For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[kerbiloid]

Like says the proverb, "Tanks don't fight against tanks".

They mostly suffer from the anti-tank weapons. (Artillery, infantry, planes, mines, their own logistics).

The same with spaceships. Any spaceship is vulnerable, so the only question is how much cheap lightweight anti-ship missiles can the opponent manufacture.
If he can, no difference if spend 10 per fighter or 100 per flagship.

Edited December 8, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Spacescifi]

Fighters can disable or destroy even missile swarms at long range with laser beams.

 

If enough missiles can man make it across the gap to hit their target... well and good. Otherwiss they get wasted.

At close range missiles work great.

 

 

[kerbiloid]

Then they send a small drone with longer laser and destroy all fighters from even longer range.

[Spacescifi]

Won't destroy enough of them in time because they re-use fightrr wreckage as shielding.

Long range sniping makes firing along one plane easy, but along a all three planes hard. You would litterally need your fleet scattered out in three dimensions to hit anything but the scrap shield.

 

Your basically hitting this at long range, and they just switch the scrap around to protect fighters at the rear.

[kerbiloid]

Just to be sure. Do you understand that space fighters have nothing common with the Roman infantry?

[Spacescifi]

 

Only ih the shielding aspect.

As stated, at long range it becomes difficult to impossible to zap using the full 3-D space (fire from above or.below would require traversing great distance if facing the front line) especially at a fleet that is only exposing a single column line to you.

 

Space is a unique battle field in that you can pick up debris and reuse it

 

When zapping fighters in front at long range, theyare unlikely to blow up even if disabled, something scifi gets wrong.

Lasers need absurd power levels to blast anything. Requiring an uber big spaceship of sorts to handle that firepower.

 

So disabled. fighters may get skewered many times over,, but fighters in the rear will keep holding them as shields, minimizing the damage tbey take from weaker long range lasers.

 

In fact, increased surface area is what you want against lasers, since it spreads out the damage instead of concentrating it.

 

At close range formation flight would be a bad idea since any kinetic weapon could bulldoze it, but at long range they are a preferred formation over the scattered swarm...generally.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Spacescifi

[ARS]

@Spacescifi, you might wanna read this

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Only ih the shielding aspect.

As stated, at long range it becomes difficult to impossible to zap using the full 3-D space (fire from above or.below would require traversing great distance if facing the front line) especially at a fleet that is only exposing a single column line to you.

 

Space is a unique battle field in that you can pick up debris and reuse it

 

When zapping fighters in front at long range, theyare unlikely to blow up even if disabled, something scifi gets wrong.

Lasers need absurd power levels to blast anything. Requiring an uber big spaceship of sorts to handle that firepower.

 

So disabled. fighters may get skewered many times over,, but fighters in the rear will keep holding them as shields, minimizing the damage tbey take from weaker long range lasers.

 

In fact, increased surface area is what you want against lasers, since it spreads out the damage instead of concentrating it.

 

At close range formation flight would be a bad idea since any kinetic weapon could bulldoze it, but at long range they are a preferred formation over the scattered swarm...generally.

If the defenders has only one firing position or the range is long so two orbital station still fire in essentially the same direction debris in front of you will protect you. 
Sending out your own fighters or smart missiles can counter this, getting around the debris shield. The missiles is pretty dangerous as they are also shielded by the debris until they evade it, giving short intercept time. 
You own fighters or other ships only need to get into an position there they can shoot at past the debris, at this stage its an gun battle again except that the main gun on the stations are ineffective. 

An curious real live example of debris protection is that top down anti armor weapons like TOW who shots an shaped charge or explosively formed projectile downward then flying over an enemy tanks will also file if it fly over large metal objects like an burned out car or tank the other tank is behind. 

[DDE]

On 12/8/2019 at 5:24 AM, Spacescifi said:

Which do you think is superior, given similar tech for both opponents?

If one opponent nation went all in for mass produced cheap space vehicles, would that not beat one that produced a limited number of heavily armed spacecraft?

