Lunar combat

[Souper]

Just now, lobe said:

To affect it so it won't hit the base might require so much energy it would vaporize

It might just continue as a plasma, into your base

That would require exploding the target, I would suggest kinetic impacter, otherwise known as the steerable mass driver.

 

So, I really think artillery is the best option about anything in space. Maybe a missile or two, maybe some lasers, but I think they are included in artillery.

Well, infantry can dodge artillery, so surely there'd be some use in that?

[lobe]

How do you deliver the infantry? Ground vehicles? VTOL dropships like the VTOL bombers? Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (good luck surviving the impact at 2 km/s)? Unless the bases are a 100 km away, it would be very easy to pick them off before they had made it. Again, the guy with the antipodal mass driver is the king, unless saboteurs have been introduced.

[tater]

11 minutes ago, Souper said:

So, alter its trajectory? Or vaporize it? What about turning it into a million little pieces so that only a teeny little fraction of it will hit its target?

Now you are being hit by a shower of particles---shrapnel, grapeshot, canister, call it what you like, moving at something like 11 km/s. The total energy is the same as if it was whole, just spread out. A 200 gram chunk at 11 km/s has the energy of an Abrams 120mm tank round. I'm unsure how much energy you'd need to destroy it if it was something like a long rod penetrator (of decent size).

[Souper]

2 minutes ago, tater said:

Now you are being hit by a shower of particles---shrapnel, grapeshot, canister, call it what you like, moving at something like 11 km/s. The total energy is the same as if it was whole, just spread out. A 200 gram chunk at 11 km/s has the energy of an Abrams 120mm tank round. I'm unsure how much energy you'd need to destroy it if it was something like a long rod penetrator (of decent size).

No, i am never hit by the total mass because my base is largely underground. And how will they fire at me? I have like 100 saboteurs in their base.

[RainDreamer]

I imagine most warfare will be done underground actually. Bases will be underground to get shielding from radiation and provide structural support, also hidden underground bases avoid detection from spy satellite and can withstand orbital/artillery attacks. Troop movement similarly can be done by tunnelling from location to location, and lower gravity help them doing such things easier as well. Fights therefore will be done in close quarters mostly. As soon as an enemy base receive sonar reports of rumbling underground, they will scramble for defense, and ready for tunnel warfare as they fight back openings in their base, and they may probably set up some mines to prevent diggers approaching in some path. Infantry (including robots) with hand held tunnelling tools will be very important due to their smaller size, and can make precision strike while a giant digger some where else mask their sound reports. Bunker busters will be used extensively from space to hit underground enemies and collapsing tunnels when they are detected. Railroads might become important to maintain supply chain between bases as well.

Edited April 27, 2016 by RainDreamer

[lobe]

2 minutes ago, Souper said:

I have like 100 saboteurs in their base.

The same in yours. At this point it would get deeply into politics, to who you could let inside, and how you could detect a saboteur before they cause significant damage. The battle/war essentially boils down to luck and acutual intelligence which could only be simulated in Civilization or some other game that might deal with this problem.

1 minute ago, RainDreamer said:

I imagine most warfare will be done underground actually. Bases will be underground to get shielding from radiation and provide structural support, also hidden underground bases avoid detection from spy satellite and can withstand orbital/artillery attacks. Troop movement similarly can be done by tunnelling from location to location, and lower gravity help them doing such things easier as well. Fights therefore will be done in close quarters mostly. As soon as an enemy based receive sonar reports of rumbling underground, they will scramble for defense, and ready for tunnel warfare as they fight back openings in their base, and they may probably set up some mines to prevent diggers approaching in some path. Infantry (including robots) with hand held tunnelling tos will be very important due to their smaller size, and can make precision strike while a giant digger some where else mask their sound reports. Bunker busters will be used extensively from space to hit underground enemies and collapsing tunnels when they are detected. Railroads might become important to maintain supply chain between bases as well.

This might be closer to the truth, or at least familiar war tactics. Though depending on depth, a shallow tunnel might be easily detectable and easily 'bombed'.

[RainDreamer]

There will be space combat as well since we are talking about support from earth, and so there will be some effort in trying to prevent supply and transport craft from reaching destinations. Also I still question the need of human infantry, since they will be very difficult to deliver safely without being shot by things like lasers or just micro missiles. Can try loading them on digger pods with retro rockets to do suicide burn and land from orbit, then instantly digging down to a safe rally point.But it sounds horrible.

Still, they would have to travel from earth...and that trip is very easy to intercept. Unless there is like a treaty of prevent war in orbit or something.

