Would there be any real practical benefit to using a giant humanoid robot as a piece of military equipment...

Would there be any real practical benefit to using a giant humanoid robot as a piece of military equipment, as opposed to normal conventional style vehicles?

They look neat.
no

None, but it would be really, really cool.

What if it looked like this and made mooing sounds.

Considering the US military budget I think we should make some anyways. It would just be more intimidating. I think they might be good for fighting in mountains and stuff.

spider tank seems like a good compromise

depends on

it might help if you can actually chase someone. lets say you're fighting ISIS army with AK, the robot won't get scratch by it, you can chase them down for more than 6 hours. then it'll help a lot.
not to mention it can be an intimidator or distraction to the actual army

There is an advantage to legs (mobility, ability to lose one of several and still move) but that's about it. No advantage in a human shape.

If they are relatively cheap, mobile, fast, have decent armor, radar and defense systems, armory, infantry support, not giant and are used in scenarious/terrains where infantry would prevail, then pretty much yes.

And it's harder to disable an armored moving joint than a whole side of a tank's caterpillar system.

Spider robots are by far the easiest to make and the best option.

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They are good for police work among civilians…or any battlefield among humans who are militarily unexperienced but report communications about: what must be done or what was done or what is done; all they do is reference the pieces by the very words they use to tell about themselves. Leg went here…arm raised to fire gun…arm lowered…crouched…sat…jumped…flailed arms…walked…ran.

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Not really. If giant mechs ever do gain traction, it'll mostly be for sport not war.


What you're describing is basically power armor, but yea this might work for some cases.

Not giant is smaller than 20 meters (typical real robot scale). The best height, in my opinion, would be 5 to 10 meters.

When most people say no, they're thinking about replacing tanks with mecha, which isn't going to happen. The thing to do with mecha is to use them in areas where tanks aren't so great, like in urban combat or dense jungles with uneven terrain that a walking vehicle can cross more easily than a treaded vehicle. Tanks will always be better on a pound-for-pound basis in open terrain.

War, big ass weapons do more to keep the peace that any treaty.
Think about nuclear weapons, powerful, destructive, the ultimate area denial weapon, still just used twice.
The entire Cold War no one dare to start world war 3 due to the highly probable nuclear exchange

mo pics

Atlas is always so fucking badass. I don't remember a MW game where Atlas sucked.

It's one of these situations isn't it? Ideally you'd have corps for each pairing.
AI is always going to error, and remote control can be easily interfered with. The best way would be to place a human inside, and interface via those new mechanical body parts. (There's no way they haven't tested that).

If it would be as reliable as factory automation, i wouldn't trust my life for war robots/mecha suits. Never seen a day at work when machines work like they should

Tanks with legs will never work. There's a reason tanks have always had tracks; legs are way too easy of a target, they offer pretty terrible ground pressure per square inch, and if something is raised off the ground like that [with the sides exposed] then it's all the easier to attack it from underneath.

this is fair, though I do wonder if mecha would be worth it considering the situational nature

Completely the opposite. You can protect tracks pretty well since they're always in the same place, but a joint has to allow for range of motion.
Not to mention if you take out a tank's track, sure, it's immobilised, but it isn't going to fall over. It can still shoot, observe and protect; if a 4 legged mech falls over on its side, say, the turret can't turn, the crew can't really use the weapons, and its weak underbelly may be exposed.

retards

drones are the future. self-driving cars with m60s all over.

The future is small drones with killing mechanisms or stun/drug mechanism to hold until capture.
The future is also in jamming, hacking, and blinding these drones. Once mass produced, a couple of cargo ship containers can disable a gov't in mere hours.

One major benefit I can think of of something humanoid is that, provided it had hands, it could instantly use any weapon designed for it without complex installation or any kind of plug in alignment. Hands are by far one of the best things about humans, they can be so useful for so many things. I remember one of the justifications for the PacRim Jaegers they gave was that the Jaegers could grapple with and push against, wrestle etc with the Kaiju. They wanted to cause as little damage as possible to human civilisation, so to be able to physically push the Kaiju away from cities is a huge advantage. Not to mention if it's synced up with a person's bodily movements it's a lot more intuitive than a complex control system of buttons and touchscreens and joysticks.

okay but, why would they not use them for war?

It really depends on the size of the exo-suit/humanoid robot.
In my opinion it'd be very well suited for more urban areas, being more maneuverable than a jeep.
It'd probably help out with long-treks (depends on how long battery lasts).

plus it looks cool

A 4th legged mech with a turret is just a walking tank. Even with that the legs will allow it to strafe crawl and turn.

they'd be more dextrous and could carry things easily, like move a damaged tank and its crew out of the line of fire, as well as be more all-terrain. It could more easily climb slopes, and be easier to control if the human used movements instead of a control stick.

also they'd be fucking cool.

