Space Combat
POSTED BY: citizen
UPDATED: Monday, May 22, 2006 21:09
VIEWED: 8604
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I've been thinking about how future space based conflicts will take place, and realistically this is what I think:
Space combat won't take place in deep space, there's no point, nothing to fight over. Also the chances of Starships running into each other out there are astronomical. This also depends on what if any FTL there is. Assuming some sort of Jump engine ships won't even travel through deep space. I think Space battles will take place at least within a planetary system, and most often within the orbital space of a contested planet.
The job of the Navy would be to gain space superiority, so that ground and air units can operate without intervention from space, and gain intelligence from orbiting satellites, while denying these advantages to the enemy. There would also be the added bonus of space bombardment.
I see the actual battles as more like submarine warfare, most of the time manoeuvring and hiding from the enemy while trying to get the drop on them, and in the end the ship that shoots first is the ship that survives.
Essentially space battles will have two stages. An initial slow drawn out stage where both sides are trying to manoeuvre into an advantages position, flush out and find the enemy, while keeping themselves hidden. The second and final stage would be when one or both sides have found the other and the shooting starts. This will be a brutal and short stage, as without Star Trek force fields once a ships hit it'll either be crippled and out of the fight, or destroyed.
I also don't see the use of fighters; small ships wouldn't be able to carry enough fuel to do much manoeuvring, so I literally see them as sitting ducks in space warfare, especially in planetary orbit.
I think the main weapons will be guided missiles, that'll be small spacecraft in their own right, using AI decision makers to calculate intercept vectors, decide what is a ship, what are countermeasures and so on.
Kinetic weapons will simply be weapons that launch a large piece of dead weight at a target, which simply because of it's kinetic energy gleaned from its weight and speed will cause huge amounts of damage on impact. I think these will come in two flavours: Rail Guns and Mass Drivers.
Rail Guns will use a particle accelerator to accelerate plasma to near light speed, then use this super heated plasma and alternating magnetic fields to launch a projectile to high velocities, and heat it up to produce secondary damage and aid penetration. Largely I think weapons like these would be used to lay down 'covering fire' and bombard ground targets.
Mass Drivers are similar, but will launch a ferrite projectile using just magnetic fields. I think these will have a high rate of fire but a lower destructive potential than Rail Guns. I think weapons like this would be mainly used for point defence against missiles and small craft/satellites.
There will also be directed energy weapons, in the form of powerful particle accelerators and possibly lasers. These will have the advantage of being immediate, unlike missiles, and accurate unlike kinetic weapons. The problem will be that as distance from the target increases the weapon yield decreases dramatically. Also unlike missiles the 'DEW' line will give away a ships position to the enemy.
Any thoughts?
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No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Any thoughts?
Just that people planet-side will be in a hell of a bind when the fireball debris starts raining down on them.
You asked.
I do think you're right about them needing to be in proximity to planets or solar systems. At least for the bulk of the battles. I could also see them being in major 'shipping lanes,' so to speak. Because, quite frankly, while there are countless permutations in space to get to point a from point b, due to fuel and monetary restrictions, the most direct routes will be the most used and therefore, regulated to avoid mishaps.
Then again, when you think about how vast the oceans are (take the Pacific for example) using your reasoning, subs and battleships shouldn't have been able to find one another to do battle, but they did. By using radar. So I think that if we're advanced enough to be doing routine interplanetary travel, someone somewhere (ie: some governmant or lunatic fringe...they're all the same
) will develope the technology to track the ships. I'll have to have a think on the rest.
****
RMMC
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Quote:
Originally posted by RMMC:
Just that people planet-side will be in a hell of a bind when the fireball debris starts raining down on them.
They'll have umbrellas. Really really big umbrellas
.I'm thinking that most detection would be down to LIDAR (Laser/Infra-red Detection and Ranging, basically finding a ship by actively sending out a laser beam and picking up any echoes, and passively searching for heat radiation sources) and RADAR. These are going to have a finite distance. On Earth that's less of an issue, EM radiation travels at the speed of light so it's only really the curvature of the earth that restricts RADAR range.
In space the distances, in comparison to the effective range of the detection schemes, are much greater.
Naval conflicts are a little different to what can happen in space. The best example would probably be the Second World War. In that the majority of conflicts took place because one side knew where the other was or would be, something not possible in space.
