Anti-Armor/spacecraft Teleportation weapon

[lordofchange13]

There are a lot of other advantages- near-perfect accuracy and reliability if the system's as good as you imply, no need to worry about ballistics or terrain (there are targets an ICBM can't hit from certain directions, on account of there being a mountain in the way), ability to hit an underground bunker hardened against attack and know you'll blow it up with the first shot...

Basically, if you can build bomb-teleporters and hide them in bunkers, then those bunkers will totally dominate warfare. Conventional combat between troops and tanks and ships and planes will be largely irrelevant- if a nation maintains those forces at all, it's only if it isn't really too expensive. All you really need to fight and win wars are bomb-teleporters, surveillance drones, and occupation troops.

"Tanks" that fight by teleporting bombs inside each other's armor are just ridiculously superfluous.

Possible. It will affect warfare greatly but it wouldn't completely change the way wars are fought, at least permanently. Technologies like teleporters are inevitably going to be incredibly expensive, so if anything a nation could deploy it on a strategic scale but its not going to work well on a tactical scale. A bunker with a bomb-teleporter would not be very powerful if all it takes to take down one is intel on its location and a special forces team deployed behind enemy lines which would neutralize it, or even better, turn it against its original users and hit them hard before they realize what's going on.

And you are going to need standard armies to destroy forces that can't easily be removed via conventional armies. How do you use teleporters to effectively counter airforce, which is constantly on the move at high velocity? The targeting system isn't going to be perfect. On that note, a teleporter targeting system could be jammed or reduced in effectiveness via long range jamming, decoy, knocking satellites out of orbit, etc.

You have already said that building the Teleporters was cheap. The bunkers are obviously going to be well hidden. though you have a point about the aircraft, you are contradicting your self when you had said that the Teleporters "cannot be interfered in any way".

[S.L.Acker]

- The range of the hypothetical teleportation technology is theoratically limitless, depending on how much power you supply to it. In the case of the portable weaponized version, it has access to an energy source that allows it to have the range of a standard US stinger missile per teleport.

- It could fire any ordinance the size of a stinger missile.

Assuming this is man portable as a sort of squad heavy weapon we can guess that power requirements can't be that high for this range and weight class.

- The process cannot be interfered in any way. If the co-ordinates are within a solid object it will displace the atoms within the target and replace it with that of the ordinance. The ordinance could be damaged in process, however.

With good intel, this is very deadly. Heck, even an agent with a handheld GPS and a cellphone would be enough for most tasks.

- It is nearly instantaneous - microseconds between transit.

This means it's faster than a missile or bullet, speed isn't going to help unless you are both very fast and have insane jamming. Simple laser designation or coordinate systems should be enough even if most signals go to shit.

- Compatible with any targeting systems, ANY TARGETING SYSTEMS.

This makes things even better, a guy with a pen and a paper and some simple math skills could hit major cities with this.

- Could also be mounted on naval ships, armored vehicles and spacecrafts for usage. Range then could extend up to tens of kilometers (no more than a hundred - not enough energy)

Your man portable weapon is already throwing at ranges of 8 kilometers, so this must mean that range significantly ramps up energy costs.

Based on what we know this weapon is going to be nasty if you give it enough juice. I could see submarines with their missile bays replaced with high output reactors being very dangerous.

[Simon_Jester]

Possible. It will affect warfare greatly but it wouldn't completely change the way wars are fought, at least permanently. Technologies like teleporters are inevitably going to be incredibly expensive, so if anything a nation could deploy it on a strategic scale but its not going to work well on a tactical scale. A bunker with a bomb-teleporter would not be very powerful if all it takes to take down one is intel on its location and a special forces team deployed behind enemy lines which would neutralize it, or even better, turn it against its original users and hit them hard before they realize what's going on.

More practically, just teleport a damn bomb into the bunker. Problem solved if you know where it is.

On the other hand, you have been nonspecific as to how expensive the bunkers are, or how many of them I can build, or how many bombs I can teleport from a single bunker. If I have fifty of them and you only find forty, and each of them can teleport one nuclear bomb per ten seconds to a destination of my choice, you are fucked.

