Defending the AT-ST

[Jedi Master Spock]

Exactly how does a trebuchet exploit any weakness other than that stone fortresses are not indestructible?

Hit an AT-ST with a heavy-duty trebuchet, and it dies - either knocked over or crushed outright, depending on where you hit.

Then how did they trip? By primitively made rope in fact. If the joints have so much strength to them, then they can snap any nearly any cable.

That's not a structural failure. That the legs didn't simply snap through a tripwire simply means that the cable was strong enough to hold up against a few tons of blunt force, which means the AT-ST's momentum continued to carry it forward while its legs were delayed, which means it falls over due to poor balance.

The legs, however, are fine - they aren't destroyed or damaged, and the joints haven't been damaged by the tripwire, any more than my tripping on my way down the stairs torques my knee out of alignment. (Now, if I land on it wrong, that could still happen, but the act of tripping itself doesn't involve any strange torques on my joints.)

I meant that at 15 tons, it's too light to survive anything serious. A single shell from a MBT or a medium sized tank would finish it with ease. It's also very vulnerable to RPG fire or mortars, which are significantly less harmful to full sized tanks.

Well, yes, that's a common problem in the weight class. The AT-ST isn't anything special for that, and it's clearly not a MBT.

In terms of efficiency. A mountain bike is still a bike. It's not necessarily the most effective all-terrain human-powered vehicle. We can easily build something with 3 or 4 wheels and suspension and everything, and it would easily be far better at all-terrain transportation than a mountain bike. However, it's probably not cost effective.

I disagree.

People will spend $2,000 more for a mountain bike that's slightly more effective than an already solid model, and then spend another thousand dollars in accessories and modifications intended to improve its capabilities as an all-terrain vehicle. A good mountain bike has a suspension system.

If it were practical to build something human-powered with 3 or 4 wheels that could out-perform any mountain bike for a cost of less than $5,000 per unit, we'd see it on the market.

Most forests are not particularly dense once you get into them. In fact, in order for each large tree to get enough sunlight, they must be fairly spread out. It would be very rare for half-meter wide trees to be dense enough to vehicle passage altogether.

As in the range of 3-4 meters apart? That's not the least bit unusual outside of a redwood forest.

An 8m AT-ST, which is about 26 ft, is well into the tree branches. I don't see how it can duck all of those problems when it's that tall. And I doubt a forest of reasonable thickness can leave tracks exposed from above. Everything will be covered up in tree leaves.

If you knock trees over, you'll leave a trail of disturbance visible from above.

The branches are generally as easy to go through as the saplings.

First of all, we've never seen it go that fast, and possibly is practically impossible due to the G-forces on the crew. Tanks can be made faster too, but we limit their speeds due to safety reasons.

As I said, that would be about two strides per second. G-forces not significant at that point.

In real-life it should be. Too many interdependent high-stress parts.

Not at all. Engines have many interdependent high-stress parts - but if well maintained, can last years without parts failures.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this already, but a Bradley has very significant redundancy in it's wheels. Only a trend kill will stop it with doing massive damage, and the trend is not easy to hit. Plus the trends are so much lower to the ground and are not exposed from the front, which is probably the mostly likely direction to be hit in normal combat.

Tread kills are probably the easiest kind of damage to create on the Bradley's motive systems. From the front, they display a similarly difficult to hit target as an AT-ST's legs, of course, but that's not really an advantage over the AT-ST.

Or hit the ground or some other piece of armor. Hitting something half a meter off the ground is not easy as hitting something several meters up.

I don't see why the elevation is making a difference here unless you're behind low cover.

A Humvee could still carry more.

We're talking about internal cabin space, then? The AT-ST does indeed have very little of that. It's generally not suitable for transporting infantry.

Impossible, the recoil would be too dangerous for the AT-ST. Any advantage it currently has in terms of weapons is due to its recoilless gun. If you want use anything with recoil, the AT-ST is completely inappropriate.

Even the most powerful 76mm guns only have on the order of 6,000 kg m/s of recoil impulse (six times the old Soviet 45mm guns I mentioned), which, while enough to jostle a ~15 ton vehicle, is not enough to knock it over, especially if the gun is adequately housed.