For instance the German U-Boats could lie in wait at shipping lanes. The Royal Navy knew where German ships would be because they knew where the ports were, and the courses ships would have to sail to leave them. Even with the relatively restricted arena of Naval combat the intercepts were largely hit and miss.
In the Pacific theatre I believe the fleets made contact because they knew more or less where each other were due to previous engagements and scout planes. They also spent a lot of time fighting over islands, which would be roughly analogous to planets.
Now in space you can't lie in wait. Stars are moving in relation to each other constantly, thus you can't have space lanes because the shortest route between two planetary systems is different from one minute to the next.
The idea is that in interstellar space you'll be travelling at supra-light speed, making detection systems based on RADAR and LIDAR useless, and even if they weren't the likelihood of an enemy ship coming within range of your detection capability is pretty remote, even if your travelling across the same transport vector (which is fairly unlikely itself).
Also if your ship is crippled or destroyed during a battle you have no chance of survival unless there’s a nearby planetary body to escape too.
So I think that the likelihood of starships running across each other even if they're looking is so remote as too make it a pointless exercise, therefore not something a military would realistically plan on doing, and something you really don't want to do even if it were possible.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.
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I suspect there will be no faster then light travel, and space battles will consist almost entirely of orbiting batteries and directed energy weapons. I can’t imagine why there would ever be the need for actual spaceships, analogous to modern submarine warfare. These kinds of things would be horribly expensive to operate and extremely fragile. If you can imagine two men in a room of cyanide gas with hazmat suits and guns, told to kill each other. A bullet doesn’t even have to puncture flesh to kill; all it has to do is tear the hazmat suit. Now if you took the man out of the loop, then you no longer have to be concerned with your battle plan depending on humans surviving in space which is perilous enough without actually trying to kill one another.
There will be no dog fights with clever banking maneuvers. It is doubtful that anything could carry that much fuel. And the truth is that the laws of physics are much simpler in space then they are down here on earth, so there is very little left to chance, very little margin to play with. When a target is acquired and fired upon, survival of that target will depend upon the success of its electronic countermeasure; otherwise the resolution of the battle will begin and end with targeting solution.
Battles could be fought with interplanetary missiles. Several independent missiles or something like a MIRV could be fired from interplanetary or planet orbiting batteries from millions of miles away, which will travel ballistically to their target and upon proximity, days or possibly months in the future, they will intercept using intelligent seek and destroy algorithms.
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I see the aerial bombardment phase as being more effective and cost-efficient if you just let gravity to the majority of the work. Drop a cluster-bomb (suitably shielded for re-entry, of course) into atmo, and it disperses above your selected battlefield. The "bomblets" would only need to be 1- or 2-pound unpropelled projectiles with a rudimentary guidance and acquisition system (say, something that can identify the shape of an enemy tank or armored personnel carrier, and can glean the difference between "us" and "them" and use steering vanes to aim at "them"). Kinetic energy and heat will do the rest. A pound of steel dropped from the stratosphere would be DEVASTATING to any earth-bound obstacle it might hit. Call it a "smart meteorite". :) It doesn't need any explosive charge; the heat of falling from 30 miles up or more, and then of "burning through" the armored hull of a tank, would superheat the air inside the vehicle and incinerate the crew. Not nice, but effective.
For orbital weapons, think "bucket of sand". Same kind of cluster-bomb concept, only this time you'd pack it with millions of much smaller projectiles. If you're in an orbital trajectory, coming up against something else in a *different* trajectory (you're not following right behind them, in other words), you simply throw what is essentialy a bucket of rocks at them. At a closing speed of thousands of miles per hour, even a small metal pellet would go right through a spaceship's hull like a hot knife through butter. Throwing millions of tiny pellets toward them, you're more likely to hit them with at least hundreds, which should pretty much disintegrate their craft.
It ain't pretty, and it's not very sophisticated, but some of the BEST parts of the whole "Star Wars" defense plan of the Reagan era were based on simple ideas like this - NOT firing huge, costly, and complicated lasers at incoming warheads.
The scariest part is, these things have already been proposed, and there's been research done. Haven't heard whether they've been deemed usable, but it'd demoralize the hell out of the enemy to find that they're being killed by a rain of death from above, when they can't even see what's coming.