Of course, there are other possibilities for making locations uncertain. You can mount the teleporter in the equivalent of a ballistic missile submarine and have it motor around under two hundred meters of seawater in the middle of the ocean. No one will have a clue where it is.

You could dig many bunkers- if the machinery for the teleporter need not be large, there's really nothing stopping you from constructing hundreds of decoy locations. The enemy can try to bomb them all, I suppose.

And you are going to need standard armies to destroy forces that can't easily be removed via conventional armies.

That is an oxymoron.

How do you use teleporters to effectively counter airforce, which is constantly on the move at high velocity?

Blow up the command centers, so that the air force does not know where to go or what to do. Blow up the highways and railroads that ship fuel and parts to the airbase. Blow up the planes themselves on the runway. Blow up the runway, too, while you're at it. No sense using half measures.

The targeting system isn't going to be perfect. On that note, a teleporter targeting system could be jammed or reduced in effectiveness via long range jamming, decoy, knocking satellites out of orbit, etc.

You didn't tell me that before. What kind of jamming or decoys would be needed to stop me from teleporting a bomb to a destination that I know to be, say, five thousand kilometers away that way? How was I supposed to know those existed?

[Number Theoretic]

How do you use teleporters to effectively counter airforce, which is constantly on the move at high velocity?

Blow up the command centers, so that the air force does not know where to go or what to do. Blow up the highways and railroads that ship fuel and parts to the airbase. Blow up the planes themselves on the runway. Blow up the runway, too, while you're at it. No sense using half measures.

This and the high vulnerability of command centers in general against such a teleporter weapon could favor the development of completely distributed p2p-like command networks. Of course it would diminsh the efficency of a conventional army but it doesn't matter because the situation is unconventional to begin with. So, completely distributed command and intelligence networks with no fixed hierachy can be useful. And the same principle could apply to the development of military gear that can do all necessary maintenance and repair on its own, without need of supporting infrastructure.

edit: fixing quotes, damnit

[Shroom Man 777]

What happens if half the bomber fleet is constantly on the air, and once they get word that their command centers have been teleport-bombed, they'll start chucking bombs down their own teleporter bomb bays?

Or submarines with submarine-teleported nuclear weapons?

If the enemy also has teleport-weapons, then your stationary teleport-bunker will be prime target for teleport-weapons too. It's like an instantaneous and super-accurate ICBM.

While the teleportation system can teleport shit everywhere, what are the limits of the sensory systems guiding the teleporter?

Will submarines ten thousand leagues under the sea be visible to these things? Stealth aircrafts flying outside of enemy radar coverage?

Like nuclear launch delivery systems, you'll want to maximize the survivability of your own teleportation weapons systems. Triple Threat Tactico-strategic Thermonuclear Teleporter Triage.


How big would a teleporter machine have to be for it to have intercontinental teleportation-strike ranges? If it's so big that it becomes immobile, and has to be placed in a bunker to safeguard, then a strategic bomber or a nuclear submarine may be a superior nuclear deterrent because while they are slower than the instant-kill intercontinental teleportation systems, their mobility and stealth allows them to be more survivable than a giant teleporter facility that will be in everyone's bomb sights when shit hits the fan.

However, while a bomber and a submarine may be harder to hit than a giant teleportation bunker-facility, the missiles launched by the bomber and the submarine are easier to stop (with ABM and point defenses and lasers and shit) than an unstoppable teleporter. So the utility of the teleporter also depends on how stoppable the delivery systems of bombers and submarines are.

Also, the intercontinental teleporter bunker can be surrounded by intermediate- and short-ranged teleportation systems, and non-teleport systems, designed to teleport-kill and normally-kill anything coming to strike the teleport-bunker. Can these teleportation systems teleport-kill stealthy subsonic or unstealthy supersonic-moving cruise missiles and even faster MIRVs? How much time does it take for a teleporter to cycle between "shots"? If the cooldown time is not short enough, an anti-ballistic missile teleporter might not be able to teleport-kill all the MIRVs before the nukes get through.

