Should maned small combat crafts be deleted from chartered space?

[Endie]

The robot counts as more than one human pilot, both in parallelism and in longitudinal terms, and does so at vastly lesser cost.

It doesn’t need to go on leave and happily works for twenty-four hours a day. It can sit there, fully-charged, on alert, ready to launch with zero warning, round the clock. It doesn’t retire, get sick, want a holiday or decide to head off and run a B&B on Cape Cod. It doesn’t get itself dismissed after a scandal in the mess nor does it impregnate a junior colleague.

The logistical tail for a robot is tiny in comparison to a human when you consider ancillary services (too tiny under the RH rules, I’d say!): sure, it has a very small cost in parts and servicing; but everything the human pilot requires for living, eating, sleeping etc also requires to be provided, and there are far more of them given the facilities needed by a human for rest, food, water and leisure, and the robot needs no HR department, legal services, entertainment and more. It doesn’t even need fresh air. There’s a reason each front line “fighting man” has a tail of several REMFs behind them.

Probably most importantly, the robot has no qualms about being launched in a vehicle that will explode with a single hit against a target bristling with highly-accurate, fast-tracking beam lasers that will probably take out half the flight before they score a hit.

 

[rinku]

They both have running costs, and I'm happy to agree that the human's running costs are higher. But only the robot has a purchase cost.

The equation for whichever is cheaper to use is, as I was getting at earlier, based on the point at which the human's extra running costs have accumulated to the robot's purchase cost. And... combat attrition may well favour the organic pilot, if it costs less than Cr500,000 to train one.

"Probably most importantly, the robot has no qualms about being launched in a vehicle that will explode with a single hit against a target bristling with highly-accurate, fast-tracking beam lasers that will probably take out half the flight before they score a hit."

That describes basically every combat pilot in a war with comparable opposition. WW1 fighter pilots had a typical combat career of a couple of weeks. RAF pilots in the Battle of Britain would expect to last a month or so.

 

[Endie]

They both have running costs, and I'm happy to agree that the human's running costs are higher. But only the robot has a purchase cost.

The equation for whichever is cheaper to use is, as I was getting at earlier, based on the point at which the human's extra running costs have accumulated to the robot's purchase cost. And... combat attrition may well favour the organic pilot, if it costs less than Cr500,000 to train one.

"Probably most importantly, the robot has no qualms about being launched in a vehicle that will explode with a single hit against a target bristling with highly-accurate, fast-tracking beam lasers that will probably take out half the flight before they score a hit."

That describes basically every combat pilot in a war with comparable opposition. WW1 fighter pilots had a typical combat career of a couple of weeks. RAF pilots in the Battle of Britain would expect to last a month or so.

First off, you're basing your argument on an immense miscalculation. I think that perhaps you have confused the Battle of Britain with the earliest phase of armed, aerial combat in the First World War, 11 years after the first flight. I'm afraid you're also judging WW1 from the (shocking!) loss rates in "Bloody April" of 1917 for the RAF specifically. And that was not always combat-related, remember: a huge number of those losses were because nobody knew how to build a reliable fighter that didn't just fuse with the ground at the slightest provocation.

You can't go around citing incorrect stats on milhist on the Traveller forums of all places!

Yes, the Battle of Britain was seen as a tough period with high casualties. But the RAF flew between 80,000 and 90,000 sorties during the Battle of Britain. They only lost 544 pilots in 114 days out of almost exactly 3,000 RAF pilots taking part. Far from "you'll be dead in a month" the likelihood was 5:1 in favour that you would survive the entire, four month campaign.

In other words, in the most intense phase of aerial combat in the first three years of WW2 the pilot taking off had a 99.32% chance of surviving the mission. Have you ever used a swarm of small craft against beams in MgT2 It's a kill for every two shots!

A hint: if you want a bloody, attritive air battle use the early bomber offensive on the Western Front. It's nowhere near the "dead in a month" figure you suggest but individual units unlucky enough sent on the worst raids did have very high loss rates during the early phase of the campaign.

Your position - that with the massive death rate you suppose from your (incorrect) Battle of Britain comparison navies will say "we'll just lose men, it's cheaper* than throwing machinery at the problem" - is kinda weird when it is a reversal of the trend across technologically advanced nations clearly demonstrated for over almost a century.**

*As demonstrated above with a huge list that is clear and apparent to anyone who understands military logistics, it's ridiculously obviously not cheaper
**See the recent cost of the rescue mission in Iran: a perfectly acceptable cost worth paying to persuade fighting men that they are not just seen as disposable resources to save money.

 

[Condottiere]

Outside of the cost of research and development for robotics, and the usual eighteen years to maturity for humans, there's the underlying infrastructure that supports everything to the point that the pilot is ready for deployment.

