Interplanetary WAR!

[SuperBigD60]

Fighters could do something capital ships can't: Evade fire, and possibly strike vulnerable parts of a ship where a missile for instance couldn't get on its own.

You could protect the vulnerable parts against fighters, although that might not always be possible, or it would otherwise compromise that portion of the ship, I'll give you that.

In order to evade that fire, though, the fighters sacrifice a lot in the way of life support supplies, and if it were to have any useful amount of dV, it could still be quite heavy anyway.

As far as the guidance on a missile is concerned, I suspect AI will be loads more advanced than a human mind even just a few hundred years in the future. But, if its too expensive, your point would remain quite valid.

It seems to me that i would be more likely that these wars would not use massie ships, these kinds of this would be hugely vulnerable to asteroids and explosive device like nukes, it would be more likely to be a fight with missiles and covert ops. another problem with capital ships would be that they would be a ***** to maneuver or speed up/slow down, also you could make lots of tiny small robots to tear at the hull of giant ships. not to mention the resources that it would take to make a ship capable of keeping an entire battle fleet going.

I acknowledge there are drawbacks to massive ships, but clearly our engineers today have already solved most of those (with the exception of the asteroids and your nanobots) with modern naval vessels. As far as I'm aware, and I'm no expert, but most of the ships in a naval fleet are quite large, yet they have no issues building or navigating them. It would be harder to amass those resources in space, but if we're talking about war on an interplanetary scale, I suspect that at least two entities have access to the ridiculous resources required to construct and maintain such a fleet.

Nukes aren't actually that big of a deal in space. You really would have to make contact, and even then it really just expends most of the explosion out into space.

Asteroids, on the other hand, are probably easier for big ships to handle than fighter-class ships. micrometeorite strikes are inevitable, so a ship with more redundancy is going to fare better. Anything big enough that a fighter can dodge, a big ship could track and dodge just as easily. I'm not talking about "that's no moon" size, just like maybe an aircraft carrier.

[krona14]

You could protect the vulnerable parts against fighters, although that might not always be possible, or it would otherwise compromise that portion of the ship, I'll give you that.

In order to evade that fire, though, the fighters sacrifice a lot in the way of life support supplies, and if it were to have any useful amount of dV, it could still be quite heavy anyway.

As far as the guidance on a missile is concerned, I suspect AI will be loads more advanced than a human mind even just a few hundred years in the future. But, if its too expensive, your point would remain quite valid.

I acknowledge there are drawbacks to massive ships, but clearly our engineers today have already solved most of those (with the exception of the asteroids and your nanobots) with modern naval vessels. As far as I'm aware, and I'm no expert, but most of the ships in a naval fleet are quite large, yet they have no issues building or navigating them. It would be harder to amass those resources in space, but if we're talking about war on an interplanetary scale, I suspect that at least two entities have access to the ridiculous resources required to construct and maintain such a fleet.

Nukes aren't actually that big of a deal in space. You really would have to make contact, and even then it really just expends most of the explosion out into space.

Asteroids, on the other hand, are probably easier for big ships to handle than fighter-class ships. micrometeorite strikes are inevitable, so a ship with more redundancy is going to fare better. Anything big enough that a fighter can dodge, a big ship could track and dodge just as easily. I'm not talking about "that's no moon" size, just like maybe an aircraft carrier.

most fighters would not be manned by humans the would definitely be remotely piloted, this would remove any need for life support and would be better for the long trips that would be necessary for this fight, they would all probably super small so they could seek in very small areas and cause lots of damage.

the problem with your second statement is that most navel ships don't actually see combat, and when they do, they are launching missiles at each other a long ranges or being bombed by airplanes, thus they do not need to be maneuverable. and with aircraft carriers, they are only for support and never actually engage in combat. if you were to use capital ships, they would not be meant for combat, they would be like aircraft carriers and would be used for refuels and reloads as well as commanding the drones you would use for combat. these ship would be kept well away from any fight because they would not be maneuverable and useful in a combat situation besides from refuel/reload.

nukes are still massively useful, they would have a much small useful blast radius, but if you just take into account how large that sill would be, its sill an awesome weapon, but things like railguns would be a extremely useful weapon here.

[SuperBigD60]

If a fighter isn't manned, its kind of just a missile with guns. It still would need to be rather heavy to have a useful dV.

And the long lines of sight sort of combat is what I'd expect from a future spacial naval battle. I suspect much of maritime navy strategy would carry over into spacial warfare, hence the big ships.

The sort of warfare would likely involve playing around on the outer edge of your enemy's effective radar/scanning/weapons range until either you or they make a mistake.

The prevalence of aircraft carriers and the fact they work by using planes is the one thing that makes me think fighters might have some niche I just can't see.

[Jouni]

Nukes aren't actually that big of a deal in space. You really would have to make contact, and even then it really just expends most of the explosion out into space.

Don't think nukes as expensive megaweapons, but as cheap bulk weapons.

A 100 kg nuclear warhead produces an instant pulse of roughly 10^15 J. At the distance of 1 km, that's still around 100 MJ/m^2, which is probably quite dangerous.

The US has produced roughly 70000 nuclear warheads, at the the price of around $10 million per warhead (present value; delivery systems were an order of magnitude more expensive). Based on this, I would guess that mass-produced nuclear warheads would cost at most a few million with present technology, and possibly much less. That's comparable to the price of long-range anti-aircraft missiles, such as the Patriot.

With prices like that, the threats that ships would face in space combat would not consist of individual warheads, but of thousands of nukes. Imagine swarms of stealth warheads, creating kill zones tens or even hundreds of kilometers across.

[Rakaydos]

If a fighter isn't manned, its kind of just a missile with guns.

You say that like it's a bad thing. That is exactly what capital ships will fire at each other

[Seret]

If a fighter isn't manned, its kind of just a missile with guns.

Unmanned is the norm for spacecraft. 99% of everything we send into space even now is unmanned. There's even less reason to put people on a combat vehicle.

Hell, give it a few decades and unmanned will be the norm for atmospheric fighters too. The days of the fighter jock are drawing to a close.

