Ortillery and Forward Observers
- Thread starter Golan2072
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Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
Considering the firepower involved, you couldn't pay me enough to be an ortillery FO! If I was that suicidal I'd have joined the Scouts...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I'd say no.
If a ship can hit an evading ship, while throwing itself around, at distances that are measured in tenths of light seconds, then hitting a relatively slow moving vehicle at a couple of thousand klicks shouldn't be much of a problem. Targetting sensors should be more than up to the job.
FO may be useful in some situations, such as firing a meson gun through a planet at the target...
If a ship can hit an evading ship, while throwing itself around, at distances that are measured in tenths of light seconds, then hitting a relatively slow moving vehicle at a couple of thousand klicks shouldn't be much of a problem. Targetting sensors should be more than up to the job.
FO may be useful in some situations, such as firing a meson gun through a planet at the target...
Theo D Lite
SOC-11
I doubt whether a FO would be needed and as Andrew points out the firepower would require one to be so far from the target that he would be able to offer little or no additional benefit.
I would point out, however, that GPS requires a constellation of sattelites and if you are the agressor in system such access may not be forthcoming or your equipment will in all probability be incompatible with the host system.
How accurate are you wanting you bombardment to be. If you are trying to put a single missile down an air conditioning vent then some form of ground based designation would be necessary and in this case a FO would be a requirement, but in this case the firepower is not so great and an FO can get suitably close to the target to employ a laser carbine or similar.
If on the other hand you just want to reduce a compound to dust and are not too concerned about the neighbours ships systems will probably suffice for accuracy.
This is all off the cuff, I don't have any rules to hand to support my argument.
I would point out, however, that GPS requires a constellation of sattelites and if you are the agressor in system such access may not be forthcoming or your equipment will in all probability be incompatible with the host system.
How accurate are you wanting you bombardment to be. If you are trying to put a single missile down an air conditioning vent then some form of ground based designation would be necessary and in this case a FO would be a requirement, but in this case the firepower is not so great and an FO can get suitably close to the target to employ a laser carbine or similar.
If on the other hand you just want to reduce a compound to dust and are not too concerned about the neighbours ships systems will probably suffice for accuracy.
This is all off the cuff, I don't have any rules to hand to support my argument.
The Human intelligence factor will still be relevant and possibly even preferrable IMHO, add that the troops on the ground are there allready anyway (usually Marines or Army that request ortillery in the first case) why not train some of them to designate and or report effectivness of ortillery? Ship needs to know when to stop firing afterall if nothing else.
And, if ships weapons can hit another ship in space at a light second distance, and some ships are not much more than 30 meters in length, then an FO hunkered down half a klick from any ground target ought to be safe from friendly fire from his swabbie mates very high above.
I can't remember any rules offhand that require an FO for ortillery, but then I can't easily invisage a situation where troops on the ground would be solely reliant on ortillery for their indirect fire needs with the possible exception of a Drop Troops landing. In that situation the troops involved would be working in conjunction with their ships so closely that they'd be in near constant communication anyway. It would seem logical to used an FO trained commo specialist atleast. Would it not?
And, if ships weapons can hit another ship in space at a light second distance, and some ships are not much more than 30 meters in length, then an FO hunkered down half a klick from any ground target ought to be safe from friendly fire from his swabbie mates very high above.
I can't remember any rules offhand that require an FO for ortillery, but then I can't easily invisage a situation where troops on the ground would be solely reliant on ortillery for their indirect fire needs with the possible exception of a Drop Troops landing. In that situation the troops involved would be working in conjunction with their ships so closely that they'd be in near constant communication anyway. It would seem logical to used an FO trained commo specialist atleast. Would it not?
A friend of mine works with satellite photo and synthetic-aperture radar imagery. I ran this by her to get her take on it. She says "no problem". An experienced interpreter can resolve objects as fine as a barbed-wire fence from orbit now (with a little luck and a lot of experience). Increased computer and sensor sophistication would only make things easier.
Alien environments or unfamiliar objects might pose a problem initially.
Her only real caveat was target identification. She suggested IFF transponders would be nearly a neccessity for close fire support.
My take on it would suggest using the MT COACC target identification rules when conducting unobserved ortillery fire. And a miss will always land "somewhere".
Some neat links on SAR here . Dial-up users beware.
Alien environments or unfamiliar objects might pose a problem initially.
Her only real caveat was target identification. She suggested IFF transponders would be nearly a neccessity for close fire support.
My take on it would suggest using the MT COACC target identification rules when conducting unobserved ortillery fire. And a miss will always land "somewhere".
Some neat links on SAR here . Dial-up users beware.
