Jump Dog Fighting

[Westi29]

I've seen many people say and write that dog fighting in space will never exist. That the Battlestar Galactica's and Star Wars fighters would never exist.

But I think they are wrong!

I imagine little fighters jumping in and out of warp drive in small areas, like dog fighting. Imagine warping to your enemy's six!

The ships would have limited energy supplies and would have to reserve some for warping from their carrier into battle and warping back to the carrier.

What do you think?

Edited July 30, 2014 by Westi29

[mythic_fci]

1. Orbital physics are your main enemy in space dogfighting, not the known enemy.

2. Warp drives are far from reality.

3. Even with the most optimistic projections of the Alcubierre drive, it would take the mass of about 3 Voyager probes in exotic matter (which we can't seem to get; it's a theory) to do a single round trip short-range warp.

4. Bullets and missiles, again, must behave by the laws of physics. True, short-range dogfighting might be OK for bullets, but firstly:

The RCS or equivalent system's thrust would throw off the ship's position (Try turning a small probe in KSP with only RCS)

and

Long range missiles and/or bullets would probably miss, due to the fact that physics will put them into a higher orbit, and therefore make the pm pass higher and slower than the target.

[cpast]

"Six" is an utterly irrelevant concept in space: as attitude and velocity are completely disconnected, and detection is far more likely to happen with instruments than visually, the response to someone jumping in behind you would be to spin and fire. That's ignoring the whole "warp drives have no real physical meaning, and how they affect space combat depends on what rules you make up for them".

The basic issue with manned fighters is this: What advantage do you gain by sticking a person on a small spacecraft send into harm's way? Why not send a missile? For that matter, why would you send fighters off for the sole purpose of dueling other fighters, instead of, say, directly attacking more important craft than fighters?

[impyre]

I highly doubt warping will ever be used on small fighter craft. It would likely be a very energy-intensive process that would require a lot of heavy equipment, and would only be useful on vehicles that travel great distances. Fighters (when used in concert with a carrier) would never need to go large distances, and in fact may need to double at atmospheric fighters (making weight more important). With this in mind, and considering that if warping did exist as a technology, it seems equally likely that smaller more mobile technologies would also exist to protect said fighter from most damage (at least on one side). This, coupled with high agility and computer assisted controls (if not outright computer controlled drone fighters), means that fighting would likely be pretty boring. The more advanced and well-armed fighter would take up a stationary position, and simply reorient to track the target and keep the forward shield in between it and it's target... while the less advanced or less well-armed fighter must attempt to maneuver behind it. (or more likely, outnumber it) For anti-carrier attacks, the fighters may attempt to maneuver into less heavily defended approach paths, but other than that, not much could be done but get close and shoot (or shoot from further away).

[Wanderfound]

Imagine all you want, but it still ain't gonna happen.

Anything that a manned space fighter can do, a drone or missile can do better. And space combat is likely to see a return to the early 1970’s F-111/Foxbat style of long range speed and missile based fighting. Stealth in space is impossible (the heat signature of a spacecraft is clearly visible from across the solar system, and there's no way to avoid emitting heat without cooking the crew), so it's all gonna come down to whose missile gets there first.

And, sorry, but warp drive doesn't exist;looks like Einstein was right about that whole speed of light thing. While there are a few theoretical methods to get around that (wormholes etc.), the power requirements and engineering involved are beyond anything that could ever be realistically achieved (for example: the "how to make a wormhole" thing starts with "tow a black hole into the same position as a white hole...").

[Wanderfound]

http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/txt/al.html might be of interest to some folks, BTW. The theory of relativity explained in words of four letters or less.

[Westi29]

Thanks for the responses!

The advantages gained by a person over an unmanned or autonomous drone vehicle:

Hacking. One person or an AI could hack into and take over unmanned vehicles. Now of course a person's computer can be hacked and so could their flight systems, I'm just coming up with a sci-fi rebuttal.

The advantages of warping fighters over warping larger ships alone:

As fighter aircraft developments have shown, multipurpose fighters actually suck at all areas. Now it doesn't matter if air superiority has been achieved, obviously. But purity always wins over compromise in fighter design.

