[Mongoose]

Most of what you mentioned there sounds a lot like the multi-ped tanks that Shirow Masamune came up with in his Ghost in the Shell universe.  I've always looked on them as being one of the more practical fictional examples of walker-type vehicles.

[Thaeris]

Yalp. I noted the image StarSlayer posted and figured that was actually quite reasonable in many ways. 

I've just been "imagineering" some better methods to that concept.

[SpardaSon21]

I always thought a somewhat-plausible mecha design were the Landmates from the Appleseed movies.  Well, they are if you remove the handwavium-powered flight.

[NGTM-1R]

The Landmates are actually powered armor, tbh.

[SpardaSon21]

Big powered armor.

Hey, I think those are the closest we are ever going to get to mecha.  Any bigger and maneuverability starts to suffer, and maneuverability is one of the best reasons to use a bipedal chassis.  If its un-maneuverable, why are you using a bipedal chassis when a treaded chassis can carry more guns and armor for same maneuverability?

[TrashMan]

Who needs a tank when you can have a helicopter provide air support? At least when it comes to mountains, choopers >>> tanks/mecha

[NGTM-1R]

Who needs a tank when you can have a helicopter provide air support? At least when it comes to mountains, choopers >>> tanks/mecha

Helicopters do not like small arms fire.

Tanks however bathe in it.

[Scotty]

That's one way of putting it.  You could say they were allergic to bullets.  Helicopters may be mobile, but they are fragile, in any military sense of the word.  Tanks may be decidedly unfragile, but they can't get to near as many places.  'Mechs, plausible or not, provide a middle ground.

That and a walking tank is just frickin awesome.

[Narvi]

Wouldn't it be easier just to make an extendible turret or summat?

[Scotty]

Doesn't affect mobility.  The tank can still only go so many places.

[bizzybody]

The more things you try to make a single machine do, the worse it is at any of them. Look up the Main Battle Tank 70 project. It quickly became over complex, over sized, over weight, over budget, overly fragile and too frigging slow on any terrain. The prototype became an exercise in everything NOT to have in a main battle tank. IIRC, the designers of the M1 Abrams used the MBT 70 as an anti-inspirational device.

Now take the MBT 70 concept, give it powerful jet engines, wings and the ability to transform into a giant robot...

Another exercise in military hardware over enthusiasm was the Crusader artillery piece. The idea was spiffy. A single gun that could automatically adjust angle and firing times to simultaneously drop eight shells on a single target. Very un-spiffy was the thing was too big to be airlifted by a C5-A Galaxy and too heavy to be able to cross most of the bridges in its expected theater of operations, which it would have to be transported to by ship. Kudos to Rumsfeld for axing the waste of money. There's a fire and forget round for the M1 that can do the same job for a lot less money.

For fictional silly, David Drake's hovertanks. They seem like they'd be cool, but I can think of many ways to defeat them. Immobilizing them would be easy with a dry moat covered with a metal grid. If they got over the grid they'd drop onto it since the air would just blow through. Immobile non-hovering tanks. Another method, pop up mines that blast horizontally just above the ground to punch lots of holes through the tanks' metal skirts. *thud* More immobile targets. Depending on how well the fans are protected from threats above and below... mines that pop up fast enough to get past the anti-personnel charges then fire something downwards through the fans. IIRC one of the books has a scene where a mechanic is under a tank working and he can see the fans. Hellooooo, big minefields that blast lots of shrapnel upwards. They wouldn't even need any electronics, just an air pressure driven trigger to pop a percussion detonator.

The anime I've seen that has the best excuse for giant mecha* fisticuffs is Evangelion, but that's only because some of the 'angels' they fight are expressly intended to close to beat-em-up range with the EVAs.

*But of course they're actually giant organic humanoid constructs wearing powered armor/restraint suits.

[TrashMan]

Helicopters do not like small arms fire.

Then give them some armor. It's not like they can't carry it.

Really, as much as I like mecha, I see them as too complex and unreliable to be of any practical use on the battlefield (as a main battle unit).

[Flipside]

It's not the copter body that is the problem, it's the fact that its lift relies entirely on a few, extremely flimsy blades that cannot be protected and use extremely delicate technology to supply lift/banking etc. You cannot armour up a helicopter too well because of that, the heavier you make it, the more upward thrust required, the larger target the rotors become.

That's why copters tend to focus on anti-infantry, long range 'pop-up' attacks and stealth, because they really are not front-line weapons unless you have massive air superiority.

If you look at a helicopter at rest, the blades droop under their own weight, that flexibility is vital to how lift is achieved, add armour to those and the helicopter loses any pretence at manoeuvrability.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, BattleTech got that right - you can't really armor up a helicopter when it relies on rotors.

[NGTM-1R]

Then give them some armor. It's not like they can't carry it.

While the Hind does exist, it's still got rotors, and it's also still got a rather vunerable transmission for them. You can't really armor those things, or the engine intakes, very well.

[Thaeris]

The Hind... 

The only helo I know of that carries conventional bombs... and then goes on dive-bombing missions with them...

[Flipside]

I seem to recall the Hind also had a problem that, whilst it was extremely difficult to penetrate the armour at the front, the tail end was decidedly vulnerable?

[Thaeris]

Ever look at the tail rotor? You can see the transmission fairing on top of the tail boom. I believe most of the actual rotor structure is exposed as well.

Despite that fact, keep in mind most helicopters are like that anyway. The Hind is one tough cookie.

[General Battuta]

It was so tough, in fact, that it couldn't turn properly without overstressing, and Hind flights rehearsed joint maneuvers so one helicopter would be forced to do anything too dramatic.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Just make something like the Valkyrie (GROPOS episode, Babylon 5)


As for mecha. I still go with the Heavy Gear/VOTOMs philosophy that mecha will be a bridge between MBTs and infantry. They'll never replace MBTs but they'll serve as armoured troopers, or power armour troopers.

But big AT-ATs and Mechs? Probably not.