Edited April 27, 2016 by RainDreamer

[qeveren]

1 hour ago, lobe said:

This might be an issue of perception between us: I figure if one facility is going to cause problems to another facility, immediate eradication is required. While some intel might be lost, the loss would be much less than the benefit of destroying the facility that would have perfected the weapons the intel would have shown. So, with no need to capture bases all that is needed are high velocity penetration rounds to turn the base into a crater.

Nothing, there is no air . I kind of pictured a lunar battle being like shooting bullets with bullets mixed with MAD doctrine.

However, as I concluded in my last post, the base with the steerable mass driver has the check-mate in this scenario.

I dunno; it's pretty rare for two opposing sides to go 'total annihilation' on each other.  Sure, you want to eliminate the opposing side's warfighting capability, but exterminating civilian populations tends to get you frowned at by folks.  It also obviously depends on what's being fought over and why; building infrastructure on the Moon is probably expensive, resources, equipment, and specialists are valuable assets to capture.  A total war, us-or-them scenario?  Smash away, I guess.

A steerable mass driver doesn't have any real advantage over conventional Lunar artillery, and has the huge downside that you can't move it out of the way of incoming fire.

46 minutes ago, tater said:

Now you are being hit by a shower of particles---shrapnel, grapeshot, canister, call it what you like, moving at something like 11 km/s. The total energy is the same as if it was whole, just spread out. A 200 gram chunk at 11 km/s has the energy of an Abrams 120mm tank round. I'm unsure how much energy you'd need to destroy it if it was something like a long rod penetrator (of decent size).

How the heck are you firing something at the surface of the Moon at 11kps?  You're certainly not doing it with something that's on the Moon.
 

47 minutes ago, lobe said:

How do you deliver the infantry? Ground vehicles? VTOL dropships like the VTOL bombers? Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (good luck surviving the impact at 2 km/s)? Unless the bases are a 100 km away, it would be very easy to pick them off before they had made it. Again, the guy with the antipodal mass driver is the king, unless saboteurs have been introduced.

It's a good point, actually.  The surface is going to be a death zone until at least one side's surface capability is reduced to rubble.  Once that's done I imagine troops would be ferried by suborbital transports of some kind... and they'll be spending the ride praying that the artillery guys didn't miss anything.

Edited April 27, 2016 by qeveren

[tater]

I'd fire it the same way everything else got to the moon, from earth. 

[qeveren]

4 minutes ago, tater said:

I'd fire it the same way everything else got to the moon, from earth. 

Well that's hardly Lunar combat, now is it?

[kerbiloid]

What's the purpose of that lunar combat at all?

If to eliminate an opponent's presence on Moon, both sides would just launch heavy rockets. No need in a lunar fortress, no artillery, no infantry, no lunar cavalry.

The only purpose of a military lunar base would be to kill another military lunar base,
If the opponent has only scientific outpost, what's a reason to create your military base? To capture his weather station?
Industrial base? See above about heavy rockets.

So, at least the first military base would be absolutely useless. And very expensive. While stilll very vulnerable and depending on space traffic.
Not great chances to be ever built.

Edited April 27, 2016 by kerbiloid

[lobe]

51 minutes ago, qeveren said:

A steerable mass driver doesn't have any real advantage over conventional Lunar artillery,

Yes it does, the first of which the the shell doesn't require propellant or it requires little maneuvering propellant.

54 minutes ago, qeveren said:

exterminating civilian populations tends to get you frowned at by folks.

This is subjective. Looking at our current state it would raise a few voices, but depending on the circumstances it might seem entirely reasonable to turn ten thousand miners into a crater to preserve a nation, culture, or business without a flinch.

[KSK]

2 hours ago, qeveren said:

Well that's hardly Lunar combat, now is it?

Nope - because Lunar combat is a dumb idea (even supposing that there's something to fight over on the Moon), given that the resources and logistics required to get any sort of combat materiel to the Moon is so disproportionately higher than the effort involved to drop a couple of tons of metal on that materiel at high speed.

From Wikipedia on the LCROSS mission.

The Centaur impact was expected to excavate more than 350 metric tons (390 short tons) of lunar material and create a crater about 20 m (65 ft) in diameter to a depth of about 4 m (13 ft). The Shepherding Spacecraft impact was projected to excavate an estimated 150 metric tons (170 short tons) and create a crater 14 m (46 ft) in diameter to a depth of about 2 m (6 ft). Most of the material in the Centaur debris plume was expected to remain at (lunar) altitudes below 10 km (6 mi).[1]

LCROSS started from a polar orbit and so hit the Moon at the relatively low velocity of 9000 km/h. Even so, it made quite a mess. If your Moonbase is anywhere that can be reached by an impactor on a direct trajectory from Earth that doesn't need to bother with that pesky slowing-down-to-go-into orbit procedure - well it's goodbye Moonbase. Unless you can bury it seriously far underground, which is a non trivial task in itself.