The 1970's dog fighting style:

When both planes are sophisticated enough to evade all the long range weaponry they wind up face to face in a knife fight. This happened in Vietnam where the original F-4's didn't even have guns/cannons.

Warp Drive Doesn't Exist:

Totally agree on this and the reason I tagged it Sci-Fi. I do not think that exotic matter exists either. However, I just majored in physics and am not going to completely rule out pretty math just yet lol. I should have tagged the original post with a disclaimer that warp drive probably can't happen anyways.

[cpast]

For hacking: That's why you program the bomb to "do this and explode" - no need for any sort of remote control (in fact, many missiles have zero remote control capability - they are fired, and guide themselves to the target). A system that can't receive wireless command signals can't really be hacked.

For dogfighting - Nothing whatsoever in aerial dogfighting is the least bit applicable to any space environment. Dogfighting is driven by concerns of atmospheric flight - for instance, that a fighter must be flying in the direction its guns are shooting, that altitude is a thing, that changing direction involves rotating, etc.

[78stonewobble]

I think... that battleship style combat, with either missiles or massdrivers, will be more likely than dogfighting.

I'm not too read up on explosions in space, but certainly they don't transfer energy too well, as compaired to in the atmosphere.

I imagine that, if we ever get true "spaceships", that are manned, we will want to protect them on level with what they could potentially face. If it's only spacedust, then it doesn't need a lot, if it's "bullets in space", then we will add armor and if it's nuclear weapons or mass driver rounds at the equivalent of a nuclear weapon, then we will add alot of armor.

Obviously you can dodge a mass driver round, but I don't really see humanity, going on another big spending spree regarding nuclear weapons, so perhaps massdriver weapons will be what we're stuck with or simply because they're cheaper in combat, if each ship can survive multiple on hull detonations.

...

But overall I think spacecombat itself is unlikely, for any forseeable future (beyond a little anti satellite weaponry).

[Comrade Jenkens]

Well in the near future I think the most likely space combat that could possibly happen is between 2 vehicles like the X-37. They would try to maneuverer into appropriate orbits to get an intercept which would enable a missile launch. Then the target would have to expend dV to try to avoid it. (would flares and chaff still work in space).

[Red Iron Crown]

The advantages gained by a person over an unmanned or autonomous drone vehicle:

Hacking. One person or an AI could hack into and take over unmanned vehicles. Now of course a person's computer can be hacked and so could their flight systems, I'm just coming up with a sci-fi rebuttal.

Advantages of drones/missiles:

- No life support mass

- Greater G-tolerance

- No need to recover, all fuel can be spent engaging the enemy

- Faster reactions (critical at spaceflight speeds/energies)

The advantages of warping fighters over warping larger ships alone:

As fighter aircraft developments have shown, multipurpose fighters actually suck at all areas. Now it doesn't matter if air superiority has been achieved, obviously. But purity always wins over compromise in fighter design.

This actually doesn't address why fighters are better than capitals at all. Though if you follow your own logic, a missile or drone involves even fewer compromises.

The 1970's dog fighting style:

When both planes are sophisticated enough to evade all the long range weaponry they wind up face to face in a knife fight. This happened in Vietnam where the original F-4's didn't even have guns/cannons.

That was not a result of long range weapons being easily evaded, it was a case of wanting visual ID before engaging. Visual ID is going to be a no go in space combat, BVR combat will be the order of the day. At close range, the engine's exhaust is likely a better weapon than any close range weapon system that can be named.

[Nuke]

you just cant get enough delta-v into a space fighter to be an effective fighting machine. you might end up with a short range fighter with some not too useful weapons. with such short effective range, its better to just put better weapons on the thing the fighters would have launched from. if you are going to put fuel on a craft to intercept a target, you are better off having that craft be a missile, since can use all your delta-v for intercept changes and last second course corrections instead of having to bring back a fighter and pilot, alive. you end up with a weapon with greater lethality and lower cost.

[MarkyJ279]

If we're shrinking an alcubierre drive to the point it can be deployed on a fighter then I can think of another use for it.