It's a walking tank without the numerous advantages tracks bring. Sure, it'd be better in a select few scenarios, but 80% of the time it gains nothing by being much taller and easier to topple. Not to mention top speed is severely limited with heavy, armoured legs; tracks are by far the best compromise between durability, cross country capability, and speed.

self-replicating swarm robotics are the future user

forgot name
t: imblying

>You can protect tracks pretty well since they're always in the same place
And, because of that, everyone knows where to target tank threads, and its easier to shoot at certain points of a single big moving object (tank's threads) than a certain points of a few medium moving objects of a big object (joints of mech's limbs).

Tanks have lots of vulnerable points all over them, including the crew (lots of people in a half-automatic metal can. Even the russian T-14 with automatic cannon reloader and other stuff must have 3 crew members), the ammo, the engines, the fuel. If you consider that it's just to use tank's low and wide profile (that is also used for better grip, and to ignore the impact of the main cannon), that would make a lot sense… But tanks get less armor in sides and rear, and the rear part of it is the biggest, and thus, the most vulnerable target that is relatively easy shoot (but it most likely implies that you are ambushing the tank, and that means that either the enemy command is stupid, or tank didn't got a proper infantry support that would kill you or know about you). And you are most likely to disable a crew member or deal severe damage if you shoot the rear side
Basically, if you shoot at a long box that is packed with different systems, you will definitely, at some point, will destroy or severely damage at least 1 of its systems, because it's all in one place, and a sure hit may be as wall a deadly hit.

That is, considering the disadvantages that tanks have, it would be really, really stupid to give them legs. Because of the wide surface they cover, they won't have enough speed and armor to be effective with legs. Tank with legs would not have the speed of a tank and mobility of a mecha. But it could be effective if it lost some of its armory, its crew member count were 1 and it were fast for its size. Like DARPA's robodogs. Or if the walking tank would be big as fu… well okay, forget this one, that's just stupid.

I will assume that the perfect mecha would be about 3-10 meters tall quick and has about the same amount of tank's armor, price and tech (active armor, dynamic armor, radars, etc), maybe more, but no outstretching; and describe one as so.

Mecha definitely would not replace tanks, as there are lots of scenarios and places where the armor boxes with treads would be ultimately better. They would be used in places where infantry would excel, and, probably, some more.

Mecha, by the standarts of the concepts and ideas, have 1 pilot and a pair of proper-armored mobile legs. Mecha's torso, just like the tank's body, would have most of systems installed here (excluding the the ones that provide movement, firepower, reloading, (probably) ammo, active defense). As the excluded systems are connected to mech's other parts or outer body, it leaves us to make the torso sport armor for protection of only: the cockpit with 1 pilot, power source, fuel source, electronic systems (and probably a few more minor things). That would leave the mech's one of main targets, the torso, smaller than a big tank body that has some of these major parts.

As I explained earlier, targeting and disabling a mecha's leg would be not that easy, it probably would be more effective to target armored mech's body, as it is the part that doesn't moves relative to other part, and is easier to hit than to target a moving armored part of a moving armored part of a moving armored object, as the overall damage will be spread, if it's about auto-fire, or hit an unimportant and/or armored part, if it's about a cannon.

Picrelated. Just a random idea of armoring a joint's problematic rear side I came up with. I'd drew a few more details here, that these "curtains" would slide with pistons and sliders, but I already described that just now. Thinking of effective armor for a small, fast moving target named "joint" is somewhat easy.

Sorry, a few typos*

tfw you'll see civil chaos caused by an EMP

fuck

Fast and durable

What does flexible even means?

to much investment in one machine. one explosive device damages it, at least significantly reducing effectiveness.
they're hyper complex machines, way too much time and money needs to be invested to keep them operational.

it's essentially why aircraft carriers are a shitty idea. losing one would be completely crippling to the war effort.

very simple rule, do not put assets in play that you cannot afford to lose. over-engineering is one of the reasons the Germans came on bad footing.

too* fuck

yfw upright bipedal weapon systems turn out to be a shit idea

still waiting for this tbh

We dont have the mass economy to made them and a few chinks with cheap anti armor bullets can destroy a costly mech, its the same shit that happened with serbs and the f-117.

no

8 points of contact with earth
massive dig-ins
0 mobility on rough terrain - mud

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Transport.


Tank.


A big gun in a bunker.

but those r options u choose from, when making the main tank

Leo


Merkava


IDK, most transports have less protection than tanks.

For urban combat: quad drones with a small gun in addition to the camera. Small enough to get in anywhere, can kill anything, if one is lost, deploy a new one.
Or just strap a bomb to an off-the-shelf drone.

Need to make them silent though.

