(Super) Soldier

[Darth Wong]

No, that is idiotic because the engineers will then attempt to meet this target even if it requires compromising other aspects of the tank's design, such as cost, speed, mobility, armour, ammo capacity, etc.

Yes, it does. So the question you have to ask is what capabilities do you need most. Most common way to increase range is a larger calibre ammunition, which mostly means less ammo capacity. If your doctrine calls for your tanks to engage at 300m maximum then you need to decide do you want your tank to be able to fire 40 times up to 300m or 30 times up to 400 to account for the plethora of things you may not have accounted for. As far as I can see the best option is the latter.

You are demonstrating a truly spectacular ability to ignore the point. You assume that "the plethora of things you may not have accounted for" will favour one particular compromise but not another. Why the fuck would you assume that? If you have not accounted for it, then by definition you do not know what the nature of the problem is.

Your argument boils down to "Things might happen which I can't anticipate, but I can anticipate what the solution will be". That's brain-damaged.

Your problem is that you always think in terms of capabilities but you totally ignore costs. It has been said that an army marches on its stomach, but in your world that doesn't matter. Actual professionals have to think about both sides of the equation.

[Sea Skimmer]

And yeah, what you want does depend on the era, but since I see no chance of engineering super soliders in an era before mechanized warfare it seems rather pointless to talk about it.

To semi retract this, since I thought about it more, it would be interesting to talk about as totally impossible as it may be, but I think one would find that at that point the biggest issue would be resistance to disease since this killed far more people then combat in battles before the 20th century then weapons. An army with higher disease resistance would triumph by shear numbers, you could be talking about having several times as many men left combat ready if you had two forces of equal numbers combat each other for a significant period, one super disease resistant and one normal humans. A digestive tract that can process inferior quality food would also be very useful, for both disease resistance and general sustainment of a large army in an era with almost no real logistics support. This is likely to make having a very large or strong solider much more difficult; but then humans were much smaller more then 100-200 years ago anyway. Its kind of crazy to read about the heights and weights that used to be the maximum accepted for cavalry.

[Connor MacLeod]

I hadn't actually thought about the disease resistance. There's also things like tissue or organ compatability.. I imagine the ability for soldiers to be able to use the same kinds of organs or itssues without threat of rejection (unless you have some very good cloning or replication tech, or you use artificial prosthetics) is an advantage for logistics.

For that matter, wouldn't logistics be a good reason to engineer for a more efficient body that doesn't neccesarily have super strength or speed or whatever? If the body is made to more efficiently use the resources it consumes, wouldn' t that lighten logistics? That can be a significant advantage.

[Gunhead]

For that matter, wouldn't logistics be a good reason to engineer for a more efficient body that doesn't neccesarily have super strength or speed or whatever? If the body is made to more efficiently use the resources it consumes, wouldn' t that lighten logistics? That can be a significant advantage.

Depends on scale really and how effective it is. If my super duper special forces guys can get by with half the food a normal man would it's worth doing even if the cost is great. If I can reduce overall need to ship food around the battlefield by 10% for example, it's worth doing only if the initial cost is manageable. Special forces would still benefit but the effect wouldn't be as great in terms of overall logistics. A far more practical solution that helps all would be make some kind of super food allowing you to carry a week worth of food in your combat harness. Specially if I can make hehe... condensed water, or some form of wonky hydrating agent that hydrates the body but is light to carry. The idea in itself is sound no matter what. Results may wary depending on application.

-Gunhead

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah, ration supply could matter for special forces and other purely foot mobile infantry, but its not that big a deal for a overall military force. To put numbers on it, a pallet of MREs with 576 meals is 1038lb. Feeding a 20,000 man mechanized division four MREs per day thus takes about 139 such pallets at a weight of about 70 short tons. This is not a small weight, but it can still be moved by just ten large trucks. This division would easily have six thousand total vehicles in comparison. Fresh food weighs more, but provision of fresh food usually would mean food can be bought locally, or else its a static situation in which supply demand are greatly relaxed anyway. In comparison its fuel requirements will approach 2,000 tons per day in combat.
I like the idea of super hydration, since in hot climates water weight will far exceed food weight. Ideally the solider would be both warm and cold blooded as its thought dinosaurs might have been, and thus able to reduce heat production and thus water requirements while in hot conditions and yet not easily freeze to death.

