Sunday, August 26, 2007

Space Fighters, Not

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas added Space Fighters to the standard arsenal of SF warfare tropes. For Hollywood it was love at first flight, partly for the cool special effects, partly for the reason I gave here. At SFConsim-l the consensus has been trying to stuff the things back in the toy box for the last eight years ... but no one listens to us.

Lucas did not invent space fighters, of course. I don't specifically recall any in the SF I read growing up, but I vividly remember one in an animated series I used to watch in grade school. (That was also a long, long time ago, and alas I have no idea what show it was.) Space fighters didn't really catch on till Lucas, though - the clearest evidence being that Trek had nothing of the sort.

So ... what exactly is a space fighter, and what does SFConsim-l have against them? If Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Babylon 5 are anything to go by, a space fighter is exactly what you would imagine: the spacegoing equivalent of a DeHavilland DH-4 or an F-16. It is a small spacecraft, about the size - and, oddly, roughly the shape - of a present-day fighter jet. It has a single pilot or at most a two-man crew, strapped into a cockpit with minimal habitability, clearly intended for short missions of only a day or so at most. We see them whooshing and gyrating across the screen, zapping away at each other. Now and then they also destroy the odd stray Death Star, which with typical bad-guy carelessness is designed to obliterate whole planets but cannot defend itself effectively against killer gnats.

(Credit to Babylon 5: not only did its Starfuries have less overt similarity to atmospheric jet fighters, they sometimes even maneuvered like spacecraft instead of airplanes - an all but unique Hollywood tribute to Sir Isaac Newton.)

So what, you may ask, do some of us have against space fighters? The atmospheric kind have been with us for more than 90 years - a shade longer than tanks - so they're no passing fad. What works in one environment, however, isn't automatically suited to a very different one, and fighter planes don't fight in space any more than tanks do. (Yes, the same false-analogy critique can be laid against the analogy of space warcraft to naval ships - but that's an issue for another post.)

Space, first of all, is the same environment for small ships and big ones alike. This immediately knocks the stuffing out of the implicit contrast between small, fast fighters and big, slow space dreadnoughts. Fighter planes are airplanes; battleships are ships: They operate in two entirely different fluid mediums with very different properties. Battleships can't fly, and fighter jets can't cut power and drift while making repairs. There's no such essential difference between space fighters and larger ships - and no inherent reason for the fighter to be faster or more maneuverable.

"Fast" is in fact a bit of a slippery concept when it comes to spacecraft. Speed in space is all relative to begin with; the more useful measure for a spaceship is delta v, "change in velocity" - especially, how much you can change your velocity before you run out of gas. For any given propulsion technology, the way to get more delta v isn't a more powerful engine but a bigger fuel tank. What a powerful engine does give you is higher acceleration - so you can achieve any given delta v more quickly.

"Bigger fuel tank" and "more powerful engine" are also relative - to the size of the ship, more specifically its mass, since that's what you've got to push around. They are also contradictory in a sense - a big propellant supply means more the engine has to push around, so it is hard to get both sprightly maneuver performance (high acceleration) and extended maneuver capability (ample delta v) in the same ship.

Which does suggest that a small, somewhat fighter-like spacecraft, designed for tactical operations with limited endurance, could be a good deal handier than big ships designed for long voyages. The short-range tactical ship - presumably transported to the battle zone by a "carrier," or operating from a nearby base - can carry a smaller and lighter fuel load relative to its size. It doesn't need the supplies, provisions, and life support of long-voyage ships - not even a proper zero-g toilet, let alone bunkrooms and a galley. (Also no crew of techs to keep it running: just a pilot.) The mass saved by leaving all of this out translates directly into higher acceleration: in tactical terms a more agile, "faster" ship.

So isn't this our fighter, even if it doesn't look much like the Star Wars kind?

If it's going to be a useful fighter, however, it should probably have an armament. It can't carry a very heavy one, or you lose the maneuver performance that is the fighter's reason for being. Nor can it carry much armor or other protection, for the same reason. Whatever armament and protection it does carry, however, should be sufficient to fight its enemy counterparts. If successful it destroys them or chases them off, after which it can attack bigger, slower enemy ships ... how?

Broadly speaking, space warcraft in SF use two kinds of weapons. The more familiar are beam weapons - once called ray guns; now usually imagined as lasers or something similar. The hitch here is that our small fighter can't carry a very big one, especially since the weapon needs a power supply. Big, sluggish ships, by virtue of being big and sluggish, can carry a much heavier armament - heavy enough to zap a swarm of fighters out of the sky before the fighters can do much more than scratch the big ship's paint.

Yes, the fighter is fast and maneuverable - but not faster than a laser beam. Nor is there much chance of jinking around to dodging one, at least at any range much less than Earth-Moon distance. Light travels that distance in one and a quarter seconds. Aiming is limited by the round trip (because the gunner depends on light, or a radar beam, etc., to see the target), so at Earth-Moon distance our fighter has two and a half seconds to dodge. That might be enough. But at a tenth of Earth-Moon distance - a piddly 40,000 kilometers - the fighter only has a quarter-second of dodge time.

Dodging "bullets" that come at the speed of light is no way to live long and prosper. So if fortune favors the big battalions, combat between laser-armed warcraft favors big ships that can lay down powerful zaps. Maneuver hardly enters into it.

Lasers and similar beam weapons, however, are not the only plausible space weapons. A throw pillow will wreck a space dreadnought, if you throw it fast enough, and spacecraft do go fast. Thus kinetic weapons, as described in this snippet back in April. The weapon itself is nothing more or less than a slug (or spray of slugs, like buckshot). It does, however, have to be thrown - fast and hard.

One way to throw it is to shoot it out of a gun - probably electrical, a railgun or coilgun. This, however, requires a heavy, high-power installation. As with lasers, coilguns with serious hitting power thus require big ships to carry them and their power supply. Another way to throw a slug, however, is to put it on the front end of a missile. The launching ship has to carry the missile, but this requires nothing more than a launching box, or even a clamp on the side. The third way to deliver a kinetic slug is the simplest of all: Head toward the target, fast, release the slug - then veer aside before it hits.

This last tactic has a lot in common with World War II dive bombing. In practice you would probably combine "bomb" and "missile" - the slug having a guidance motor to steer it into the target and counter any evasive moves on the target's part. Henry Cobb on SFConsim-l came up with the term lancer for this tactic and the ships used to execute it.

In contrast to zapping with lasers or similar weapons, lancer tactics favor small, agile ships. You need good maneuver performance, first to line up on collision course with your target, then to veer clear of the target - and its defensive fire envelope - after releasing your ordnance. Large size is no advantage, because the lancer ship needs no powerful on-board equipment, and because several small lancer ships are preferable to one big one. They can engage several different targets - or come at one target from several directions, boxing it in.

Now things start to look interesting, because it has probably already occurred to you that lancer ships can engage each other. In fact, if lancers are technically and tactically viable at all, the best way to protect your big ships from them might be to send your own lancers out to engage them. A battle between lancers even looks quite a bit like a dogfight, though on a vastly larger physical scale. We can imagine small, handy ships, hurtling along complex curved trajectories, trying to line up for clean shots at their enemies while avoiding getting lined up on - especially getting boxed in, where evading one enemy sends you right into the path of another.

