones?

>The LS3
That's a drone. Mechs need a pilot.

And yet the Spider Excavators. Excavators are already common at FOBs for trench digging. Having something with more versatility would mean less tonnage to haul overseas. This would mean a massive net savings for every deployment.

For now. The tech is still immature and it would be foolish to assume things will stay the same.

If we're going by part count then every link of a tanks tread is a moving part.

If we're going by part count then every link of a tanks tread is a moving part.

Tank treads break down a lot. They are high maintenance.

>Legs are never going to be more efficient
Artificial muscles, homie.
They already exist, look up electroactive polymers as an example.

Giant robots won't be propelled with servos and hydraulics, they'll have muscled limbs with significantly fewer moving parts than a tank chassis. And even those moving parts will be purely mechanical.

Oh I'm sorry, I forgot we were just saying stupid shit forgive me. Tanks will still be better because of nanomachines that can heal any injured part that the tank has, and quicker than synthetic muscles.

They'd make extremely good suspension, especially if you had some sensors in front of the tracks allowing them to raise and lower each wheel in advance to smooth out bumps

No, never. Because the military has no use for small, extremely rough terrain excavators. Because they have tons of free hands for small jobs, and heavy equipment for big ones. And they don’t have to worry about things like property rights, erosion control, or environmental impact.

>we have fleets of transports
you have a fleet of transports? I sure don't. Unless you count my two cars and my bike as a fleet.
>the infrastructure is already in place to maintain and operate them
so no new equipment will ever be adopted because we don't have infrastructure in place. Gotcha. Now act like I'm the moron for not thinking about how much more mechs would cost because of their novelty, instead of you being the moron for thinking for a second about why your point is moronic to bring up in the first place.

>mechs probably wouldn't be particularly expensive, since most of the machinery inside is going to just be muscle-like actuators, which aren't very expensive to make, and computers and stuff aren't super expensive either. What part of the mech would actually be expensive?
Yeah it's just going to have to have functioning legs and fingers when making an uncrewed machine that's humansized do that an extremely difficult feat of engineering, but no big it's going to be much easier and more affordable than fricking treads for some reason.

>so that you don't need to bring along a specialized vehicle for all of those things, and have it in the right place at the right time, and after its role is fulfilled it's redundant and just has to sit on its thumbs for the rest of the op.
But WHY, why would you not be bringing a specialized vehicle for all those things? You're absolutely ensuring you're going to be doing whatever you're doing worse than everyone else who is actually preparing for conflict.

>I doubt a mech would be much more expensive than an IFV, probably cheaper after the first few generations and they become more commonplace.
Yeah it would absolutely be cheaper to take a BMD but put legs on it, and arms, and make it so that it can somehow translate the pilot's movements inside into precise movements that allow for delicate finger articulation. One of those would probably cost like as much as a BMD.

>yeah, no shit, but do you even know what operations are? Versatility is often a virtue.
True, that is why all our jets have flippers, just incase the air turns to water during combat.

>why would you not be bringing a specialized vehicle for all those things?
because no one has an unlimited ability to transport things, and if you can it's usually best to use that capacity for other systems or in other places instead of shipping tons of specialist equipment where something else would do well enough.
>Yeah it's just going to have to have functioning legs and fingers when making an uncrewed machine that's humansized do that an extremely difficult feat of engineering
let's get on the same page here, do you think it's impossible to make a mech, or just difficult? If you think it's just difficult, do you think that the difficulty is in manufacturing or in design? It seems to me like you're bouncing between different stances to defend your idea that mechs are bad. I agree that the development would require a lot of engineering work, but I don't think that the actual manufacture would be particularly expensive. The problems you describe all seem to be on the development side, rather than actual manufacturing.
>that is why all our jets have flippers
no, it's why we use multirole jets and why things like VTOL and STOL are desirable. Operational flexibility is a useful thing, every design requires compromises.
>One of those would probably cost like as much as a BMD.
if you exclude the development costs, yes.

>What roles do you think a mech is going to accomplish?
Direct fire support, Armored recovery, engineering, AT, SHORAD, HIMAD, and a lot of others. What part of your little moron brain can't grasp the notion that having a system that is tactically inferior but more flexible on an operational level is frequently advantageous? That's why multiroles are a thing.
>What do you think is the more likely advancement in the future for this sort of task?
how about both? You overestimate the capabilities of autonomous systems and underestimate the feasibility of making a mech for a decent price point.

>because no one has an unlimited ability to transport things, and if you can it's usually best to use that capacity for other systems or in other places instead of shipping tons of specialist equipment where something else would do well enough.
If you can't ship a fricking tank when going into war then you shouldn't be going to war. A mech is going to have to be shipped just like everything else. it's going to take time and money to research, build, field, train, and ultimately apply. The space that mech takes up could be an IFV, why is it better for anything than just making a better IFV?

>let's get on the same page here, do you think it's impossible to make a mech, or just difficult?
It is possible to build a mech, in the sense that you could potentially design an armored vehicle that supports a pilot who maneuvers a 10-ton box with huge flipper feet. It is right now impossible to build a 10-ton 20-foot walker with arms and legs which have any fine motor control, that can do anything other than walk in a straight line on flat ground, and which can do anything other than walk. The manufacturing would be extremely expensive because it would require very advanced electronics that can capably allow a pilot inside to maneuever the vehicle with any dexterity at all. Add in the requirement to armor it to protect from even small-arms fire, and it is just plain impossible at present time. Even in a future where technology allows for it, anything it could do could be done better by a different machine.

>no, it's why we use multirole jets and why things like VTOL and STOL are desirable. Operational flexibility is a useful thing, every design requires compromises.
False equivalence. You are describing the difference between an IFV and a tank, not a talk and a WALKING tank with arms, fingers, and purpose-made weaponry specifically for said machines. It serves no purpose that isn't better served by a better machine.

>you're shipping one
Vehicles can typically only do one or two jobs at a time. Trying to make a vehicle that can do 20 different jobs is pointless when it can only do like, 2 jobs at a time. At that point you might as well just build a more specialized vehicle.

>not a talk and a WALKING tank with arms, fingers, and purpose-made weaponry specifically for said machines.
You're really focusing hard on fingers when weapons could easily be hooked onto external hard points. Stop forcing your strawman.

>yeah, no shit, but do you even know what operations are? Versatility is often a virtue.
"alright were gonna be meticulously planning this series of raids, moving and shooting at some very specific things."
"Hey bring the $5B Mr Hands vehicle just in case, life is like a box of chocolates yknow? He could like hit the enemy witha giant pole! Or like, if the bad guy would be going like *this* and then he would just do this and then this and this!"