If we took away logic, it sure would be nice to have troops who can eat grass and tree leaves.

[Simon_Jester]

You'd need super soldiers to fight skirmishes why?

Casualty-aversion, problems recruiting adequate military manpower because your civilization is 2050 Exaggerated!America and the bulk of the population is 4F except for a relative handful of lunatics...

Eh, you're probably right.

Of course, the kind of guys I was imagining wouldn't be very "super-" nothing really outside the bounds of what you might engineer your kids for anyway just because you want them to succeed in life (high intelligence, more resistance to mental and physical fatigue).

And yeah, what you want does depend on the era, but since I see no chance of engineering super soliders in an era before mechanized warfare it seems rather pointless to talk about it.

I brought it up because so many people do imagine the ideal supersoldier as eight feet tall and strong as an ox, and often don't think of things like "increased mechanical aptitude" and "reduced need for sleep" until later, even though they're really a lot more important to have up front.

Of course, normal soldiers tend to screw up "hearts and minds" too. Maybe you'd screw around with supersoldiers' brains so they'd feel less inclined to do things like piss on their enemies' dead bodies and pose with SS flags against orders, so you don't get so much bad PR?

Intelligence and training are the only way to deal with adverse reactions to combat, which led to shit like pissing on corpses in all wars, but the best way to do it is to just take the humans out of life or death situations and allow them a more detached approach. Thus, robots for infantry, and everyone else rides a vehicle. I doubt you'll find tank crews pissing on enemy dead because they wouldn't get out of the tank to try. I don't think a realistic brain modification would be possible to prevent such problems otherwise...

Probably true- I'm just playing around, trying to imagine what kind of mutant custom-made soldier a general in a real modern war might actually want.

David Petraeus (I know he's not running any armies at the moment, but I need an example of a smart contemporary general) would probably have very little use for a company of Space Marines or a bunch of Spartans from Halo. But he just might be interested if you offered him ten thousand soldiers who could learn Arabic quickly, have top-decile mechanical aptitude, and can go four days without sleep with no noticeable loss of function.

[Gunhead]

If we took away logic, it sure would be nice to have troops who can eat grass and tree leaves.

You sure about that? Might defoliate an area... Look out agent orange
Okay maybe not as a primary nutrition source. I'd settle for the ability to consume anything that the human body can extract nutrients from without getting sick. Rotten meat, unsanitary water etc.

-Gunhead

[Connor MacLeod]

One thing I'd kinda hoped to get away from is power armor as well. It has its usees but I think it gets overused as a concept (like super soldires its just another way to make a super powered badass.) I mean some kinds of 'powered' systems make sense (something to conserve or recycle body fluids like a stillsuit makes sense, and sensors and such.)

One of the more 'plausible' ideas I can remember for having some sort of biological super soldiers was from the Old Man's WAr series. I dont know why they didn't go for robots exactly, but they had magictech that allowed you to transfer iconsciousness from one body to another, and human bodies as were were too frail to compete with aliens (so they made artifical super-bodies. Which were trademarked.)

[Ahriman238]

True, a fair number of supersoldiers seem to be immune to most/all diseases.

They shall be my finest warriors, these men who give of themselves to me. Like clay I shall mould them, and in the furnace of war forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great armour shall I clad them and with the mightiest guns will they be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease, no sickness will blight them. They will have tactics, strategies and machines so that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror. They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear.

...

Well I'm sure MOST of the time that worked out just dandy.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah but those are CSM and Space Marines. They pretty much subsist on Magic (quite probably literally, given the warp.)

