Sorry if this topic has been created before or if I'm in the wrong forum.

Anyways, how effective do you think mechs would be in real, modern combat? Most manga series which use mechs laud them as highly advanced and effective pieces of machinery to the point of completely overshadowing tanks and jets. Personally, I think that mechs would really only be useful in urban environments where they would have the firepower and armor of tank with much more maneuverability, like the Tachikoma in Ghost in the Shell or the Geckos in Metal Gear Solid (not a manga, but still). In the open field I think tanks would perform on par with mechs and jets would be much more effective.

For now they would be clunky and hard to move on the battlefield but i think within time i think mechs could become apart of the military with time. Like Gundams and Veritech fighters

In the presence of good company, it is good to keep your composure before going all crazy on them.

The Military actually made a humanoid bi-pedal mecha that was highly ineffective,it was clunky and slow and it could barely handle any terrain,it was a decommissioned project that was said to be of no use to them

@Syrius: Of course we don't have the technology to make effective mechs now, I'm talking in a purely hypothetical sense. Assuming the military could make a mech that was not clumsy and slow, assuming they could make mechs like you see in manga, how effective would they be?

@SteampunkMD: I think by the time we have the technology to make Gundams and Veritechs we will also have the technology to make highly maneuverable jets with laser beams which would be just as effective as gundams without the need to draw up blue prints for a completely different type of weapon.

No very effective. Unless all out war is declared, what the world is fighting against is an enemy hidden in the shadows. Go in guns blazing and light up the place, and the shadows will disappear, only to come back when the illumination is gone. No. We would need to fight stealth with stealth, and mechs probably won't so the job (unless they have invisibilty coating and have pilots as skilled as kira).

Lego & manga. The building blocks of life.

we already have siege tanks now, perhaps vikings in next decade ? 😀 (starcraft 2)

rather than gundam I would like to see Macross's Valkyries 🤣

"we are people because of other people"
"I am who I am because of who we all are"

in hypothetical sense yeah i think we could since we have the tech to make the exoskeleton we just need to perfect the robotics

In the presence of good company, it is good to keep your composure before going all crazy on them.

Mechs on a small scale like mechanized full body suits would work a lot better than large scale mechs, because ultimately size will always be an issue. The larger the scale, the more strain on the metals and the more it will weigh. Unless some divine material is crafted that can have the durability of the steels but the weight of clothe, then size will always be an issue. With that said, it also depends on what kind of mech you are looking at.

Quadriped mechs, spider walkers, or some of the four-legged AC's in armor core would be excellent on the battlefield because of the versatility it would possess over the terrain. Also, the ability to stand higher or lay flatter would give more abilities than the standard tank. With that said, the technology would be a lot more complex, and ultimately it would still be a tank, a four-legged tank.

The reason why mangas and animes can make it so fantastical and so superior to tanks is because of many factors. One, in gundams particularly, they are always made of some better material, more armor, and is much larger. The tank may only be up to the gundam's shin or knees at best. In terms of airplanes, anything is more durable than an airplane. It is designed to fly not take hits, so even machine gun fire will take down a plane, and until we can create some sort of law-defying monstrosity like a mobile armor, we'll never find anything that grants more air superiority than a plane.

A mecha that moves agilely and precisely like in FMP or Gundam would require at least robotics tech from about 100-200 years in the future. You need light yet durable alloys for the armor, flexible alloys for the joints and more powerfull computers to make constant calculations to adjust the motors.
And even then, in direct combat they are likely to be outclassed by tanks. (in FMP, tanks are more powerfull than the mechs, but the mechs are more versatile.)
What I see happening earlier is personal combat armor. Like in Red Eyes, Master Chief in Halo, the MI in Starship Troopers (the novel) or something like the Wolverines from C&C:Tiberian Sun.
The HUD and scanners can give a better battlefield awareness. The suit enhances natural movents so moving faster is possible. Heavy armor to protect the person inside and the ability to carry more and heavier weapons.
Still, something like that would be at prototype phase in 50 years at best.

Do but despise reason and science,
The highest of all human gifts -
Then you have surrendered to the Devil
And must surely perish. - J.W. von Goethe

if they could make Robots that are as good as in manga
they would be as good as in manga/anime

so yes
they would be very useful

newtype screaming teens jerking the stick and all the enemy gundams will go down
or you train and train and train...and beat all the newtypes asses anyway like Char