Drive On -- Corporal Winters

BUMBLEBEE on 13th Jan 2018, 2:55 PM

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This tedious minutae will be important later...

Chippewa Ghost on 14th Jan 2018, 10:18 AM

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The Army ("aka ARMY STRONG") uses computers?!

BUMBLEBEE on 14th Jan 2018, 12:32 PM

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For transparency I have to admit there is some bullshit going on here, but I think it’s arcane enough it won’t get in the way and it’s central to the plot (#handcuffs#ziptied). The Abrams does have what they call a computer, that uses information from cant, temp, crosswind and motion sensing, muzzle droop, ammo type and boresight correction factors to make reticle adjustments so the gunner has more of a point and shoot task with a 99% chance of a hit (in theory). It’s really more of a fancy calculator, designed in the eighties... hence the BIG buttons and tiny display. It sure has hell doesn’t auto update like your desktop and it’s never even heard of the internet.

I’m pretending that at some point in the last twenty years it got upgraded to something more like what we think of as a computer today, with a sat uplink, and B Co got retrofitted with them. There is precedent for it... the M1A2 (which is what these tanks are) has a system where you can up and download target information through the commanders station and share it digitally between tanks and with higher.

I’m not inventing the likelihood that the army would upgrade the tanks, check the box and move on without verifying that everyone was an expert on the new system. That’s why winters, even though he’s the best gunner in the company, doesn’t really know about the “new features” nor does he really care. He’s old school and stubborn.

What he doesn’t realize is that what goes up must come down and an internet connection can be as much a weakness as a strength in certain situations...

StLOrca on 27th Aug 2018, 9:47 PM

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