Take the drive, attach a flight computer and a small explosive (or nuclear if you can) warhead to it and chuck it out into space, no weapons or pilots or engines or anything else. Then activate drive and fly it straight into the target fighter. Essentially you have a warp missile. I couldn't find any definitive studies on what would happen we when the warp bubble encounters significant mass because no one has generated a warp bubble to experiment with but some popular theories are:

A) Warp bubble maintains integrity and flies though fighter unimpeded until onboard computers shut the drive down halfway through. Target fighter is permanently fused with missile

Warp bubble maintains integrity and hits with the fighter while interacting with normal space. Target fighter is shredded/vaporised

C) Warp bubble dissipates and converts the exotic matter used to create it into energy and hawkins radiation. Target fighter is vaporised

D) Warp bubble dissipates and releases small particles accumulating in the warp field as a kind of extreme high energy bow-wave. Target fighter is vaporised

E) Warp bubble collapses with no destructive effects and generating ship inherits it's energy. Target fighter is smashed to pieces by 99.9999999999%C velocity bomb

F) Warp bubble collapses with no destructive effects and generating ship retains it's sub-warp velocity until warhead detonates. Target fighter is damaged/smashed/vaporised (depends on warhead size)

Same weapon could even be used against larget ships and stations. If we can play god then maybe it's time to put down the toy fighters and get on with some real armageddon!

[Seret]

Hacking. One person or an AI could hack into and take over unmanned vehicles. Now of course a person's computer can be hacked and so could their flight systems, I'm just coming up with a sci-fi rebuttal.

You've talked yourself out of that one. A manned vehicle is just as susceptible to EW as an unmanned one. It's not like the crew could navigate or use their sensors or weapons without the ship's systems. There's no "manual override" on a radar.

There is no sensible reason to put a human in a combat spacecraft, and about a million to go unmanned. Sorry Buck Rogers, you're out of a job!

As fighter aircraft developments have shown, multipurpose fighters actually suck at all areas. Now it doesn't matter if air superiority has been achieved, obviously. But purity always wins over compromise in fighter design.

Not so. Most designs are multirole these days. You can't claim that aircraft like the F-16 and F/A-18 have been anything other than hugely successful.

The 1970's dog fighting style:

When both planes are sophisticated enough to evade all the long range weaponry they wind up face to face in a knife fight. This happened in Vietnam where the original F-4's didn't even have guns/cannons.

This was nothing to do with ECM or evasive tactics. F-4s ended up in short-range dogfights a lot because their AIM-4 missiles were almost comically useless. Early Phantoms effectively did not have any long range weapons.

[Westi29]

Thanks for the responses! Definitely talked me out of writing this into a plot lol.

[peadar1987]

I think that actual space warfare will be along the lines of one side throwing unmanned weapons at the enemy's defences until they're completely wiped out, and only then rocking up in a large capital ship to secure the area. Spacecraft are simply too vulnerable to regularly put in combat, in my opinion.

[Moar Boosters]

Thanks for the responses! Definitely talked me out of writing this into a plot lol.

I'm sure you could write it into a plot, you'd just have to come up with a reason for them not to use drones.

Suppose future-earth is attacked by an alien species who've completed mastered electronic/radar jamming to the point we can't communicate with or control our unmanned vehicles. One solution to that would be to reintroduce manned craft.

[Red Iron Crown]

Or possibly the warp drive requires a human operator, similar to Larry Niven's mass sensor.

[Nuke]

This was nothing to do with ECM or evasive tactics. F-4s ended up in short-range dogfights a lot because their AIM-4 missiles were almost comically useless. Early Phantoms effectively did not have any long range weapons.

they didnt have any short range weapons either. eventually someone got smart and put a gatling gun in a cargo pod. it turned out to be so effective that every fighter since has included a gun of some sort.

guns are pretty good for visual range combat. in space computer targeted guns could probibly extend that range considerably. making it so your bullets rendezvous with a target a few orbits later. sorta like how you can do amazing thing with artillery these days. bullets are kind of dumb and so i guess you would fire a burst that will spread out by the time it gets to the target, but increase the chance of impact by a huge factor. sorta like how a single gau8 round can kill a tank, but you usually fire a couple hundred of them just to be sure. in cases where your rounds would make escape velocity, just fire retrograde. then of course military doctrine would require you to make periodic course adjustments to avoid dumb rounds.

you might be better off doing rail/coil gun launched missiles. this might be a lot more effective, you can dial in a velocity to some degree which will make the weapon more versatile. the missile's capacity for course correction comes in handy close in. doing a railgun launch, the full delta-v of the missile can be used for course correction close to the target. by the time the weapon is detected it can mach the target move for move, and out perform it because of high twr. for a warhead im thinking a small he charge (or perhaps highly volatile fuel which can double as a bomb) behind a kinetic penetrator. puncture the crew compartment or a fuel tank and detonate in the pressurized interior, would really mess up a targets day.

