What kind of military spacecraft can we create with current technology?

[RainDreamer]

Edit: Imagine the USA becoming a rogue nation under the control of  a crazy president (I won't say who or how the American decide to follow that person) who aims to conquer the world. The same crazy president decide to militarize space.

What kind of crazy military spacecraft will the poor scientists working there will come up with?

Edited September 16, 2016 by RainDreamer

[xenomorph555]

If they have interstellar travel then they probably have forcefields and everything else you would expect aliens to have + worse.

We would dead the minute they declared war.

[Zucal]

Well, I imagine much of the cutting-edge stuff is under wraps.

[xenomorph555]

Question; do they aliens have to abide by orbital physics or do they hover round in anti-grav ships.

[Frozen_Heart]

Pretty sure that a satellite with some targeting equipment and a rack of missiles could work pretty well. If you want to add in experimental stuff then laser weapons could be used as well.

[Moon Goddess]

If they have technology similar to us but interstellar travel, then we're talking generationship I guess, they've been traveling for say 3000 years, but even that doesn't add up, as that would take technology far beyond us to pull off.

[RainDreamer]

Just hypothetical situation here. Forget the details. XD I just mean that the aliens are not capable of keeping us from launching stuff thus render developing military space craft moot (since we can't put them in orbit in the first place). We can launch stuff and engage combat in space for this scenario.

Now what can we make with the current tech to fight them in space and to the moon?

[Alias72]

We have the ability to defend Earth from alien control right now!

it's called scorched earth or more accurately

Nuke it from orbit. its the only way to be sure. We vaporize and irradiate the planet until the aliens go home. Aside from that we have inadequate context to answer your question.

- - - Updated - - -

Just hypothetical situation here. Forget the details. XD I just mean that the aliens are not capable of keeping us from launching stuff thus render developing military space craft moot (since we can't put them in orbit in the first place). We can launch stuff and engage combat in space for this scenario.

Now what can we make with the current tech to fight them in space and to the moon?

We have:

Fission Power Plants

Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear engines

Lasers

We could build:

a casabawa howitzer on a nuclear powered nuclear rocket. It would be every 1950's air force generals dream. It would likely be ineffective.

For more details about what the near future might hold check out attack vector tactical.

[crubs]

If they're an interstellar civilization than going up against them would probably be like Native Americans fighting against European guns by using spears. The only thing that they might even raise an eyebrow to is nukes. But if we were to nuke them, they would probably just nuke us harder. The best option would probably be just to establish our conditions of surrender early on.

A more interesting question would be how our military could exploit space to fight other countries. I'd say ODST platforms on centrifuged orbital stations would be possible with current technology, but it would be far too expensive to be worth it.

[Hcube]

A more interesting question would be how our military could exploit space to fight other countries. I'd say ODST platforms on centrifuged orbital stations would be possible with current technology, but it would be far too expensive to be worth it.

I'm pretty sure the best way space can be used in military situations is widespread already : it's satellite imaging and data... What's better in a huge expensive orbital striking station than in a regular missile or ICBM ?

Data and imaging are the way to go. Satellites with huge optics pointed at the ground, able to recognize everything...

As for aliens, i can already see a few "world's police and defenders" countries nuking the hell out of the Moon to kick them out

[DeepOdyssey]

Soviet union built a satellite with 23mm cannon based on a zu-23 shilka, but i imagine it would be ineffective as you have to control recoil. Lasers on the other hand...

[crubs]

I'm pretty sure the best way space can be used in military situations is widespread already : it's satellite imaging and data... What's better in a huge expensive orbital striking station than in a regular missile or ICBM ?

Data and imaging are the way to go. Satellites with huge optics pointed at the ground, able to recognize everything...

An ODST platform would allow you to get boots on the ground practically anywhere in the world in an extremely short period of time compared to other transport methods. Your right, the payoff would be small but I can't think of much better.

[Kibble]

It depends on how much infrastructure you want to protect. If the situation is dire enough that you can abandon your satellites, ASATs will always be enough to keep away invaders (unless said invaders take the form of a large deliberately directed meteor). If you want to protect your satellites too, it becomes more complex - you'll need infrared space telescopes staring at every orbital maneuver the aliens make. If they make a hostile move, response would probably take the form of a sophisticated spacecraft injected onto an orbit that will coincide with the alien spacecraft's path, rendezvous as close as possible, and detonate itself, like Soviet coorbital ASATs IS-A and Naryad (Briz KM).

EDIT:

An ODST platform would allow you to get boots on the ground practically anywhere in the world in an extremely short period of time compared to other transport methods.

Actually an orbital spacecraft is one of the worst ways to do that. The fastest way to get something anywhere in the world on short notice is an ICBM.

Edited June 3, 2015 by Kibble

[RainDreamer]

A more interesting question would be how our military could exploit space to fight other countries.

The reason I avoid that is because it limits the scale of technology involved. Against enemy of humanity, we get virtually no limit on resources and technology, since by that point everyone is (hopefully) going to get together to do something about our space invaders. On a nation vs nation scale, it becomes a matter of economics and politics and such, with limited access to all tech available.

If thinking of fighting aliens are too problematic, then let just say they are space terrorists that has a base on the dark side of the moon and all that tropes and they want to nuke earth.

[Rune]

Yeah, we can throw rocks, guided rocks, or guided nukes. Lasers, currently, would pretty much cook themselves before they cooked anything else (awful energy transmission efficiencies), except bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, but hose we would have to really develop from mostly scratch, and are single-use. If any adversary has the same tech level, they can do the same, only they have access to more stuff (all of the solar system except Earth, presumably), and they have the gravity well working as an advantage to bomb us. Us, on the other hand, have to counteract their mobility with guided warheads, and are on the wrong side on a 9.5km/s gravity well, which we currently can barely escape.