The true costs are usually borne post bellum, in what to do with the robots and veterans.

It should be noted, most veterans usually become positive contributors to society and the economy.

 

[Endie]

Outside of the cost of research and development for robotics, and the usual eighteen years to maturity for humans, there's the underlying infrastructure that supports everything to the point that the pilot is ready for deployment.

The true costs are usually borne post bellum, in what to do with the robots and veterans.

It should be noted, most veterans usually become positive contributors to society and the economy.

Absolutely! The ongoing cost to society (both wider society and closer family and friends), the effect on societal stability and the sunk costs over the previous upbringing are all very good points!

 

[tytalan]

I noticed that everyone is talking about the cost being the only factor which is not the case. The argument about cost is only 1 of the 4 main reasons and everyone seems to be ignoring things like social restrictions, Hacking, Other Counter Measures. Personally if I was a carrier commander I would have serious concerns about my fighters being Hacked and sent back at me for example.

 

[Condottiere]

Hacking a nuclear missile tends to be interesting, and returning it to sender.

 

[tytalan]

Hacking a nuclear missile tends to be interesting, and returning it to sender.

Missiles don’t have to be communicated with after launch, fighters do. It’s a matter of purpose a missile is a fire and forget weapon system while a fighter is an attack/defense craft which must be in communication with its carrier.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Why must the fighter be in communication with the carrier? if the comms can be hacked and the flight computers taken over then the enemy can take over a manned fighter as easily as a robotic fighter.

The latest Ukrainian drones are fully autonomous after they reach their target kill space, the human authorises them to either continue the mission and the robot does the rest, or aborts. The scary thing is we are now at the point where fully autonomous drones can be sent out and will carry out their mission with no human oversight at all, much like an artillery shell, once fired it is going to hit something. You can't hack it because there is no external comms.

 

[Condottiere]

With a long enough fibre optic cable, you can secure communications.

 

[swordtart]

In other words, in the most intense phase of aerial combat in the first three years of WW2 the pilot taking off had a 99.32% chance of surviving the mission. Have you ever used a swarm of small craft against beams in MgT2 It's a kill for every two shots!

Which kind of defeats an argument that a robot is more cost effective in the long term. If your robot pilot isn't going to survive beyond 2-3 missions it doesn't matter that it could have flown hundreds more for the sophont equivalent price.

If you are feeding your meat pilots into the grinder then it is only the accumulated cost to get them to what will be their last fight that matters.

The military don't pay for your life until the point of induction. In a lovely warm hugs universe then society has to pay that, but in a society that is considering Fighter craft then that is someone else's problem. There is always an underclass you can exploit if you really want.

Under Traveller post career training rules it could be as little as 8 weeks to get skill-0 and another 8 weeks to get skill-1, so you could churn out a competent fighter pilot in 8 months assuming they make the 4 EDU checks fist time round. I am sure a sufficiently motivated instructor (or personal trainer software) could get pretty good results. If you are cynic then you recruit the college kids with promises of glory as they take the training better (add it handily removes the ones who might begin to rabble rouse).

You have to pay the lodging and food costs for 8 months. These can be quite spartan. Barracks life support costs are Cr500 per month. Space-based education might cost as little as KCr4. Your similarly skilled clone costs you KCr10 and your robot KCr100's.

Once you have trained them, you can then put them in frozen watch and the costs drop to Cr100 per month. You defrost in time for action (let us say they a month in barracks regaining fitness and prepping for their one-way trip). After action any survivors go back in the freezer and back to Cr100 per month again. Let's say you were defrosted twice a year. Total life support costs = 2x500 + 10*100 = KCr2 per year. A 4 year term costs KCr8 in life support.

Survive a full 4 years and you get to draw the pitiful benefits of service and at best you might take home KCr50. On average it will be KC16. If you take the non-cash benefit, it is mostly surplus equipment anyway so likely cost free. Maybe you were "paid" in the interim, but that was effectively just vouchers to spend in the ships or shore base commissary and the money just went back to the Navy. It cost them a few power points to recycle your poop back into luxury foods. Those few power points just cost some water. 4 Years service costs the Navy on average KCr20 per fighter pilot that survives.

Of course that assumes you survive a full term. If you don't then you only cost life support up until the time you leave the service (maybe feet first). If your assumption about MGT2 attrition is correct then surviving even a year on a war footing might be unlikely. The raw numbers mean it is more cost effective to recruit new cannon fodder rather than maintain existing ones since they cost less to train than allow to retire. You might allow fighter pilots that survive a term to transfer into capital ship gunnery (though this is where robot gunners will really save you money).

