Jovian Warfare

[Souper]

Suppose two countries with all of the technologies we expect to have by the year 2150 exist on Ganymede and Europa. They cover the whole of their moons. They have giant vertical underground farms to sustain themselves and huge solar fields with almost 100% efficiency (virtually no energy (light, heat, vibration, etc.) is missed or wasted). They have mining running down to the cores. They have big cities like on Earth, mostly underground.

And they go to war with eatchother. No prisoners. No survivors. No slaves. Total annihilation.

 

How is it fought? What are the advantages of Europa over Ganymede?

[kerbiloid]

Callisto wins.

Three similar balls of frozen mud.
The main entertainment is to throw mudballs at each other, propelling them with water steam.

The upper is a moon - the less dV this kind of relaxation requires, while the greater kinetical dV will be released below.
While the lower is a moon - the more expensive shot, the weaker impact into an upper one,

As orbits are: Europa < Ganymede < Callisto, Callistians have advantage over those two losers. And Europa is below them all.

Also Europa is inside the radiation belt. So, they are limited in their surface activities.

Spoiler

 

Edited February 21, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Shpaget]

Whoever is the first one to throw a big enough rock.

[razark]

Neither.

They begin an arms race to develop the "ultimate weapon", but end up with nothing more than Mutually Assured Destruction, meaning that whoever pushes the Big Red Button first dooms both of them to annihilation.

[DDE]

Europan surface activities are impeded by rad flux, whereas Ganymede has steeper dV requirements.

[Scotius]

Also, solar panel fields that far from the Sun? One would think after 1,5 century Jovian colonists would at least have access to fusion power plants. Going to war while your energy requirements are covered by uncountable flimsy photovoltaics spread all over the place is a... bad idea.

[kerbiloid]

Then Mimas wakes up and... That was no moon.

P.S.
Btw, steam waterpults throwing transorbital mineral shots rule.

Edited February 21, 2017 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

Kinetic energy differences are insignificant, you just throw arbitrarily large nukes. Getting weapons off the surface in either direction will be trivial, given the technological assumptions here. The same probably can be said for radiation environment.

The winner depends on who has the best equipment, training and military acumen, as is traditional.

 

[peadar1987]

As always, it depends why they are going to war. Are they trying to capture something? Is it religious in nature? Did the beautiful but headstrong Princess of Ganymede marry the dashing Duke of Enceladus instead of going through with her arranged marriage to the Earl of Europa? The objective of the war will determine what constitutes "winning", and that will determine who is the most likely to win.

[kerbiloid]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Kinetic energy differences are insignificant, you just throw arbitrarily large nukes.

First they need to make them, probably without uranium deposites.
While water and stones always around, in planetary amounts. As also priceless heat from the Jupiter.
 

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

The winner depends on who has the best equipment, training and military acumen, as is traditional.

Mr. Napoleon thoughtfully listens to you on St.Helen's island.

1 hour ago, peadar1987 said:

Are they trying to capture something? Is it religious in nature? Did the beautiful but headstrong Princess of Ganymede marry the dashing Duke of Enceladus instead of going through with her arranged marriage to the Earl of Europa?

They even didn't begin, but you already are searching how to make them enemies. How impassible!

 

Edited February 21, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Bill Phil]

Callisto.... It has the high ground.

But seriously, the planet/moon dwellers will be easily conquered by the orbiting civizilation. They control the orbits. They control the moons/planet. They also happen to control the giant lasers... good luck fighting them. You'd need hostages in order to not be shot down immediately.

[p1t1o]

47 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

First they need to make them, probably without uranium deposites.

There's gotta be some fissiles SOMEwhere on those rocks. If its here, its there.

 

[kerbiloid]

28 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

planet/moon dwellers will be easily conquered by the orbiting civizilation. They control the orbits. They control the moons/planet. They also happen to control the giant lasers... good luck fighting them. You'd need hostages in order to not be shot down immediately.

A total annihilation war between Europa and Ganymede underground cities (as given) means that the former Earth colony around Jupiter got into a deep crysis and easier conflicts between its moons were already destroyed orbital infrastructure and so on.
So, the orbital forces indeed would give an advantage for the side which it would have, but they are gone long ago. It's a tunnel war between the underground vaults.
(Otherwise the war be finished earlier exactly like said about the orbiting civilization).

17 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

There's gotta be some fissiles SOMEwhere on those rocks. If its here, its there.

But the mines and facilities not enough deep under ground are probably destroyed or will be as soon as the action begins.
While the survivivg fortresses are hidden deep under the ice, where the tidal forces heat the underground water deposites (poetically mentioned by the OP as "solar fields") giving them energy.
So, it's too few uranium to mine, it's too much ice over the targets to need.
And the situation described in/by OP looks like positional war between the survived fortresses.