It's taken us long enough - I've been working on this post, off and on, for about three weeks (which is why this blog has looked like a dead zone lately) - but here at last we seem to have our space fighters.

Not so fast: There are complications. In space, if I've lined up a good shot at you, you also have a good shot at me. We're heading straight at each other in a game of interplanetary chicken - given equal-performance ships, if one of us veers aside in time neither of us scores a hit; if not, we both score hits. In lancer combat you're either a live chicken or a dead duck. So much for swaggering lancer jocks knocking back green fuming Rigellian brandy and hitting on the bar girls.

The simple if unromantic solution is to leave out the pilots, or at least put them back somewhere safe, "flying" the lancers by remote control. That way you're not throwing away pilots, just some expensive hardware. There's not much reason to have a pilot in any case. Outer space is a tactically "clean" environment, without much clutter - ideal for automated systems. A lancer ship would have to be flown mostly by computer anyway; there's really not much place for silk scarf and goggles. Save the mass of pilot, cockpit, and even minimal life support and your lancer-turned-drone becomes that much more agile.

One type of decision that can't be left to an ordinary computer is a rules-of-engagement decision: shoot or don't shoot. In contemporary terms only a human being - or an artificial intelligence as sophisticated as a human being - can decide whether a car speeding toward a checkpoint carries a suicide bomber or a terrified Iraqi family. A tactical space battle, however, is very unlikely to pose that sort of question, at least in a form so immediate that it can't be decided by a human remote operator a few light-seconds away.

You could find ways around all of these complications, but at some point it becomes special pleading - like contriving a world where people have radar and guided missiles, but fight their sea battles with ironclads, really just because it would be cool. A more robust contrivance is to have your ships fight in Z-space (or whatever you choose to call it), where the local laws of physics favor spaceships that fly like airplanes. It's still contrived, but not so baroque.

For "normal" space, however - the kind with stars and planets - space fighters are a pretty dubious proposition, and you're better off without them.

Of course, if Hollywood calls and waves some money in front of me ... space fighters you want, space fighters you get.

394 comments:

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Byron said...

...and if you do somehow manage to fire anything larger than an atom at near-relativistic velocities, your ship immediately moves in the opposite direction.
Not really. A microgram at .9 c is only going to have a recoil of about .27 N*s. That's considerably lower then a typical handgun. The peak force will be considerably higher, of course. And I will admit to skepticism on the energy front as well.

The best naval analogy isn't fighers to bombers either, both are similarly-scaled planes. The appropriate naval analogy would be fighter or bomber to battleship or aircraft carrier.
No, it's not. The best naval analogy would be a PT boat/MTB to a battleship. A fighter moves in a different environment then a battleship does, which is all that justifies it's existence. Nobody has ever built a PT boat carrier, for the same reasons that nobody will use parasites in space. That reason is that, while a 'fighter' might have more punch per dollar then does a 'capital ship', when you factor in the carrier, you're spending more for the same firepower.

Byron said...

And on another note, the thread that wouldn't die just hit 200 posts.
I suppose it's about time.

TOM said...

Ball lightning is likely made of plasma but it manages to stay together... okay there are outer pressure, but we cant give really good explanations for that phenonema. Or at least I dont know about it.
What if we can somehow press together the particles at the end of the barrel, then the electromagnetic forces will keep them together?
What if we use gluons or thingy like that?
Okay I'm not a physicist, I surrender and admit, that we cant do it now.
(But we can already do many things that were unimaginable earlier. I guess if someone had talked about space time curvature, dark energy, quantum thingy to the best scientists of Newtonian era, most of them would have called the doctor. But again ok i admit, i cant disprove what you say.)

About the last part : in case of planetary defence, you dont need a carrier, okay they already wrote that small craft rather meant for orbital combat.
But even so, if you already has a cargo ship, you can load it with gunboats instead of rebuild it to a battleship.

WLUwikipedia said...

My post was #200, I'm adding that to my resume :)

Not really. A microgram at .9 c is only going to have a recoil of about .27 N*s. That's considerably lower then a typical handgun. The peak force will be considerably higher, of course. And I will admit to skepticism on the energy front as well.
What would the damage be? More specifically, is it worth accelerating that much mass to .9c or do you need something heavier to make it worth your while? I understand the broad-strokes physics, but the numbers are what really tell the tale. Any chance you can link it to the BOOM table at project rho?

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#boom

It gives 1 gram at .9c an impact of 29 kilotons of dynamite, is it as simple as 29,000,000t/1,000,000=29 kilos of dynamite? In which case, I may need to eat my words...

Byron said...

TOM:

Ball lightning is likely made of plasma but it manages to stay together... okay there are outer pressure, but we cant give really good explanations for that phenonema. Or at least I dont know about it.
What if we can somehow press together the particles at the end of the barrel, then the electromagnetic forces will keep them together?
What if we use gluons or thingy like that?
Okay I'm not a physicist, I surrender and admit, that we cant do it now.

I noticed that you're not a physicist. And I honestly doubt we'll ever be able to do any of these things.


(But we can already do many things that were unimaginable earlier. I guess if someone had talked about space time curvature, dark energy, quantum thingy to the best scientists of Newtonian era, most of them would have called the doctor. But again ok i admit, i cant disprove what you say.)

Sure, but that sort of thinking removes the discussion from the realm of hard sci-fi. As I said earlier, you can do it, but it's not realistic.

But even so, if you already has a cargo ship, you can load it with gunboats instead of rebuild it to a battleship.
This assumes the cargo ship in question is capable of deploying and servicing the gunboats. I have very, very serious doubts about that. In World War II, most PT boats were shipped as deck cargo, but they never deployed off of ships.

It gives 1 gram at .9c an impact of 29 kilotons of dynamite, is it as simple as 29,000,000t/1,000,000=29 kilos of dynamite? In which case, I may need to eat my words...
That's correct. It's actually lower then my gut said, but that leads me to another question. If we have a magic device that can accelerate this projectile and fit on a fighter, why can't we use the same technology to shield the target? And what could a bigger ship do?

Rick said...

And nobody has ever made a PT boat carrier.

True of PT boats in the strict sense, but in the late 19th century there were a couple of torpedo boat carriers. (One each RN and France, IIRC.) My copy of Conway's All the World's Warships 1860-1905 is buried under other books, but it lists these ships with some information. Experiments were also made with battleships carrying small torpedo boats.

The idea went nowhere, but noted for the record!

Byron said...

OK, that's good to know. I would point out that this doesn't hurt my point. The ships in question were apparently not terribly successful, given that each nation built one, and the obscurity of the vessels.

TOM said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_boat

I know Wiki isnt the most reliable source, but it claims, that TBs werent THAT useless.

But : a TB is clearly a worthless junk against an airborne fighter, it is inferior compared to a submarine, even if you dont hit it precisely, the wave of the explosion can flip it over.
You have to protect it from storms, you cant just drag or fuel them.

Space fighters dont suffer from theese major disadvantages.

Byron said...