M
Malenfant
Guest
I thought the whole point of an FO with artillery was because you have to fire long range groundbased artillery indirectly at the target?
For Ortillery (orbital bombardment I presume?) you can just use satellite imagery instead as Piper said. So long as the resolution was high enough that you could recognise your target, that is (of course, if you actually had the target's lat/lon location anyway then it's trivial to locate it).
For Ortillery (orbital bombardment I presume?) you can just use satellite imagery instead as Piper said. So long as the resolution was high enough that you could recognise your target, that is (of course, if you actually had the target's lat/lon location anyway then it's trivial to locate it).
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Why do people always presume that it's only sensors that will advance and not the other side of the issue? I always hear how there's no way to sneak into a system because your ship is such a bright sensor object and sensors are so fantastic in the future that it'll not only see a type-S enter the system anywhere it'll be able to tell if the pilot is running a fever. These same people seem to think that with all the heat a Traveller ship generates that it would be turned into a vapour unless some handwave (which many seem willing to accept) is allowed to deal with it. Well maybe the same effect whatever it is could just as easily make it near impossible to spot with sensors. Not quite a black globe absence but certainly close, and probably tied to the jump-drives. But I'm drifting now...
Perhaps FOs will still be needed on the ground to spot targets hidden from space based sensors by camoflague designed to fool long range sensors. Or more likely validating that the target is in fact as it appears to sensors. Great use was made of cheap plywood and canvas dummy airplanes (and even just paintings the of shadows of non-existant airplanes on taxiways) during our little recent world war. The effect fooled aerial recon cameras quite well. I can accept the same thing, advanced in TL of course, to justify the need for troops on the ground and even FOs.
Anyway, just my 2creds (unadjusted for inflation).
Perhaps FOs will still be needed on the ground to spot targets hidden from space based sensors by camoflague designed to fool long range sensors. Or more likely validating that the target is in fact as it appears to sensors. Great use was made of cheap plywood and canvas dummy airplanes (and even just paintings the of shadows of non-existant airplanes on taxiways) during our little recent world war. The effect fooled aerial recon cameras quite well. I can accept the same thing, advanced in TL of course, to justify the need for troops on the ground and even FOs.
Anyway, just my 2creds (unadjusted for inflation).
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Correct, but perhaps the future FO has a bit more in their task assignment. Names may stick while the job changes (think Cavalry in the modern army, it isn't horse anymore).
Correct also. Or(bital)(Ar)tillery was coined, umm, hang on a sec there's a thread here somewhere...
...ah, here's the thread:
LINK
Looks like maybe it was not definitively determined in origin
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Piper, could you ask your friend how long it takes on average to interpret satellite photo and radar data? While not an expert myself, I'd think that the time it would take to do a solid interpretation of orbital sensor data would be quite long if done during an ongoing ground combat. This is where the Forward Observer comes in, providing real-time targetting information for the ortillery or even laser illuminating targets for those big guns.
M
Malenfant
Guest
Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
How long does it take you to look at a picture and figure out what it's showing?
From my experience staring at planet images and mapping: if you're doing an indepth analysis, it would probably take an hour - maybe a few - if you bring up multispectral imaging and do funky image processing with it. It'd probably take less time than that if you weren't so fussed about removing all ambiguity. And you'd need the experience too obviously - the trick to interpretation is to identify what is in the image and then interpret it, not leap to the first conclusion that jumps into your head. Bear in mind here that ortillery is usually going to look for man-made structures, so you don't have to figure out the geological history of the region which should cut quite a bit of time
If something is right there visible and obvious and unambiguous in the picture, then it takes a few seconds to say "that's the target" (or at least "that's a building").
Again, it depends on the resolution. If you're down to 1 metre/pixel or less, then cars and buildings and artificial structures should be fairly obvious and not require too much interpretation.
If you're looking at 10 m/pixel (which right now is pretty good for a planetary orbiter, but we have stuff orbiting Earth that can do that easily (and don't even ask what the spysats can do)) then you're going to start having problems with the interpretation of such things. If your image is 800x600 pixels and you have say an aircraft runway that is 10m wide and 100 m long at that scale, then if you're lucky you're looking at a white line that is one pixel thick and ten pixels long. A building that is 20m x 10m would be a two-pixel thick line, surrounded by lots of other stuff to hide it. You'd need much better resolution than that to see things like troops and cars and trucks, let alone buildings.
Not to say an FO on the ground wouldn't be useful, but as someone else said, he'd be somewhat at risk from the stuff raining from the sky if he's in the area.
