re: #340 LudwigVanQuixote

Ohh yes, I saw that post late last night about the tugboat. Before I get to that though, I have to say, I agree with your Voltron metaphor. You have a very good point. If you want to really make it a Jewish metaphor though, simply point that Amalek knew they could not win, but they also knew that if they could make Jews bleed, they would embolden others to try.

As to the tugboat, generating the kind of field you are talking about would be rather difficult and I would very much *not* want to deal with salt sprays and the sort of power outputs that would be needed. Worse though is the fact that if you turn on a field that strong, you will automatically slam your tug into the other ship. If you are deploying something like one of those big magnets that picks up cars, I then that would slam into the hull of the other ship once it got close enough and likely breach the hull.

Honestly much cheaper and more effective to fire a five inch shell amidships if you want to sink them.

If you want to tow them, much more effective to simply grapple the other ship. You also frankly only would want to do any towing after taking out the engines or screws of the other vessel. The last thing you want is a tug of war at sea.

Largely I agree in terms of ethics and efficacy, but right now I am operating under / testing the theory is that viewers have an inherently more negative response to the use of disposable weaponry, i.e. ammunition and traditional direct or indirect fire ordnance.

There’s something that is already dehumanizing about body armor, so we agree that there is no point to putting men in it in harms way with no good options. I just really have to believe that there has got to be some tangible value in finding an effective solution that doesn’t involve explosives.

Ideally the solution should be reusable too, you hand the enemy a small victory when he costs you the continued use of any asset you use to defeat him, which goes back to your lesson learned at Amalek. Maybe set the switch for the electromagnet to close only when triggered by a strong filtered vibration sensor, or radar proximity of < 0.25 meters? Yeah it will slam hard, I’m not aiming for a pillow fight here. My goal is to help send a message, and maybe save a few lives in the process.