I never claimed that Torpedo Boats were useless. I'm pointing out that torpedo boat carriers were failures. They didn't work well enough for repeats, and were converted to other support ships fairly quickly. I found details on HMS Vulcan, and it seems to be exactly what I was describing. The fact that the concept was brought up once, and then never again is fairly telling.

Rick said...

Agree on both points: Torpedo boats were useful; TB carriers were not.

But also note the evolution of torpedo boats. Efforts to develop a countermeasure led first to 'torpedo gunboats,' which were not successful, then to 'torpedo boat destroyers' - jumbo torpedo boats, also armed with light guns, which were very successful.

So successful that they largely supplanted TBs for torpedo attacks, continued to grow, and evolved into just plain 'destroyers.'

TOM said...

What you say is clearly right.

But again, you cant just rely on naval analogy IMHO.
Forgive me I'm not an engineer, I cant see all the technical difficulties.

But I think, a fighter carrier is much more like to an aircraft carrier, you dont need cranes to unload the vessels, and store them on your deck. Yes it IS really awkward.
Buy the time they could solve the problems with carriers, TBs were rendered useless by the airforce.

In space, you just open the cargo bay, and they are ready to take off. Or you just need magnetic hooks to stick them to the sides of the bigger ships.
Or you just have to keep the fighters fueled to keep up with the fleet.
Well I think so.

And I dont write theese things, just because i fond of fighters...
I think an interplanetary military ship will be damned expensive.
It needs to have a certain radius to mimic gravity with rotating, artifical biosphere, cargo bays, workshops, huge amount of fuel, really big thrusters and reactors, and everything in a redundant amount.

If there is any chance you can protect all theese things, and let the cheaper, more easy-to-produce fighters to deal (partially) with your enemy until you get in to fire range, i think you have to take it, and think about, how can you solve the problems of fighter transport.

Byron said...

TOM:
But again, you cant just rely on naval analogy IMHO.
No, we can't. But looking for analogies is a good thing, so long as you keep in mind their limitations. Space Fighters are the prime example of this not being done.

But I think, a fighter carrier is much more like to an aircraft carrier, you dont need cranes to unload the vessels, and store them on your deck. Yes it IS really awkward.

In space, you just open the cargo bay, and they are ready to take off. Or you just need magnetic hooks to stick them to the sides of the bigger ships.
Or you just have to keep the fighters fueled to keep up with the fleet.
Well I think so.

I don't know if it would be quite that easy. If the ship is a modular carrier, then it just might work. However, at this point, we're treading the line between fighters and small ships that just happen to be carried. The advantage of a fighter supposedly is that it can avoid everything that's not mission-critical, and most of these would sort of defeat that. Particularly the last one. I can see fighters of sorts in a convoy protection role, subbing for cargo pods, but those are more like CAM ships then a conventional carrier. They'd be mostly to deter very light warships, not to fight fleet engagements. Oh, and they'd be drones, too.

I think an interplanetary military ship will be damned expensive.
It needs to have a certain radius to mimic gravity with rotating, artifical biosphere, cargo bays, workshops, huge amount of fuel, really big thrusters and reactors, and everything in a redundant amount.

Not as much as you might think. You don't need spin unless you're carrying Marines. Biospheres don't pay off that fast. That cuts mass and cost a lot. Journeys are likely to be on the order of months.

If there is any chance you can protect all theese things, and let the cheaper, more easy-to-produce fighters to deal (partially) with your enemy until you get in to fire range, i think you have to take it, and think about, how can you solve the problems of fighter transport.
The biggest problem with fighters is simple. I believe that, for the amount of money spent on a parasite and its dedicated carrier, you can get more firepower in conventional ships. This assumes a fighter-like model of parasite use. If you strap them to a cargo pod dock, and don't worry about rearming them, then it's more practical. But even then, that's not for fleet battles.

Rick said...

What exactly do we mean by 'fighter,' anyway? How far can a limited endurance / rider ship depart from the Star Wars mental image and missions, and still count as a fighter?

Not really a frivolous question, because 'space fighter' as much about evocation than anything else.

Byron said...

What exactly do we mean by 'fighter,' anyway? How far can a limited endurance / rider ship depart from the Star Wars mental image and missions, and still count as a fighter?

Not really a frivolous question, because 'space fighter' as much about evocation than anything else.

Not a frivolous question at all. I've been asking myself this quite a bit since I started a separate essay on the subject. (I'm slightly bored right now, so I decided to put down a lot of my thoughts in a coherent way.) That's why I've been using the term parasite. And for parasites, I think the gunboats from AV:T are probably a good example. And yes, I do know that you had something to do with those.

Anonymous said...

"Space Fighters" will probably be either small orbital weapons platforms used for strickly near-planet combat, or aerospace fighter-bombers used for planetary assault/defense. You won't use them to attack capital ships (unless you're very desperate); with the exception of if you have a swarm of them and can overwhelm the bigger ship's defenses. You probably won't win in the long run, but you might make it too costly for the percived benefit to the more powerful state to start a war in the first place.

Ferrell

TOM said...

You have really good arguments, and I have almost surrendered.
Yes, fighters are best suited for orbital combat, as you already determined.

But then I came up with the following idea.
Yes, big ships and fighters move in the same medium.
But that doesnt mean, that they have the same PROPULSION system.

For example : an interplanetary ship will have to have a good, reliable, efficient ion thruster as main engine.
A fighter can have plasma thrusters, what way more powerful, but only reliable for short time operation, due to the excessive heat. You dont want to have such a main engine on an interplanetary ship, do you?
And that brings up the analogy of an aircraft carrier.
Especially if the enemy has to protect something, or has to charge, so you can have to attack vector to get the fighters aside the enemy, so they can disable it with their strong but short ranged particle cannons.
They can also wield mirrors or lenses, that help focusing the beams of the big ship, so they can extend its range of fire.

Rick : when i talk about a fighter, I mean a short ranged attack craft.
Even if its 100m long, compared to kilometer long capital ships, like in Warhammer 40k.

Byron said...

TOM:
But then I came up with the following idea.
Yes, big ships and fighters move in the same medium.
But that doesnt mean, that they have the same PROPULSION system.

For example : an interplanetary ship will have to have a good, reliable, efficient ion thruster as main engine.
A fighter can have plasma thrusters, what way more powerful, but only reliable for short time operation, due to the excessive heat. You dont want to have such a main engine on an interplanetary ship, do you?

There are two problems with this. First, ion thrusters and plasma thrusters are in the same performance range. You might be able to get more out of a plasma thruster, but we're talking 2x thrust, not 10x. Second, keep in mind is that ships that maneuver in combat using the same drive the cruise under are not maneuverable. Given the amount of time spent under thrust, generally measured in days if not weeks, ships will be unable to change the tactical geometry in a meaningful way during a few hours. And the drive must be different by orders of magnitude to make it work, not a factor of two, so you're looking at NTRs.

Byron said...

And I promised two problems, then forgot about the second one. Your heat-management strategy is not viable. Given the amount of waste heat produced, you simply must get rid of it. I can see a time limit on a given period of thrust, but not completely ignoring heat management.

Rick said...

'Short ranged attack craft' is quite a bit broader than 'fighter' - beyond mere size, it could be remote/robotic, or have a crew of half a dozen.

I'm rather favorable toward rider ships in general - if that means 'fighters,' so be it.

