capt midnight wrote:Along this line, if you're wanting some quality autonomous tank reading, look for a series of books written by Keith Laumer, called BOLOs. I bet a bunch of folks on here would enjoy them. I've been reading them for years.
Bill
Thanks for the tip, Captn.

My list of writers to explore grows longer by the day! In fact, my coffee table's already labouring under the weight of 'priority' reads.. , and the shelves are sagging with the next lot to catch up on. I see that Laumer died some time ago but writers, especially sci-fi writers, often anticipate technological breakthroughs long before they happen. On the Forum, I expect Painless has probably leafed through a few of his books.
I'd never heard the 'Bolo' term until you mentioned it, but checking in the 'search' box here brings up a few references in archived threads. With drones being to the fore in the modern world of surveillance and warfare, 'Driverless' tanks are an obvious development. Where wars are conducted remotely, pilots and tankers are not actually mashed up by cannon shells, or spalling. What better then for crew life-expectancy, than an Armata T-14 with no actual crew on board, eh? They can be sipping a vodka hundreds of miles from the front line, safe in the knowledge that if the tank is wasted; they won't be. Thus- by extension- WW3 could actually be fought like W.O.T. The combatants go home to their loved ones, and their vehicles to the scrapyard.

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please"- Mark Twain.