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
See, this is why I'm asking about the interpretation. It might be difficult to identify which targets are civilian/noncombatant and which targets are military/combatant from orbit. (Probably why the IFF transponder is important, but you may want to be able to be extraordinarily discriminate in your targets when attacking from orbit.) I'm not just considering buildings as targets, I'm also considering the possibility of individual troops as targets for ortillery.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
OK, looking for something else and I came across this paper that looks like it relates to some of this. No time at the moment to give it a full read but here's the link:
Deception in the Era of Commercial Imaging Satellites
Deception in the Era of Commercial Imaging Satellites
M
Malenfant
Guest
And again, it all depends on image resolution. If you've got sub-metre resolution then you can easily see troops moving around, cars, trucks etc (assuming they're not covered over or anything - and even then, IR or other wavelengths/scans might be able to penetrate cover). If you've got metre-scale resolution then you're going to find it much harder to spot individual troops or vehicles oreven missiles. Tens of metres, and you're really only going to see big things like buildings.
Without knowing the resolution of the image and the filters used, it's hard to answer a question of "how easy is it to interpret an image to find these things".
Actually, I wanted to come in on the pro-FO side of this, then I looked over the MT and Striker rules for spotting. Though neither directly addresses orbit-to-ground, both are very generous with spotting by sensors. Consider the sensor suite on a Type-S as opposed to most ground vehicles.
Good question about the time needed to resolve and interpret this data and one I should have asked.
She wasn't sure (she was in the interpretation end, not the collection) but it's probably not real time, almost certainly not at the highest resolutions. Another factor is the size of the area scanned. If you're looking over a large area you can't get this kind of resolution without multiple scans (or geostationary orbit).
Actual interpretation can be as quick as looking at a photo or could take quite a while if you're looking for something obscure. Too many variables, not the least of which is interpreter skill. It's as much art as science.
It would seem to boil down to a question of target size and technology. Bombing the starport should be a no-brainer. Picking off a tank with a laser would take a good sensor lock and knowing generally where to look in the first place.
Good question about the time needed to resolve and interpret this data and one I should have asked.
She wasn't sure (she was in the interpretation end, not the collection) but it's probably not real time, almost certainly not at the highest resolutions. Another factor is the size of the area scanned. If you're looking over a large area you can't get this kind of resolution without multiple scans (or geostationary orbit).
Actual interpretation can be as quick as looking at a photo or could take quite a while if you're looking for something obscure. Too many variables, not the least of which is interpreter skill. It's as much art as science.
It would seem to boil down to a question of target size and technology. Bombing the starport should be a no-brainer. Picking off a tank with a laser would take a good sensor lock and knowing generally where to look in the first place.
IMTU, the only time I make ships have FO's AFTER the initial call is for indirect meson or missile, when pinpoint hits must be achieved, or when sat-image won't work (Usually obscuration by weather)
For meson, it's traditional blind-arty issues, since meson fire can be indirect.
Pinpoint hits would usually require FO's calling corrections, and said corrections being to low-power ranging fire. Such situations should be rare, but are quite doable. Often, this is also meson fire...
For Missile, it's either paint or guide to self-acquire, often with a target veto.
For meson, it's traditional blind-arty issues, since meson fire can be indirect.
Pinpoint hits would usually require FO's calling corrections, and said corrections being to low-power ranging fire. Such situations should be rare, but are quite doable. Often, this is also meson fire...
For Missile, it's either paint or guide to self-acquire, often with a target veto.
Andrew Boulton
The Adminator
A few dozen Egyptian tanks, seen via Google Earth:
According to FF&S2, decent P-EMS has 7cm resolution at orbital range, just about enough to see people and easily enough for vehicles, buildings, etc.
FOs are useful for finding targets in the first place, but ortillery is capable of hitting them on its own.
According to FF&S2, decent P-EMS has 7cm resolution at orbital range, just about enough to see people and easily enough for vehicles, buildings, etc.
FOs are useful for finding targets in the first place, but ortillery is capable of hitting them on its own.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
LBB1 also limits FO to Army and Navy careers only.
This makes me think that, at high TLs especially, FO also involves the comm protocols necessary to call in the fire support to a given location.
This makes me think that, at high TLs especially, FO also involves the comm protocols necessary to call in the fire support to a given location.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Oh, and has anyone seen the latest issue of New Scientist?
There's an interesting article about a bunker busting warhead design that relies on "terradynamic cavitation". I'd post a link but it requires subscription...
so here's the patent (warning 3 meg pdf), with thanks to the folks at defensetech.org.
There's an interesting article about a bunker busting warhead design that relies on "terradynamic cavitation". I'd post a link but it requires subscription...
so here's the patent (warning 3 meg pdf), with thanks to the folks at defensetech.org.
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