Scenario is a space battle only, from deep interplanetary space to orbital battle.

No planetary bonbardment

There is insufficient data for a meaningful reply. The particulars of technology - and I know you're a fan of eschewing realism whenever it's excessively constricting - determine the comparative effectiveness.

For example, seventy years ago smaller ships were clearly outranged by larger ones, but nowadays, given external targeting, they're just as effective as larger ones with the same VLS count. At the same time, some capabilities cannot be miniaturized: you just can't make a small aircraft carrier, small ships have a lower sea state threshold for when the weather is too bad for them to fight, and if nuclear propulsion is desirable for global endurance, it's a lot more on larger hulls.

13 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Space is a unique battle field in that you can pick up debris and reuse it

Moving an uncooperative, misshapen, potentially explosive chunk of metal is a daunting endeavor that will cripple your mobility - assuming it's at all possible, since fighters aren't tugs - and open you up to kinetic fire, which will become far more damaging with the added sources of shrapnel.

Just add a second fighter's worth of armour onto your fighters.

3 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

An curious real live example of debris protection is that top down anti armor weapons like TOW who shots an shaped charge or explosively formed projectile downward then flying over an enemy tanks will also file if it fly over large metal objects like an burned out car or tank the other tank is behind. 

The problem here is that, unlike a tank, a space fighter is unlikely to be shielded against the collateral damage from the destruction of another fighter in direct proximity. There is a hard and fast rule of never taking cover behind stricken tanks, because they tend to explode.

[Spacescifi]

Actually, I was somewhat wrong. Here is my modified view. Using current science understanding and current physucs limits. Deep space battle? Big ship is preferred. Why? Propellant, little ships will take forever to get anywhere unless they are mini orion pusher plates (which don't scale down too super small levels). Either way in deep space, a big propellant laden ship can afford to manever a lot more than a smaller one with a smaller propellant budget. I deep space distances are likely to be so huge between combatants that you may as well trade fighters for missiles. Low orbit space battle? This is a total kill zone. Since spacraft orbit Earth every 90 min. It is relatively easy to shoot down satellites, and spaceships are much bigger targets. Did you know their are jet aircraft that can fire a missile into space a hit a satellite? Imagine what a whole volley of missiles would do to Star Destroyer WITHOUT scifi shields flying AGAINST the direction of the orbit? Hitting stuff flying toward ya at 8 km per sec is serious business. And much worse can be done (nukes). So all those scifi tropes of Earth not having legit space defense just because they lack orbital weapons platforms are untrue. The only way Earth won't be a problem for a big spaceship in LEO is if: A: The ship has lots of propellant and thrust to jyst dodge missiles for days. Umfortunately... Earth has lots of missiles, so you may run out of propelkant before Earth runs out of missiles. B: Scifi shields that can somehow tank missiles hitting you as slam into them,at 8 km per sec or higher. C: Your cooling mechanisms are so good you can vaporize missiles regularly before they hit with lasers. So you need one of those in LEO or if you're a big ship you're dead. Fighters are better for LEO actually. Scifi scenarios: Often spaceships jump out of warp/hyperspace with a speed and trajectory autoshifted to match other nearby spacecraft. Thus relative tp each other they are standing still. In that case which ship is better deoends purely on DPS and range and nothing more. Can you jump within a few kilometers or a few meters? If a few meters... big ships are preffered, as they can take more DPS and dish it out too. If several kilometers is the jump range then fighters and missiles can rule again... why? The kinetic enegy they gain from acceleration alone will increase their DPS to kill big ships anyway.

