That's not equivalent to something like a modern tank's turret, which is an *actual part of the vehicle's structure*. A Rheinmetall Rh-120 hypervelocity tank cannon weighs 4,160 kilograms including the gun mount; rounded off, that's only five tons.
The Rheinmetall Rh-120 (I actually say that last night but decided to not include it because it wasn't an autocannon) is also hand fed. But I have to ask how much of that weight also includes the stabilizer and the control motors for fine adjustment? (Do modern tanks do horizontal or only vertical for fine adjustments? I suppose they could move the entire turret, but that seems like a waste of power if you've only got to adjust for like a degree)
So 120mm is /10 to /20 range at 5 ish tons? That's like seven tons minimum to pull it up to BT weight for ammo feed, automated loading, control/adjustment motors, etc.
It's kinda long though, isn't it? Isn't part of the BT 'issue' how short barreled most of their weapons are?
In terms of computer tech, I don't think they actually beat us, but I also don't think that we necessarily beat them. Yeah they have extremely rugged computing technology, but it's volume/weight to processing power ratio is pretty doo doo. In the same weight and space we could jam in enough processing power to jump ahead.
And most of their comps are really purpose built, yeah?
With what we've already got, I think we've got more than enough to turn away just about any smaller (Lance to battalion) force without breaking out biiiiig weapons.
So long as we accept that we
can chip away at their armor. Because even if we don't have the ballistics for whatever reason, we do have artillery and missiles that match or exceed along.
And that they weren't they for a raid. I don't think we could respond fast enough to a raid.
If an RCTEQ dropped on us for an invasion, we'd win through attrition I think. We just have the reserves (Because we have sane military numbers). They'd still likely wreck a lot of infrastructure.
But if the entire Crucis Lancers dropped on us like they did on Tikonov, we'd lose.
At least for tech up to the Civil War/Clanners still being Clanners. Once the EWAR suites start being used en masse, and they start fielding energy boats with their (definitely pretty awesome) AMS' along with more combined arms tactics, I think we'd start to lose against smaller and smaller forces. Or have to use the 'tactical weapons' with increasing frequency.
And if they rolled up with a Warship, they could just threaten ortillery and probably get a lot of nations to just fold.
I'm actually curious about the air frame gap. I realize we don't have ASFs but in atmo, how'd you think we'd hold up?