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The ICC Armed Forces: the Hardware Evolution Curve Ball |
2nd Rear Admiral Sobaan
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Joined: November 21, 2004
Posts: 30
From: The shadows of human imaginations abroad
|  Posted: 2005-03-25 03:15
My brain went into overdrive and i completed the final 5/6 of it recently, it hasn't been heavily reviewed for cohesion and has only been ran through a spelling and grammar check in MS Word, appologies for that. Either way, first submission, comments welcome.
prologue
Special forces are a chapter of warfare that is all but never chronicled, often for fear of compromising sensitive information. However as far as civilians are concerned what they don't know can hurt them, so wide resentment of special forces followed man to the stars when the United Galactic Trade Organization liquidated official special ops divisions when its new generation of goliath mobile exo-armor hit the front lines. However one of the most important, and most recent, of the milestones made in Special Force evolution was by far the situation in the Interstellar Cultural Confederation military. Their army was quite a unique case among military action in the day, composed of only 50% direct combat infantry, with the rest filled by the famed mobile B detachments of the unconventional warfare division, or as it was oft called; the “Hide and Seek” division. This name was granted to them by respecting infantry divisions that often witnessed their handy-work, who found evasion of enemy infantry and under cover movement to be highly important in reaching their objective, hence their nickname.
They were borne of necessity due to the abysmal manpower the ICC had to work with, and the technology they had access to. By 2140 they had just finished refining their agile environmental suits with the MU-13 scout suit, which contained little in the realm of armor beyond durevlar sheets over important areas of the body, however the suit was the first model to show wide success of the fast charging booster pack, which granted the wearer the ability to “hop” well over 500 feet and land safely. This volatile mix resulted in some of the more unique tactics of the interspecies war, one of the more popular known as “dying man’s leap.” Which often involved jetting into a long high arc over an enemy position and attempting to gun them down from the air, however this involved exposure to heavy fire that their environmental suits couldn’t withstand. So use of the jetpack was mostly relegated to mobility.
2141ad…ICC Weapons Technology is born
16 years after it’s separation from the United Galactic Trade Organization, ICC weapons technology began to hearken further back in history to the time before exo-armor was introduced to the battlefield. For them, this was a long-range war. Rifles were brought back from the grave in the form of the AM5 Bolter, a massive combustion based rifle; the first military service rifle since 2050 when old pneumatic vac-rifles fell out of popularity as a low oxygen environment weapon. However it was still based on old rifle technology. Even though it shot 1.25inch diameter depleted uranium bolts instead of the much smaller bolts of old weaponry, it still had the same old and outdated sharp-shooting philosophy that relegated sniping only to how far one could see with an optic scope, there was more to be done.
2156ad…the Birth of the Cybernetic Marksman
Since their conception, the ICC have worked diligently toward new technology, their next leap forward was thanks to two scientists involved in cybernetics research, a newer field at the time, Shinji Matsuri and Joshua Walker.
Matsuri was born in the farstar systems and had devoted his life to composite metal research and engineering. Nanotechnology, when it came about, was the greatest thing he had ever been granted. His first major advent was self-reconstructing hypermetal. It was a composite of inter-system travel age metals and nanobots that interlaced into the structure and could receive instructions on how to alter the metal. Given time and a proper template, this metal could form into just about every metal-based device.
Walker was a cybernetics specialist who had defected from the UGTO in 2145ad after he had been offered a position to produce an aggression inhibiting brain implant designed to nullify revolts in UGTO population centers. He threatened to leak news of the device to the populace as he was departing UGTO space if the project was not halted; intelligence has heard no news of overly docile UGTO populations since then.
He studied briefly under Matsuri, whose new nano alloy was now an important research point. In 2147ad Walker was able to forge a basic memory storage system implant from Matsuri’s reconstructing alloy. Thanks to the implant’s reconstructive properties, it was able to install itself into the human body and establish a link automatically; both internal and external variants became popular. On the commercial market it was used very often to store memory-reading programs that could call up long lost information from the brain.
After conferring with ICC military command it was decided that with current technology, ocular implants were possible. In 2149 the first optic zoom implant was created; unlike the misconceptions the public made about the final product before it’s release, it was small and discrete. The implant was smaller than a contemporary contact lens and about ten fold more comfortable as it was part of the eye. It was a small nano thickness diaphragm structure that could magnify the users vision as much as 4 times. Post test models in 2154ad made use of focusing systems and allowed for a scaled down version that delivered 10 times zoom, the military began using the implant on an elective basis in 2156. However once again this was only a stepping-stone.
2161ad… the Advent of the Man Portable Artillery Platform System
The widespread use of the Walker/Matsuri optical enhancement system and the re-invention of Mechanized Assault Shell Kinetics lead to a cyberization initiative with military technology. MASK technology enabled precise control of motorized systems based on decoded input from the brain, quite unlike the comparably archaic UGTO systems, which were pressure based (when force was applied to an inner surface of the suit, the suit would alter its position in that direction). By 2159 the army had developed a prototype for a new artillery platform, one that would bridge the gap between infantry and the cumbersome artillery systems of old. The AM47 Gun Platform Exo-suit. The exo-suit allowed the user to dexterously and easily use a firearm weighing as much as 220 pounds.
But did the military have a gun for this monstrous machine… in fact they did. Based off their old magnetic technology and their newer gauss technology, they had designed on parallel with the MASK systems a 200 pound bazooka / rifle configured tank cannon codenamed Thor’s Hammer. The rifle was equipped with a combustion and magnetic rail combination barrel that could shoot 4-inch diameter rounds as far as 3 miles with almost no flight path degradation. However the technology for this system was already there. What was far more remarkable however was the targeting program.
