The Logistics of Mecha

[Pablo Sanchez]

Napolean once said that amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. This is eminently logical and quite correct, for it would be impossible for even a military genius to win against an idiot, if his army is starving and out of supplies. Winning is only half the fun, first your army has to be capable of even contesting the outcome.

This can be applied to the mech versus tanks (or other conventional weapons platforms) quite easily, and is in some cases even more decisive than the argument on combat capabilities.

Fuel Efficiency:

Tanks are notorious fuel hogs, particularly those with the gas-turbine engines. A tank offensive requires a massive logistical network to sustain it. But a mecha-based army would require even more. Compare the amount of work in moving a mecha to the task of moving a tank. A tank's engine must simply drive its tracks. In order to move forward, a mecha's powerplant must lift one leg, move it forward, and set it on the ground at a reasonably slow velocity. Then it must repeat this process, over and over again. A mecha of a large size, moving at any appreciable speed, will consume many times the amount of fuel consumed by a tank.

This would make an offensive by mechas virtually unsustainable. To move a formation of mecha equivalent in power to a tank division, you would need several times the fuel transport and logistical base. In hostile areas, this means several times as much force left in the rear to guard your line of supply. Mecha would also be terribly vulnerable to being cut off. When a tank runs out of fuel, it still maintains some utility. Even after a total power failure, its turret can be manually traversed and its gun fired by simple optical targetting. A mecha without fuel has a combat utility of zero. It cannot even shoot without power.

The Three Rs:

One of the important lessons in warfare has been this: things break. Some of the better efforts in design have been invalidated by the bitter reality of combat, and as such, the best weapons have usually been those best equipped to function in adverse conditions. Nowadays, most designers focus much of their attention on two things: Reliability and Repairs.

For example: A tank is a complex device, and when any part of it fails, it can be catastrophic to the vehicles performance. If the track breaks, for example, the tank is immobile and therefore little more than a dangerous target. Any major mechanical failure can take a tank out of action for hours, severe battle damage can take much longer. This is due to its complexity as a platform. With thousands of parts and a total cost in the millions of dollars, a tank is a difficult thing for a repairman to master, and there are many things that can go wrong.

A mecha is many times as complex, and, given equal skill in the design and engineering, it will always be less reliable and more difficult to repair. Consider the effort necessary to move the mecha. The movement of a leg requires work in multiple different directions, two legs means many different engines working in different directions, any one of which will totally immobilize the entire suit on failing. And a leg failure on a bipedal mecha could result in a fall, inflicting damage on the vehicle (there is no such danger in a tank). And, given the number and relative complexity of a mecha's motors, they would be far more difficult and time consuming to repair; mecha with their array of moving parts are also more likely to fail in adverse conditions. The vast number of moving parts also adds to the time and expense of training men to repair the vehicle.

Then we can add the third R, one that applies only to post-combat operations: Recovery. When a tank is immobilized, and the side owning it retains control of the battlefield, they typically do their utmost to save money. They send a recovery vehicle (often a turretless tank) to tow it back to the rear for repairs. This is often a difficult process (German forces recovering Tiger IIs often needed three or more prime movers to tow the massive tanks), but it is greatly facilitated by the tank's treads. All the prime movers have to do is push or pull, and the tank will obligingly roll along.

The same cannot be said for a mech. It's method of movement is walking, which means that the relatively simple act of taking back for repairs would be incredibly difficult for a Gundam-sized mecha. The mecha military in question would be forced to maintain a fleet of absolutely massive flatbed trucks, and that still leaves the seperate problem of actually loading the mecha onto the truck. Perhaps the most efficient way to recover and repair a mecha would be to dismantle it into component parts, transport it back for repairs, and reassemble it. But this would be far more time consuming than a recovery and repair operation on a tank! Soviet repairmen were sometimes able to restore badly damaged tanks (that had even been reported as killed by the Germans) within hours! No such luck for a mecha.

Cost:

A person no less influential than V.I. Lenin once said that quantity has a quality all its own. While it would probably be possible for a nation to produce a force of 50 million dollar tanks with excellent performance, there are other concerns. Chief among them is the question of price.

Tanks are by no means cheap. A modern MBT costs millions of dollars to construction, and takes a lot of factory time. But a mecha would be far worse. A mecha's far greater mechanical complexity (and in some cases, size) would lead to a vastly larger pricetag. This is an important concern, particularly in a competition with tanks. A tank of equivalent power would be far cheaper than any mecha could be, particularly mecha in the Japanese anime tradition (with articulated hands, non-fixed weapons, and a human-like construction).


In conclusion, even ignoring the questions of combat effectiveness, mecha as a weapon of war are of dubious value. In order for a mecha to prove its value as a fighting machine, it would first have to be able to meet the enemy on the field of battle.

[Setzer]

Very nicely done.

[TrailerParkJawa]

You make some pretty good points. I think one aspect of WW2 that is sometimes ignored was the shear weight on American production of war material. We were able to swamp the enemy with numbers of tanks, jeeps, transports, planes, etc, that they could not even dream of producing themselves.

When its comes ot Mecha, they get the cool factor for cartoons. But on the battlefield they are too expensive, fragile, and targets for swarms of missiles like the Javelin carried by teams of Rangers, Marines, freedom fighters, etc.