As for infantry combat in spacesuits - you are kidding right?

[InsaneDruid]

9 hours ago, Souper said:

Hello everyone. I'm starting this thread to discuss how combat on the lunar surface would take place. Specifically;

 

Hopefully: non-existent.

[Bill Phil]

9 hours ago, lobe said:

All but 2 of those would be worthless: the artillery and spacecraft. Artillery could be used for immediate retribution, since the Moon has no air a projectile can be launched into sub-orbit and strike halfway around the Moon. Spacecraft have the obvious advantage of orbital strike capability anywhere on the orbital trajectory. Though thinking about this even spacecraft are at a disadvantage to artillery, because it takes to much energy to adjust inclination. A mass-driver might be turnable in lunar gravity.

It takes less energy the higher your orbit is... A bombardment station at EML-1 would be the best place. 

[PB666]

9 hours ago, Souper said:

What's the issue?

In the replies already given it should be obvious. 

[todofwar]

I think too many people in this thread are getting hung up on total annhilation. The US and Russia have had the ability to annihilate their enemies for decades, hasn't stopped them from launching conventional wars. Also, the scenario is a bit vague, if the goal is to purge all enemy bases from the moon then yes nuke it from orbit. But if you're trying to take control of a peak of eternal light, or maybe the anchor point of a space elevator, you're not going to resort to total annihilation strategies. 

[PB666]

14 minutes ago, todofwar said:

I think too many people in this thread are getting hung up on total annhilation. The US and Russia have had the ability to annihilate their enemies for decades, hasn't stopped them from launching conventional wars. Also, the scenario is a bit vague, if the goal is to purge all enemy bases from the moon then yes nuke it from orbit. But if you're trying to take control of a peak of eternal light, or maybe the anchor point of a space elevator, you're not going to resort to total annihilation strategies. 

Aside from the fact you are devolving into modern politics, historical i refer to the name cold and idea of surrogate combatants. The poles of the conflict are trying to divorce themselves from the two previous generations of global conflict for good reason, read the history and think about those reasons. The dogs of war bark, slash and gnarl as long as the combatants remain alive. This is why history repeats itself. 

If you are engaged in an intellectual combat, you want to demonstrate to the non-alligned that your system is better when not in conflict. For this reason i would argue that engaging in lunar wars and space wars immediately places the aggressor in a situation of now having to dispell the impression that it cannot succeed socially or intellectually so that it has to devolve into self destructive military combat. Militarism looks good internally, but almost always makes one look worse globally. 

I can give the example of the opinions that are created when one group blows their satellite into >3000 pieces and how this 'KSP' group of multinationals reflect on that act.

 

[todofwar]

51 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Aside from the fact you are devolving into modern politics, historical i refer to the name cold and idea of surrogate combatants. The poles of the conflict are trying to divorce themselves from the two previous generations of global conflict for good reason, read the history and think about those reasons. The dogs of war bark, slash and gnarl as long as the combatants remain alive. This is why history repeats itself. 

If you are engaged in an intellectual combat, you want to demonstrate to the non-alligned that your system is better when not in conflict. For this reason i would argue that engaging in lunar wars and space wars immediately places the aggressor in a situation of now having to dispell the impression that it cannot succeed socially or intellectually so that it has to devolve into self destructive military combat. Militarism looks good internally, but almost always makes one look worse globally. 

I can give the example of the opinions that are created when one group blows their satellite into >3000 pieces and how this 'KSP' group of multinationals reflect on that act.

 

I just meant that having the ability to annihilate your enemy doesn't mean you use said ability, I'm talking from a purely strategic perspective not a political one. I agree that any kind of militarization of the moon will be met with extreme protest from everyone, but that may or may not halt it. 

Getting back to how a Lunar war might play out, in a situation in which two countries establish settlements on the Moon, and both start to act aggressively towards each other, we would probably see them both build these kinds of long range one hit kill weapons but do so secretly and constantly deny they are being built. The tech to get us to orbit from the Lunar surface can be re-purposed to launch kinetic projectiles at the enemy. Of course, such projectiles will actually be easy to guard against because you will know their general trajectory and can establish a missile defense system, so it might not actually be useful. I think the threat of MAD would result in everything being done through black ops type missions, maybe with terrorist type groups that the enemy would disavow if they fail. 

 

[More Boosters]

Why is this subforum so obsessed with  combat?