If your strategic teleportation weapon can kill the fuck out of everyone, but then within the next few hours or by the end of the day, SLBMs and ICBMs will MIRV shit on you and bombers will nuke-tipped cruise missile the fuck out of you and your entire nation from halfway around the world, things may not be changed all that much.

Unless with their awesome instantaneous teleportation weapons, they'll get the impression that their super-fast first strike capabilities will allow them to reliably defeat the enemy's counterstrike capabilities and negate MAD.

But even then, even if the enemy has no teleport-systems of their own, they can build fuckloads of SSBNs and bombers on constant patrol to make sure that any first strike - no matter how super-fast or super-accurate - will be met with massive massacration. Doctor Manhattan from the Watchmen was pretty much a teleporting strategic weapon, a glowing blue naked one, yet the Soviets in that setting were able to maintain MAD by deploying obscene numbers of delivery systems - enough to make Manhattan doubt he could intercept all of them.

If many people have teleport-systems... how can the teleport-strikes be traced back to any single party? If the nuclear powers all had teleportation weapons, how can the Russkies determine if it was the French or the Lithuanians who teleport-striked the Gremlin? Would we end up with a "if one flies, they all fly" attitude wherein if any one nation teleport-strikes another nation, due to the untraceable nature of these teleport-strikes, the stricken nation will end up teleport-striking all other nations with teleporters and all the other teleport-capable nations will end up fucking each other over?

[Simon_Jester]

This and the high vulnerability of command centers in general against such a teleporter weapon could favor the development of completely distributed p2p-like command networks. Of course it would diminsh the efficency of a conventional army but it doesn't matter because the situation is unconventional to begin with. So, completely distributed command and intelligence networks with no fixed hierachy can be useful. And the same principle could apply to the development of military gear that can do all necessary maintenance and repair on its own, without need of supporting infrastructure.

edit: fixing quotes, damnit

Yes in theory, but in practice this is going to be very hard. One problem with a distributed command network is security: how do you prevent General Ripper from ordering his planes to bomb the Soviet Union? This is really important for a nuclear deterrent: arguably, making sure it doesn't go off when you don't want it to is more important than making sure it works when you do want it to.

Having military units supply themselves for any extended period is even harder- I'd think it out of the question if the unit is expected to sustain operations for any length of time, or to do much of anything other than fight a single sharp battle right around the area they're based at.

What happens if half the bomber fleet is constantly on the air, and once they get word that their command centers have been teleport-bombed, they'll start chucking bombs down their own teleporter bomb bays?

Schemy- although if we go with SM93's vague descriptions, the teleporter may be too big to put in a plane, although you could maybe build planes of ridiculous size and go all XB-0 on things by remote control.

Or submarines with submarine-teleported nuclear weapons?

Already thought of it. Yes, it's a good idea.

If the enemy also has teleport-weapons, then your stationary teleport-bunker will be prime target for teleport-weapons too. It's like an instantaneous and super-accurate ICBM.

While the teleportation system can teleport shit everywhere, what are the limits of the sensory systems guiding the teleporter?

Will submarines ten thousand leagues under the sea be visible to these things? Stealth aircrafts flying outside of enemy radar coverage?

I do not know- my impression was that SM93 was describing a teleporter that could only send things to a specific known location, like "five thousand kilometers that way." If I can use some kind of magic spy-ray to figure out what's at the other end before teleporting anything there, then this game gets a whole new dimension in craziness. Because I can use the spy-ray for reconnaissance without teleporting bombs or anything else.

How big would a teleporter machine have to be for it to have intercontinental teleportation-strike ranges? If it's so big that it becomes immobile, and has to be placed in a bunker to safeguard, then a strategic bomber or a nuclear submarine may be a superior nuclear deterrent because while they are slower than the instant-kill intercontinental teleportation systems, their mobility and stealth allows them to be more survivable than a giant teleporter facility that will be in everyone's bomb sights when shit hits the fan.

This is why I proposed constructing copious decoys. Think of something like the Chinese missile tunnels. The advantage of the teleporter facilities is that they don't have to be large or high profile, and they don't need something like a big flat space to put missile silos in. If you can build a teleporter installation in, say, a 30m by 30m space, you can put them everywhere- bunkers, random grain silos in the middle of nowhere, missile submarines, in abandoned mines, or whatever. And each teleporter is about as dangerous as a whole field full of individual ICBMs, so the enemy is in more trouble if they don't get all of them.