I suspect much of maritime navy strategy would carry over into spacial warfare, hence the big ships.

I highly doubt it. Spacecraft are much more like aircraft than they are like ships. Size and weight need to be minimised. Combat spacecraft will be small, unmanned and unarmoured.

[Vortex421]

I suggest reading the "Honor Harrington" series by David Weber and most of Ben Bova's books. The earlier Harrington books do a very good job of describing just how combat in space could look in the future - velocity, turnover, etc. are all important and the weaponry used is either missiles with payloads of nukes/explosives/laser systems or railguns. There is also the issue of communications lag. Ben Bova, especially in the Asteroid Wars series, does another good job of painting both what this sort of warfare might look like as well as give an interesting scenario for just such a setting - several nations with tensions amongst each other.

[SuperBigD60]

Don't think nukes as expensive megaweapons, but as cheap bulk weapons.

A 100 kg nuclear warhead produces an instant pulse of roughly 10^15 J. At the distance of 1 km, that's still around 100 MJ/m^2, which is probably quite dangerous.

The US has produced roughly 70000 nuclear warheads, at the the price of around $10 million per warhead (present value; delivery systems were an order of magnitude more expensive). Based on this, I would guess that mass-produced nuclear warheads would cost at most a few million with present technology, and possibly much less. That's comparable to the price of long-range anti-aircraft missiles, such as the Patriot.

With prices like that, the threats that ships would face in space combat would not consist of individual warheads, but of thousands of nukes. Imagine swarms of stealth warheads, creating kill zones tens or even hundreds of kilometers across.

I suspect rail guns (which the US Navy is developing now, mind you), or something with linear induction motors might be more likely in terms of bulk weapons, for precisely the reason we're trying to develop them today. If a nuke costs $10 million, but a chunk of metal you fire out of a rail gun costs $1000, I suspect you'd go for the cheaper, easier to produce alternative.

The reason behind railgun development today is because shooting down a $100,000 drone with a $1 million dollar missile is a little stupid. (I don't know the actual costs, but the missiles are sometimes/often more expensive than their targets.)

Unmanned is the norm for spacecraft. 99% of everything we send into space even now is unmanned. There's even less reason to put people on a combat vehicle.

Hell, give it a few decades and unmanned will be the norm for atmospheric fighters too. The days of the fighter jock are drawing to a close.

I highly doubt it. Spacecraft are much more like aircraft than they are like ships. Size and weight need to be minimised. Combat spacecraft will be small, unmanned and unarmoured.

I don't know if that would be the case. I think an important target would have large gun batteries/missile silos/whatever, and so any attacker would need to be armored against that. You could go for using small fighters to try and get between the big guns, but small, agile craft would be much more susceptible smaller machine gun/flak cannon fire, and I think those guns would be a necessity simply due to their relative cost compared to a railgun that could provide the same punch as a nuke (as in, they are cheap, and they defend against cheap-ish attackers, so they are important).

Reading about some of how the navy operates, as far as I understand, aircraft carriers play a relatively central role in a fleet, so I'm starting to think some fighter (manned or unmanned) would be rather important to a space navy. These fighters would need a larger "aircraft carrier" like ship to service them and support them (keep them flying, refill their fuel/ammo, etc.). So I imagine some balance between armor and weight would have to be reached, because big ships are a strategic necessity

[Rakaydos]

Be careful going too far down that analigy- On earth, aircraft carriers work becuse of the difference between heavier than air flight and powered sailing.

In space, there's no real difference in performance between a 10 ton hunter killer that is 90% engine, and a 100,000 ton courier vessel that is 90% engine.

Therefore, a space fighter can only be made more effective if it plays to it's strengths- disposability. (Therefore allowing sacrifices to be made in operating range and combat endurance- and almost certiantly life support- in order to achieve greater short term performance than larger, more expensive craft. Think Tie Fighters manned by droids- dirt cheap noone cares if they die)

[SuperBigD60]

Be careful going too far down that analigy- On earth, aircraft carriers work becuse of the difference between heavier than air flight and powered sailing.

In space, there's no real difference in performance between a 10 ton hunter killer that is 90% engine, and a 100,000 ton courier vessel that is 90% engine.

Therefore, a space fighter can only be made more effective if it plays to it's strengths- disposability. (Therefore allowing sacrifices to be made in operating range and combat endurance- and almost certiantly life support- in order to achieve greater short term performance than larger, more expensive craft. Think Tie Fighters manned by droids- dirt cheap noone cares if they die)

You're right, the analogy as I phrased it is misleading. But a similar relationship exists, I suspect.

Your 10 ton hunter killer would not be fit for long distance travel, due to being stripped way down and being, in large part engine. You would need some sort of delivery method to bring this craft (and its friends) to the battlefield, and a capital ship would be one possible solution. the difference you get between the big and small ship here is the 10 ton ship is 90% engine, while the 100000 ton ship is 5% engine. You don't need to worry about getting significant thrust for something that is dealing with interplanetary transfer burns. Perhaps you just need to be more careful with your calculations so you know you can stop when you get to the target, but still, a ship that big has no business being 90% engine by mass.

[Rakaydos]

Perhaps you just need to be more careful with your calculations so you know you can stop when you get to the target, but still, a ship that big has no business being 90% engine by mass.

Why not? you get all the maneuverability of a "space fighter" (probably trade some MWR for ISP, but still), but the 10% that isnt engine is far larger- call it a battlecruiser or light cruiser, depending on mass. It's just more expensive and takes longer to build.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Rakaydos

[Northstar1989]

I suspect rail guns (which the US Navy is developing now, mind you), or something with linear induction motors might be more likely in terms of bulk weapons, for precisely the reason we're trying to develop them today. If a nuke costs $10 million, but a chunk of metal you fire out of a rail gun costs $1000, I suspect you'd go for the cheaper, easier to produce alternative.

The reason behind railgun development today is because shooting down a $100,000 drone with a $1 million dollar missile is a little stupid. (I don't know the actual costs, but the missiles are sometimes/often more expensive than their targets.)