 

[ARS]

While we're talking about space combat, let's take a look on capital ships. A lot of capital ships in sci-fi has main battery weapons that mirrors naval combat, which isn't surprising since many of the naval terms is applied to spaceflight (port, starboard, hatch, -nauts in astronaut, etc.). Most of these sci-fi main battery guns are either firing physical or energy shots. If we're looking at the one with physical projectiles (shells, railguns, coilguns, mass accelerator), realistically speaking, if such a weapon with capital-ship grade caliber (300mm and above) are mounted on capital ships for space combat, should it also include some mechanism to counteract recoil? Since at that caliber, those cannons are basically reaction engine, and the effect of recoil/ kickback is much more pronounced in space, probably enough to rip the whole turret off of it's mounting when they are fired full salvo (on earth, cannon recoil are absorbed by water on the opposite side of the ship). I am thinking a counter-thrusters that'll be fired at the same time the cannon is fired (one scene on Expelled From Paradise is a good example, firing giant linear cannon in orbit requires all of the back thrusters to fire in unison at full power for a few miliseconds the moment the cannon is fired), or reinforcing the barbette of the turret in order to handle the recoil, or compensators with reciprocating barrel for minimizing recoil

[DDE]

43 minutes ago, ARS said:

(on earth, cannon recoil are absorbed by water on the opposite side of the ship)

You're missing the very important part: the entire structure of the ship that transfers the load from the gun's trunnions to the water. Which typically is quite considerable. Without water, the recoil only faces the inertia of the ship itself, requiring much less bracing than a "wet" warship would need; lack of gravity has zero effect.

The induced rotational moment would, however, be an issue.

Edited December 11, 2019 by DDE

[ARS]

2 hours ago, DDE said:

You're missing the very important part: the entire structure of the ship that transfers the load from the gun's trunnions to the water. Which typically is quite considerable. Without water, the recoil only faces the inertia of the ship itself, requiring much less bracing than a "wet" warship would need; lack of gravity has zero effect.

The induced rotational moment would, however, be an issue.

Ah yes I forget about that. Thanks for reminding me

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, ARS said:

While we're talking about space combat, let's take a look on capital ships. A lot of capital ships in sci-fi has main battery weapons that mirrors naval combat, which isn't surprising since many of the naval terms is applied to spaceflight (port, starboard, hatch, -nauts in astronaut, etc.). Most of these sci-fi main battery guns are either firing physical or energy shots. If we're looking at the one with physical projectiles (shells, railguns, coilguns, mass accelerator), realistically speaking, if such a weapon with capital-ship grade caliber (300mm and above) are mounted on capital ships for space combat, should it also include some mechanism to counteract recoil? Since at that caliber, those cannons are basically reaction engine, and the effect of recoil/ kickback is much more pronounced in space, probably enough to rip the whole turret off of it's mounting when they are fired full salvo (on earth, cannon recoil are absorbed by water on the opposite side of the ship). I am thinking a counter-thrusters that'll be fired at the same time the cannon is fired (one scene on Expelled From Paradise is a good example, firing giant linear cannon in orbit requires all of the back thrusters to fire in unison at full power for a few miliseconds the moment the cannon is fired), or reinforcing the barbette of the turret in order to handle the recoil, or compensators with reciprocating barrel for minimizing recoil

I imagine main guns would typicaly be dorsal guns running trough most of the ship. Yes this will restrict aiming speed but assuming long ranges here and its maximize the distance you can accelerate the projectile. 
Broadsides is another option, say you have 4 turrets top and bottom and forward and back balanced around center of mass, firing all four will not give any rotation, you get an problem if one turret is down however. 

I kind of like the star destroyers design, you can bring all the guns to into action facing forward or half in an broadside. Downside is if you have to redraw or cower an redraw but as the nozzles on the back is funnels not rocket engines I assume you could at least move sideways and giving broadsides. I would put the hangar bay doors on the top, this would let the bridge work as the tower on an aircraft carrier and have multiple smaller bays for fighters. 
Might have bays for larger ships on the bottom. 

And a bit more smaller guns. 100 times more.

Yamato had more AAA guns than the dreadnought in the last jedi and that guns was more like battleship guns who would be an fitting secondary guns on an 7 km long ship however they moved to slow to be effective against fighters close in, however you have multiple levels of smaller guns as in the image and numbers of guns tend goes up as they get smaller.  
Some US carriers welded on an gun deck below the flight deck and lined it with 20mm guns two meter apart. 
Then you have stuff like this.