So, we can see huge underground boilers , huge pipelines raising to the surface and grim machinists.
Mines where grim miners mine ice and stone blocks and send them to a shell factory.
A factory where grim workers round the ice and stone blocks to make shells.
And huge steam pipes throwing these shells into orbit, sending them to another moon, making it covered with craters to reach the enemy dungeon. The second century is about to finish...

Edited February 21, 2017 by kerbiloid

[p1t1o]

15 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

But the mines and facilities not enough deep under ground are probably destroyed or will be as soon as the action begins.

How? Because with my stockpile of fissiles built up before hostilities, I was able to deflect X% of incoming rocks, especially over strategic targets like uranium processing plants.

Counter-proposal:

If waging war between jovian moons, dont fight from *your moon*, its all about secret bases in the belt, havn't you been watching The Expanse?

[kerbiloid]

13 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Because with my stockpile of fissiles built up before hostilities

Not sure if somebody would produce stock fissiles in amounts much greater than spends.
Especially on moons made of ice and lightweight rocks which probably have formed from a cloud not rich with heavy elements. (Rather than some asteroids which are debris of planet embryos, more dense that the Jovians.)
So, probably all fissile from stock have already gone during the former conflicts.

19 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

If waging war between jovian moons, dont fight from *your moon*, its all about secret bases in the belt, havn't you been watching The Expanse?

Just the OP was about Jovian moons, so.

In the Expanse setting _{that dirty} beltalowda live not after some conflict leading to a total war where their stocks were depleted. The society is still rich enough to build a Nauvoo-class megaship.

[KSK]

Instead of Jovian warfare, why can't we have jovial warfare? A Grand Tourney of the Ages between teams from each of the Three Moons. Featuring events from all through history: Jousting (on robot horses natch), ice-hockey, chess, wrestling, Counterstrike, StarCraft II...The possibilities are endless!

[kerbiloid]

Curling. They must play curling.

[daniel l.]

Honestly a gigaton bomb would settle such a war quite quickly. With low gravity and no atmosphere it would be easy to launch such a weapon via mass driver. And once it hits? Well... Needless to say the recipient will suffer loss of one hemisphere, And a severe elongation of it's orbit. So whoever fires first would probably be the winner. Unless the enemy detects the incoming weapon and launches it's own missile. In which case...

No one wins.

[Tyko]

This and the other thread about a future interstellar war smack of a replay of the Terran Cold War..."Suppose two superpowers, each with the capability of rendering the planet uninhabitable many times over, decide to engage in no-holds-barred warfare. Which would win???"

Edited February 21, 2017 by Tyko

[TheKosanianMethod]

Who has more resources? One of them could pull a WWII-style attrition war. Bonus if the underdog gets their Really Big Ally With Big Guns And Money to change the course of the war.

7 hours ago, daniel l. said:

Honestly a gigaton bomb would settle such a war quite quickly. With low gravity and no atmosphere it would be easy to launch such a weapon via mass driver. And once it hits? Well... Needless to say the recipient will suffer loss of one hemisphere, And a severe elongation of it's orbit. So whoever fires first would probably be the winner. Unless the enemy detects the incoming weapon and launches it's own missile. In which case...

No one wins.

MAD. I like it. This is why we don't use nukes^^^

[YNM]

They'd be space-station colonists. Hollowing a body down to core is a no-no. They'd have a bigger problem than just warring each other (radiation, limited supplies already, and well, MAD.)

[Bill Phil]

13 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

A total annihilation war between Europa and Ganymede underground cities (as given) means that the former Earth colony around Jupiter got into a deep crysis and easier conflicts between its moons were already destroyed orbital infrastructure and so on.
So, the orbital forces indeed would give an advantage for the side which it would have, but they are gone long ago. It's a tunnel war between the underground vaults.
(Otherwise the war be finished earlier exactly like said about the orbiting civilization).

But if they have the capacity at all to fight each other, it means they have the capacity to launch. Which means that orbital infrastructure would still be in place.

But I'm not referring to infrastructure. I'm referring to the nations/polities that don't limit themselves to planets/moons...

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

But if they have the capacity at all to fight each other, it means they have the capacity to launch. Which means that orbital infrastructure would still be in place.

Nowadays the Terrans surely have the capacity to launch, but the orbital infrastructure looks not so... battleshippish. Just puny things with antennas, no space fortress.

[Bill Phil]

10 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Nowadays the Terrans surely have the capacity to launch, but the orbital infrastructure looks not so... battleshippish. Just puny things with antennas, no space fortress.

Then no space war is going to occur. At all. Europa is not going to go to war with Ganymede. Which defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Again, if they have the capacity to launch the weapons to fight each other, they have orbital infrastructure.