In early 2160 the army was already well underway into developing a targeting system, by 2161 the system was complete, and accurate up to a sixteenth of an inch at 2 miles. The handy work of over 100 scientists, engineers, programmers, cyberneticists, and physicists, it accounted for wind, planetary gravity, target speed, target heading, target turn rate, all these among others. In early 2162 the system was bug free and performed correctly, after debugging, it only missed five targets out of 1,000, one of which had been rigged by a wannabe comedian of an officer to rocket off into the stratosphere when a sound resembling a large cannon report reached it’s audio sensors.
The resulting product only required a sensor lock from a spotter to engage targets effectively. Training began in 2160 and the first trained one soldier detachments joined infantry squads in the field in 2161ad. The infantry bombardment platform was born.
Appendix: the ICC AMG89 Recoilless Rifle (project codename “Thor’s Hammer”)
The AMG89 or the oomph gun, as nicknamed by infantry near it’s blast radius, can be loaded with a variety of rounds ranging from a high velocity explosive canister to a surface to air micro missile that acquires targets in mid air. The gun is equipped with two barrels, an upper barrel with a clip loading system at the top of the gun, and a lower barrel with a 4-chambered cylinder designed to be loaded with specialty ordinance. However if the rounds can be loaded in the appropriate fashion, then the rounds are interchangeable between barrels. The army’s standard monition for the upper barrel is a large high velocity shaped charge system designed to pierce heavy armor, however high explosive fragmentation canisters are also manufactured, these are designed to bombard an area of enemy activity or remove enemies from lightly fortified positions, as an alternative to either, there is a micro anti radar Missile system that is relatively new desighned to take down close supporting aircraft.
The army also manufactures more expensive rounds as single units; these rounds include the Burster flak shell, the sunflare electromagnetic pulse missile, the Gunther Heavy Rocket Propelled Grenade, and even a tracking beacon similar to those found on scouts. The flak shell can airburst over ground targets or proximity burst near ion emissions making it a nice area affect weapon that can lower the morale of an enemy’s standing army or damage aircraft and spacecraft in sub orbital flight. The sunflare EMP missile can cause localized disruption of non-shielded electronics and will greatly disrupt communications in its effective area. The Gunther Heavy RPG is most effective against soft targets but can damage ground vehicles moderately.
This gun accels in diversity but is absolutely and completely useless in assault operations and was designed to be fired while concealed. It offers solutions to any fighting man’s problems when used correctly and is instrumental for close support of direct combat assault units, who may need an armored vehicle taken out of commission or the communications at an enemy base camp cut to keep them from calling re-enforcements.
[ This Message was edited by: Sobaan on 2005-03-25 16:27 ]
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Fleet Admiral Busby
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Joined: October 15, 2004
Posts: 239
| Posted: 2005-03-25 22:31
no one is gona read that its to long 
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Coeus {NCX-Charger}
Admiral, I can't read,
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: February 16, 2004
Posts: 3635
From: South Philly
| Posted: 2005-03-26 02:21
...
be quiet rofflies.
Tag to read tommorrow.
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2nd Rear Admiral Sobaan
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Joined: November 21, 2004
Posts: 30
From: The shadows of human imaginations abroad
| Posted: 2005-03-26 08:56
Quote:
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On 2005-03-25 22:31, The Evil Lol wrote:
no one is gona read that its to long
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heh, figures, got the same review for one of my english essays (more or less, cut out the crap and keep the important parts intact). Eh well, first fifth of this thing was written as I went so the things in dissaray there, meh.
[ This Message was edited by: Sobaan on 2005-03-26 08:57 ]
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Coeus {NCX-Charger}
Admiral, I can't read,
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: February 16, 2004
Posts: 3635
From: South Philly
| Posted: 2005-03-26 10:27
I'll read it when I get back from rehearsals tonight - don't change a thing!
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2nd Rear Admiral Sobaan
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Joined: November 21, 2004
Posts: 30
From: The shadows of human imaginations abroad
| Posted: 2005-04-02 19:25
wow! This forum sure went quiet... I'm hoping for more feedvack (and sorry to anyone daunted by the longness of the story)
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Bobamelius
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Joined: October 08, 2002
Posts: 2074
From: Ohio
| Posted: 2005-04-03 13:46
Bump! This is pretty cool, read it!
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Axianda The Royal
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Joined: November 20, 2001
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From: Axianda
| Posted: 2005-04-03 17:13
Man thats a sweet read... would be good enough as actual history
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2nd Rear Admiral Sobaan
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Joined: November 21, 2004
Posts: 30
From: The shadows of human imaginations abroad
| Posted: 2005-04-04 15:30
heh yeah I know... The fic was inspired by Shadow Warriors by Tom Clancy, it was a history of the special forces peace in the same sense as this (entirely different point though, same eye for detail) The technology in this fanfic was pretty much my own work though.
Does anyone think I should compress my works more? I've gotten a lot of feedback saying it's friggin long.
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Bobamelius
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From: Ohio
| Posted: 2005-04-04 15:48
Quote:
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On 2005-04-04 15:30, Sobaan wrote:
I've gotten a lot of feedback saying it's friggin long.
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All I see is Evil Lol's comment about it. Everyone else seems to think it's fine.
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2nd Rear Admiral Sobaan
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Joined: November 21, 2004
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From: The shadows of human imaginations abroad
| Posted: 2005-04-04 16:54
heh true, I guess I just psyched myself into expecting negative feedback *shrugs* ah well.
Perhaps next time inspiration hits I may take the time to write an other short fiction.
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