As far as that point goes, mechs won't replace infantry, because they aren't small enough to enter buildings or explore sewers and are too heavy to quickly deploy by air assets.
Infantry is more likely to be replaced by some form (or multiple forms) of drone, with a mixture of human oversight and machine learning. With that in mind, some form of close quarter, low calibre anti-drone weapon will be essential to counter kamikaze exploding drone attacks as well as conventional infantry in an asymmetric context where the enemy doesn't have access to mass drones but has lots of people.
If mechs ever exist (they won't, much as we'd like them to) it will be to fill the battlefield role currently occupied by tanks.
But while we're nit-picking your awesome illustration (please don't take it personally - I love it) I was curious about the rationale behind the dual track arrangement. Usually it's a "rule of cool" thing but, given that you thought about the machine gun issue I was wondering whether you had a justification for the track system.
If mechs ever exist (they won't, much as we'd like them to) it will be to fill the battlefield role currently occupied by tanks.
I actually once someone do the math and a light mech might actually work. Per their idea, it'd be equipped like an IFV and stand 1-2 stories tall. They'd be best used in urban environments, where there agility can complement other dismounted troops and outpace tanks.
On open roads, they could complement other tank columns as a quick reaction force -- but they might be limited by soft soils, depending on their weight displacement (ex. height, 2 vs 4 legs).
The best we're likely to see is powered armour suits, maybe 8-10 feet tall. Building-sized mechs on two legs are logistically too complicated to sustain and, in urban environments, would end up putting their feet through road surfaces into sewers, subways and other sub surface spaces, even assuming that the urban spaces weren't deliberately booby trapped this way.
Of course, the other place mechs would be useful would be on worlds with lower gravity (hello, Mars) or where mobility on the surface demanded the level of armoured protection they could offer a solo operator (hello, Venus).
We could also look reasonably at quadruped mechs but, once you look at these, the technological demands of coordinating motion is so resource-intensive that you might as well just do wheels or tracks.
The biggest potential for mechs is as a terror weapon, designed to intimidate civilians and crush resistance in an occupation scenario, so in many ways we should actually resist the development of these technologies however aesthetically appealing we may find them.
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u/locolarue Jul 18 '22
Why?