[Darth Wong]

Another really useful trait for "super-soldiers" would be mental toughness. And by that, I don't mean hard-ass machismo, or the ability to withstand pain. All fictional super-soldiers have that in spades. I'm talking about the ability to remain focused on the mission and compliant to the rules and regulations even in the face of frustration and mental fatigue. I'm talking about an ability to maintain high morale even if they're not sure what they're accomplishing, or the locals hate them. I'm talking about a resistance to PTSD. A certain psychological serenity, in other words.

[Ahriman238]

Another really useful trait for "super-soldiers" would be mental toughness. And by that, I don't mean hard-ass machismo, or the ability to withstand pain. All fictional super-soldiers have that in spades. I'm talking about the ability to remain focused on the mission and compliant to the rules and regulations even in the face of frustration and mental fatigue. I'm talking about an ability to maintain high morale even if they're not sure what they're accomplishing, or the locals hate them. I'm talking about a resistance to PTSD. A certain psychological serenity, in other words.

This to. I dimly recall a book (Postman, I think) where after making psychotic-cyborg supersoldiers the pre-collapse government conscripted people who manifestly did not want power, gave them "upgrades" and trained them mostly in meditation and biofeedback.

I kind of like the idea of supersoldiers occasionally expressed in 40k, which seems the best use of them in sci-fi, that in the distant future we'll need to create a supersoldier just to be able to survive the sort of enemies humanity will meet, and the sort of enviroments we'll wind up fighting them in.

[Darth Wong]

Extreme environments seem like a prescription for drones and robots, not super-soldiers.

[Batman]

For even halfway realistic supersoldiers, yes, but I think realistic sort of went out the window when this thread started.

[Darth Wong]

For even halfway realistic supersoldiers, yes, but I think realistic sort of went out the window when this thread started.

Maybe, but there are some people who are trying to make pseudo-realistic sounding arguments for the typical sci-fi super-soldier, and they're apparently unwilling to admit that the archetypal giant bulging-muscle supersoldier is just a lot of childish chest-beating macho wankery and nerdy wish fulfillment.

[Sea Skimmer]

One thing I'd kinda hoped to get away from is power armor as well. It has its usees but I think it gets overused as a concept (like super soldires its just another way to make a super powered badass.) I mean some kinds of 'powered' systems make sense (something to conserve or recycle body fluids like a stillsuit makes sense, and sensors and such.)

Its the only plausible way to protect infantry troops from blast effects, and likely the only way to ever have rifle bullet resisting armor on more then the torso and head. If you can make that work it'd be a big change in the way you take casualties. It might never work of course, but if you could get it you'd really want it. Power NBC warfare filters and over pressure would become more or less essential if you had typical crazed sci fi powers that will use massive amounts of chemical weapons on a whim. Modern suits don't even fully protect from existing real life threats, and once you have more then one planet involved chemical weapons become way more attractive.

One of the more 'plausible' ideas I can remember for having some sort of biological super soldiers was from the Old Man's WAr series. I dont know why they didn't go for robots exactly, but they had magictech that allowed you to transfer iconsciousness from one body to another, and human bodies as were were too frail to compete with aliens (so they made artifical super-bodies. Which were trademarked.)

If you had problems remote controlling the robots, that might be useful. Hardly optimal though to still being able to loss the persons mind. It'd be better if you could copy minds of your ideal solider into killing machines and save the trouble of very complicated software for any serious level of autonomous ground operations, but also apply some kind of soul removal filter that makes them become inhuman and unchanging... ethically slippery but it'd be horrible to have complete minds getting trapped in machines. We just need the combat programming because magictech lets us do it!

On the other hand, ground operations would be much easier when all enemy mobile weapons and barriers were already obliterated, breached or bridged by endless waves of UAVs and artillery.

[Optimus Metallus]

Extreme environments seem like a prescription for drones and robots, not super-soldiers.

Well, humanity once apparently fought a war against AI's in the past, hence the general distrust which humans in the 40k universe have towards machines, so that would explain why the Emperor decided to go with human super-soldiers over machines.

