Starfist - 10 - A World of Hurt by Dan Cragg

Author:Dan Cragg [Cragg, Dan]
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-07-02T10:24:04.500000+00:00

From its beginnings in hot-air balloons in the mid-nineteenth century, military commanders have found aerial observation and intelligence gathering a valuable pursuit. But aerial observation has always been vulnerable to defeat. As soon as an observer is spotted by the object of its search, steps can be taken to hide or put out decoys. Even orbital satellites can be deceived by such measures. And aerial observation platforms, weather balloons, manned aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles have always been vulnerable to fire directed at them from the ground. Even orbital satellites were vulnerable to jamming or destruction by ground, air, or orbital-based weapon systems. And an enemy's intelligent use of camouflage just added to the problem. Those are simple facts that commanders who use aerial observation have always had to live with.

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The Confederation Marine Corps, on the other hand, being Marines, didn't believe they had to accept limitations just because everybody else did. And, as Marines, they believed firmly in taking care of their own. They wanted the use of UAVs for battlefield intelligence gathering, and didn't want the craft to be fooled or lost just because they could be seen by an enemy on the ground. So they came up with their own form of UAV, one that could be disguised as any manner of native flier that approximated its size. Sizes, actually; the Marines used two different UAVs that could variously look like bird, mammal, or large insect analogs--whatever flying creature was appropriate for where they were deployed. Not only could the Marine UAVs mimic the look of local flying fauna, they could mimic their actions. Some birds or their analogs constantly flap their wings in flight, while others use their wings sparingly and glide mostly on thermals. The same was true of flying mammals and their analogs. The bodies of flying insectoids commonly bop up and down between their wings, and jitter from side to side in flight. So could the Marines' UAVs, which could even adjust their thermal output to mimic the infrared signals of real fliers.

As soon as the Confederation Marines adopted their new UAVs, their UAV combat losses dropped dramatically.

The Confederation Army, which was still using UAVs that looked and acted like UAVs, continued to suffer heavy UAV combat losses and became intensely jealous. The Marines, being Marines, smiled smugly and basked in the army's jealousy. After a few campaigns and wars in which the Confederation Army lost a goodly number of UAVs, the army's then-chief of staff broke down and said "pretty please," and the Marines graciously allowed the army to license their UAV design. Confederation Army UAV losses dropped dramatically. That didn't mean the army stopped swearing about "those damn Marines." After all, didn't the army have an ancient tradition of bestowing its castoffs and obsolete equipment on the Marines? One should expectsome gratitude, they thought. But no, not from "those damn Marines"; they were too arrogant by more than half.

For initial operations on Maugham's Station, the Marines disguised their larger UAVs

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