With the proviso that IMHO you pretty much need a demi-operatic setting to get to cool space battles at all.

TOM said...

Byron : The overall reliable lifetime of that super-plasma thrusters could be a few days or couple of hours.
Enough for a few battles, than you have to replace them.

Lets see why I think this isnt a bullshit, waste of money.

First : after a few battles, you need to return to dock anyway, make trendemous repairs, rearnaments...
Then you can afford to replace the weary thrusters.

Why dont we install theese kind of thrusters on the big ships for combat manuevering?

The overall acceleration will be still hindered by the slow main engines. They are pretty expensive, we dont turn out fleets into huge airships.
And if anything would happen to go wrong... the fighter is more expendable.

If you want expendable thrusters, why dont you use missiles?

I think theese space fighters can overperform missiles.
Lets assume the missile can reach 1000 km/s. Still you can blind it from 10.000 km, deploy some anti-missile mines.
SF can take out or damage an enemy ship from 100.000 km.
It can take out anti-missile mines, enemy missiles.
And it is reusable.

What about their short range?

If an enemy frigate protects a convoy, or enemy cruisers have to charge your dreadnought, the range will be just fine.
Otherwise they can act as support ships.

( Maybe in unmanned mode, you can make never-to-return attacks...
Maybe the pilots will be rather skilled mechanics, like R2-D2, they meant to ensure, you can retrieve the hardware if something goes wrong. )

Byron said...

TOM:
The overall reliable lifetime of that super-plasma thrusters could be a few days or couple of hours.
Enough for a few battles, than you have to replace them.

Uncooled? That doesn't make much sense. It's virtually impossible to make an uncooled engine that will run for long periods of time. An aluminum engine that puts out 1 kW/kg of waste heat will heat up at about 1 degree K per second. To make this sort of thing practical, you'll need something on the order of a few degrees per minute.

I think theese space fighters can overperform missiles.
Lets assume the missile can reach 1000 km/s. Still you can blind it from 10.000 km, deploy some anti-missile mines.
SF can take out or damage an enemy ship from 100.000 km.
It can take out anti-missile mines, enemy missiles.
And it is reusable.

This is where the problem is. I have serious doubts that the fighters have ranges of 100,000 km. They might, but the enemy ship will have a much larger range, turning the fighters into skeet. Missiles don't have to come home, which gives them a significant velocity advantage when closing. All of the above supposes lasers, of course.

( Maybe in unmanned mode, you can make never-to-return attacks...
Maybe the pilots will be rather skilled mechanics, like R2-D2, they meant to ensure, you can retrieve the hardware if something goes wrong. )

That presupposes that the pilot can do much. A modern pilot has no way of fixing anything, and you would also need to add tools to fix it.

TOM said...

Byron : I have never talked about uncooled plasma drives.
I talked about expendant thrusters, that can give more acceleration, but they erode.

Otherwise : I am a programmer, I can understand mathematics, but not good in engineering.
Please tell me, where I am wrong.

You have a small ship. 1 unit of mass. You need one unit of power for acceleration. You have four units of radiators on the sides.

Then you have a bigger ship.
8 units of mass, 16 units of radiators on its sides.
Then you need 8 units of power to reach the same acc.

That means 8 units of waste heat for 16 rads, vs 1 unit of waste heat vs 4 units of rads.

Wont that mean that small ships can have bigger sustainable acceleration?

As i said, if a deep space fighter has to be a 100m long vessel, compared to km long capital ships, fine to me.
If R2-D2 is the pilot, while humans keep the engines running, replacing overheated parts, broken radiators, etc, fine to me.
(Yes it would be interesting, how could a modern pilot fix his plane during mission. :D )

About ranges : I have the following speculations.
I read, free-electron lasers have an efficiency about 65%
Lets assume mirror armors can deflect 90% of energy.
That can turn lasers into pretty ineffective things.
Maybe they are rather meant to jam sensors.
Think about fighting in fog. Infra-fog generated by the lasers.
Than it wont be such an easy thing to determine the position of a fighter within 1 arcsecond limit.
They can have pretty much chance to avoid being hit.
Even if they are hit by lasers, maybe it will be rather a disabling shot, not a lethal one.

So you need to employ particle cannons for a reasonable punch.
And you want your fighters to weaken your enemy, till you get into the range of the enemy's main cannon. And they can attack the weaker sides.
They can have full speeds if they fly by the enemy, you need double amount of fuel compared to a missile for deceleration... then the carrier can fetch you.
You need to have life support for a day yes, but not for months.
(Yes, we can call theese ones rider ships.)

Other speculation : maybe because missiles are easy to blind, they will rely on the remote control of the ships to got a reasonable chance for hit.
But due to light lag, inaccuracy grows exponentally, not to talk about the problems of properly tracking the missiles with unjammeble laser beams.

If you have your fighters advanced a light-second, compared to the 2 light-second distance of the carrier, you can have four times bigger accuracy.
They can also shot the enemy missiles in the back, making them blind every side, and aid the missiles with further jamming of enemy sensors.
Maybe they will have to dodge missile shrapnels like the fighters of WW II dodged flak cannons.

Byron said...

TOM:
I have never talked about uncooled plasma drives.
I talked about expendant thrusters, that can give more acceleration, but they erode.

OK, that makes more sense. Though I'm not sure how much more thrust you'll get out of a plasma drive like that. Do you have any sources?
(Honestly curious)

You have a small ship. 1 unit of mass. You need one unit of power for acceleration. You have four units of radiators on the sides.

Then you have a bigger ship.
8 units of mass, 16 units of radiators on its sides.
Then you need 8 units of power to reach the same acc.

That means 8 units of waste heat for 16 rads, vs 1 unit of waste heat vs 4 units of rads.

Wont that mean that small ships can have bigger sustainable acceleration?

Theoretically, yes. However, I really doubt that surface radiators will dominate for warcraft. At 1600 K, you're getting about 350 kW/m2. That's a lot, but when the heat output is three times that of your engine thrust, you're going to need a lot of area. (If you haven't already, check out atomic rockets, linked at the top of the page).

I read, free-electron lasers have an efficiency about 65%
Reasonable enough.
Lets assume mirror armors can deflect 90% of energy.
That can turn lasers into pretty ineffective things.

That's where it goes wrong. Mirror armors don't work. The first hit will vaporize the mirror, and then it's no good at all.

Other speculation : maybe because missiles are easy to blind, they will rely on the remote control of the ships to got a reasonable chance for hit.
But due to light lag, inaccuracy grows exponentally, not to talk about the problems of properly tracking the missiles with unjammeble laser beams.

I don't know how easy missiles are to blind. If you fit a narrow-band filter on the missile, most of the laser radiation would be excluded, unless the frequency is just right.

TOM said...

Missile blinding :
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/ircm.htm

We can do it even now.
And we cant just put mirror armor to our sensors.

About that super plasma thrusters...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoplasmadynamic_thruster

"Another problem with MPD technology has been the degradation of cathodes due to evaporation driven by high current densities (in excess of 100 amps/cm^2)"

Thats the best I got, sorry I can rather speculate than say exact things. Well that topic is about far future.