The main limit on this is expense, of course.

But even then, even if the enemy has no teleport-systems of their own, they can build fuckloads of SSBNs and bombers on constant patrol to make sure that any first strike - no matter how super-fast or super-accurate - will be met with massive massacration. Doctor Manhattan from the Watchmen was pretty much a teleporting strategic weapon, a glowing blue naked one, yet the Soviets in that setting were able to maintain MAD by deploying obscene numbers of delivery systems - enough to make Manhattan doubt he could intercept all of them.

This works, but is very expensive. Watchmen was written in 1985, when most Americans greatly overestimated the size of the Soviet Union's economy and its internal stability; in real life if we break out our hand-cranked adding machines and so on, I do not know if the Soviets (or any other normal country not willing and able to spend countless zillions of dollars) would be able to maintain the enormous and terrible overkill this would take.

If many people have teleport-systems... how can the teleport-strikes be traced back to any single party? If the nuclear powers all had teleportation weapons, how can the Russkies determine if it was the French or the Lithuanians who teleport-striked the Gremlin? Would we end up with a "if one flies, they all fly" attitude wherein if any one nation teleport-strikes another nation, due to the untraceable nature of these teleport-strikes, the stricken nation will end up teleport-striking all other nations with teleporters and all the other teleport-capable nations will end up fucking each other over?

Oooooh, yeah, that's a problem. Teleport-bombs are untraceable and incredibly deniable; you'd see various asshole organizations like the CIA using them gratuitously to teleport purely conventional bombs and then going "oh well that wasn't us."

Or doing relatively subtle things like teleporting vials of carcinogenic liquid into their enemy's pockets. The KGB would teleport polonium into people's desks. The CIA would teleport LSD-soaked cigars into Fidel Castro's humidor, and so on.

[Ahriman238]

So... basically the Teraport Wars from Schlock, if the man who invented the Teraport hadn't also come up with a counter and widely distributed the specs for both?

If you can be really precise iwth the things, you could teleport the drug or poison of your choice into a target's body. Or teleport his heart onto your desk as a trophy.

[Simon_Jester]

I think SM93's Vagueporter is transmitter-to-anywhere; you can't beam things to yourself from another place.

[Uraniun235]

Doesn't work. Whether or not the teleportation process takes a microsecond, a day, a week, a millenium, if the bomb arrives with a nanosecond left on the timer, you have a nanosecond to get rid of it. The relevant issue is the time you have before the bomb goes off. How long it took to somehow get here is completely irrelevant.

If the timing on the teleporter is precise enough to reliably place an object somewhere to within a nanosecond of the desired delivery time, you could probably teleport a bomb over that was already beginning to explode.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes. You definitely could, although the volume occupied by the explosion might (for nuclear weapons) prove problematic if the SM93 Vagueporter can't handle objects three or four feet across. Light-speed issues, y'know.

[Shroom Man 777]

I do not know- my impression was that SM93 was describing a teleporter that could only send things to a specific known location, like "five thousand kilometers that way." If I can use some kind of magic spy-ray to figure out what's at the other end before teleporting anything there, then this game gets a whole new dimension in craziness. Because I can use the spy-ray for reconnaissance without teleporting bombs or anything else.

If it was a spy-ray that granted near-omniscience, then the game's pretty much over.

This is why I proposed constructing copious decoys...

Yeah, this is true. The enemy's intelligence could keep an eye and track specialized component systems for teleporter construction to see where Nation X is potentially emplacing teleporters. But if you go with closed societies like China or the USSR, with entire secret teleporter cities, tracking them will be much harder with the bragskirovkas and shits.

This works, but is very expensive. Watchmen was written in 1985, when most Americans greatly overestimated the size of the Soviet Union's economy and its internal stability; in real life if we break out our hand-cranked adding machines and so on, I do not know if the Soviets (or any other normal country not willing and able to spend countless zillions of dollars) would be able to maintain the enormous and terrible overkill this would take.