I don't know if that would be the case. I think an important target would have large gun batteries/missile silos/whatever, and so any attacker would need to be armored against that. You could go for using small fighters to try and get between the big guns, but small, agile craft would be much more susceptible smaller machine gun/flak cannon fire, and I think those guns would be a necessity simply due to their relative cost compared to a railgun that could provide the same punch as a nuke (as in, they are cheap, and they defend against cheap-ish attackers, so they are important).

Reading about some of how the navy operates, as far as I understand, aircraft carriers play a relatively central role in a fleet, so I'm starting to think some fighter (manned or unmanned) would be rather important to a space navy. These fighters would need a larger "aircraft carrier" like ship to service them and support them (keep them flying, refill their fuel/ammo, etc.). So I imagine some balance between armor and weight would have to be reached, because big ships are a strategic necessity

Excellent insight- it all comes down to cost in the end.

Any space navy is likely to be heavily reliant on railguns for precisely this reason- they pack a large punch for a small cost.

'Fighters', manned or unmanned, are likely only to be useful for scouting/recon missions (a *little* armament on a scout allows it to attack unarmed targets of opportunity). Dodging projectiles fired at you isn't really very feasible in space combat- with no atmosphere to slow the projectiles down, you can easily fire projectiles at any 'fighter' type craft at incredibly high velocities that no fighter could conceivably dodge. Automated targeting systems and high-speed railguns would simply work too well for fighters to ever be cost-effective.

The advantage of railguns over missiles or fighters is obvious- you don't have to manufacture an expensive propulsion system for each and every projectile, you simply give the payload all its velocity while it's still on the ship firing/launching it. Propel it fast enough, and dodging it becomes next to impossible. Missiles are slow and easy to intercept (ironically, the best system to destroy a missile is probably a precisely-targeted railgun, not offensive chaff/flak) by comparison... Lasers carry this same concept to an even greater superiority (there's no dodging a well-aimed laser in real life- it will reach any target in such a short time that it can't possibly move before impact...)

Given that the main weapons would be railguns or lasers, now what about propulsion?

I would assume that for interplantetary warfare to ever occur in the first place, we would probably need a lot more advanced propulsion systems than we have now to colonize other planets in the first place...

Forget chemical rockets, forget ion engines- for a warship you're most likely talking antimatter reactors coupled to thermal rockets, or Alcubierre Warp Drives (the only type of warp drive that is probably mathematically/physically feasible).

If you can warp right next to your enemy, or approach them at an enormous enough speed with antimatter thermal rocket propulsion to slow you down at your target, then "long range" becomes an antiquated notion. Spacecraft will be capable of traveling from Earth to Mars at significant fractions of the speed of light (or faster than light)- so detecting these craft far enough ahead of time to launch missiles or interceptors becomes next to impossible- another reason combat will take place mainly between large ships with railguns or lasers...

Large vessels would have the advantage of having less surface area relative to volume- which makes armoring them much more cost-effective...

Especially given the element of surprise, armor becomes invaluable for most ships. You want to ensure your enemy can't destroy you before you even have time to note their presence.

Not conventional armor, mind you- a few dozen centimeters of steel does nothing to repel a high-powered railgun.

Instead, armor would be largely magnetic (for kinetics) or absorptive (or lasers). Your goal would not to be to present an impenetrable substrate enemy weapons cannot pierce, but rather to reflect and absorb as much enemy firepower as possible... Predictive plating becomes a necessity, due to the projectile energies involved- it's far easier to reflect a kinetic projectile if the armor plate it impacts rotates to create a smaller angle of impact (think of it like skipping stones on a pond)- and the effective armor thickness (should the magnetic systems fail) becomes much thicker. Automated systems to control the predictive plating would of course also be necessary...

Which brings me to my final point- automation. It's not quite as valuable as you think...

True, an unmanned vessel can be lighter, faster, and more agile than a manned one. And, even on large ships which would probably carry a small repair crew (to repair damage to the vessel between engagements) you would theoretically still want to automate as many systems as possible...

However, theory doesn't always match practice. The fact is, unmanned vessels/systems introduce several weaknesses and vulnerabilities that manned ones do not...

The first of these, is an extraordinary vulnerability to EMP.

All an enemy has to do to fry an entirely unmanned enemy fleet is let off a strong enough Electromagnetic Pulse. If this pulse is strong enough, it can permanently disable enemy electronics. You would expect to see specialized vessels with highly shielded systems themselves built precisely for this purpose- but shielding every single unmanned system and vessel you build to a sufficient level would be extremely expensive, and greatly reduce the mass and cost benefits of unmanned systems versus manned ones. Manned vessels, with their reduced reliance on electronics, and capability to switch many automated functions over to "manual control", would be far cheaper and easier to protect against such an EMP system...

The second of these is these weaknesses is a reliance on outside transmissions to control an unmanned vessel.

Excepting the development of quasi-magical fully independent advanced AI, which is still a long ways off (and blurs the line on what is human or manned anyways), most unmanned systems would be remote-control. True, you could give an unmanned vessel relatively simple programming to engage enemy vessels, and hope it works. But there are a variety of electronic countermeasures and systems to fool the target-identifications systems of such a vessel that could make this strategy nigh-useless, not the least of which is because such programs would likely have to identify enemies by transmitted signals which could easily be faked or jammed rather than appearance or behavior...

If a system is remote-control, then your best weapon against it becomes attempting to imitate the real control system and issue commands telling it to do things like self-destruct or attack allies. Even if this proves impossible, general (and already well-understood) signal-jamming techniques can render a drone a worthless hunk of metal to be blown into pieces at leisure...

Should NONE of these approaches work, a remote-control vessel can be most effectively disabled not by targeting its engines, weapons, or reactor- but by targeting its antenna. Destroy this relatively fragile and exposed piece of equipment, and once again, a RC drone just becomes a worthless hunk of metal...

And, as a last-resort, you can always destroy the drone-control center (if there are no backup control centers to take over), Phantom Menace-style; though that really only works when it would take minutes or hours for signals to arrive from the next closest control center...