Okay I can understand the thing with radiators.
However... it might not be that unviable to drag fighters.

You may prefer to convert your cargo ship to a dedicated logistic ship for your fleet. That can handle fighters also.
Or they can be attached to a marine transport.
Well, they can be attached to any ship... IF the crew can handle the resupply things.

Byron said...

Missile blinding :
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/ircm.htm

We can do it even now.
And we cant just put mirror armor to our sensors.

I never said it was impossible, but there are countermeasures. What I suggested was a narrow-band filter that only allows a narrow band of wavelengths through, which the laser hopefully does not operate in, while still allowing the missile to see. It isn't perfect, but there's always home-on-jam, too.

About that super plasma thrusters...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoplasmadynamic_thruster

"Another problem with MPD technology has been the degradation of cathodes due to evaporation driven by high current densities (in excess of 100 amps/cm^2)"

That's pretty much what I expected. I think that we'll see convergence around one or maybe two solutions to thrusters. My money is on concentric-channel hall thrusters, which can match VASIMR's proposed specs today. If MPDs end up as one of those solutions, then the erosion problem will be solved. If not, then they'll be 10 minutes in AE 312. MPDs don't offer a huge number of advantages over other thrusters, particularly since the upper end of their performance range is not useful for manned flights.

Okay I can understand the thing with radiators.
However... it might not be that unviable to drag fighters.

I'm not claiming it's unviable. I'm claiming that, for the battle fleet, it is uneconomical. The mass devoted to gunboat support is going to cost more then a ship with the equivalent weapons. They might be useful for limited duty (patrol and convoy protection) but that's not the same thing as being a solution for combat missions.

TOM said...

Well I think about some theoretical device, that isnt last for 10 minutes, but not for weeks, months neither.
Okay, that is speculative.

It is still easier to fry the missile sensors, or explode the propulsion systems (from the back) than melt them down from the front, their front can be protected by reinforced mirror armor.

Anyway, I had a Star Wars discussion earlier, they said :

Lets agree, the big ones can usually defeat fighters, but poor man dont have the opportunity to choose.


If you have a cargo ship, and orbital fighters, but dont have battleships, your main shipyard is damaged, than it is still easier to convert the cargo ship to a dedicated logistic ship for your small fleet, a few frigates and squadron of fighters, than rebuild it to be a battleship.

And I think, at least they can make things more complicated for the enemy strategists.
Anti ship cannons arent really good against fighters, too much wasted energy, too much recharge time without expendant coolant.
Batteries are really good against fighters but not so good against big ones.
Anti missile mines and short range rockets really good against missiles, but fighters can take them out.
They cant just focus on one or two types of weapons system, if they leave the fighters out of their calculations, then maybe, they will be surprised, when fighters get close while the big cannon is reloading.

TOM said...

I have rechecked what is written about radiators.
Well I still think, after the last example, that although you are right, they cant just vanish the waste heat of a fully blazing engine, they still grant small ships a bigger sustainable acceleration, (they can overheat them, even small percentages that erodes them slowly, can be good by the temparature^4 factor ) and a weak spot for big ones.

So they might be useful for some minor support roles, flanking operations.


But again, I admit, your arguments are right. You have written down well why the popular sci-fi image is false, where space fighters seems to be the ultimate strike force.
/Although I wonder, maybe the media of future shall still overpopulize fighters as a symbol of chivalry, and for their role in defending planets, asteroid mines in swarms./
So again, i thank you for having a normal debate, i ve found it constructive.


I would like to have a question.
What do you think about specialized aerospace fighters?
A guy told me, they are bullshit, they will be just bad in both environments.
( Yes there are times, when i stick to my opinion, but i didnt want to be offensive, I care about other ones. )

Byron said...

TOM:
Well I still think, after the last example, that although you are right, they cant just vanish the waste heat of a fully blazing engine, they still grant small ships a bigger sustainable acceleration, (they can overheat them, even small percentages that erodes them slowly, can be good by the temparature^4 factor ) and a weak spot for big ones.
I've thought of that. The problem is that if you're already radiating 98% of your waste heat, why not pay the little bit extra for that last 2%? The performance falloff is minor, and it's one less thing for you to worry about. I'm not sure erosion is connected to temperature, and I also question the wisdom of deliberately eroding your engines. Not to say that they'll never need replacing, but having engines that must be replaced multiple times over the course of a cruise strikes me as being potentially a bad idea.

What do you think about specialized aerospace fighters?
A guy told me, they are bullshit, they will be just bad in both environments.
( Yes there are times, when i stick to my opinion, but i didnt want to be offensive, I care about other ones. )

I think that this guy needs to be more open-minded about the concept. It depends on exactly what variety is under discussion, and I can come up with a couple right off the top of my head:
1. Dual-role. A fighter that is built to fight both in the air and in space. I doubt this is a viable idea, and it's probably what he was referring to. The performance penalties for two separate roles are fairly high. This is only if it has to fight in both environments as a matter of course.
2. Ground-launch space. Fighters built to launch from the atmosphere and fight in space. This makes a decent bit of sense, if you have cheap, high-performance SSTOs, or no way of putting up bigger warships (Dyna-Soar). Pop up, fire weapons, return to base on the planet. Doesn't have to fight in an atmosphere. Could work.
3. Space-launch air. Fighters that are dropped into the atmosphere, attack ground targets, and return to ships. I'm more skeptical of these, mostly because I don't see any roles they can do that missiles would not be more effective at. You would need similar or better technology then for number 2.
4. Space-drop air. Fighters dropped into a planet's atmosphere and left there to fight. Used in support of an invasion, presumably. These would be very similar to normal air fighters, with capability for drops (heat shield attachments, vacuum-rated cockpits, etc). Probably required if you decide to invade a planet. Which I don't think is a good idea, but that's another story.

TOM said...

Byron :

Well, we can agree that the aircraft carrier analogy is bad.
/In BSG it might justificable, that they wanted to keep out their precious big one out of most fights. Of course, the main reason is to include younger warrior types above older captains and leaders./

But is that okay, that a small ship can have bigger sustainable acc than a big one?

Well I think this is the analogy that can suit the space fighter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Attack_Craft

I guess asteroid mines are really good places to employ them, they can manufacture and store them in larger shafts, well-protected from enemy artillery.
And ok, if you have enough tanks, you dont employ mobile infantry instead of them. /I think that is the analogy of fighter dragging, as they dont sink in storms./


Okay so you say point 2 isnt bad.
What do you think about a hypersonic skyhook, that would lift something from stratosphere to orbit? Of course, provided that something above have the necessary power output and enough time to lift?

I would like to add to point 3, that they could employ energy cannons /in wavelengths that is good for air/ so they might be cheaper than precise missile attacks.

TOM said...

Otherwise yes invading an enemy planet is similar to say that Somalia launches its troops to occupy Sweden...
If you want to just succumb them, you might only want to launch missile barrages against their cities, than say : Ok where we, yeah what is about the export prices?

That could turn the entire interplanetary war concept into the realm of space operas, it is easier if you have warp drives.

I guess there wil be rather small regional conflicts over an asteroid mine, and/or between different syndicates.
Neutral parties could be among them, so you ll need decision making not just shoot everything in sight.