A 45mm gun's recoil is not going to do anything significant to a 15 ton vehicle, bipedal or not. Very simply, for a light fighting vehicle designed to engage infantry, rather than serve as a tank destroyer, recoil is not a very significant issue.

Of course... recoilless rifles have been around for a while. They're just not very fashionable right now, with the exception of the Carl Gustav, but I could easily throw one or two large-bore recoilless rifles on a modern-weapons downgrade of an AT-ST for your tank-destroyer needs...

...which is common practice for a modern low-budget tank destroyer on a light vehicle chassis.

[Nonamer]

Hit an AT-ST with a heavy-duty trebuchet, and it dies - either knocked over or crushed outright, depending on where you hit.

Trebuchets are far less effective than cannons. I don't know why you're bring this up.

That's not a structural failure. That the legs didn't simply snap through a tripwire simply means that the cable was strong enough to hold up against a few tons of blunt force, which means the AT-ST's momentum continued to carry it forward while its legs were delayed, which means it falls over due to poor balance.

The legs, however, are fine - they aren't destroyed or damaged, and the joints haven't been damaged by the tripwire, any more than my tripping on my way down the stairs torques my knee out of alignment. (Now, if I land on it wrong, that could still happen, but the act of tripping itself doesn't involve any strange torques on my joints.)

Um, that is my point. The joints don't have enough strength to overpower what amounts to a simple rope. I can't imagine the joints surviving any sort of unexpected torque.

Well, yes, that's a common problem in the weight class. The AT-ST isn't anything special for that, and it's clearly not a MBT.

Hence it's too light to be particularly effective. It needs to be about twice as big.

I disagree.

People will spend $2,000 more for a mountain bike that's slightly more effective than an already solid model, and then spend another thousand dollars in accessories and modifications intended to improve its capabilities as an all-terrain vehicle. A good mountain bike has a suspension system.

If it were practical to build something human-powered with 3 or 4 wheels that could out-perform any mountain bike for a cost of less than $5,000 per unit, we'd see it on the market.

Boutique produces don't strike me as cost effective. Anyways, there's all sorts of mountain tricycles and quadricycle and other weird vehicles, but these are pretty rare. It's pretty rare for someone to intentionally go way offroad on a bike.

As in the range of 3-4 meters apart? That's not the least bit unusual outside of a redwood forest.

And why is that? Forests are surprisingly sparse at floor level. There may be spots where the tank can't go into, but for most forests navigation is not impossible.

If you knock trees over, you'll leave a trail of disturbance visible from above.

The branches are generally as easy to go through as the saplings.

Or low hanging branches. And you're not going to leave a path of destruction but probably something a lot less obvious, as you would have only destroyed the smaller trees.

As I said, that would be about two strides per second. G-forces not significant at that point.

Other than making the crew puke...

Not at all. Engines have many interdependent high-stress parts - but if well maintained, can last years without parts failures.

They don't actually. The piston is the only moving object that suffer heavy stress in an ICE. The whole thing may be complicated, but it's not interdependent and it's all well kept in a well protected case and well cooled case. Please note that ICE were invented in the 19th century and do not require enormous engineering efforts to design.

Tread kills are probably the easiest kind of damage to create on the Bradley's motive systems. From the front, they display a similarly difficult to hit target as an AT-ST's legs, of course, but that's not really an advantage over the AT-ST.

From the front it's a tiny part of the profile. Not to mention the rest of the front is the most heavily armored, so misses tend to do nothing.

I don't see why the elevation is making a difference here unless you're behind low cover.

Any miss has a good chance of hitting the ground just due to how low the treads are. At at 3-4 km, that's a hard place to target.

We're talking about internal cabin space, then? The AT-ST does indeed have very little of that. It's generally not suitable for transporting infantry.

And carrying heavy objects too. I'll bet anything bigger than a dune buggt can carry more than the AT-ST.

Even the most powerful 76mm guns only have on the order of 6,000 kg m/s of recoil impulse (six times the old Soviet 45mm guns I mentioned), which, while enough to jostle a ~15 ton vehicle, is not enough to knock it over, especially if the gun is adequately housed.