As you can see, unmanned systems have a number of vulnerabilities. So in practice, they wouldn't be used that much- or the first interplanetary or interstellar power to use them in symmetrical warfare- rather than asymmetrical warfare against a massively-outmatched opponent (which is the only reason things like drones have worked as well as they have in the modern era- not to be stereotypical, but comparatively primitive Arabs in the desert being attacked by a Predator Drone don't have things like powerful EMP or sophisticated electronic countermeasures to co-opt its command and control systems...) would be in for a massive surprise, when their "superior" drone force would quickly be defeated by a manned force using things like EMP and electronic countermeasures to their best advantage...

I hope we never see warfare in space. It's my dream that we can reach some sort of world government BEFORE we go off setting up too large a presence among the stars. But, if this should happen, these are some trends to be aware of...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited May 8, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Jouni]

A lot about space combat depends on what kind of technology is ultimately possible. Cheap weapons are useful only if space travel is cheap - otherwise they'll be expensive and inefficient weapons. The combination of engine, weapon, and sensor technology determines typical combat ranges and what kind of weapons are useful. At 1 km, railguns and lasers are good, while missiles are bad. At 1000 km, railguns are bad, lasers are good, and missiles are still pretty bad. At 10^6 km, railguns and lasers are bad, and missiles are good. At 10^9 km, missiles are the only currently known technology that could work.

[Seret]

I don't know if that would be the case. I think an important target would have large gun batteries/missile silos/whatever, and so any attacker would need to be armored against that.

Do aircraft deal with heavy enemy air defences by stacking on armour? Weight is just as critical to spacecraft as it is to aircraft (probably moreso in fact). Spacecraft would deal with heavily defended points the same way aircraft would, using EW, tactics and specialised weapons that targeted defensive fire control sensors. SEAD is dangerous work, but totally doable by unarmoured vehicles.

[Dodgey]

That was a good read NorthStar1989 I can't reply in full now but I will say, you said that unmanned ships would be weak against an EMP and that manned ships would be better, I want to know how. You are in space, everything is electronic, its not like older aircraft which have pulleys and cables, unmanned or not you are still screwed.

[Accelerando]

snip

attack the antenna? you might as well just say chip off a piece of the armor and the thing is a goner,; i mean, if it's so easy to pick off yet such a small component as an antenna then why don't you pack a bunch of them? some mechanism to replace them, extend new ones, etc.

additionally how are you going to deliver a powerful enough EMP to kill a spaceship between planets? nuclear is the most effective way to deliver EMP, and without a nearby ionosphere to excite you'd have to practically contact the hull with a nuke, at which point you might as well be destroying the ship outright... and then there begs the question of shielding, even if a pulse manages to get close enough but not destroy the ship, how are they going to be able to target anything worth a darn when the sensors powered by electricity that are needed for quick sky survey and tracking enemy spaceships are blown out by EMP? what are they going to do, look out the telescope?

not to mention that, indeed, if your electronics go out on a giant 10,000 ton antimatter spaceship and only your meatbags are left functioning, how are you going to control the ship in combat situation? without serious targeting computer power, how will you get good firing solutions on spaceships that can accelerate so fast that "detecting these craft far enough ahead of time to launch missiles or interceptors becomes next to impossible"...? ships with such, as you say, quasi-magical drives will surely be able to maneuver far faster than any human brain could ever hope to account for...

also superpowered reactor technologies are at least as far off as any strong AI, why is the assumption that we won't have near-sapient disposable computers if we have antimatter thermal rockets? and about the whole morality of sending sapient drones into battle, if we're willing to send humans to die for us then what's to stop us from using drones for the same purposes?

and while humans should be making the high level decisions for such drone AIs, i find it hard to believe that a human can truly outsmart or in any way outperform a computer as costly as the habitat equipment needed to house the fleshy meatbag, in heat-of-the-moment combat maneuvering and firing situations...

if your habitat module gets blown out then you're just as much out of luck as if your computers all get blown out, you can store a lot more number crunching power on a ship than you can store meatbags. additionally the meatbags are a lot less easy mass-wise to carry lots of redundant copies of and shield individual habitats against weapons, and magitech antimatter drives will just make this even more the case, because now you can carry hundreds to thousands of redundant targeting computers and considering technology advances, probably even better and smaller ones.

that said, indeed, railguns and lasers are good investments, cheap to fire once you have enough reactor power, but i disagree that lasers are the instant kill you speak of. especially if/when you have drives that can accelerate at constant 1-10G, duking it out with lasers over 1+ light-second interplanetary distances is going to give plenty of leeway for the enemy to start preemptively dodging your beams

and, truth, fighter-scout style spacecraft could be used for patrol within cisplanetary/translunar orbital space, investigating spacecraft arriving and departing on daily basis from space stations + planetside

edit: about target identification also, for spaceships coming in at interplanetary velocities, you will be preferably tracking all of them at once. since there's no horizon to hide behind, you will be able to see all of their orbits, all the time. so why would you rely on ID signals? not to mention why would enemy ships use broadcast ID signals at all? tightbeam laser comms are more secure than broadcast radio for military purposes, and in battle they're not going to be pointing those signals at you.

and then about detecting relativistic torchships - for one, they're putting out enough thrust to accelerate to fractions of lightspeed well within the time it takes chemical ships to get to Mars. not only will the Martians see them coming long before they ever made it past 1% C, but those engine flares will be seen halfway to Alpha Centauri. any advanced enough civilization to carry out space wars is going to have an advanced deep sky survey program, and we can already do a complete survey in less than a day.

you seem to think that future combat spaceships aren't going to be much more advanced computerwise than missiles or predator drones, but even if computer tech stayed the same, why wouldn't they be? a predator drone sized ship or a missile alone can't get that much ∆V while being survivable, and a nuclear or antimatter powered rocket would be able to cart server farms around without that much extra effort...

Edited May 8, 2014 by Accelerando

[Northstar1989]

That was a good read NorthStar1989 I can't reply in full now but I will say, you said that unmanned ships would be weak against an EMP and that manned ships would be better, I want to know how. You are in space, everything is electronic, its not like older aircraft which have pulleys and cables, unmanned or not you are still screwed.