[KSK]

1 hour ago, todofwar said:

I think too many people in this thread are getting hung up on total annhilation. The US and Russia have had the ability to annihilate their enemies for decades, hasn't stopped them from launching conventional wars. Also, the scenario is a bit vague, if the goal is to purge all enemy bases from the moon then yes nuke it from orbit. But if you're trying to take control of a peak of eternal light, or maybe the anchor point of a space elevator, you're not going to resort to total annihilation strategies. 

How many combatants do you see getting involved in a lunar battle? There's a big difference between total annihilation, Cold War nuclear exchange style and total annihilation of a platoon or two of infantry. Besides, there's plenty of room on the Moon for everyone for the foreseeable future, simply because getting people there and keeping them there is such a major undertaking. Why does there only have to be a single base at the peak of eternal light? If you can't agree on a way of sharing that extremely expensive space elevator, then there's no good reason why you couldn't build two. The exact position of that anchor point isn't going to be critical.

And this is yet another reason why the whole idea of lunar combat is stupid. Anyone on the Moon is so heavily dependent on equipment just to stay alive, let alone fight, that the borderline between a limited engagement and total annihilation becomes hair thin. If I pop a hole in your spacesuit, it doesn't much matter how badly injured you are - the chances are that you're going to die anyway. Taking prisoners becomes a very cold exercise in 'how many more people can we fit in our base and still keep the life support running.' Planning to capture enemy assets? Better hope they haven't booby-trapped the airlock.

So you don't bother. You send an ultimatum: 'evacuate your base within one month or we drop a spent booster on it at the next available launch window.' Or if you absolutely must capture those enemy assets (for whatever trumped up reason you care to give), then you send in the drones, wipe out all the defenders and potential saboteurs and move in. Or simply punch a big enough hole in it to kill everyone inside, wait till they run out of backup air, repair the hole and move in. If they try to fly in additional supplies, it really wouldn't take much to disable a rocket powered lander, at which point it does a thoroughly convenient job of plastering itself all over the regolith.

There's just no earthly reason to get involved in this idiocy and if you must get involved, there's even less reason to hamstring yourself (and risk your own troops in the process) with the niceties of limited warfare.

 

Edited April 27, 2016 by KSK

[YNM]

Space warfare ?

[PB666]

3 hours ago, todofwar said:

I just meant that having the ability to annihilate your enemy doesn't mean you use said ability, I'm talking from a purely strategic perspective not a political one. I agree that any kind of militarization of the moon will be met with extreme protest from everyone, but that may or may not halt it. 

Getting back to how a Lunar war might play out, in a situation in which two countries establish settlements on the Moon, and both start to act aggressively towards each other, we would probably see them both build these kinds of long range one hit kill weapons but do so secretly and constantly deny they are being built. The tech to get us to orbit from the Lunar surface can be re-purposed to launch kinetic projectiles at the enemy. Of course, such projectiles will actually be easy to guard against because you will know their general trajectory and can establish a missile defense system, so it might not actually be useful. I think the threat of MAD would result in everything being done through black ops type missions, maybe with terrorist type groups that the enemy would disavow if they fail. 

 

But the problem is that the exit velocities for the moon are slightly faster than then trajectory velocities of a high powered weapon. Suppose you have a settled moon, many countries, prolly many living near the poles and sharing resources like power, etc. You then hit one of them, even with a conventional bomb, you are going to have projectiles flying out with zero atmospheric drag force and impacting these other nationalities at 1km/sec projectiles. Good luck with your foreign relationships.

I have distilled my comments down, hopelessly to try to put an end to these childish threads.

I have to make a point here, avoiding the forum no-nos. I going to do this by reduction-ad-absurbum. Obviously so because some lack a historic perspective.

There was a time in pre-human and human warfare when destructive conflict made sense. During this time our natural environment posed most of our capacity, and thus the conflict did not degrade capacity. If chimp troupe A and B conflict, males are lost, females are exchanged, and the youngest are killed off, but the capacity remains undiminished. Since WWI, this is not the state of modern warfare, the winners often lost as much as the losers, and the war to end all wars was not an end (in fact it corruption of the Mandates that was the beginning to the major conflicts we see today).  The further a combatant was from starting a war, and the smallest amount of time spent from the conflict generally translate to better circumstances after the war.
An example is the Soviet Union, which invaded Poland, eventually on the winning side, lost 20,000,000 and the capacity of a large swath, e.g. Stalingrad, of land was lost and had to be rebuilt). Germany was split in half, optimum capacity was lost, lost a large proportion of males, and a substantial number of its intellectuals. Where did alot of the surviving intellectuals end up . . .in the place that avoided conflict.