Edited July 30, 2014 by Nuke

[Rakaydos]

The basic issue with manned fighters is this: What advantage do you gain by sticking a person on a small spacecraft send into harm's way? Why not send a missile? For that matter, why would you send fighters off for the sole purpose of dueling other fighters, instead of, say, directly attacking more important craft than fighters?

A person (and basic life support) may be cheaper to supply than electronics of sufficent complexity and rad-hardening.

Think suicide bombers in tin cans, swarming down expensive drone fighters.

[Seret]

they didnt have any short range weapons either.

Except for the very earliest part of the war they had the AIM-9, which was pretty effective even before it had SEAM and all-aspect. They got plenty of kills with the Sidewinder, it's where the weapon made its name.

eventually someone got smart and put a gatling gun in a cargo pod. it turned out to be so effective that every fighter since has included a gun of some sort.

The SUU-16 was a proper gun pod. Not sure what you mean by a cargo pod? Pilots of fast jets can usually carry a luggage pod for their uniform and such if they're landing away, but the SUU-16 wasn't adapted from a luggage pod as far as I'm aware. Gun pods on fast jets aren't unknown, we had some types that sometimes carried them when I was an armourer.

The argument about whether to include a gun or not comes up every time a new fighter is on the drawing board. Only some of the F-35s have an internal gun, and the Typhoon came very close to not having one. Bottom line is that a gun is a lot of stowed kills, and fighter pilots love the gun, so the spec does generally call for one. The military are often a bit reluctant to give up traditional weapons like guns for fighters and bayonets for infantry. Old habits.

[Skyler4856]

The easiest solution would be to release a high power EMP. Once the computers are fried, the crew would begin to asphyxiate...

[Rakaydos]

The easiest solution would be to release a high power EMP. Once the computers are fried, the crew would begin to asphyxiate...

Crew of Apollo 13 didnt asphixiate, even without power, for the time it took them to return home... (though the whole 3 crew/2 man lander thing made it a near thing, but that doesnt apply here)

An old fashioned chemical firearm wont be EMPable either.

[Skyler4856]

Crew of Apollo 13 didnt asphixiate, even without power, for the time it took them to return home... (though the whole 3 crew/2 man lander thing made it a near thing, but that doesnt apply here)

An old fashioned chemical firearm wont be EMPable either.

The crew of Apollo 13 had to Jerry-rig together filters, and besides they only had to keep the cycle for 6 days, a much longer trip to a gas source would certainly be damning.

And while the chemical fire-arms wouldn't be EMPable, the computers that aim them could easily be fried.

[problemecium]

I don't have a lot of specific arguments, but I too am among those who aren't so sure dogfighting won't exist in space. Obviously it'll be vastly different from any current battle tactics the same way dogfighting was different from its predecessors.

But I've played a lot of EVE Online, wherein a lot of the battling mechanics are related to you and your enemy's angular velocities, which in turn depends on distance and agility. A large ship with massive turbolasers (or something) would be easily able to pick off fighters if it had a high tracking speed - but moving around a 400-ton cannon barrel isn't easy. Similarly, one could only outmaneuver an incoming high-speed projectile with a high thrust-to-mass ratio, which is a hallmark of smaller craft.

I imagine things could easily turn out such that a large carrier would show up (perhaps warping in, perhaps not), close the distance to its target, and then deploy a cloud of tiny drones which would be difficult to hit accurately and could do damage that a larger long-range weapon couldn't (as it could be deflected).

Now if we start putting warp drives on fighters, it isn't really any harder to put warp drives on missiles, in which case you can just warp a missile right into the enemy's face.