(A small return to Hollywood films, if you want to be realistic, you need many many cuts to cover the ranges and flight paths, times. That would be irritating after a while. Of course, they could still note, there are no aerodynamics in space... Yes such things emberasses me also.)

Byron said...

But is that okay, that a small ship can have bigger sustainable acc than a big one?
That is not an inherent feature of smaller vessels. There is no reason to assume that a small ship will naturally be capable of greater speeds then a big one. That will depend on the fine technical details, and I think that any technical performance difference will be washed out by design differences.

Well I think this is the analogy that can suit the space fighter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Attack_Craft

I guess asteroid mines are really good places to employ them, they can manufacture and store them in larger shafts, well-protected from enemy artillery.

I've used that exact analogy myself in another venue. However, an FAC is just a modern-day torpedo boat.
I have nothing against short-range, low-endurance craft. My problem is with the proposal to carry them into battle as deployed from ships. The thing most people overlook is that a vessel of this sort can be of any size. I would expect to see Planetary Defense Ships (PDSs) made in most sizes, except the very largest. The best parallel is the Scandinavian coastal defense ships. No doubt Rick can tell us who else used them. Basically, as the design never has to go far from home, it can have a small engine, small tanks, minimal redundancy, and limited quarters (if it has those at all).

Okay so you say point 2 isnt bad.
What do you think about a hypersonic skyhook, that would lift something from stratosphere to orbit? Of course, provided that something above have the necessary power output and enough time to lift?

I'm uncertain about the technical feasibility of the concept in general, but in this case, it's useless. A skyhook is going to be immobile, and that makes it an easy target. As the invader, I'd announce that, out of the goodness of my heart, I would leave it intact so long as they didn't use it. And have a missile attached to the center of it in case they did.

I would like to add to point 3, that they could employ energy cannons /in wavelengths that is good for air/ so they might be cheaper than precise missile attacks.
Maybe. My problem with these sort of arguments is that they typically ignore the fighter loss rates. While missiles are expensive, fighters are even more so, and are likely to be launching marginally less expensive missiles of their own. Beams seem like a good idea, but if the target was vulnerable to beams, you could shoot it from orbit just as easily.

Otherwise yes invading an enemy planet is similar to say that Somalia launches its troops to occupy Sweden...
If you want to just succumb them, you might only want to launch missile barrages against their cities, than say : Ok where we, yeah what is about the export prices?

The general solution to a trade war is a blockade, which, under PMF, is ridiculously easy to enforce. I'm sure there are sever discussions on it floating around. Check space warfare 13-15, I know there's one there.
The exact difficulty of invading a planet is highly dependent on a host of technical details. That was space warfare 12. Space Warfare 1 had some related discussion on bombardment and planetary defenses.

TOM said...

Well i saw on atomic rockets, that the analogy most close to aircraft carrier is the mothership, a gargantuan ship with own biosphere, gravity, it can house a small fleet, and a layer of parasites.

About point 3, if you just want to erase an army, you can bomb from orbit, but what about urban warfare?
In that case, scattering beams and collateral damage from missiles can be too big.

"That will depend on the fine technical details, and I think that any technical performance difference will be washed out by design differences."

Could you explain a bit?
I think about the waste heat treatment.
Yes, a larger vessel can also have big radiator wings to get rid of the waste heat of the engines, but they will be vulnerable.
Otherwise, with not too extended radiators, well, previously, I have asked about the surface to mass ratios.
Also short range vessels have to carry less dead weight.

Byron said...

Well i saw on atomic rockets, that the analogy most close to aircraft carrier is the mothership, a gargantuan ship with own biosphere, gravity, it can house a small fleet, and a layer of parasites.

That may be the case, but in the scenarios we look at, there is generally little call for biosphere and gravity.

About point 3, if you just want to erase an army, you can bomb from orbit, but what about urban warfare?
In that case, scattering beams and collateral damage from missiles can be too big.


True. As much as anything, it depends on how much collateral damage you are prepared to accept. At the same time, troops are heavy, which makes importing them very expensive.

Could you explain a bit?

I'll try. My point is that scale differences between spacecraft (which don't necessarily have to favor smaller ships) will likely be so minor that you would only be able to notice them if you had two ships of the same overall design built to different scales. If the designs are significantly different, any performance variations due to size would be undetectable because of the design variations.

I think about the waste heat treatment.
Yes, a larger vessel can also have big radiator wings to get rid of the waste heat of the engines, but they will be vulnerable.
Otherwise, with not too extended radiators, well, previously, I have asked about the surface to mass ratios.

For one thing, I don't think surface radiators are such a good idea. Wing radiators, provided you only have 2, allow you to orient the radiators edge-on to two separate threats. Plus, given their single-sided nature, I don't know how much more mass-efficient surface radiators would be.

Also short range vessels have to carry less dead weight.

Theoretically, yes. However, they also have serious tactical limitations (assuming you're talking about fighter-class craft). And you can build short-range vessels in any size. Short-range would vary in definition, but PDSs are a very real possibility.

TOM said...

About point 3 : even if you make a planet surrender, you may still have to fight partisan, guerilla attacks, riots, it is not a good idea to make too much collateral damage against them.


Well, call me stubborn... but I had another idea, when I read about laser or microwave riding rockets.

Think about it : what could tiny hard-to-hit fighters do with the power output of a big carrier ship? If it uses its lasers to EMPOWER them?
Rather than trying to hit a manuevering target two light seconds away?

/1g acceleration 4 sec light-lag it can be anywhere within 80m radius. The fighters advance one light second, they can see it in 20m radius. And they let their carrier know where will they be. /

You empower your fighters with lasers, and they attack with short ranged particle cannons. (or refocus your beams)
Of course there are losses in the process and it is more expensive than a single warship.

But think on the long run : you has to rebuild fighters rather than interplanetary ships.
The main idea of the aircraft carrier is to stay out of harm while your fighters do the job, otherwise you could deal much more damage with artillery shells.
Fighters are more easy to produce, you can manufacure them in well protected underground factories instead of big shipyards with a Nuke me! sign.
After the fight, you just go to your planet, new fighters, ready to go, no long repair jobs. (In normal process.)

Fighters wont be stopped by anti-missile mines and short (point blank) ranged batteries, they can take out interceptor missiles, dodge their shrapnels, provide additional layer of defence for the carrier.
Even if you run out of fighters, you can still fight with your lasers, but of course you want them to punish the enemy, while you are in relative safety.
If you manage to hide the carrier behind a big asteroid, you dont have to care even about acc to avoid being hit from long range lasers.

What do you think about it?

Byron said...

I think that beamed-power fighters have been discussed elsewhere, but I'm not sure exactly where.
The idea has some merit, but there are three big practical problems. The first is that the fighter has to indicate where it is going to the beamer. That requires a lot of coordination, which, while not impossible, is very difficult. And if the enemy somehow cracks the code, you have a big problem.
The second is that I don't think that military mindsets would accept it very readily. The fighters are entirely dependent on the beamer, which presents a massive vulnerability in the system. If they should so much as stray off course, they become helpless.
Third, receiving the beam is a non-trivial task. The fighter will likely be significantly larger because of collector area, and the beam must hit the collector area, or the fighter is powerless.