[Simon_Jester]

Extreme environments seem like a prescription for drones and robots, not super-soldiers.

Well, humanity once apparently fought a war against AI's in the past, hence the general distrust which humans in the 40k universe have towards machines, so that would explain why the Emperor decided to go with human super-soldiers over machines.

Really, I think it just serves to date the origin of 40k, and the feel the authors of the setting were aiming for: they started wanting to put in big hulking super-commandos and have ridiculous things like the warships of the imperial fleet reloading their guns with huge crews of press-ganged convicts. So they came up with a lot of excuses, many of which don't hold much water, for how to get rid of automation.

It depends whether you're looking for an entertaining story, or a plausible one.

Extreme environments seem like a prescription for drones and robots, not super-soldiers.

Yeah, that's what we'd be more likely to do in real life.

The idea of supersoldiers for hellish environments got its start in people's minds at a time when computers were vastly less advanced- in the 1970s and 1980s, unless you were exceptionally savvy about computer science, it would be easy to predict that computers would always be inherently limited, not especially intelligent, and no substitute for human beings at any task more complicated than tightening bolts on an assembly line. Not everyone expected things to work out that way, but enough did to get the ball rolling.

Today, we live in a world saturated with much more powerful computers, which have made the jump to everyone's personal lives in a way they hadn't then. We've seen drones used in warfare, but only in the past ten years- that was not a prediction everyone would have expected earlier. Many people did predict it, but it wasn't something totally obvious, it didn't make a silly joke out of someone asserting that computers would always be inferior to a skilled human being for really important jobs.

Supersoldiers aren't the only technology the rise of robotics has made to look a little silly, but they have made it look silly. I'm not sure whether or not to be sad that not everyone has caught on to the silliness, though. I think a lot of good speculative fiction would have been much harder to write in a society where everyone took for granted that any really important or dangerous task would be handled by a machine.

[Ahriman238]

Extreme environments seem like a prescription for drones and robots, not super-soldiers.

If you want to, it isn't hard to write around that. The AI isn't capable of complex problem-solving, or is too slow to adapt to changing conditions. Nobody trusts AI. AI is outlawed for practical/religious/moral reasons. Countermeasures to computers (like an EMP in spirit, if not in fact) are easily come by.

Robots/drones are too easily hacked. If you remote control them the signal isn't that secure, it can be hijacked or jammed. An operator can't react quickly enough to some circumstances. I can keep doing this all day.

Problem is, now instead of having a practical reason for a supersoldier, I'm beginning from the existence of supersoldier and rewriting the universe to rationalize it. Damn.

What about the old spacefighter argument, that we may do it because of a cultural bias rather than from any purely practical argument?

[Gunhead]

If you want to, it isn't hard to write around that. The AI isn't capable of complex problem-solving, or is too slow to adapt to changing conditions. Nobody trusts AI. AI is outlawed for practical/religious/moral reasons. Countermeasures to computers (like an EMP in spirit, if not in fact) are easily come by.

Robots/drones are too easily hacked. If you remote control them the signal isn't that secure, it can be hijacked or jammed. An operator can't react quickly enough to some circumstances. I can keep doing this all day.

Problem is, now instead of having a practical reason for a supersoldier, I'm beginning from the existence of supersoldier and rewriting the universe to rationalize it. Damn.

What about the old spacefighter argument, that we may do it because of a cultural bias rather than from any purely practical argument?

Cultural bias works when the difference between solution A and B is not too steep to break plausibility. This comes really apparent when it comes to warfare. If you are stuck using an inferior system while possessing a superior one, you are already need to engage in mental gymnastics to explain why it's not used. If the other side is actively using a superior system you'd be capable of using but don't for some moral/religious/tradition reason, you are breaking plausibility. Granted, everyone has a personal limit how quickly their SoD breaks and it might not even prevent them from enjoying the story but I think if a writer is asking the reader to bend over backwards to have his story make sense he's just sloppy or lazy.