Nope. It would just be a big, clumsy, obvious and expensive target.

too much noise and the mobility and visibility aren't on point. you need to have quick reflexes, not only is there operational delay, the movements won't be instinctual either.

=[

What are the current problems that tanks have and could having legs of some kind solve them?

You could say gun depression but then..

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layzors m8

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the main problems are tech.
war, now more than ever, is communication.
tanks are useless when they can't communicate. basic scrambles, EMP's, information/communication warfare etc are the main dangers. you can not fix that regardless of how big your caliber is, how much armour your have, what your method of propulsion is.

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I'm really fucking tired that most people think that mechs would be useless. Why the fuck? Most of their arguments are shitty and proven long a lot of times, yet people tend to forget that and still hold to the same "truth". Fucking engineering "geniuses" think that a mech is necesserialy some giant sleek useless shit like in animes, or unarmored clusterfucks of joints like in some shitty games or concept arts. Even in mech communities retards jump in and screech "muh tanks". Fuck.

tanks for the post m8

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Mechs of that size cannot compete with tanks. As other anons have pointed out, smaller "power armor" sized mechs for urban warfare are more useful.

Just look at those MechWarrior mechs, One shot to the weak joint and they're out.

Of what size, user?

Their design is old western futuristic shit

Mechwarriors come in many sizes, user.

This is one of only two benefits I can think of. By imitating us, the humanoid can be best adapted to take advantage of any human-intended tools it comes across and could make use of. Guns, vehicles, etc. Imagine an army of Grand Theft Auto robots fucking with the ISIS supply chain.
Two would be, of course, the anthropomorphizing aspect. That is to say, the benefit of making a robot look/seem human is that it would look/seem human. This would work well as a psyop against the enemy as well as make police-bots more tolerable to the average Joe.

Big slow ass Mechwarrior mechs, metal gears etc. Metal gear wouldn't be able to lift itself off the ground if it got knocked over.

I'm guessing 12-18 feet is probably the max height for a practical mech

Power armor may come into use in the future, but Mechs won't.

Reason being is that Mech's are tall as shit. A tall vehicle is a vehicle that can be seen from a long distance and is a larger target. Ontop of that, you have mobility issues. A wheeled or tracked vehicle will be able to move much faster, and carry more weight.

Might be useful for police actions, but conventional uses are limited.

Mechs aren't by necessity tall. Stop conflating Mechwarrior classes with Mechs in general.


On terrain level enough to traverse. The mech has the advantage of fuck the terrain. You can place mechs in areas that are otherwise inaccessible to vehicles as a heavy tactical unit.

That's an advantage to humanoids, but not *giant* humanoids OP asked about

Ayyy lmao
That's still pretty much a mech
I was writing about something like this here


Look here
You just imply that a mech must necessarily be tall, big and slow, and will be used instead of other vehicles

Yes.

Not in my country, Obama.

Why not both?

I agree.
The deployment of this equipment in the battlefield is subject to artillery focus, it would be hard to deploy in a stealthy manner, and it's a stupid amount of money in a single war machine.
I'd like to think the most used and expensive military vehicles are jets, but they compensate their price with ridiculous speed, precision and ability to enter and exit the battlefield in most conditions, also with much much options of artillery and melee damage, malfunctions near infantry could be very dangerous.
I think in terms of speed and flexibility they would be worse than tanks.

You could get a tank more maneuverable with an hybrid with this kind robot, a kind of quad tank, the ability to stay low and elevate the artillery or being able to transform the artillery sideways for alleys or quick corner shooting without showing the chassis would also be pretty cool.

I do suppose that when working in conjunction with other armored vehicles, they have their place. I just don't see a mech moving at 50-60 mph efficiently, no matter the height.

This guy knows what's up. Future is lots of robots and small teams of military guys who are highly specialized.

I don't know, 50 mph speed could be pretty much possible. Also consider that the videos are very old, and the DARPA is not likely to show everything new and good.

True.

Me neither, friendo. Got my water filters in the mail yesterday!

Nope. They would only have use for providing security in a stable civilian setting. They are not weapons of war and are massive targets with complicated parts and engineering.

It could be designed to be invertible, or given a self-righting mechanism, or even be hybridized with a tank by putting tank treads on its legs. Ground pressure would still be an issue though. That's why the best use of a full-sized mech would be as a defensive unit, because in a location you control, you can lay down pavement that can handle the weight. The other reason it would be better for defense is because in order to make a mech that doesn't get incapacitated by a single joint shot you'd need ludicrous amounts of armor, which would add to its expense. The most expensive units are the ones you can't really afford to lose, so you can't really afford to actually assault anything with them. It's best to keep them in a well-protected location.

im sure ive seen more of these pics
sort of 'alt history'

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