Mike
"Also, I can kill you with my mind..."
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Ok my thoughts (well these are the things i disagreed with =) ):
"...and in the end the ship that shoots first is the ship that survives."
i think that will depend very much on the attack vs defense technology. Just like it has before, the balance between them shift. Walls were great in early ages, now they arent in that widespread use.
"as without Star Trek force fields once a ships hit it'll either be crippled and out of the fight, or destroyed"
Why is that? a tank can take a hit and keep fighting, just slap on big chunks of armor. And a spaceship would probably be able to have a lot of it. And battleships of old could also keep going for a while, and they too had to work where the environment is hostile to a damaged ship.
"I also don't see the use of fighters"
Well, the good thing about fighters is that they inrease the action radius. Modern fighters cant really take a hit either.
"Rail Guns will use a particle accelerator to accelerate plasma to near light speed"
Rail guns function much like you described mass drivers. Using force from a magnetic field to fire. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun)
"Stars are moving in relation to each other constantly" ... "is different from one minute to the next"
The stars in starsigns have been looking about the same for a long time i think? They at least certainly doesnt change by the minute (except to a small degree due to earth rotation). Though astronomy really isnt my area of expertise, i think the milkyway is basically a disc that spins around its centre, with stars in fairly fixed positions on the disc.
"So I think that the likelihood of starships running across each other even if they're looking is so remote as too make it a pointless exercise, therefore not something a military would realistically plan on doing"
While i do agree with you, I dont think the military just sends out people saying 'hope you see the enemy, good luck' Much as today, they'd probably use intel to find out where the enemy is. And deploy defensive troops at important places (ie basically planets as you said)
BTW if you like spacebattles. Watch Battlestar Galactica (if you havent already =) ), some of the episodes are full of it.
I've been sane a long while now, and change is good.
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Citizen. Great game in the making is that. Ill back it all the way :) Im from the Silent Hunter 2 schoolof gameplaying. I love Sub games. As a comparison that sounds great :) I play Eve online and that uses Rail guns. In fact best guns in the game
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I would say that stationary defenses would be widely used and widely ineffective, since kinetic weapons launched from outside of the solar system could easily target anything stationary. In my opinion the main types of space battles would be fought by medium-sized ships flying by at very high speed (.99 light perhaps) in order to get surprise followed by larger battleships (which would probably have actually left earlier) that would take out the leftover targets. I would say that the majority of weapons would be guided missiles with either kinetic payloads (big chunks of iron), or nuclear payloads (close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and atom bombs, plus no real worries about radiation), the main backup weapons would probably be lasers since they are easy to aim, have no recoil, and can be made quite powerful.
That being said, I think that in the real world, interstellar battles would be a very bad thing. Picture this: a very large ship, almost completely made of metal, a large engine set deep inside the chunk of metal, the ship is sent to the planet with no programming to decelerate.
Result? planet gets split in half.
Granted this removes any chance of conquest but the speed\size could be decreased to make it only like a gigaton-class nuke (with the advantage of not having radioactive fallout)
The biggest advantage of this approach is that the ship would be relatively cheap (especially if they just dropped an engine into a ferrous asteroid) there would be little that the defenders could do to stop it (1000 ton ship moving at .99 lightspeed would barely be nudged by a nuke and probably wouldn't even be seen until a few days before it hit), and they would not need to be manned.
To see something like this (albeit on a much smaller scale) in action read the book The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Heinlin, best argument against moon colonization around.
I see minefields as being quite useful, if you surround all of the likely approaches then any ships coning in would have to come through tight channels. And yes you could block off likely approaches, while there are virtually infinite directions to approach a planet the fuel cost and length of time exposed to sensors (and thus defenses) increases dramatically when you move out of a direct line.
I don't see fighters being used since without force fields they woudld be too vulnerable, and they would not have the fuel to manuver very much.
I don't see a lot of gauss cannon\railgun type weapons being used since they would have several disadvantages compared to lasers (e.g. recoil, need to carry large amounts of ammo, moving parts, need to lead the targets which at long ranges would be relatively easy to dodge)
If there is FTL travel it would probably be of the wormhole variety which would be un-interceptable. But thats just a guess.
