Why do we need Mechs?

[thewok]

Apparently, Gundam has a pretty decent explanation for why hand-to-hand robot battles are more efficient than nuking everything from three galaxies away. From Wiki:

Another reason would be because the entirety of the Gundam series takes place in the space around Earth, to not much farther out than the Moon.

In Gundam 0083, however, Zeon loyalist troops steal a prototype Gundam from the Federation. Its purpose was to deliver a nuclear warhead payload from a highly mobile platform. Zeon used it to great effect, destroying or disabling two-thirds of the Federation fleet in one shot.

The Minovsky particle only works within a certain range, and they only work if you know to scatter them.

 

[Derren]

Mechs also provide a very powerful psychological tool in warfare. Using mechs has the effect of humanizing the technology, which can have both defensive and offensive benefits. If you can accurately control the appearance of your weapons in relation to the Uncanny Valley, you can open up an entirely new world of mind games on your enemy.

On the defensive side, a humanoid mech is less likely to be shot at. Believe it or not, most people are actually quite averse to killing another person, and will avoid doing it even in war. In fact, one of the primary methods of training people to kill is to dehumanize their enemy. By giving your opponent a more human-like target, you minimize that dehumanization. A mech puts a face on the enemy, which makes it harder to pull the trigger. For more information on this effect, check out this Cracked article: The Biggest Star Wars Plot Hole, Explained By Science | Cracked.com , or read On Killing by Dave Grossman.

Having a humanoid mech can also be a powerful tool of inspiration. The powers-that-be in war often try and find important heroes to be the face of the war so that people can feel a more direct connection to the events, and to give them hope. Imagine if that heroic symbol could be the flagship itself. This was one of the over-arching points across the Macross series, where the SDF1 eventually became the center of city.

The same humanizing effect can also be used for intimidation. If you want to maintain a military presence, having the streets patrolled by a fierce and human-like mech may be able to instill fear better than a simple car or truck. And the effect of having a wave of giants swarm over a city would be immensely more fear inducing than a simple fly-by from military jets. IIRC, this technique was discussed in the second book in the Leviathan series.

The bottom line is that the same psychology that makes mechs "cool" can also be used as a tool of warfare. It's certainly an expensive tool to implement, but one that shouldn't be overlooked.

At the technological level required to make a useful mech one hardly fights at viewing distance any more (we already don't do that very often in the real world). Most combat is done by firing missiles at dots on the radar, negating pretty much all advantages you post.

Thats why all mech settings I know feature weapons which are vastly inferior (range) to what we already have today or like Gundam have other explanations why long range combat does not work.

 

[garrowolf]

What I decided to go with for the Fusion Age is a set of shorter bipedal mechs similar to Madcats and multiped tanks from Ghost in the Shell. Think more Chromehounds and less Atlas. I decided that they sort of transform. They have a walking/crawling mode and a flight mode. The larger ones use vectored thrust and fly around like T-Birds from Shadowrun. The lighter ones have a folded Canard Rotor Wing that can deploy and fly (an example is the Wispercraft from the 6th Day). They have joints and articulation but they are not large humanoids. They also have the thermoptic camouflage as in Ghost in the Shell.

The Gravitic Age moves to more flight oriented weapons platforms so mechs go out of fashion. Then in the colonial age they come back for a different reason. The colonists left on various planets start to add weapons to their construciton mechs and use them for dealing with dangerous creatures and fighting other colonies. They are not the kind of technology that the military uses since they operate from orbit and mostly any ground unit is now in serious trouble. But the colonists don't have access to all those military toys so they make do with what they have. Some of the colony worlds develop a culture around their mechs and they focus on making them the standard of their military tech so they add things to it and make it more like the Macross type mechs.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

On the defensive side, a humanoid mech is less likely to be shot at. Believe it or not, most people are actually quite averse to killing another person, and will avoid doing it even in war. In fact, one of the primary methods of training people to kill is to dehumanize their enemy. By giving your opponent a more human-like target, you minimize that dehumanization. A mech puts a face on the enemy, which makes it harder to pull the trigger. For more information on this effect, check out this Cracked article: The Biggest Star Wars Plot Hole, Explained By Science | Cracked.com , or read On Killing by Dave Grossman.
.