Yes its two 20-25 mm Gatling guns and 8 missiles. One option is to auto load more missiles from an magazine below the turret. 
This is stuff you can buy if friendly with Russia. 
 

[DDE]

8 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

20-25 mm

*30 mm

And that's the innermost layer. The Italians think this can work as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJpqNFkd9gI

[magnemoe]

14 minutes ago, DDE said:

*30 mm

And that's the innermost layer. The Italians think this can work as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJpqNFkd9gI

Impressive as it blur the line between an auto loader and an automatic gun with 3", as 40 mm was the old limit 

[ARS]

Realistically speaking, is it economical to destroy a capital ship armed with CIWS by overwhelming it with more missiles than what it can handle? judging from the cost of the capital ship vs total cost of the entire missile massacre used

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

8 hours ago, magnemoe said:

 

If attach arms and legs, it will be a mecha.

2 hours ago, ARS said:

Realistically speaking, is it economical to destroy a capital ship armed with CIWS by overwhelming it with more missiles than what it can handle? judging from the cost of the capital ship vs total cost of the entire missile massacre used

One would compare this to the massacre which can be made with that ship.

Also, in WWs the amount of manufactured rounds for firearms was ~50 000 rounds for a KIA soldier.
And not that they had a 50 000 times greater stock than they needed. So, they spent metal of almost of the soldier's mass.

Also, iirc, in the 1st Gulf War they spent 2 guided missiles and ~15 t of free-fall bombs per destroyed vehicle.
Even if remember that not only vehicles were being bombed, they still were main target. So, it's like dropping a several tonnes heavy stone from bird's flight.
 

Spoiler

Nothing has changed since the Stone Age, just the stones fly better.

 

Edited December 12, 2019 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

3 hours ago, ARS said:

Realistically speaking, is it economical to destroy a capital ship armed with CIWS by overwhelming it with more missiles than what it can handle? judging from the cost of the capital ship vs total cost of the entire missile massacre used

A CIWS does not guarantee defense against even a single missile. Surface warfare-focused ships generally pack more firepower than they themselves can take (current USN warships are an aberration, really, with 8 AShMs vs almost a hundred SAMs - compare with a Russian frigate with 16 AShMs and 32 SAMs), even with the totality of CIWS and longer-ranged SAMs. So the answer is an emphatic "yes".
Economical compared to what other option, anyway?

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, ARS said:

Realistically speaking, is it economical to destroy a capital ship armed with CIWS by overwhelming it with more missiles than what it can handle? judging from the cost of the capital ship vs total cost of the entire missile massacre used

it is, a ship only has a few CIWS systems. say 2-8, on an carrier they would be placed below the flight deck so only half can be active. 
However the CIWS is usually the last line of defense, an carrier will have an escort with air defense destroyers with lots of longer range ant air missiles making this an very hard target. 
An single ship with only CIWS is not so hard to overwhelm. 

 

 

[magnemoe]

16 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

If attach arms and legs, it will be a mecha.

One would compare this to the massacre which can be made with that ship.

Also, in WWs the amount of manufactured rounds for firearms was ~50 000 rounds for a KIA soldier.
And not that they had a 50 000 times greater stock than they needed. So, they spent metal of almost of the soldier's mass.

Also, iirc, in the 1st Gulf War they spent 2 guided missiles and ~15 t of free-fall bombs per destroyed vehicle.
Even if remember that not only vehicles were being bombed, they still were main target. So, it's like dropping a several tonnes heavy stone from bird's flight.
 

  Hide contents

Nothing has changed since the Stone Age, just the stones fly better.