The robot can also be put into storage after it has been constructed and only activated when there is a missions to take its maintenance costs to close to nil, but if we assume a KCr100 unit then it needs to survive for 5 Terms to buy its way into the force mix if pilots are expected to survive long enough to draw their Benefits. If pilots don't survive to draw benefits then they cost a maximum of KCr6 per year and the robot needs to operate for over a century before it's purchase price begins to approach that of the training plus life support costs of those that don't survive a full term.

The character generation rules assume that one in 6 well suited pilots (those with a DM+2 DEX) will not survive. If we assume cannon fodder are not that good and just running interference for the competent ones they can be average. Then chances of them making old bones are significantly less so the cost tends to the lower end of the spectrum and the robot needs to last a lot longer to be competitive.

 

[Endie]

All this seems to make the slightly suspect assumption that you can hire and retain highly capable pilots (although, as demonstrated above, less capable than a robot for a higher price) who will be willing to commit suicide. Since that is no longer the case in moderately-rich TL8 economies, I wonder what massive cultural changes you read into the Imperium, for instance, that drive people to such fanatical devotion to the cause, and why the Imperium is willing to train them to die fruitlessly to beams or to superior and expendable robot pilots in cheaper ships?

As Condottiere pointed out, the cost is not just vast for the kamikazes you are somehow hiring, but also to their familes, to the economies you rob of their labour which invested in them for a couple of decades to see them insta-popped in the first battle against even a near-peer opponent etc.

Or do you not use the High Guard rules when involving small craft combat?

 

[collins355]

The latest Ukrainian drones are fully autonomous after they reach their target kill space, the human authorises them to either continue the mission and the robot does the rest, or aborts. The scary thing is we are now at the point where fully autonomous drones can be sent out and will carry out their mission with no human oversight at all, much like an artillery shell, once fired it is going to hit something. You can't hack it because there is no external comms.

I'd like to see some citations on that. There is a big difference between lock-on-after-launch (which has been in missiles such as the Maverick for decades and is what I think the Ukr drones are doing) and what you appear to be suggesting.

No doubt the technology may evolve to allow fully autonomous operation at some point if legal/social restraints are not applied. But I'm not convinced that is what is happening yet.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The society that trains the fighter pilot is a closed economic system.

It can spend its resources on raising a child to 18 and then training them as a fighter pilot and all the costs that accrue thereafter

or

the society can build robot fighter factories.

The latter is more cost effective and values life, the former doesn't place any value on life and is willing to waste resources for the most inefficient combat craft.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on when the economies of scale kick in.

I looked at the basic skill set you need for spacefaring, and if you want to keep it humancentric, competitively, early specialization is required.

 

[swordtart]

All this seems to make the slightly suspect assumption that you can hire and retain highly capable pilots (although, as demonstrated above, less capable than a robot for a higher price) who will be willing to commit suicide. Since that is no longer the case in moderately-rich TL8 economies, I wonder what massive cultural changes you read into the Imperium, for instance, that drive people to such fanatical devotion to the cause, and why the Imperium is willing to train them to die fruitlessly to beams or to superior and expendable robot pilots in cheaper ships?

As Condottiere pointed out, the cost is not just vast for the kamikazes you are somehow hiring, but also to their familes, to the economies you rob of their labour which invested in them for a couple of decades to see them insta-popped in the first battle against even a near-peer opponent etc.

Or do you not use the High Guard rules when involving small craft combat?

Not all societies value life and not all life is valued equally in those that do. Not all empires are created equal. Not all lives are productive some people are net consumers. If a robot can replace a human as a fighter pilot (surely one of the more challenging use cases) then why cannot it replace them in almost every other endeavour. How are you robbing an economy of a sophont's labour when at the same time you argue that robots can perform it better and cheaper.

The question was what was cheaper, not which was more moral. Real-life air forces tend to have to invest heavily in training and they pay their pilots well. Those same nations might treat their infantry much more poorly even to the point where they are serving but still qualify for welfare. That is not a moral evaluation or all servicemen would be treated equally well, it is economics and supply and demand of skill sets.

Getting people to volunteer for exotic far off glory has never been that hard historically, often with their family clubbing together to buy them some equipment. Historically that has been exploited by governments and political factions.

There is absolutely no point evaluating the relative costs of sophont pilots and robots using current real world examples. This is Traveller, in MGT2 we have costs laid out and those are the costs to be paid. Clones can be built cheaper than robots can be built, it says so in the robot handbook. Regular people are even cheaper as they self-replicate. Robots might in theory last longer but the ships they pilot needs to survive for them to do so. Small craft are really fragile, you can destroy one with a man-portable weapon . Unless you are using the optional vehicle toughness rules from companion and unless they actually have armour they can in theory be one-shotted by a body pistol. If you have less that 10 hull points then cumulative damage rules mean 1 point of damage is 10% and that means a critical and the most common one of them is more hull hits, you could lose the 4 hull from a 10 DTon fighter in one go.