Fewer electronic systems to protect. You don't need a probe core on a manned craft- just the actual controls themselves. This leaves less to EMP-shield, and they can also be built using non-electronic methods such as valves and hydraulic systems (both of which are in fact have seen use in real-life space programs...) You don't have to use fly-by-wire controls for your spacecraft.

[Northstar1989]

A long post, so I'll have to reply piecewise...

attack the antenna? you might as well just say chip off a piece of the armor and the thing is a goner,; i mean, if it's so easy to pick off yet such a small component as an antenna then why don't you pack a bunch of them? some mechanism to replace them, extend new ones, etc.

You're falsely assuming most spacecraft would be equipped with small, extendable omni-directional antenna such as you see on old radios or primitive spacecraft in KSP. Much more likely, any antenna would be a long, winding one built into the hull close to the surface (similar to the built-in antennae on modern cell phones), or a dish-type signal transmitter/receiver. Either one makes a substantial target, and you need only break the winding antenna type in one place to disrupt its transmission ability...

Antenna need to be located close to the surface of a spacecraft, as metal will interfere with their signal (read up on a "Gaussian Cage" if you're not familiar- it's impossible to transmit radio signals though a metal shell). Thus, they make highly vulnerable targets, as they can't be protected with thick armor like weapons, engines, or reactors can...

additionally how are you going to deliver a powerful enough EMP to kill a spaceship between planets? nuclear is the most effective way to deliver EMP, and without a nearby ionosphere to excite you'd have to practically contact the hull with a nuke, at which point you might as well be destroying the ship outright... and then there begs the question of shielding, even if a pulse manages to get close enough but not destroy the ship, how are they going to be able to target anything worth a darn when the sensors powered by electricity that are needed for quick sky survey and tracking enemy spaceships are blown out by EMP? what are they going to do, look out the telescope?

The whole point is that your own ship is heavily shielded against EMP (including the sensors), and can have far fewer electronic systems to protect as it is manned (manned ships can make extensive use of valves, hydraulics, and other mechanical control-systems), so you won' lose functions like targeting yourself.

It is also assumed that vessels would slow down to comparatively slow attack speeds before engaging their opponents. This is for a variety of reasons, but especially so that if you temporarily lost engine power (due to an enemy railgun barrage, for instance), you wouldn't end up slamming into the nearest planet or hurtling into a nearby star before you could regain control... These slower speeds make manual targeting feasible, even if EMP blew out your targeting systems.

EMP doesn't require nuclear explosions. It can easily be delivered by high-powered capacitors.

not to mention that, indeed, if your electronics go out on a giant 10,000 ton antimatter spaceship and only your meatbags are left functioning, how are you going to control the ship in combat situation? without serious targeting computer power, how will you get good firing solutions on spaceships that can accelerate so fast that "detecting these craft far enough ahead of time to launch missiles or interceptors becomes next to impossible"...? ships with such, as you say, quasi-magical drives will surely be able to maneuver far faster than any human brain could ever hope to account for...

I referred to highly advanced and independent Artificial Intelligence systems that are sentient as quasi-magical (computerized sentience is still a LONG ways away, regardless of what Science Fiction tells you...), not to the ship's drives... Additionally, see what I said about "slowing to attack speed" before- manual targeting would be entirely feasible in many engagements...

Plus, I've said this repeatedly- your own ship would be protected against EMP. That's the very reason you would go with a manned ship instead of an unmanned one in the first place- so you had fewer electronic systems to protect in the first place (no computer brain, and many control systems could work on valves and hydraulics- as those on real life spacecraft sometimes do...)

also superpowered reactor technologies are at least as far off as any strong AI, why is the assumption that we won't have near-sapient disposable computers if we have antimatter thermal rockets? and about the whole morality of sending sapient drones into battle, if we're willing to send humans to die for us then what's to stop us from using drones for the same purposes?

Antimatter rectors aren't nearly as far off as sentient AI. Plus, humans fight and die for their country/state/nation because they have something to value and live for besides war. A sentient AI whose only purpose is to act as a combat machine is essentially a slave, and is probably going to turn on its masters at some point... (I recommend watching "Battlestar Galactica" and "Caprica"- not for the fake science or the acting, but because of the moral questions about what is human and how to treat computerized life... The Cylons were originally mass-produced purely as war machines, which is a big part of why they rebelled- as is examined in "Caprica"...)

and while humans should be making the high level decisions for such drone AIs, i find it hard to believe that a human can truly outsmart or in any way outperform a computer as costly as the habitat equipment needed to house the fleshy meatbag, in heat-of-the-moment combat maneuvering and firing situations...

Did you actually *READ* half of my earlier post? I never claimed humans could outperform computer programs- in fact I acknowledges they couldn't. What I said is that humans aren't vulnerable to EMP, computer viruses, or many electronic countermeasures that computers are- which means that a properly-equipped (with EMP, jamming, and/or electronic countermeasures) manned ship could *EASILY* defeat a "superior" unmanned ship with ostensibly superior agility, targeting, firepower, etc...

if your habitat module gets blown out then you're just as much out of luck as if your computers all get blown out, you can store a lot more number crunching power on a ship than you can store meatbags. additionally the meatbags are a lot less easy mass-wise to carry lots of redundant copies of and shield individual habitats against weapons, and magitech antimatter drives will just make this even more the case, because now you can carry hundreds to thousands of redundant targeting computers and considering technology advances, probably even better and smaller ones.

You're sounding more and more like a troll... Did you actually read what I wrote before?