In less fancy words: we are screwed. The moment they decide to take out our cities and resource-collecting operations, there goes technological civilization.

Rune. And that's with equiv-tech weapons. But then again, we can already wipe ourselves very easily.

[peadar1987]

Really good short story about this sort of thing here: http://josephshoer.com/blog/2009/12/high-orbit/

[Rus-Evo]

Whilst their travel technology might be far beyond earths, their military technology and tactics might not be. Humans may be unusual in the level of warfare we conduct against ourselves, making our advancement in this field unusually high.

If they are internally at peace by nature they may not be talented fighters at all.

[regex]

I'm more inclined to believe that if aliens can reach us, and are hostile, they will simply bombard us from the asteroid belt or something. If they want to invade they'll bombard some key places while moving their fleet in, which will probably be able to handle any missiles we throw at them while dropping crowbars from orbit whenever something threatening moves. In short, we won't have adequate time to prepare a space-based military response, doubly so if they can muster kinetic weapons with any sort of fantastic isp.

[Bill Phil]

Let's look at a 60s design..

Orion Battleship, baby! Shoving nukes out the back forcing itself to go fast!

This was a serious proposal. It actually frightened President JFK...

Like the Michael battleship in Footfall... Minus the space shuttles.

[jrphilps]

If they're an interstellar civilization than going up against them would probably be like Native Americans fighting against European guns by using spears. The only thing that they might even raise an eyebrow to is nukes. But if we were to nuke them, they would probably just nuke us harder. The best option would probably be just to establish our conditions of surrender early on.

A more interesting question would be how our military could exploit space to fight other countries. I'd say ODST platforms on centrifuged orbital stations would be possible with current technology, but it would be far too expensive to be worth it.

Exactly. In real life, if you had a species that was willing to cross interstellar space for a chance to fight us, we'd be in some deep $%^&. The most likely attack would come in the form of relativistic kill vehicles, pummeling all industrial and population centers. Our casualtys would number in the billions, and chaos would sweep through the civilised world. Soon after, there would be a fleet of warships in orbit to mop up whats left of humanity, and some ground forces to capture whatever individuals remain (maybe sticking them into zoos).

People like to fantasize about waging guerilla warfare against hostile aliens, but the truth is, we'd never get the chance. They would pound us from orbit, bomb us back into the stone age. By the time they deploy ground forces, the aliens would for all intents and purposes have won. If you really want to beat a hostile force of aliens, you're going to need a military grade supercomputer (like skynet). We can't develop strong AI at this point and time, but its definitely a possibility in the next few decades.

Edited June 4, 2015 by jrphilps

[Bill Phil]

Why would any race fight us? Earth has less resources than the rest of the solar system.

They would want to annihilate us. That's the only real reason for attacking us.

Now, if they saw all our scifi from the 50s, they might assume we're really advanced. Maybe even a threat. So they would come to destroy humanity.

Thek they could just bombard Earth with a whole bunch of asteroids.

Unless they wanted to only eradicate is... Then actual war on the ground could happen...

But these are aliens. How should I, or anyone, know?

[prophet_01]

Isn't it way easier for them to launch a couple of nukes and detonate them high up in earth's atmosphere? As far as I know the emp should be enough to make us not launch anything to orbit and beyond for decades.

Why would you need force fields?

[ChrisSpace]

Here is a quick breakdown of what we could strap onto a spaceship with our current technology:

Artillery-like Naval turrets

Electromagnetic Railguns

Multi-megawatt laser turrets

100 megaton nuclear missiles

Particle beam weapons

Electromagnetic pulse bombs

Air-to-air (or rather, space-to-space) missiles

Thermobaric explosives

Hypervelocity kinetic kill rods

Exosuits, M1A1 tanks and battle robots for the lunar surface

[prophet_01]

Tanks and exosuits? Can you explain to me how you think you can get that kind of equipment to the moon and operate it there? It's one thing to get a military unit some very distant place, but operating it is something else entirely. You need supplies, fuel, ammunition, medics and of course more transport vehicles to move your more specialised units once you are there. Needless to say that military equipment is neither build to be operated in space (fuel, heat???) or lightweight by any means. It's already a huge acomplishment to get an object to the moon's surface that has been build to get there...

[Rune]

Really good short story about this sort of thing here: http://josephshoer.com/blog/2009/12/high-orbit/

That was a nice short sci-fi story. Completely unrealistic in that the ships were manned and that the aliens did exactly all they shouldn't have done, but hey, it's sci-fi. On a more plausible scenario, the same aliens would have dropped a couple KBO's on Earth to create a short nuclear winter, at the same time as they seeded LEO with debris to take out all our space infrastructure, and probably dropped a few more precisely targeted kinetics on big industrial and population centers before they even got past the asteroid belt and to where we could take a good look at them, for good measure. If they had any sense, that would be the first indication of hostile aliens in our solar system, stuff blowing up in orbit and the skies darkening with shoot as the forests burn... if you are lucky and not close to an impact site.

Granted, you have to wait for a couple hundred years for the dust to settle before you can claim your new pristine ape-less planet and start growing alien crops. But then again, why do you need planets if you can cross interstellar space, their primary extermination mission would already be fulfilled anyway (there is no other plausible justification for interstellar war at this point).

Rune. Still, zeroth rule of sci-fi, nobody wants to read about the adventures of a missile.