What are the best uses that a modern military can use for a bug based golems...

What are the best uses that a modern military can use for a bug based golems? How could enemy soldiers best handle these things

To be more specific a entire golem made out of any bug that can fly with a mind smart enough to split itself into segments to avoid swings at it. The kind that can break itself down into a cloud to get places easier.

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reconnaissance/spying/information gathering/finding the cave where the taliban is hidden.
but there is no need for the golem form in those cases.
with a golem then they can also kill the target, and retrieve objects.

Strategically, a golem that you can order to, say, descend as a cloud of insects upon any food supply caravans for your enemy and devour or taint all the food would be an incredible boon.

A golem made of seperate flying animals wouldn't work mechanically, it would litterally work the same way as an amorph swarm of bugs.

A Modern military would probaly handle them with a flamethrower or perhaps gas

These would make a huge comeback.

I mean, fucking hell, what wouldn't they do with it?

Beyond the elements of recon, their capabilities in CQB are beyond belief.

Flamethrowers don't work that way, man.

I know they are essentialy fire-squirtguns and not aerosolized fire, but i'm pretty sure they would still be very effective against a bug swarm that for some reason has chosen to coalesce into a vaguely human shape , man

Beyond belief? They are just bugs

Flamethrowers aren't for use on people, man, they're for destroying entrenched positions.

Beyond their ability to quickly and effectively find every possible hostile in a building or area, their ability to distract or disrupt fighters in situations where split second decisions are vital is massive.

In CQB situations between two roughly equal forces, you can expect causalities in the 50-60% range. The sheer disruption that insects can cause would tip those numbers in a huge way. Blocking the sight of combatants as you breach a room, disabling key pieces of equipment to cripple their ability to fight back, and above all else, the sheer paranoia such forces would face of every insect they see being a possible enemy would have a huge effect.

Just bugs? Lad there are some spiders that can fuck your shit with one bite. See, Brown Recluse.

I was limiting my thinking to flying bugs. Naturally poisonous spiders exists, but their strategic value be diminished somewhat by fielding them in large swarms?

flamethrowers have been used against locust swarms, man. If it can kill every human within a bunker it can also be used to kill any bug in a room, man.

As for the recon aspect, are we assuming that the individual insects can communicate with their handler somehow? If not that limits their use further, man.

I mean Do we just assume that you can tell your little bug buddies to cut the telephone wires and disarm the bomb? If so then yes, man, they might be vaguely useful, but that is tantamount to saying "people would be usefull as weapons if they had super powers".

Can't argue with the paranoia aspect though, especially when you consider that the leaders of your enemy chose to weaponize bugs rather than develope actual weapons and are thus clearly disturbed, man.

Also none of these strategies makes use of the whole golem aspect. Basically the idea of man shaped bug army is deeply impractical, man.

one bee flying into a soldiers mask, or crawling into his pants and stinging his ball sack would completely change the outcome of many situations. Imagine being in a firefight when there are roaches crawling in your clothes, or trying to snipe why bugs keep flying in your face

There is actually a golem from 3.5 that is a swarm of adamantine shurikens.

Are you suggesting shooting off a flamethrower in an enclosed room at bugs that are swarming in from every opening?

Needless to say that is an even less realistic construct. You can handwave away most issues by just saying magic did it.

That said a golem made of bugs wouldn't be able to exert more force on and object than what is required to crush one of the component bugs, making it pretty useless in combat.

I'm suggesting that there are litterally millions of ways to kill bugs. If you know your enemy is using bugs as a tactical force just tape a lighter to a deoderant spray or something and fry those suckers up.

Read
If it's smart enough to split to avoid people swinging at it Moonsoon style then it's probably not going to try and take swings itself.

Terrorism.
Fuck bugs.

Then what is it good for? the golem aspect is completely redundant.

also if the maximum potential of the this bug swarm weapon is being somewhat distracting to soldiers in loose-fitting clothes then i stand by the assertion that it would be pretty damn useless as a weapon.