It doesn't matter if you have a million targeting computers or just one, an EMP will disable them all just the same. A human, on the other hand, can survive for days with life-support knocked out: as was revealed on the Apollo 13 mission (and a combat spacecraft would likely be much larger- extending the time until oxygen supplies ran low or CO2 levels became toxic without life support...) That should be plenty of time to repair a spacecraft after the battle is over, or pull into a safe spaceport somewhere utilizing the engines under manual control... Losing life support or habitat is really not relevant on the timeline of a space battle.

that said, indeed, railguns and lasers are good investments, cheap to fire once you have enough reactor power, but i disagree that lasers are the instant kill you speak of. especially if/when you have drives that can accelerate at constant 1-10G, duking it out with lasers over 1+ light-second interplanetary distances is going to give plenty of leeway for the enemy to start preemptively dodging your beams

The distances wouldn't be 1+ light second. That's the whole point I made before- did you read it? They'd be a hundred kilometers or so at the most. At that range, you can't dodge a laser...

and, truth, fighter-scout style spacecraft could be used for patrol within cisplanetary/translunar orbital space, investigating spacecraft arriving and departing on daily basis from space stations + planetside

Of course. That's what I said the main niche of fighter-craft would be: patrol and recon duties. They wouldn't be very useful in pitched battles, however.

edit: about target identification also, for spaceships coming in at interplanetary velocities, you will be preferably tracking all of them at once. since there's no horizon to hide behind, you will be able to see all of their orbits, all the time. so why would you rely on ID signals? not to mention why would enemy ships use broadcast ID signals at all? tightbeam laser comms are more secure than broadcast radio for military purposes, and in battle they're not going to be pointing those signals at you.

Ahh, but there ARE horizons to hide behind. Planets still blot out certain angles. And dense asteroid belts could easily confuse any tracking system to all hell at long distances... (on the order of light-seconds)

But, an unmanned craft would need to rely on ID signals to sort out civilian from military traffic, and friendly from non-friendly. It doesn't matter if you can see a craft all the time- you need to have some way to tell if it's your enemy... I guess this one is a matter of opinion- it is conceivable to have systems that don't rely on ID signals, but I don't foresee them being the main systems relied on...

and then about detecting relativistic torchships - for one, they're putting out enough thrust to accelerate to fractions of lightspeed well within the time it takes chemical ships to get to Mars. not only will the Martians see them coming long before they ever made it past 1% C, but those engine flares will be seen halfway to Alpha Centauri. any advanced enough civilization to carry out space wars is going to have an advanced deep sky survey program, and we can already do a complete survey in less than a day.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I never suggested use of relativistic torchships would be common. The most likely propulsion system is Alcubierre Warp drives.

you seem to think that future combat spaceships aren't going to be much more advanced computerwise than missiles or predator drones, but even if computer tech stayed the same, why wouldn't they be? a predator drone sized ship or a missile alone can't get that much ∆V while being survivable, and a nuclear or antimatter powered rocket would be able to cart server farms around without that much extra effort...

I never said that future computer systems wouldn't be more advanced. I only made the point that we over-estimate drone effectiveness because of our own experiences hearing about Predator drone strikes- which only work half as well as they do because they're against a MUCH less advanced and prepared enemy. A little EMP, and those Predator drones would start falling from the sky...

Regards,

Northstar

[Jouni]

It is also assumed that vessels would slow down to comparatively slow attack speeds before engaging their opponents. This is for a variety of reasons, but especially so that if you temporarily lost engine power (due to an enemy railgun barrage, for instance), you wouldn't end up slamming into the nearest planet or hurtling into a nearby star before you could regain control... These slower speeds make manual targeting feasible, even if EMP blew out your targeting systems.

You're making a lot of assumptions here.

It's entirely plausible that space combat is going to take a really long time. You'll fire the weapons and go grab a beer. Then there are elections, and the next elections, and the next. Then the kids of the original elected officials get elected. One day, the weapons finally reach their destination, and if it still feels like a good idea, they do whatever they're supposed to do. Maybe they destroy a space station, maybe they saturate the surface of a planet with nukes, or maybe they make a star go nova.

Or maybe everything will be over in a fraction of a second, like in the Culture series.

There's no particular reason to believe that effective space combat would be conveniently human-scaled.

[Accelerando]

snip

our current antimatter production is such that producing the antimatter necessary to fuel an alcubierre drive would take millenia. compared to our progress toward strong AI, i'd say we're only a little futher ahead in the propulsion department.

if you're taking the battlefield straight to orbital space then true, there will be horizons to hide behind.

however, on the asteroid thing, i seriously doubt that any amount of asteroids is going to shield a ship from being spotted especially if it's burning to change orbit, but also if it's idle running at 280 kelvin and running the reactor to keep the crew alive. unless you're actually hiding behind the asteroid, and then who's to say that your alcubierre warp spaceships can't put someone on the other side of the asteroids to spot for the rest of the FTL warships? spaceships are hot as hell compared to almost all of space, and your manned belter warship is going to get spotted one way or another once it starts engaging the drives for combat, especially if the battles are as close range as you suggest (<1 light-second). and are there really going to be multiple asteroids within a few 100s of kilometers of each other? asteroids in the real asteroid belt have an average separation of 1,000,000km. even in the densest fields, barring planetary rings, i don't think you'll ever have enough asteroids to foul up a ship's sensors.

oh and on the "troll" remarks, ad hominem is just what we need to keep this fire burning baby. that said, i did gloss over your post, my durp. i see your point about alcubierre, and yes, it would reduce battle ranges.

i've already seen battlestar galactica. yes sapient drones might be harder to convince that serving us in war is necessary.

i know about the concept of faraday cages, yes, but no matter what kind of antenna you are using, parabolic dish or hull wire, it's still basically a relatively lightweight length or hunk of metal with some cords to plug in. it certainly isn't going to mass as much as a missile or a loaded gun/mass driver. doesn't seem like that much of an expenditure of resources to pack a crap ton of them.

also

EMP doesn't require nuclear explosions. It can easily be delivered by high-powered capacitors.

i'm well aware of this, but can you show me the numbers on how a nuclear bomb and capacitors compare? especially in mass... i would certainly think that even without an ionosphere a contact nuke would create enough system-generated EMP to outdo any capacitors.

i'm not convinced, but true, crewed warships could make sense

Edited May 9, 2014 by Accelerando

[krona14]

Excellent insight- it all comes down to cost in the end.

Any space navy is likely to be heavily reliant on railguns for precisely this reason- they pack a large punch for a small cost.

'Fighters', manned or unmanned, are likely only to be useful for scouting/recon missions (a *little* armament on a scout allows it to attack unarmed targets of opportunity). Dodging projectiles fired at you isn't really very feasible in space combat- with no atmosphere to slow the projectiles down, you can easily fire projectiles at any 'fighter' type craft at incredibly high velocities that no fighter could conceivably dodge. Automated targeting systems and high-speed railguns would simply work too well for fighters to ever be cost-effective.