If the teleporters are way more expensive and difficult to construct than nukes, nuke-spam might work.

You only need enough nukes to overwhelm the enemy's existing teleportation networks. The proportion of nukes will depend on the enemy's teleportation whatevers. It'll only get crazy if the enemy's teleportation systems are also insanely numerous.



Anyway, this depends on the cost and the size and the whatevers of the teleportation machine, its range, and how it stacks up to conventional systems.

Like if you have a teleporter the size of a table or a sofa or bookshelf, and it has a range of several hundred meters and costs like a million bucks, a cheap price for a relatively small machine that can rape the laws of reality. Okay, that's cool.

But a gun also has a range of several hundred meters, it might not be as instantaneous as teleporting bombs inside people, but it's cheaper, it's lighter, and a soldier would rather haul a rifle or a mortar through mountains and deserts and swamps rather than the bigger heavier clunkier crate-shaped teleporter machine that has a similar effective range.

For a range of thousands of KMs, the teleporter might need to be as large as a building.

But a cruise missile is way smaller and has similar ranges, AND is easier to carry on an aircraft or warship.

[S.L.Acker]

The teleporter itself can't be hard to build if SM's teleporter tanks and Humvee's are anything to go by. A man portable unit is able to fire an object the size of a stinger missile at about stinger missile range (8km), so either that's some sort of sweet spot for range and mass, or SM hasn't done any math on how this thing's energy needs scale.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, this is true. The enemy's intelligence could keep an eye and track specialized component systems for teleporter construction to see where Nation X is potentially emplacing teleporters. But if you go with closed societies like China or the USSR, with entire secret teleporter cities, tracking them will be much harder with the bragskirovkas and shits.

You don't even need it to be that closed- really, if the components for a teleporter can be broken down and put on trucks, you can hide them in all kinds of places. People will find some, but not all, or you'll never really know you'd found them all.

This works, but is very expensive. Watchmen was written in 1985, when most Americans greatly overestimated the size of the Soviet Union's economy and its internal stability; in real life if we break out our hand-cranked adding machines and so on, I do not know if the Soviets (or any other normal country not willing and able to spend countless zillions of dollars) would be able to maintain the enormous and terrible overkill this would take.

If the teleporters are way more expensive and difficult to construct than nukes, nuke-spam might work.

You only need enough nukes to overwhelm the enemy's existing teleportation networks. The proportion of nukes will depend on the enemy's teleportation whatevers. It'll only get crazy if the enemy's teleportation systems are also insanely numerous.

Well, the plan is to make sure that you can launch enough nukes for a killing blow even if the enemy launches a surprise teleport-nuke attack. For that purpose, you could take a lot of damage in the opening minutes of an atack; it depends on the cooldown time of the bomb-teleporters as much as it depends on the number of the things.

So you need a LOT of missiles, and you need them in fairly expensive "moment's notice" launch systems so that they aren't destroyed on the ground. Which greatly increases the cost, though yes it can still be cheap compared to teleporters.

Like if you have a teleporter the size of a table or a sofa or bookshelf, and it has a range of several hundred meters and costs like a million bucks, a cheap price for a relatively small machine that can rape the laws of reality. Okay, that's cool.

But a gun also has a range of several hundred meters, it might not be as instantaneous as teleporting bombs inside people, but it's cheaper, it's lighter, and a soldier would rather haul a rifle or a mortar through mountains and deserts and swamps rather than the bigger heavier clunkier crate-shaped teleporter machine that has a similar effective range.

For a range of thousands of KMs, the teleporter might need to be as large as a building.

But a cruise missile is way smaller and has similar ranges, AND is easier to carry on an aircraft or warship.

Yes, but at that point the teleporter's other advantages start to kick in.

Also, the size difference becomes smaller. Cruise missiles aren't that big, but ICBMs are pretty damn huge; I don't know if you've ever seen ICBMs close up but it's impressive. A fixed installation the size of a building, compared to a large group of individual ICBM silos, the offices, and the and spaces to maintain them... well, suddenly you're not saving as much room as you think.