We can just follow one system, the 12 or so US submarines in the pacific in 1941, basically defensive information gathering, short range, low power, no deck gun, no radar, low quality sonar, 4 torpedos, within a year they were longer, had more torpedos, more powerful torpedos, within 2 had radar, deck guns, many more torpedos - many more accurate torpedos, within 3.5 years had sank the largest capital ship built in the war a few days on its maiden voyage, by wars end there was a saying you could walk from Singapore to Japan on the periscopes of US submarines. The maritime capacity of the initiating combatant was reduced by 70% by a system they did not even consider as a primary target wars start.  Bombs, tanks, and pitched battles had less to do with wars end than two smart technologies, the smart-sub and the A-Bomb. Both of these made the wars end inevitable, and more to the point, the initiating combatants knew this before they knew the H-bomb even existed, because they could no longer control the seas nor could they could protect themselves from stealth attacks.

This epitomizes modern conflict, you cannot assume in any attack that your target does not have a reserve capacity of resources (in the case of subs underdeveloped intellectual capacity), to do to you something a magnitude more degenerative than you did to them. In the modern period overt attacks are basically pluri-degenerative, in a lunar circumstance all of the capacity is in human construction, there is no dense forest to fall back onto (reduction ad adsubum - but in fact the baseline state is fully considerable). These are all 14-PSI balloons with a grand fear of needles. I think the movie Dr. Strangelove basically points out the ultimate outcome of a nuclear war is basically bunker warfare, a few who survive in bunkers that have no capacity to produce and so winning is absurd. Anywhere on the moon is a Strangelove War (the vacuum of the moon is comparable to the radiation of atomics), on the moon you go throwing needles around and they will all pop, the ones you want and those you don't want. Your bunker warfare precedes any conflict otherwise starting the conflict basically ends it and everyone loses everything. Not only that but those folks living in the balloons are the elite of the engineering, science and technology world, they have associates that can basically freeze any electronic system ever built, and if so,  motivated to build and arm a better stealth weapon. There is an old saying, those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. The contra is also true, it is better to Conserve capacity and built an social/intellectual capacity that is primarily defensive, but can be converted to offensive, than to initiate conflict. It is not necessary for competitors to know all the reserve, but occasionally it should be made public a preventive show of capacity. The only reason to do this is to prevent a neophyte demagogue from rising up and mustering ignorance.

This leaves only earth locked terrorist that have a belief that lunar colonization is bad, or earth or far off competitors that are suffering a decline of market share due to lunar capacity. Again if you are an earth bound terrorist group and you attack my group on the moon, with a space to GSO dV of 2500 m/s and no atmosphere, All I need is a few solar panels and a high output microwave laser and basically were you came from and your capacity is toast. There is no logic in attacking a space-based culture in the modern age, you may win in the end, it would be a hollow victory.

We in this culture place a premium on games of war and warfare, hallway shoot-em ups and the like, but these technologies which allow the games also make the real-life warfare much more subject to intellectualism and less subject to animism, because ultimately the smarter the weapon the more obvious our ignorance.

Quote

“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”

“A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy' it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten.”

" The fiercest serpent may be overcome by a swarm of ants." [In response to the building of the Battleship Yamato, its carrier counterpart was sunk by a 1/10th its mass sub on the carriers sea-trials, while he thought it would be sunk by allied air, in fact the force he did not attribute sunk it even faster]

“A brilliant man would find a way not to fight a war.”

-English thereof -  Yamamoto,  Isoroku - Marshall admiral - Commander and chief Imperial Japanese Navy.

 

Edited April 27, 2016 by PB666

[lobe]

6 hours ago, todofwar said:

I think too many people in this thread are getting hung up on total annhilation. The US and Russia have had the ability to annihilate their enemies for decades, hasn't stopped them from launching conventional wars.

The US and Russia have never fought themselves though. Pretty much all warfare since World War Two has been asymmetric, a large industrialized nation fighting an insurgency or an agrarian nation. A lot of the wars the US fought after WW2 have been civil wars where the US got involved to 'spread democracy'.  In fact I think there has been no conflict between any two nuclear armed nations.

[todofwar]

2 hours ago, PB666 said:

Snip

I would say all you've shown is war is getting more destructive, but I don't think, sadly, that war is over. You assume humans are logical beings, but we're not. Inevitably someone will take something a bit too far and we will have another war. But this is getting off topic. I like these threads, childish as you may think them, for the intellectual challenge of imagining what kinds of tech will be employed. For the purposes of a thought exercise I disregard the whys of it, even though I agree a war on the moon is very far fetched.