The advantage of railguns over missiles or fighters is obvious- you don't have to manufacture an expensive propulsion system for each and every projectile, you simply give the payload all its velocity while it's still on the ship firing/launching it. Propel it fast enough, and dodging it becomes next to impossible. Missiles are slow and easy to intercept (ironically, the best system to destroy a missile is probably a precisely-targeted railgun, not offensive chaff/flak) by comparison... Lasers carry this same concept to an even greater superiority (there's no dodging a well-aimed laser in real life- it will reach any target in such a short time that it can't possibly move before impact...)

Given that the main weapons would be railguns or lasers, now what about propulsion?

I would assume that for interplantetary warfare to ever occur in the first place, we would probably need a lot more advanced propulsion systems than we have now to colonize other planets in the first place...

Forget chemical rockets, forget ion engines- for a warship you're most likely talking antimatter reactors coupled to thermal rockets, or Alcubierre Warp Drives (the only type of warp drive that is probably mathematically/physically feasible).

If you can warp right next to your enemy, or approach them at an enormous enough speed with antimatter thermal rocket propulsion to slow you down at your target, then "long range" becomes an antiquated notion. Spacecraft will be capable of traveling from Earth to Mars at significant fractions of the speed of light (or faster than light)- so detecting these craft far enough ahead of time to launch missiles or interceptors becomes next to impossible- another reason combat will take place mainly between large ships with railguns or lasers...

Large vessels would have the advantage of having less surface area relative to volume- which makes armoring them much more cost-effective...

Especially given the element of surprise, armor becomes invaluable for most ships. You want to ensure your enemy can't destroy you before you even have time to note their presence.

Not conventional armor, mind you- a few dozen centimeters of steel does nothing to repel a high-powered railgun.

Instead, armor would be largely magnetic (for kinetics) or absorptive (or lasers). Your goal would not to be to present an impenetrable substrate enemy weapons cannot pierce, but rather to reflect and absorb as much enemy firepower as possible... Predictive plating becomes a necessity, due to the projectile energies involved- it's far easier to reflect a kinetic projectile if the armor plate it impacts rotates to create a smaller angle of impact (think of it like skipping stones on a pond)- and the effective armor thickness (should the magnetic systems fail) becomes much thicker. Automated systems to control the predictive plating would of course also be necessary...

Which brings me to my final point- automation. It's not quite as valuable as you think...

True, an unmanned vessel can be lighter, faster, and more agile than a manned one. And, even on large ships which would probably carry a small repair crew (to repair damage to the vessel between engagements) you would theoretically still want to automate as many systems as possible...

However, theory doesn't always match practice. The fact is, unmanned vessels/systems introduce several weaknesses and vulnerabilities that manned ones do not...

The first of these, is an extraordinary vulnerability to EMP.

All an enemy has to do to fry an entirely unmanned enemy fleet is let off a strong enough Electromagnetic Pulse. If this pulse is strong enough, it can permanently disable enemy electronics. You would expect to see specialized vessels with highly shielded systems themselves built precisely for this purpose- but shielding every single unmanned system and vessel you build to a sufficient level would be extremely expensive, and greatly reduce the mass and cost benefits of unmanned systems versus manned ones. Manned vessels, with their reduced reliance on electronics, and capability to switch many automated functions over to "manual control", would be far cheaper and easier to protect against such an EMP system...

The second of these is these weaknesses is a reliance on outside transmissions to control an unmanned vessel.

Excepting the development of quasi-magical fully independent advanced AI, which is still a long ways off (and blurs the line on what is human or manned anyways), most unmanned systems would be remote-control. True, you could give an unmanned vessel relatively simple programming to engage enemy vessels, and hope it works. But there are a variety of electronic countermeasures and systems to fool the target-identifications systems of such a vessel that could make this strategy nigh-useless, not the least of which is because such programs would likely have to identify enemies by transmitted signals which could easily be faked or jammed rather than appearance or behavior...

If a system is remote-control, then your best weapon against it becomes attempting to imitate the real control system and issue commands telling it to do things like self-destruct or attack allies. Even if this proves impossible, general (and already well-understood) signal-jamming techniques can render a drone a worthless hunk of metal to be blown into pieces at leisure...

Should NONE of these approaches work, a remote-control vessel can be most effectively disabled not by targeting its engines, weapons, or reactor- but by targeting its antenna. Destroy this relatively fragile and exposed piece of equipment, and once again, a RC drone just becomes a worthless hunk of metal...

And, as a last-resort, you can always destroy the drone-control center (if there are no backup control centers to take over), Phantom Menace-style; though that really only works when it would take minutes or hours for signals to arrive from the next closest control center...

As you can see, unmanned systems have a number of vulnerabilities. So in practice, they wouldn't be used that much- or the first interplanetary or interstellar power to use them in symmetrical warfare- rather than asymmetrical warfare against a massively-outmatched opponent (which is the only reason things like drones have worked as well as they have in the modern era- not to be stereotypical, but comparatively primitive Arabs in the desert being attacked by a Predator Drone don't have things like powerful EMP or sophisticated electronic countermeasures to co-opt its command and control systems...) would be in for a massive surprise, when their "superior" drone force would quickly be defeated by a manned force using things like EMP and electronic countermeasures to their best advantage...

I hope we never see warfare in space. It's my dream that we can reach some sort of world government BEFORE we go off setting up too large a presence among the stars. But, if this should happen, these are some trends to be aware of...

Regards,

Northstar

Antimatter/warp drive:

WOH SLOW DOWN! ANTIMATTER? antimatter and warp drives are ssooooooooooo far away from being useable for propulsion or ant other thing, plus warp drives are not even a concept yet! did you read the beginning of the topic! this is pre fusion proposition, there is NO WAY we will have anything like that before fusion!