TOM said...

I found this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laser_launch_hx_kare.png

Well, if the lasers heat up the main plasma engines of the fighters, you might not need such a big separate receiver unit.

Also they can have their own nuclear battery (charged up by the carrier perhaps), so they arent entirely dependant on the external power source.
If some beam misses, they can recorrect.
Basically the fighters have to give their vector from the point where they sent their own laser comm message.
And the enemy dont know, whether the beam was misaligned or not, to calculate their vector.

Rick said...

There is also the question of whether these smaller space combat vehicles need an on-board pilot. For pure space combat missions I'm not at all persuaded that a combination of remote piloting and onboard computers can't do intercept & shoot type missions.

You're not out so much if you lose the vehicle, and indeed can expend it as a missile to engage targets outside the round-trip envelope.

Dicier missions in dicier envelopes are a different matter, but the small combatants for those missions are more 'gunship' than 'fighter.' Of course you're free to call them fighters, just as 'frigate' has referred to a different ships with different missions over the last 500 years.

TOM said...

Yes, you can expend theese fighters as missiles if you are desperate (of course in unmanned mode), but if you want to return them (and normally you want to return them, the hardware isnt that cheap), a human can bring back a damaged fighter, that might be beyond the ability of a computer.

For example if the laser hit fries sensitive electronics, there can be still a robust old-school backup system for the pilot, maybe a hidraulic one, for returning.
Or maybe they have to replace some burned out parts.
I think laser hits will be rather damaging, dont explode the ship.
(Fighter, gunboat whatever)
Maybe AIs shall also need training, because there can be lots of small random errors and differences.


And there can be irrational things as well.
(For example, sorry if i am offtopic, i have an idea, that various groups of humans left the solar system, on giant mother ships, because AIs turned human society into a hedonistic, stagnating thing.
Many of them bacame religious, and they rather launch a kamikaze attack in big desperation, than trust AIs. There is a difference between a single computer and an AI)

Otherwise yes, if neutral parties involved in case of orbital combat, that is a more human scenario.

Byron said...

TOM:
Yes, you can expend theese fighters as missiles if you are desperate (of course in unmanned mode), but if you want to return them (and normally you want to return them, the hardware isnt that cheap), a human can bring back a damaged fighter, that might be beyond the ability of a computer.

For example if the laser hit fries sensitive electronics, there can be still a robust old-school backup system for the pilot, maybe a hidraulic one, for returning.
Or maybe they have to replace some burned out parts.
I think laser hits will be rather damaging, dont explode the ship.
(Fighter, gunboat whatever)
Maybe AIs shall also need training, because there can be lots of small random errors and differences.

A hydraulic backup? On a spaceship? Really?
I'm going to answer this with quotations from my posts on Space Warfare XIII.
"Damage control is not there to put the ship back together after it gets blown apart. That's the job of the shipyard. The damage control crews are there to make sure it gets to the shipyard. (I'm not claiming that DC crews never fix anything. Just that they don't do what most SF authors seem to think.) Spaceships don't sink or catch fire. Almost all damage will come from the direct hit, so DC isn't required.
There might be a little bit humans can do, but not all that much. As to "humans can keep working when the computers fail", that's a red herring. Humans will be giving orders to the computers. If the computers go down, it doesn't matter if the humans are still alive."

The human might be able to bring back more fighters then if those same fighters were unmanned, but the problem is that you're putting humans in harm's way, and putting people on a ship at all has some severe performance penalties. In terms of cost, I really doubt this is a winner.

TOM said...

So you say, there has to be an irrational setting, to involve humans on a deep-space fighter.

And one should only employ pilots in case of orbital combat, when there are more difficult scenarios?

(I think about, for example, you want to capture a mine on a moon, that is defended by a turret. You cant just bomb from afar, and fighters can get around the moon, and attack the turret from within the mountains.)

Byron said...

So you say, there has to be an irrational setting, to involve humans on a deep-space fighter.

And one should only employ pilots in case of orbital combat, when there are more difficult scenarios?

(I think about, for example, you want to capture a mine on a moon, that is defended by a turret. You cant just bomb from afar, and fighters can get around the moon, and attack the turret from within the mountains.)

It has to be an unrealistic setting to involve deep-space fighters at all. Unrealistic as in not in PMF, not as in bad. I'd hesitate to use the word irrational.
I'm not even sure about pilots for pure combat missions in orbit. To put it simply, there is no reason to have a human onboard when something needs to die. There is only reason to have a human when something might need to die. Even the mine on the moon wouldn't really need a human. Why couldn't you shoot at it from afar with a guided projectile? Or laser it from afar with a laserstar? I find it really difficult to imagine a situation in which a target is so close to something that you don't want to damage to render both of those impractical. And if it is, I definitely want the fighters unmanned, as the defenses will probably kill several.

TOM said...

PMF? Sorry i am not that familiar with theese acronyms.

Well in case of that mine, they can deliberately put the turret next to it, to prevent capturing.

And yes of course, i dont want to kill humans... but then i wouldnt start a war in the beginning...
A moons surface is more difficult terrain than space, and the enemy might find a way to jam, block, tap even laser controls.


So, do you say, in hard sci, manned spacefighters and living troops should act only as kinda police force?

TOM said...

Sorry, I realized too late I missed something.

What do you think about an interplanetary ship, how much crew does it need, if any?
(Of course I dont want exact numbers, im rather curious about their tasks.)

Byron said...

PMF? Sorry i am not that familiar with theese acronyms.
Plausible Midfuture. It's the standard tech assumptions here. Things like nuke-electric, lasers, etc.

Well in case of that mine, they can deliberately put the turret next to it, to prevent capturing.

Not sure how well that would work, honestly. The CEP on a laser is probably going to be smaller then the turret, and ditto for the missile. It might happen, but it's a once in a blue moon thing, not a reason to build your force around fighters.

And yes of course, i dont want to kill humans... but then i wouldnt start a war in the beginning...
That's not the point. The point is that if you absolutely must engage a target a close range with expendable units (otherwise, you'd move the laserstar closer), they'd better be as expendable as possible.

A moons surface is more difficult terrain than space, and the enemy might find a way to jam, block, tap even laser controls.
How? Doing anything to laser controls involves being either on or very close to the line of sight. That's very difficult to do, particularly if the enemy declines to cooperate.

So, do you say, in hard sci, manned spacefighters and living troops should act only as kinda police force?

Pretty much. The only living participants in a fleet battle would be on the drone control ships. Humans would be needed for police functions, and for patrol missions.

What do you think about an interplanetary ship, how much crew does it need, if any?
(Of course I dont want exact numbers, im rather curious about their tasks.)

First off, if you're interested in this topic (men vs. drones) I'd suggest you read Space Warfare XIII. I know that it's a really long read, but it's also an excellent discussion of the issue.
With that said, your question is extremely broad. For a commercial ship, I'm not sure. Assuming that people are needed aboard at all, half a dozen should be sufficient.
For a warship, that depends heavily on what it has to do. For a patrol vessel, I'd say somewhere around 18 minimum. For one thing, there are significant economies of scale in crewing. For another, I want it to be able to keep a watch on duty at all times during autonomous operation. A typical watch might be three to four people, one engineer, one or two sensor operators, and one officer. Four watches, plus a few extra bodies (medic, life support tech, maybe the captain doesn't stand watches) gives you 18 to 20 people.

