Battle Keeper

I would like to suggest a technology that likely will not be possible within the next hundred years or so: mobile ordnance replication. Instead of carrying pre-made weapons and ammunition, warships and on-site land factories can instead carry the requisite materials, and then fabricate both as needed in combat.

Why would this approach be preferable? Well to begin with, magazines have repeatedly throughout history been a double-edged sword. The more armaments a factory or warship carry, the less damage they can take without erupting into explosions and flames.

At the extremes of combat, several naval battles, such as the attack on the Bismarck in 1941, and the destruction of the Moskva earlier this year, saw warships so heavily armed that a single well-placed salvo ignited their onboard munitions and instantly sunk them, with the loss of nearly all hands.

So clearly, the ability to manufacture weapons on the fly would remove a major weakness for such battle systems. At the same time, it would also reduce the logistical necessity of constantly re-equipping and re-arming forward operating bases. They could carry an abundance of inert materials, allowing them to operate without the hindrance of being dependent upon resupply routes.

The down side of course is the possibility that the onboard weapons factory were to be targeted and damaged, rendering them emasculate. However, that trade-off would in most cases be more than worthwhile, as in return for it one would have a military asset that could operate anywhere in the world, at any time, and under any circumstances, without restriction or restraint.

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