Modern Ground Warfare

# Tactics

With orbital laser and kinetic weapons capable of easily destroying massed force concentrations with pinpoint precision, massed "ground combat" mostly occurs only in megacities and space habitats where spaceborne firepower is inffective at doing much other than razing. Military ground forces are therefore mostly composed of small (0.1-2 ton) maneuverable multirole combat morphs intended to fight in relatively tight conditions, such as the Rockhound. Ubiquitous targeting effectively provides perfect aimbot accuracy (a synthmorph could in principle shoot slower bullets out of the air, or take out eyeballs from a kilometer away), but in practice laser dazzlers and very effective ECM makes targeting in synth-vs-synth combat largely a matter of guesswork. Combat doctrine typically involves minimizing direct enemy contact as much as possible, using invisible synthmorphs and drones to locate enemy units and eliminate with long ranged fire and drone strikes before they realize the opponent is there. Combat forces are usually seperated into small self sufficient fireteams capable of as much independent operation as possible, as bunching up forces is practical suicide and there is no guarantee that long range communications will remain reliable under battlefield ECM.

# Weapons and Armor

Ground combat tends to involve a mix of kinetic and energy weapons in a direct fire role. Pulsed free-electron lasers using self focusing are standard direct fire infantry weapons - superconducting magnetic energy storage provides the necessary energy densities for effective combat laser weaponry, and self-focusing enables extreme penetration and range (though, contrary to popular perception, are very loud and noisy around the few meters long self-focusing region, see here for a close portrayal). Adaptive multi-spectrum smartmatter phased arrays, fully covering the surfaces of most modern war machines, are also used as ECM and point defence weapons - these are less mass efficient than traditional laser systems, but can instantly steer the beam onto anything within line of sight without needing to move the whole emitter. These can also provide effective invisibility to synthmorphs by matching incident light and emissions.

Particle beams are occasionally used on heavy morphs as well - these typically have much shorter range in atmosphere than lasers, need long accelerator tubes and have major radiation shielding requirements, but at high relativistic beam velocities can achieve extreme penetration.

Grenades are normally deployed via either micromissiles or loitering drone munitions, with octaazacubane explosives dramatically increasing explosive power. Micromissiles are normally salvoed to bypass point defenses - due to fragmentation being essentially useless against modern armor HEAT and EFP warheads are most common. Kiloton yield autocatalytic nuclear weapons in the 2-100 kT range are occasionally also used for tactical fire support of infantry in situations when regular orbital support would be unavailable.

Infantry armor is almost always powered, using internal superconducting magnetic energy storage for power. Protection is provided via conventional diamondoid armor covered by a programmable adaptive layer of quantum dot smartmatter.

# Support

A typical combat morph is backed by a wide range of support drones in a typical engagement, including stealth reconaissance artificial insects, micro-UAVs serving as launch platforms for gyrojet grenades, and droppable stealth mortar pods. Small invisible bee-sized drones (widely known as Synsects) used for observation and long distance unjammable laser comm relay are necessary for maintaining effectiveness battlefield awareness and coordination - destroying the opponent's Synsect network while maintaining ones own is one of the most key aspects of modern land warfare.

The extreme durability of nanomaterial armor against overpressure and fragmentation makes conventional explosive artillery rather ineffective - even a 1-kiloton tactical nuclear airburst has a reliable kill radius of only ten meters against a typical midrange infantry morph like a Rockhound. Artillery therefore typically uses cluster warheads containing numerous sensor fuzed munitions, with magnetohydrodynamic explosively formed penetrators capable of defeating armor at dozens of meters.

Traditional tanks have mostly been obsoleted by particle beams and changing battlefield conditions. The closest equivalent is lightweight 5-10 ton wheeled mobile vehicles dependent mostly on active protection and stealth and used as platforms for 100-200 megawatt range particle beams, for heavy direct fire support and targeted irradiation of city blocks. Fighter drones still exist to an extent, though are dependent on stealth and extreme ECM for survival due to their vulnerability to directed energy weapons.