Considering what you could conceivably achieve with the magical ability to endow individual bugs with the tactical wherewithal and anatomical understanding to "sting a soldier in the ballsack". What would similar brain enchancing magic do on vertebrates? would rats rival humans in intelligence? humans rival gods? Pretty sure it would constitute the first step on the road to the singularity rather than a minor tactical advantage (for the first week or so until you enemy starts wearing beekeeper suits) .

Revel in your ignorance, my friend. Enjoy it, for soon the weight of reality will begin to crush you and all you hold dear.

>*CRAWLING IN MY SKIIIIIN playing in the background*
Like others have said user, recon.
Not to mention a god reason for why swarms of bugs could be smart enough for this shit is one simple thing. Nanomachines. Each fly just being a AI controlling a biological organism.
Also the golem form can be used for some form of propaganda or intimidation. Nothing says "we can spy on you from basically anywhere" like a manshaped swarm of bugs. It shows how much you pumped into the little fucks.

>the weight of reality

We still on Veeky Forums talking about making a robot out of bugs right? or do you represent some sort of shadow conglomerate who has already built one and have shipped it off to take care of me due to my mocking attitude?

If so i must warn you that it is winter where i am and most bugs would die within a couple of hours outside, also i have bug spray.

At that point you are asking "what are the modern military implication of nanobots", at which point you might as well say gray goo and the total destruction of human life. I feel is somewhat out of tune with the original question, but what do i know i'm not OP.

as for the probaganda aspect isn't that exactly the kind of image you'd want to avoid? considering how hated drones have become in the media, having a man-shaped swarm of bugs just screams "we are evil", which admittedly is pretty intimidating. it's also worth noting that they don't actually have to ever make the man format in real life for it to be a part of the propaganda.

>At that point you are asking "what are the modern military implication of nanobots"
Which goes back to the question as to why you would want to make those nanobots into bugs.
Perhaps because they'd be allot more inconspicuous and cause paranoia when literally any fly on the wall could be a spy?
Besides why stick to flies when you can also use some of the most dangerous bugs on the planet at that point. Such as a some of the more poisonous variety.

Unless you are allergic to them bugs generally aren't poisonous enough to harm people. i don't know of any bugs that have a bite that is immediately fatal. The primary danger bugs pose are as carriers of disease or parasitic infection, so not really your perfect assassination tool.

All of you, go read Worm. You wanna know what bugs can do if you have enough and a competent brain controlling them? Read Worm:
Parahumans.wordpress.com

>Unless you are allergic to them bugs generally aren't poisonous enough to harm people.
Have you even seen what a Brown Recluse does to some people?
Besides if we're including fucking nanomachines then at that point you could probably give them better poisons to inject into people.

well that is an arachnid not a bug, one of the few highly poisonous ones.

My point was that we shouldn't include nano-machines cause that literally allows for anything. why not a nuke the size of a sandgrain carried by a mosquito and injected into the base of the spine of your target?

>well that is an arachnid not a bug
Nobody likes a smartass.
>My point was that we shouldn't include nano-machines cause that literally allows for anything.
Well how else would you make a damn bug golem? Magic?
Besides at this point we've gone from bug golems to "what can we do with mind controlling nanomachines if we stick to bugs?".

mother loves me that is enough.

well yes magic, within reasonable limitation was my initial assumption, since golem making isn't currently regarded as nanoscience.

In either case we would need to clearly define the limitations to the the magic/tech, otherwise we are just discussing whether infinite ant-mans with a nuke would be an effective weapon, which i think it might.

I've been meaning to look into this. It's rather long though, so if you have some stand-out examples of bug-tactics from the book/bloggything i would love to hear them.

It could be that the nanomachine tech has a hard time using more complicated organisms, that's why you'd stick to insects. They're just allot less complex then using them on say, wolfs.

I guess that is a pretty good reason. how precisely can you control though? Is it "write only" or can you receive the sensory information from the bugs?

>what are the combat applications of insects?
parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/
Thank me when you're finished.

Are they produced by Manure Golems?