 

Note that the number of rounds fired to kill an soldier is incorrect, or rather the purpose of most shots fired is not primary to kill the enemy but to pin them down, if you are in an trench or behind an rock and bullets are hitting the edge all the time you are not going to put you head out and if you do the problem is solved. 
Now the enemy has many options, other enemies can outflank and shoot you, if its an close rock they can use grenades, longer and an rock you can use other area effect like grenade launcher or rpg, you can even call artillery or air strikes. 
Good soldiers uses this a lot, the most intense firefight as in bullets used in North Irland was then two British elite units who both was undercover and not in uniform ran into each others both in belive the other was IRA. 
Note it was the most intense firefight but non got seriously injured. (read this but not sure if true but plausible)

Note that this also depend a lot on your CIWS, if you have something like the big Russian one, especially with magazine for the missiles it would be significantly better than having one 20 mm gun. 
US has an 16 round box missile launcher as an option to the gun, larger ships use both. 

Now the real fun start then you get smart shells who can track targets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJpqNFkd9gI
But all the shells are smart, yes this would be useful for surface targets in visible range to, not as good as missiles but magazine is way larger. 

However last warships hit was an Israeli destroyer hit by an Hezbollah truck launched anti ship missile, they had the CIWS off as it was lots of planes flying around and they did not belive  Hezbollah had anything who could engage them. 
 

[wumpus]

On 12/11/2019 at 4:24 PM, magnemoe said:

Yamato had more AAA guns than the dreadnought in the last jedi and that guns was more like battleship guns who would be an fitting secondary guns on an 7 km long ship however they moved to slow to be effective against fighters close in, however you have multiple levels of smaller guns as in the image and numbers of guns tend goes up as they get smaller.  
Some US carriers welded on an gun deck below the flight deck and lined it with 20mm guns two meter apart. 
Then you have stuff like this.

While it isn't an issue for the Phalanx weapon system (which controls the Navy's big gatling guns), before jets took over those AA guns were controlled/fired by hand and the gunner had to identify friend or foe visually and quickly.  Early in WWII, the US found itself shooting down more friend than foe through AA guns (by the time Yamato deployed, they really didn't have enough zeros for this to be an issue).  This was eventually corrected, but the techniques to do this became obsolete with jet aircraft (and fortunately published.  Far too many are lost since secrecy was maintained by shear habit).

For Heinlein fans, much of this was done by one Samuel Renshaw who shows up as "inventing a super memory training device" in several of RAH's works.  Pre-google, this took nearly an hour to track down all the information you could get in a single google search, and all day (a trip to the Library of Congress) to confirm no other material was published).

[kerbiloid]

6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Note that the number of rounds fired to kill an soldier is incorrect, or rather the purpose of most shots fired is not primary to kill the enemy but to pin them down

That's obvious. But this changes nothing because that's not a question, how much stones do you need to make a headshot.
That's a question, how much stones do you spend to make that headshot possible. You anyway need all of them to be manufactured and brought.

So, while a hunter sometimes goes hunting with 3-5 gun shells in a pocket (like duckhunting with 3-5 arrows with stone tips), the war is still stoning the enemy with a heap of his own mass. Tens of kg of per soldier, tens of tonnes per vehicle.
The war. The war never changes.

Edited December 13, 2019 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

US has an 16 round box missile launcher as an option to the gun, larger ships use both. 

Instead of, and a proper RAM launcher is the better option if necessary alterations can be made.

9 hours ago, magnemoe said:

it is, a ship only has a few CIWS systems. say 2-8, on an carrier they would be placed below the flight deck so only half can be active. 

You don't need to reach that far. Look at this one:

CIWS with clear fields of fire to either side are surprisingly rare, probably because a terraced superstructure has a large radar signature:

4 hours ago, wumpus said:

before jets took over those AA guns were controlled/fired by hand and the gunner had to identify friend or foe visually and quickly

Not entirely true. WWII saw rapid development of centralized targeting and mechanized training of the weapons.

@ARS

[wumpus]

8 hours ago, DDE said:

Not entirely true. WWII saw rapid development of centralized targeting and mechanized training of the weapons.

@ARS

True, and a gun optimized to hit a V-1 is unlikely to hit a spitfire (wrong lead times).  But I doubt that electronic IFF (identify friend or foe) was a thing during WWII.  Somebody had to see the aircraft and decide shoot/don't shoot.