-Gunhead

[Ahriman238]

If you want to, it isn't hard to write around that. The AI isn't capable of complex problem-solving, or is too slow to adapt to changing conditions. Nobody trusts AI. AI is outlawed for practical/religious/moral reasons. Countermeasures to computers (like an EMP in spirit, if not in fact) are easily come by.

Robots/drones are too easily hacked. If you remote control them the signal isn't that secure, it can be hijacked or jammed. An operator can't react quickly enough to some circumstances. I can keep doing this all day.

Problem is, now instead of having a practical reason for a supersoldier, I'm beginning from the existence of supersoldier and rewriting the universe to rationalize it. Damn.

What about the old spacefighter argument, that we may do it because of a cultural bias rather than from any purely practical argument?

Cultural bias works when the difference between solution A and B is not too steep to break plausibility. This comes really apparent when it comes to warfare. If you are stuck using an inferior system while possessing a superior one, you are already need to engage in mental gymnastics to explain why it's not used. If the other side is actively using a superior system you'd be capable of using but don't for some moral/religious/tradition reason, you are breaking plausibility. Granted, everyone has a personal limit how quickly their SoD breaks and it might not even prevent them from enjoying the story but I think if a writer is asking the reader to bend over backwards to have his story make sense he's just sloppy or lazy.

-Gunhead

What if you go the other way? Make the enhancing technology (perhaps for reasons of cultural bias shaping technical development) so over-the-top awesome that automated war-robots simply can't keep up?

[Gunhead]

What if you go the other way? Make the enhancing technology (perhaps for reasons of cultural bias shaping technical development) so over-the-top awesome that automated war-robots simply can't keep up?

This is just making stuff up to to have X. There just are so many things that machines do better than humans so to give a human similar or greater ability they'd basically be all machine after anyway.

-Gunhead

[Connor MacLeod]

Well since this got resurrected...

One thing that would be useful as a 'modification' for soldiers is some ability to limit or halt bleeding from injuries. That, coupled with a resistance to toxins and disease, would go a long way towards making them more combt-effective.

The one other thing I was wonderinga bout but not sure of is messing around with pain thresholds or resistance to shock/trauma.

[Sea Skimmer]

I dunno how you'd go about making a person inherently more resistant to bleeding without creating a serious risk of strokes. However several antihaemorrhagic drugs are now used by military forces that have at times been called miraculous. They come embedded in field dressings now, and are also injectable to stop internal bleeding but this does come with serious risks. Trauma basically just means injury, not a very specific thing to become more resistant too. Its also kind of hard to stop shock, if the body doesn't have enough blood, it doesn't have enough blood. Shock is a survival mechanism to limit flow to vital areas. If you don't go into shock you'd basically be deciding to bleed to death rapidly for few seconds or minutes more of mobility. Not saying this might be impossible, but its just real hard to think what your going to do about it with biological means. It will help if a guy has more muscle, because it would help limit the depth of very minor injury, but this wont mean anything against gunshots or fragments or burns. This is however all stuff that sufficiently advanced power armor and even just advanced uniforms could help with. The dream uniform is going to be ballistic armor, NBC protection, flash burn protection and a short term self sterilizing (I've been it proposed... good luck) wound dressing all in one.

In some dream age, every solider would have a little helper robot along with him that will automatically climb over him and apply tourniquets too. Tourniquet built into uniforms have been proposed, but they wont work since whatever causes an injury is likely to damage them, and it would be hard to have enough of them at optimal locations.

[Batman]

I'm not sure fiddling with pain thresholds is such a hot idea either, for pretty much the same reason. Pain is your body's way of saying your body has been damaged and maybe you should do something about it.
Wait-are we talking about what levels of pain you can endure and keep operating, or are we talking about when pain starts to actually register? The former might actually be a desirable trait to an extent (though it seems to vary so much from individual to individual that I'm not sure there's a biological component to it you could tweak).