EMP:

manual controls? last time i checked, you could not just shift to manual in a spacecraft and a rudder pops out the back for steering. if one was to use and EMP an a manned ship, the person would have no life support, no way to control their hydraulic engine, no way to increase/decrease thrust, no way to do anything, almost everything in a spacecraft is electronic.

Fighters

Of course. That's what I said the main niche of fighter-craft would be: patrol and recon duties. They wouldn't be very useful in pitched battles, however.

why would fighters not be useful?? maybe you have the wrong idea of what a fighter is. i have a feeling that most people think of fighter jets: large fast metal objects with lots of missiles, this does not fit this topic. why don't use very small craft the size of a microwave, with a machine gun on the front? you could have swarms of thousands on thousands of these, who cares if you just got 10 with a flak cannon? you have 10000 more. these small bots could reduce the usefulness of capital ships in a battlefield to 0, because the small possibly ion power craft could sneak into areas unseen or safe from a turrets firing arch and slowly saw away at the hull of a massive ship or space station. also these would cost almost nothing to make and weigh almost nothing.

Capital ships

the only ever use for a capital ship would be as a support unit, or mobile base (like an aircraft carrier) this massive ship would reload, repair and be a center for all the pilots of the drones to be (to reduce lag from transmission to reception). these might have a few heavy weapons to bombard a fortification from far away, and maybe some small emergency defenses, but these ships would never see combat. (like an aircraft carrier). all the fighting would be done by the disposable drones.

Jamming/hacking

do you see predator drones being hacked? i don't! i rest my case. (hacking is not easy, it can take months to hack something) (Jamming this kind of transmission is nearly impossible in this time)

AI

in my theory, dodging and evading things would be AI, the fighting and piloting would be human (i doubt we will have super intelligent AI at that time)

Lasers!

Ummmm, lasers are really inefficient and will probably never be used in combat other than with disabling large missile from a base or large ship. kinetic propelled weapons will be more practical and effective. ie railguns, normal guns (propulsion techniques will have to be modified for space) lasers are still pretty Sci-fi.

THIS IS NOT STAR WARS!

[Accelerando]

yeah, that reminds me, i'm really not convinced on the range issue - assuming evenly matched forces, once someone won one of these 100s of kilometers range low-velocity battles at a vantage point far enough away from everyone else fighting in the orbital space, they would have the jump on all other forces due to their range, while the other forces would still be locked in fighting. they could power up their drives to max acceleration and start kesslerizing the place from afar, if not using lasers, then using fuzed mass driver slugs, or just fuzed projectiles in general. or just launch a hail of slugs their way. how do you account for that?

[Rakaydos]

The problem with lasers is that, assuming even a token antilaser coating, you actually do more thermal "damage" to yorself than to the target. a 50% efficent laser vs a 50% efficient mirror coat (say, a titanium hull) that puts 100 Mj into a shot, generates 50Mj of heat and fires a 50 Mj laser. The mirroring reflects 50% of the laser, meaning the target only takes 25 Mj of transfer energy while the firing craft takes 50 Mj of waste heat. They're only useful against targets with a smaller thermal mass than the firing ship. (so, a capital ship or base firing at microwave-sized fighters would DEFINATELY use lasers, because a base can absorb 50 Mj into it's structure, whereas the fighter is vaporized by the 25 Mj pulse)

Because the best weapons against parasite warships ("fighters") damage the firing craft, it's still worth it to throw fighters and cheap missiles at the enemy, because it forces the enemy to raise it's thermal signature, bleeding off their capaciters and heat sinks before the real fight begins.

[Dodgey]

Fewer electronic systems to protect. You don't need a probe core on a manned craft- just the actual controls themselves. This leaves less to EMP-shield, and they can also be built using non-electronic methods such as valves and hydraulic systems (both of which are in fact have seen use in real-life space programs...) You don't have to use fly-by-wire controls for your spacecraft.

Oh come on. I challenge you to come up with a spacecraft that could work without electricity in the most basic sense. How do you use the engines for one, not even orient the craft just use the engines. And I'm going to ignore the statement that hydrolics don't need power.

[SuperBigD60]

Oh come on. I challenge you to come up with a spacecraft that could work without electricity in the most basic sense. How do you use the engines for one, not even orient the craft just use the engines. And I'm going to ignore the statement that hydrolics don't need power.

I think it'd be easier to shield a ship that doesn't necessarily require outside communication to function vs shielding one that absolutely requires outside communication to function. I mean, don't we have ways already to protect sensitive electronic equipment against excessive radiation?

On another vane:

I think I've been going about this somewhat in the wrong way.

I mean, I've been assuming that the space aspect of warfare would be the only one going on, and so I've been just thinking in terms of naval warfare, but I suspect that might be rather myopic.

What about the guys on the ground? After all, infantry have been a part of our warfare since the dawn of civilization, and even though every other aspect of warfare has changed (well, maybe not every aspect, that was hyperbolic), I just get the feeling we'll still have ground forces involved in battle for the next couple centuries, at least as long as the scope of this discussion.

And navies and air forces planet side won't just dissappear, I don't think. I mean, if we're still not united on earth, any armed force would still have a part to play terrestrially.

So, that leaves the question as to what would orbital forces would do in these battles. To me, it seems like the role would develop progressively, much like the role of aircraft in battle has already.

The first major conflict might see small, light craft designed primarily for recon missions, maybe with small armaments to defend or take out small, strategic targets (think of the first canvas planes in WWI; ships not really designed for combat, exactly, but the pilots still carried bombs they could drop on unsuspecting enemy troops below).

Then we'd see more combat oriented craft in the next few conflicts, but still they are very balanced so thy can do a little bit of everything, but not very well. Perhaps they'll have more armaments, better dV budgets/life support, etc, but we still would be developing just what role orbital forces would play in any given battle.

In the end, what comes to mind for me are orbital batteries used for taking pot shots at enemy strongholds without using nukes, and we'd have craft designed specifically for orbital superiority, meant specifically to take out other space-faring vessels.

I imagine we'd see some sort of amalgamation of strategies from artillery tactics, submarine tactics, naval tactics, and air force tactics, depending on what was going on. Probably some new stuff we can't foresee thrown in there, as well.

Just some thoughts