There's also the no-warning nature of the attack (great for sneak attacks or quickly executed operations of other kinds), and the fact that it's totally noninterceptable. Cruise missiles can be shot down, you see, it just isn't easy.

[Shroom Man 777]

Which is why I emphasized bombers and subs in my previous posts because ICBMs being static and huge and immobile and visible are pretty much no different from the long-range immobile static huge strategic teleporters, except slower and harder to conceal, whereas bombers and subs while using similar systems to ICBMs (long-range cruise/ballistic missiles) have other attributes that set them apart and give them other advantages, like mobility and stealth and survivability.

Ideally, a nation would have its own teleporters to counter the enemy's teleporters and close the Teleportation Gap. But even without teleporters, a nation can still pose a credible threat and maintain a deterrent to deter a teleport-capable enemy.


Maybe a teleporter's systems can be arranged in such a fashion that it fits into a train, so instead of one huge immobile building, you've got multiple connected train cars moving along the lines. They'll be hard to spot, especially if there are fleets of decoy (read: normal full-of-people) trains going along everywhere, and they'll be mobile, and if you can fit the teleporters into all the cars, they'll still have all the systems of a building-sized teleporter.

Or a fleet of 18-wheeler trucks, each hauling a teleporter component. When the nukes come, they go off into the interstate and into the highway and wherever, go into the middle of nowhere and assemble their teleporter-trailers, and start teleporting nukes.

[Simon_Jester]

Which is why I emphasized bombers and subs in my previous posts because ICBMs being static and huge and immobile and visible are pretty much no different from the long-range immobile static huge strategic teleporters, except slower and harder to conceal, whereas bombers and subs while using similar systems to ICBMs (long-range cruise/ballistic missiles) have other attributes that set them apart and give them other advantages, like mobility and stealth and survivability.

Ideally, a nation would have its own teleporters to counter the enemy's teleporters and close the Teleportation Gap. But even without teleporters, a nation can still pose a credible threat and maintain a deterrent to deter a teleport-capable enemy.

Yes, as long as they maintain the deterrent rigorously and the enemy doesn't get lucky. Still though, any actual conflict gets decided by strategic weapons: if both sides have teleporters, both sides teleport bombs over intercontinental distances and blow each other to hell. If one side has teleporters and the other doesn't, they may still blow each other to hell, but only if the guy without teleporters has all manner of other deterrents.

Against smaller, weaker states that lack powerful deterrent forces, the teleport bomb is practically invincible, both in war and in covert operations- unlike a ballistic missile, you can use it to do small, subtle acts of dickery, not just to carve your name in the landscape in mile-high burning letters.

Which was my original point to SM93, that no, wars will not be decided by fights between tanks and ships armed with weird teleport guns that act just like normal guns only a little better. Because the power to teleport arbitrarily sized bombs wherever I please from hundreds of miles away makes it nearly impossible to fight a conventional war at all. There's no such thing as a perimeter, no way to secure anything important, no way to anticipate what the enemy can and cannot attack at a given time, or when they can attack a given place. It's the defender's nightmare.

Maybe a teleporter's systems can be arranged in such a fashion that it fits into a train, so instead of one huge immobile building, you've got multiple connected train cars moving along the lines. They'll be hard to spot, especially if there are fleets of decoy (read: normal full-of-people) trains going along everywhere, and they'll be mobile, and if you can fit the teleporters into all the cars, they'll still have all the systems of a building-sized teleporter.

Or a fleet of 18-wheeler trucks, each hauling a teleporter component. When the nukes come, they go off into the interstate and into the highway and wherever, go into the middle of nowhere and assemble their teleporter-trailers, and start teleporting nukes.

These ideas are cool (AUTOBOTS, ASSEMBLE), but I'm not sure how well they'd work. Ideas like this have been considered for transporting ICBMs too- the Russians tried it to some extent; the US never did, apparently because it screws with the railroad timetables if you secure the nuclear warheads on the trucks or trains properly.

Anyway it doesn't matter. You will probably see land-based teleporters, and decoy land-based teleporters that are designed to make people waste teleport-bombs on useless barns and abandoned coal mines.And you will see submarines with bomb teleporters, and maybe even giant XB-0 planes with nuclear reactors and bomb teleporters. Something like that.