You didn't read enough of that article. Helmets can be sufficiently dehumanizing to make shooting someone easier -- one of the reasons US troops are now trained to go out of "Stormtrooper mode" and take off helmet and ballistic glasses when interacting with populations.

Build a humanoid mech, and I guarantee it will be easier to pull the trigger -- it's a machine, not a man.

At the technological level required to make a useful mech one hardly fights at viewing distance any more (we already don't do that very often in the real world). Most combat is done by firing missiles at dots on the radar, negating pretty much all advantages you post.

Perhaps in modern naval battles, of which there have been almost none since the Falklands, or modern air-to-air combat, which is in theory a long-range icon-fest, but there has been virtually none to test that theory in over two decades.

As to ground combat -- not even close; if anything the experience of the past decade across multiple conflicts (Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Lebanon, Libya) is that ground combat remains up close and personal, with virtually all engagements within half a kilometer, and most of those within two hundred meters or so. Terrain, particularly urban terrain, provides a strict limitation to engagement ranges. Technology is not likely to change that soon.

 

[Derren]

Perhaps in modern naval battles, of which there have been almost none since the Falklands, or modern air-to-air combat, which is in theory a long-range icon-fest, but there has been virtually none to test that theory in over two decades.

As to ground combat -- not even close; if anything the experience of the past decade across multiple conflicts (Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Lebanon, Libya) is that ground combat remains up close and personal, with virtually all engagements within half a kilometer, and most of those within two hundred meters or so. Terrain, particularly urban terrain, provides a strict limitation to engagement ranges. Technology is not likely to change that soon.

All those recent conflicts you list are asymetrical warfare and in those combat mechs aren't used anyway. In battle between equal forces the distance increases a lot as both sides have modern weapons with high range. And as mechs tend to be larger than smaller houses, urban terrain doesn't help here.

Also, a reason why ground combat is rather short ranged is that humans are small and hard to hit at 2km distance. A mech on the other hand isn't and our current tanks can already shoot accurately over kilometers.
And of course air combat is long range as ever, that includes air to ground engagements. You mentioned Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq. The pilots there certainly had no much qualms to drop bombs and fire missiles into (suspected) enemies. Remember "Shock & Awe" or the infamous wikileaks helicopter video? A mech would only make it a bigger target without any advantages over tanks.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You didn't read enough of that article. Helmets can be sufficiently dehumanizing to make shooting someone easier -- one of the reasons US troops are now trained to go out of "Stormtrooper mode" and take off helmet and ballistic glasses when interacting with populations.

It's not just the reduction in dehumanizing factors that makes removing the helmet & specs work- it is also a subtle psychological signal of 2 other kinds:

1) like the handshake, with it's origins in showing you are unarmed, removing the helmet shows trust that the person you are talking to will not harm you.

2) it is a nearly universally recognized display of respect to remove one's hat (of any kind) for another.

That's powerful stuff alone. However, there is yet another reason.

Just as the gear dehumanizes the person wearing it to those perceiving it, so too does it psychologically distance the wearer from the humanity of others. The "masking" gives a sense of power and authority that can lead to abuses of power...and has been demonstrated with something as minor as a pair of mirrored sunglasses.*








* full disclosure: all of my sunglasses for the past 20 years have been mirrored.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

All those recent conflicts you list are asymetrical warfare and in those combat mechs aren't used anyway. In battle between equal forces the distance increases a lot as both sides have modern weapons with high range. And as mechs tend to be larger than smaller houses, urban terrain doesn't help here.

All of those conflicts have involved heavy armor in varying amounts. If (theoretically) someone developed combat mechs, they'd be used in asymmetric environments as well as symmetric ones -- perhaps even more so (a tank is asymmetric to an infantryman, and vice versa). Even a mechanized vehicle the size of a house can be hidden in natural or man-made terrain.

Setting aside the technical and tactical ridiculousness of mechs, the point is still that one can't assume technology will allow hand waving away the need to fight at close combat ranges. (Note that I'm not suggesting the need for the sort of silliness seen in mech anime where mechs fight hand-to-hand -- not that kind of close combat.)