>when you're finished

you might have to wait a while

Doesn't matter as long as more people read this

ok fine i'll read it, but for the sake of the thread could you give us an example of clever bug use from it?

choking
using spiders in tandem with flying shit to drop immobilizing silk
using spider silk in tandem with a time controller to create immovable invisible cutting string
distraction
butterflies as cover
stings, duh
shorting shit out
espionage

Just off the top off my head things that don't spoil much

Oh, btw, it's just the first chapter of some two hundred.
Well worth the read, though, I mean it.

i can't help but feel that the properties of spidersilk are being slightly oveestimated here, but i'll withhold judgement until i know how it's executed.

it was dropped in big quantities and the Powered Individual was making the spiders make it Daft Punk

Fair enough. Make it Daft punk?

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WORK IT HARDERMAKE IT BETTERDOIASTERMAKES US STRONGERWORK ITARDER MAKE ITDOITFASTERMAKESUSMORETHANEVEROUROURWORKISWORK IT HARDER MAKE IT
DOIT FASTERMAKES SMORE THAN EVER HOUROURWORK IS NEVER OVER

is this... memes?

No it's still a nonot in the slightestyes

Pretty much all modern military use MRE's now, which are completely sealed in plastic.

Soldiers uniforms are designed to be seal-able in the event of a gas attack, this would work against bugs, and while they're at it, deploy them with some insecticide gas grenades, this tactic would completely nullify bugs as a weapon.

Where do these nanobots get their energy user?

Where doesn't matter, as long as it last enough for the bugs lifespan.

I'm guessing it would depend on the nanobot model.
Some would use radio transmissions, others would let you control it remotely like a drone, while others use more complex methods of getting that info back. Possibly due to it being a newer technology and still experimenting with what would be most efficient.
Bugger off shill.

Depending on the insect, and assuming no modification outside of a MMI to control them, and also due to them being REALLY FUCKING hard to detect. You could probably use them to disrupt equipment. Imagine these things sneaking into the exhaust of a tank overnight and clogging up the engine? There is some legit use for sabotage, and assuming the techniques to make them controllable is easy to produce and supply, you don't have to worry about recovering them.

Also, another thing to remember, and something that armchair strategists the world over completely fail to realize, is that none of this exists inside of vacuum. Every asset that a military would have to expend to fight off something that disruptive is one less asset that can be used for more strategically more important roles. Equipping even a handful of soldiers, vehicles, and aircraft with anti-bug equipment requires a new supply line to keep it functional. Creating another vector for sabotage and wasting resources that could be used for other munitions. Vehicles, soldiers, and aircraft also have limited loadout, and every anti-bug equipped aircraft sacrifices valuable strike capability. For a large air force like the USAF or the Hellenic Air Force, this isn't a problem. But for a country whose inventory of aircraft can be counted by the dozens rather than the hundreds, it can be crippling.

And simply choosing to ignore the insects? Increased upkeep costs as engines become clogged with bug guts, supplies of all variety become tainted, new engineers having to be trained or simply brought over from more important posts to deal with the new workload, and an overall decrease in moral as nobody wants to wake up to bugs swarming out of their boots. All of this for a relatively low cost; insects breed fast, and you can deploy them just about anywhere worth a damn.

Yeah, it isn't the end all of warfare, nobody is claiming as such, but for a large military machine it is a constant annoyance, and for a small local force, it can decide a battle long before it even begins. The best part, this assumes a very, very limited range of insect species. And the insect kingdom is very large and full of wonderful potential for application yet to be thought of. It is the ultimate dick move. I'm not even getting into the funcrime potential of targeting civilian populations with the little nasties.

sound logic, i guess the potential in this case would depend on whether it was more of a resource drain to bugproof equipment or to weaponize bugs.

This basically.

>And the insect kingdom is very large and full of wonderful potential for application yet to be thought of.

This. Imagine air dropping a shit-ton of nano hornets into a small town for the sake of terrorism. That's not to say it doesn't have limitations, in theory a good EMP could fuck the bugs sideways if their nano, so the nanobots better be a well kept secret.

watch the most recent season of Black Mirror,
specifically the episode "hated of the nation",
which is exactly what you are looking for :)