A 45mm gun's recoil is not going to do anything significant to a 15 ton vehicle, bipedal or not. Very simply, for a light fighting vehicle designed to engage infantry, rather than serve as a tank destroyer, recoil is not a very significant issue.

Of course... recoilless rifles have been around for a while. They're just not very fashionable right now, with the exception of the Carl Gustav, but I could easily throw one or two large-bore recoilless rifles on a modern-weapons downgrade of an AT-ST for your tank-destroyer needs...

...which is common practice for a modern low-budget tank destroyer on a light vehicle chassis.

Still a major shortcoming. You can have the option to put heavy guns on a Bradley, you can't on a AT-ST. It's always possible for things like rail guns or gauss guns to suddenly become popular.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I'm quite unconvinved of the efficiency of a tank in a forest.
All examples of forests I've seen, even growing on flat lands, don't look particularily forgiveable to anything that can't quickly

Just as a human, count the times you actually have to turn to avoid trees. You rarely manage to walk in a straight line for more than a couple of tens of seconds, at best.

Most of the trees I have to avoid aren't even of the size of those small ones easily trampled over by tanks.

They're just so many of those 50~80 cm wide big lumps of wood.

Which are easily dwarfed by the behemots of Endor.

I was asking myself if a tank in Endor would have stood a chance, but it seems unlikely. The terrain seems way too hazardous, and the trees just too close to each other to allow what is nothing more than a big rectangle seen from above to manoeuver at ease.

Then I thought that if an AT-AT is considered a viable vehicle on such terrain, then a tank would stand a chance, but that's bull, because an AT-AT can easily topple the trees I've been talking about (though it would fail destroying the massive trees which the Ewoks built their villages upon).
Plus the AT-AT's feet are probably as huge as a tank itself, and if a foot gets stuck, it still can pull it off any hole, while the tank... is stuck once and for all.

[Jedi Master Spock]

Trebuchets are far less effective than cannons. I don't know why you're bring this up.

Because a trebuchet is the classic example of a device used to throw car-sized objects at things.

Sure, there exist such things; but they're generally not very easy to hide or aim. You easily get the momentum needed to knock over an AT-ST with such a large projectile, but large projectiles mean large bombs, large traps, etc.

Um, that is my point. The joints don't have enough strength to overpower what amounts to a simple rope. I can't imagine the joints surviving any sort of unexpected torque.

Failing to sever a cable several inches in diameter with a leg is not exactly a structural failing... and as I pointed out, tripping has nothing to do with the joint strength.

Hence it's too light to be particularly effective. It needs to be about twice as big.

Not for the anti-infantry role. There are other vehicles in the weight class.

Boutique produces don't strike me as cost effective. Anyways, there's all sorts of mountain tricycles and quadricycle and other weird vehicles, but these are pretty rare. It's pretty rare for someone to intentionally go way offroad on a bike.

There are very few mountain tricycles and quadricycles because - although they can offer far lower gearing and cover a slightly steeper slope because they don't need to rely on gyroscopes - the vehicle has worse turn rates, lower efficiency, etc etc - it's generally outperformed by mountain bikes on all the most common sorts of terrain.

Or low hanging branches. And you're not going to leave a path of destruction but probably something a lot less obvious, as you would have only destroyed the smaller trees.

See what Mr. Oragahn wrote.

Other than making the crew puke...

Presumably they're not that motion sensitive. It's not that much jostling.

They don't actually. The piston is the only moving object that suffer heavy stress in an ICE. The whole thing may be complicated, but it's not interdependent and it's all well kept in a well protected case and well cooled case. Please note that ICE were invented in the 19th century and do not require enormous engineering efforts to design.

Hm? The piston is far from the only moving object that needs to experience torque, and far from the only object whose failure means bad things for the engine. (Actually, a single piston failing won't kill an engine, unlike, say, a drive shaft failure, a transmission failure, etc.)

Etc. The gasoline ICE wasn't invented until the late 19th century because it's such a mechanically complex device.

From the front it's a tiny part of the profile.