The biggest problem with interstellar war would be the relativistic affects of time. This is shown in the book Forever War by Haldeman. By the end the protaganist is in (I believe) his early 30's, but because of relativistic effects he is actually over a thousand years old and he actually fought in only 5 or 6 battles. Additionally technology would be advancing as the wars raged, it would be entirely possible for an attack to be launched at a planet only to find that the war is over or another attack fleet with better engines passed the first one a while ago or the super secret stealth system has already been compromised by the enemy.
Quote:
"as without Star Trek force fields once a ships hit it'll either be crippled and out of the fight, or destroyed"
Why is that? a tank can take a hit and keep fighting, just slap on big chunks of armor. And a spaceship would probably be able to have a lot of it. And battleships of old could also keep going for a while, and they too had to work where the environment is hostile to a damaged ship.
armor=heavy=slow=dead, simple as that.
Anyways thats just my 2 cents.
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Reavers are different and they just drift out into space unlike the navy how you explain that?
Simon:"If the battle was so horrible, why did he name the ship after it?"
Zoe:"Once you've been in serenity you never leave"
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Please forgive the long post, there’s a lot to reply too:
Quote:
Originally posted by Finn Mac Cuhmal:
Now if you took the man out of the loop, then you no longer have to be concerned with your battle plan depending on humans surviving in space which is perilous enough without actually trying to kill one another.
I agree to a point. I think automated weapons systems, the natural evolution of current UAVs will play a big part, but your still going to need manned ships, even if they're just transporting troops. Plus I don't see an AI intelligent enough to come up with the tactics and strategies that a Human could for a very long time.
Quote:
There will be no dog fights with clever banking maneuvers. It is doubtful that anything could carry that much fuel. And the truth is that the laws of physics are much simpler in space then they are down here on earth, so there is very little left to chance, very little margin to play with. When a target is acquired and fired upon, survival of that target will depend upon the success of its electronic countermeasure; otherwise the resolution of the battle will begin and end with targeting solution.
Totally agree.
Quote:
Battles could be fought with interplanetary missiles.
Well we have ICBM's now, but battles are never exclusively fought with them. Wars aren't fought (or very, very rarely if they are) to wipe out the other side. They're fought to gain trade concessions, resources and land, thus you'll need 'boots on the ground' to secure these things. You'll need ships in orbit to keep enemy fire off their heads and get them there, and act as a hub for command and communication. I think that will require Humans in the loop somewhere for sometime. An analogy, if I play a really good chess program, it will beat me, for a couple of games, after that I've worked out the algorithm and it's quirks and I never lose.
Interplanetary missiles may be used to soften a target prior to arrival, but I don't see them used for much else.
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko
Drop a cluster-bomb (suitably shielded for re-entry, of course) into atmo, and it disperses above your selected battlefield. Drop a cluster-bomb (suitably shielded for re-entry, of course) into atmo, and it disperses above your selected battlefield.
Dead-drop weapons, I agree. Though these will have a disadvantage in so much as they won't be able manoeuvre much, being un-powered, so hitting a moving target will be much harder than a powered or more immediate weapon. They'll also be easier to counter, since the free fall will superheat them so that they kick out a lot of EM radiation. They'll be lit up like a Christmas tree and not have a lot of manoeuvrability.
Quote:
For orbital weapons, think "bucket of sand".
I'd thought of that, something like flak. Problem is this will quickly fill up a planets orbit with debris making it un-navigable, everyone loses.
Quote:
Originally posted by Awesomo:
Why is that? a tank can take a hit and keep fighting, just slap on big chunks of armor. And a spaceship would probably be able to have a lot of it. And battleships of old could also keep going for a while, and they too had to work where the environment is hostile to a damaged ship.
Firstly tanks are usually destroyed by a single hit, unless you go for a soft kill to something like the tracks, in which case it is crippled.
Now a Submarine is a better analogy than a battleship, since the entire boat operates in an environment where the external pressure is different to the internal pressure. If a submarine is actually hit, even once, the whole thing will be destroyed.
Furthermore more armour means more mass which means more inertia, which means less manoeuvrability and more fuel needed to accelerate slow down and manoeuvre. Also we're talking about a huge amount of destructive force.
The weapons I'm describing, travelling at realistic orbital speeds would pass straight through any armour we could realistically build and equip a stars
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