What you will not see, but what SM93 seemed to be imagining, is something like a modern "tank" armed with a teleport gun that only fires over short distances. Except possibly as a special-purpose vehicle, and even then there isn't a lot of point in building them when you can have strategic-range teleporters ready hundreds of miles away to provide all the firepower support you need.

[Shroom Man 777]

Okay. I wasn't reading any of SM93's posts anyway.

[Number Theoretic]

I wonder if this teleportation technology could also be used to enhance the logistic and communications capabilites of your distributed command network and army. If it can teleport bombs, it can teleport any kind of matter, like spare parts needed by field units or submarines. Or i can teleport hard drives between computers around the world or in orbit to achieve effective FTL communication. So maybe the technology helps to solve the very same problem it created: it requires an army to become super-stealth and super distributed but it also makes logistics required by such an army feasible and it wouldn't require as magitech as i initally thought to make military units effectively autonomous.

[Darth Tanner]

Your limited to something the size of a stinger warhead so it would be slow work to teleport supplies around unless it’s cheap/quick to do a teleport and I don't see why teleporting hard drives around would be that much more effective than current speeds. Presumably you'd lose any speed advantage by having to have a tech/robot arm attach the hard drive once it’s been teleported where you want it.

It could revolutionise Amazon Prime though.

[Starglider]

I don't see why teleporting hard drives around would be that much more effective than current speeds.

It would be completely secure, unjammable and undetectable, a massive improvement over radio based systems. Also bandwidth is a huge constraint for modern military intelligence and C&C systems.

Presumably you'd lose any speed advantage by having to have a tech/robot arm attach the hard drive once it’s been teleported where you want it.

Assuming the teleporter can target a reasonably small chamber, you would use wlan or (for high bandwidth) optically interfaced inductively powered data bricks. Latency would be at most a few milliseconds. Although most likely the technology produces a noticeable signature (EM or otherwise) when it activates, and you could blink it at very low power and/or modulate the effect to act as a direct communications device.

[S.L.Acker]

Your limited to something the size of a stinger warhead so it would be slow work to teleport supplies around unless it’s cheap/quick to do a teleport and I don't see why teleporting hard drives around would be that much more effective than current speeds. Presumably you'd lose any speed advantage by having to have a tech/robot arm attach the hard drive once it’s been teleported where you want it.

It could revolutionise Amazon Prime though.

You're not limited to something the size of a Stinger, that was just what was given for the small vehicle mounted system SM93 envisioned.

[Eternal_Freedom]

If you can teleport larger things, could you use it to deploy spec ops teams behind enemy lines? For instance, beam a large bunch of SEALs or SAS into the Kremlin or similar places.

[S.L.Acker]

Depends on if it's a kill you and rebuild a perfect copy style teleporter, or a bends space type of teleporter.

[Simon_Jester]

Using it for 'courier' transportation- sure, there's latency, but you can send a terabyte of information in one go. For some purposes that's not worth it; for others it is.

I wonder if this teleportation technology could also be used to enhance the logistic and communications capabilites of your distributed command network and army. If it can teleport bombs, it can teleport any kind of matter, like spare parts needed by field units or submarines. Or i can teleport hard drives between computers around the world or in orbit to achieve effective FTL communication.

Teleportation need not be FTL. I think if we ever do discover a teleporter, it will operate at the speed of light in vacuum, allowing "lightlike" movement through spacetime, but not "spacelike."

So maybe the technology helps to solve the very same problem it created: it requires an army to become super-stealth and super distributed but it also makes logistics required by such an army feasible and it wouldn't require as magitech as i initally thought to make military units effectively autonomous.

True, perhaps- but the problem is that you're still vulnerable to strategic warfare against the domestic economy, unless you can distribute production. You don't just need many teleporter paths to get an object from A to B, you need backup facilities A' and B' in case one of them gets blown up.

[Nyrath]

Most of this is covered in Larry Niven's The Theory And Practice Of Teleportation.

[Simon_Jester]

Not necessarily- that spends rather more time talking about possible methods, and social implications; less about military implications.