[data_link]

You are quite correct in most of your points. We all agree that mecha are impractical batte units. I do have one nitpick however: the method of recovering a Mecha would be to send another Mech to carry it home, much as one soldier would carry a wounded comrade. Nobody in their right mind would suggest using a truck.

[Sea Skimmer]

You are quite correct in most of your points. We all agree that mecha are impractical batte units. I do have one nitpick however: the method of recovering a Mecha would be to send another Mech to carry it home, much as one soldier would carry a wounded comrade. Nobody in their right mind would suggest using a truck.

That assumes you have mecha that can lift and remain stable while carrying another. You're also going to have insane amount of pressure on the ground regardless.

Normal vehicle recovery methods are simply to drag the thing along unless it’s a total wreck, in which case recovery is not an issue. Mecha don't roll real well but a large truck, mabey a very low multi legged platform similer to the Clone Armies artillery peices might work.

[Patrick Ogaard]

The only practical -- if practical is a word that can be applied to mecha -- method for mecha recovery that I can envision right off hand would be dependent on making the things modular, with a quick release function for separating the mecha into head, torso, arms and legs, in which case a recovery vehicle or recovery mecha would cart off only the damaged portion(s). Ideally, a replacement would immediately be installed, allowing repairs to be carried out on the damaged component in a rear area.

In particular, that type of modularity would make it possible to quickly cannibalize "killed" units, using their still-functional limb assemblies as impromptu replacements. If the separation points are sufficiently robust and idiot proof, mecha might be cannibalized on the spot, using the buddy system: mecha A (disabled permanently but with one or more still-functional limbs) has those limbs removed by the undamaged mecha B, and mecha B then snaps the undamaged limbs on those friendly mecha in need of immediate limb replacements.

Ultimately, of course, such a scheme would require a lot of spare major assemblies, a potential logistics nightmare that also brings with it the problem that those replacement assemblies would represent multiple complete mecha not being deployed. After all, simply snap together a head, torso, 2 arms and 2 legs, and you've got a functioning unit.

[Exonerate]

In real life, Mechas wouldn't be used anyways

[Neko_Oni]

Yeah agreed, Mecha look cool and all (at least in my opinion) but they just don't make effective combat units. Maybe they will have some uses in other areas *shrug*, but never combat.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

They would make pretty good space construction vehicles, IMO.
And neko: who's the avatar?

[Vympel]

They would make pretty good space construction vehicles, IMO.
And neko: who's the avatar?

Bah, I don't know about that. Why have a complex bipedal machine as a construction vehicle when you can have a much simpler platform that uses tracks?

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

Bah, I don't know about that. Why have a complex bipedal machine as a construction vehicle when you can have a much simpler platform that uses tracks?

SPACE CONSTRUCTION VEHICLES. Emphasis on the first word.

[Patrick Ogaard]

They would make pretty good space construction vehicles, IMO.
And neko: who's the avatar?

Bah, I don't know about that. Why have a complex bipedal machine as a construction vehicle when you can have a much simpler platform that uses tracks?

A classic space bottle or a workpod would make a much more efficient space construction vehicle. In a microgravity or zero-gravity environment, the only real use legs would have would be to allow the vehicle's balance to be shifted, something that small thrusters and robot arms could do just as easily, and with less dead weight.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

A classic space bottle or a workpod would make a much more efficient space construction vehicle. In a microgravity or zero-gravity environment, the only real use legs would have would be to allow the vehicle's balance to be shifted, something that small thrusters and robot arms could do just as easily, and with less dead weight.

Possibly the legs could be outboard engine platforms. THough any construction mecha would probably have more than two legs. It might end up looking like a spider.

[Vympel]

Bah, I don't know about that. Why have a complex bipedal machine as a construction vehicle when you can have a much simpler platform that uses tracks?

SPACE CONSTRUCTION VEHICLES. Emphasis on the first word.

I know. All you need for a space construction vehicle is propulsion to get around in space, a mode of propulsion to get around on the surface of what you're constructing (tracks being the most simple solution- look at R2), and the necessary appendages to do the construction work. That's all.

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

Bah, I don't know about that. Why have a complex bipedal machine as a construction vehicle when you can have a much simpler platform that uses tracks?

SPACE CONSTRUCTION VEHICLES. Emphasis on the first word.

I know. All you need for a space construction vehicle is propulsion to get around in space, a mode of propulsion to get around on the surface of what you're constructing (tracks being the most simple solution- look at R2), and the necessary appendages to do the construction work. That's all.

Good points. Possibly you would want multiple appendages to manipulate multiple objects at once. The main body would have tracks, and maybe some of the limbs would have tracks on them (To move efficiently up the inside of a large internal corridor)

[Neko_Oni]

Okay shameless JC plug here..

They have the standard space mecha in that..however they also have one called the Syreen, take a mecha cut off the legs put a motor there. Lot more realistic look. Basically it's just a vaguely humanoid space crane. Since the vehicle is controlled by a linear frame (sorta copies the pilot's movements with voice controls in addition) the humanoid shape would be more instinctive to the user. Maybe...

BTW the avatar is Kirika from Noir celebrating with Mirielle (off-screen).

[Typhonis 1]

Thers also the Typhon and the Apollo plus one more out now