Like an AT-ST, in other words, except with the target more compact. There's a reason treads were considered prime target area in WWII for those infantry with guns big enough to damage them.

Any miss has a good chance of hitting the ground just due to how low the treads are. At at 3-4 km, that's a hard place to target.

At 3-4 km, it's pretty much impossible to target. Likewise with the AT-ST's legs.

And carrying heavy objects too. I'll bet anything bigger than a dune buggt can carry more than the AT-ST.

And we have no way of verifying the claim to inferior external haulage.

Still a major shortcoming. You can have the option to put heavy guns on a Bradley, you can't on a AT-ST. It's always possible for things like rail guns or gauss guns to suddenly become popular.

Actually, you don't really have the option to fit a Bradley with a heavy gun. Not without a lot of new parts, and the Bradley is quite heavy enough as it is. Sticking something significantly larger than a 76mm - i.e., something large enough to give an AT-ST recoil problems, like a 100+mm gun - would basically require a complete redesign of the vehicle.

When you consider that the AT-ST already has a more powerful gun than any modern light tank has a right to mount, and can probably upgrade that by a factor of ten if redesigned as a tank destroyer with a single heavy blaster, this is a particularly moot point.

[SailorSaturn13]

The top cross-country speed of AT-STs cited in this thread has been ~30 mph, which would be on the order of a couple strides per second, and is not greatly less.

It has much lesss ability to move suddenly. It cannot jump sidewards, or turn fast. This making it an easy target.(see also below)

The basic tradeoff - which is already visible between different wheeled vehicles - is between efficiency (speed) and power (terrain handling).

And tracks solve it better - they allow up to 50 mph with very good power.

When you consider that the AT-ST already has a more powerful gun than any modern light tank has a right to mount, and can probably upgrade that by a factor of ten if redesigned as a tank destroyer with a single heavy blaster, this is a particularly moot point.

You ignore the explosives: a Heavy Tank round of 120 mm diamater can pack up to 10 kg of TNT, making it a 40 MJ weapon. Russian T-72 can penetrate 600(!!) mm of armor at 2000 m , American Abrams - up to 750. AT-ST is clearly outclassed - both by armor and blaster. Oh and the effective range of MBT guns is up to 3500 m. I doubt ATST has a chance here. It simply cannot aim good enough, judging by all the movies. Nor can its blaster penetrate their armor which is up to 520 mm.

At 3-4 km, it's pretty much impossible to target. Likewise with the AT-ST's legs.

Yes, but at 500 m it is easier to target agains sky than against ground.

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

JMS- I have to agree with Nonamer that the AT-ST is inferior at carrying stuff, both in terms of volume and mass. It doesn't have the internal room and hanging anything off to the side would be very detrimental to balance, which is already an AT-ST shortcoming. As for putting stuff on the roof, that blocks the only appearant hatch of the vehical and would also pose balance issues if of sufficient mass.

SS13- The AT-ST is not an MBT, it is a light combat vehicle and is therefore better compared to other light combat vehicles like an APC. I agree that the AT-ST is severely outclassed by most modern MBTs, especially in regards to a lack of angled and reactive armor. Perhaps the AT-ST's armor is better a better thermal insulator to protect against blasters, though given how a single volly from one AT-ST disintegrated the head of another it isn't very good against heavy blasters either.

[Nonamer]

Bah I'm losing interest fast. The debate is just too long for my tastes. So let me sum it up:

AT-ST is not a dismally bad ideal, especially given that it's made with special SW tech that makes it semi-useful in some situations. However, it is at best on par with a tank or IFV in the same situation, and in other situations much worse. This becomes especially acute if the tank is given the same level of tech as the AT-ST. For all practical purposes, it's simply not a good idea.

[SailorSaturn13]

Good sum.

A tank with SW blaster and SW armor would be better (through tritanium armor would be even better....)

[AnonymousRedShirtEnsign]

Blasters and fusion reactors, yes. Armor, no. SW armor is on par with standard contemporary armor, but reactive armor is superior. In 15 or 20 years this won't even be a close debate since tanks will be equiped with magnetic accelerator weapons and vastly superior forms of armor.