The whole idea of a multi-mega credit fighter is rather suspect itself if the attrition rate is as high as you implied in your post. They serve no useful purpose so the presence of a human vs a robot is somewhat moot.

I love a good robot, but it doesn't alter the fact that Traveller has whole systems of "poor white trash" that are no loss to whatever empire runs them. The only reason the empire takes an interest is for trade and that requires resources. All it takes is one world that recognises that it's only exportable commodity is people and you have scope for the poor to be sold off as cannon fodder.

Your mileage may vary.

 

[phavoc]

What should be the purpose of a manned craft is that you have both a computer and a pilot / crew onboard. The pilot gives you flexibility that a program cannot. It gives you the ability to react to situations that a programmed response could not/would not be able to do. Sure, if your drones survive (and aren't most meant to die?) and bring back the information you can add more knowledge to your programs for the next round. Same goes for a human, of course, but ideally your forces would be more incentivized to ensure their human pilots return intact rather than your robotic ones.

With the advances we are seeing today you'd probably get more of a piloted craft with a swarm of robotic drones that would get sacrificed in place of your pilot. At the time the game was created, robotic tools weren't all that advanced (though arguably sci-fi had written about fully autonomous robots, such as Asimov's or even Rossum's Universal Robots story from the 1920s), plus there is that inherent bias written into the game that the 3rd Imperium has against fully autonomous robots. And, as others have pointed out, who wants to RP a droid (sorry Lucas).

 

[Vormaerin]

Exactly. There's two different questions. What do we think the future will look like? and What do you within the game should play like? And those answers are not the same.

 

[Condottiere]

Function follows form.

While I love needling about dogfighting, Confederation doctrine for smallcraft is principal engagement is over the horizon with missiles and torpedoes.

Piloting remains paramount, gunner an adjunct.

If dogfighting mode is activated, the magazines are to be emptied, and then the pilot is to make a run for it, back to base.

 

[Endie]

Not all societies value life and not all life is valued equally in those that do. Not all empires are created equal. Not all lives are productive some people are net consumers. If a robot can replace a human as a fighter pilot (surely one of the more challenging use cases) then why cannot it replace them in almost every other endeavour. How are you robbing an economy of a sophont's labour when at the same time you argue that robots can perform it better and cheaper.

The question was what was cheaper, not which was more moral. Real-life air forces tend to have to invest heavily in training and they pay their pilots well. Those same nations might treat their infantry much more poorly even to the point where they are serving but still qualify for welfare. That is not a moral evaluation or all servicemen would be treated equally well, it is economics and supply and demand of skill sets.

Getting people to volunteer for exotic far off glory has never been that hard historically, often with their family clubbing together to buy them some equipment. Historically that has been exploited by governments and political factions.

There is absolutely no point evaluating the relative costs of sophont pilots and robots using current real world examples. This is Traveller, in MGT2 we have costs laid out and those are the costs to be paid. Clones can be built cheaper than robots can be built, it says so in the robot handbook. Regular people are even cheaper as they self-replicate. Robots might in theory last longer but the ships they pilot needs to survive for them to do so. Small craft are really fragile, you can destroy one with a man-portable weapon . Unless you are using the optional vehicle toughness rules from companion and unless they actually have armour they can in theory be one-shotted by a body pistol. If you have less that 10 hull points then cumulative damage rules mean 1 point of damage is 10% and that means a critical and the most common one of them is more hull hits, you could lose the 4 hull from a 10 DTon fighter in one go.

The whole idea of a multi-mega credit fighter is rather suspect itself if the attrition rate is as high as you implied in your post. They serve no useful purpose so the presence of a human vs a robot is somewhat moot.

I love a good robot, but it doesn't alter the fact that Traveller has whole systems of "poor white trash" that are no loss to whatever empire runs them. The only reason the empire takes an interest is for trade and that requires resources. All it takes is one world that recognises that it's only exportable commodity is people and you have scope for the poor to be sold off as cannon fodder.

Your mileage may vary.

Ok, so I’ll grant you that there are a couple of races (Tezcats, I’m looking at you) who might well view intelligent life from their own species as borderline-disposable in the right situation. And if a species is not based on Dawkins’ memetic replication of competitive, personal code then that might be easier to imagine.

But among humans as technology and lifespan increase and belief in salvation and eternal afterlife falls to the levels in Chartered Space? Hardly. That’s not the Imperium nor Zhodani space we see described; it’s absolutely not Vargr; and for most Aslan clans it’s also the sort of stretch that requires you to pretend to believe that All Japanese Were Kamikazes.