TOM said...

Well, about your questions, to achieve a small CEP, you have to move your ship close to the turret, so it can attack you IMHO.
(And it can take out many guided missiles.)
In case of a moon surface attack, it isnt impossible to create a dust cloud above you, or launch a small drone from a mountain top, to tap your communications.

But anyway I yield, thanks for having a normal debate.

( Is there any thread to discuss, how could you justify epic Star Wars like things in a soft sci?
Even if one says, that is only a book, I can find out fictional technology, I can have hyperspace, it isnt bad to care about casuality, explain things in a logical way. )

Byron said...

Well, about your questions, to achieve a small CEP, you have to move your ship close to the turret, so it can attack you IMHO.
(And it can take out many guided missiles.)

Maybe. I remain unconvinced that a turret that is weak enough that you can worry about collateral damage (if it's too big, you have to take it out, and fix the mine later) is going to be guarding a mine like that. As for missiles, that's what overkill is for.

In case of a moon surface attack, it isnt impossible to create a dust cloud above you, or launch a small drone from a mountain top, to tap your communications.
That drone would have to achieve orbit, and maneuver into the beam without being noticed. Not an easy thing to do, particularly as it will move relative to the target ships.

But anyway I yield, thanks for having a normal debate.
No problem. You've given me a lot to think about.

Is there any thread to discuss, how could you justify epic Star Wars like things in a soft sci?
Even if one says, that is only a book, I can find out fictional technology, I can have hyperspace, it isnt bad to care about casuality, explain things in a logical way.

Not that I can think of. People generally don't come here looking for soft sci-fi. We did have some interesting discussions of FTL in early 2011.

TOM said...

Ok, thanks.

OFF : About FTL thingy, I could quote some things from a "rogue" scientist (the whole essay is Hungarian :( ), maybe it would be interesting a bit.

TOM said...

However... I'm still wondering a bit.
Okay, we have agreed, they will most likely keep manned spacefighters on orbit.

But isnt there ANY possibility, that giant masses somehow hinder the acceleration even in space?
I read about VASIMIR design, it uses pretty strong magnetic fields.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VASIMR
"Powerful superconducting electromagnets, employed to contain hot plasma, generate tesla-range magnetic fields.[4] They can present problems with other on board devices and also can produce unwanted torque by interacting with the magnetosphere. To counter this latter effect, the VF-200 will consist of two 100 kW thruster units packaged together, with the magnetic field of each thruster oriented in opposite directions in order to make a zero-torque magnetic quadrapole.[5]"

It is okay until you have to 100 kW unit.
But what if you have a dozen unit, or bigger units, cant that mean that interference or waste treatment will cause you more and more trouble, and you can just put a ten times bigger engine in a ship ten times heavyer?
In a medium, friction limits your speed, the bigger you are, the bigger friction. In space, no friction when you simply fly... but if you accelerate, then isnt really any chance to meet similar problems?


Another question, how much accuracy can you have in case of orbital bombing?
I read, that you should use short wavelengths in space, but in air (at least in Terran air) they quickly scatter.
Is it possible to make precise strikes, that dont destroy at least a big house block?

TOM said...

Oh I wanted to write something...

I still couldnt read everything sorry... :( Was there anything about a Space Battleship Yamato like rule?

TOM said...

Ok, I guess I'm tiresome. :(

But i'd like to share one more idea, a special mission, that requires space fighters to be manned.

Asteroid mine capturing, with its giant shafts, it could be like a Death Star scenario, fighters have to deal with inner defence systems, and you cant just remote control them inside.


About lasers : I have doubts, that a simple bearing is enough, if the enemy has mirror armor cooled by liquid helium, you have to focus to an area smaller than your mirrors or lenses to deal a good damage, that rather requires exact coordinates.
You can overheat a smaller ship...
But i dont think, tracking a fly is so easy task (not with enemy jamming at least), your mirrors deforme due to heat if you emit a continuous strong pulse.

I asked other people, they have said, on film, longer objects APPEAR to be slower (even if it is a space shuttle) otherwise yes, smaller ships are more agile than giants, if they have roughly the same design.

But again, i make it clear, that i respected and accepted (most) things you have said, Torpedo Boats are okay, but to build dedicated carriers for them isnt superior to a battleship.
And normally, when there are only two sides on space, drones are just fine.

Im still processing the topic, i have one more thing.

Rick said...

With lasers you need an approximate range to focus the beam, but the range need not be precise. Big difference from guns, where a range error of a few percent means a clean miss.

Fighting inside a mine shaft strikes me as a form of short-range operation - just the environment in which I see piloted 'gunships' as being viable. In contrast to open-space fighting at Stupendous Range.

Rocketeer said...

Disclaimer- I did not read posts 100-225ish so forgive me if this has already been discussed.

However, assume I build a small fighter/torpedo boat/corvette/whatever you want to call it/idk that is a sphere 15 meters in diameter, and designed to evade enemy AA lasers. It would have an acceleration of about 2.5 Gs in any direction, random or controlled by the pilot. Say your engagement is at a range of about 1/10th of a light second, or about 30,000 km, which is very small compared to huge battleships blasting away at each other at stupendous range.

You can't target this ship effectively at this range now. It takes 1/10th of a second for position data to go from my ship to the ship targeting it, about 1/20th for the laser turret to aim, and then another 1/10th of a second for the laser to get to me. All in all, I have about 1/4th of a second to get completely out of the way. With 2.5 Gs, (I'm only 14, and I haven't really finished calculus yet), I can get about 12/13 meters. (don't quote me on that). That means I cannot be targeted by your battleship, because the radius of my ship is much smaller than the amount I can jink. Your best bet now would be to shoot randomly in my direction and hope for lucky hits. (or shoot at me with missiles)

However, I can still target you with my laser :)

I have a nuclear reactor that weighs 10 metric tons and can put out 10-15 megawatts (not unreasonable). I only need 2-3 of those megawatts to power my ship, and the rest can all go to powering my weapons. According to http://www.5596.org/cgi-bin/laser.php, even a 5 mw laser can vaporise a few HUNDRED meters of titanium, and I can have one of those on board.

The ship I have just described would be almost immune to enemy lasers, and would have point defense for kinetics. It can also really hurt a big stupendous battleship at the ranges that we're talking about. You can't jink much in 1/4th of a second, because your battleship is designed to fight at much longer range (as far as I can tell, most of the threads here are talking about ranges of 1 light second or more), and thus, I can kill you.

Build 50 of these for the cost of one battleship, and now the battleship can't even use the random hit method to defend itself, because it can't effectively target 50- 1000 small jinking ships. The small ships would be able to cut up and destroy the fleet of battleships at close range. The small ships seem awfully close to “space fighters” :)

Btw, this is my first post here.

Byron said...

I'm sorry to say that your displacement number is way off. Displacement is 1/2*A*t^2. Over .25 sec at 2.5 G, you'll displace about .78 m. So no, you can't dodge. Also, getting 2.5 G isn't easy. You can do it, but then your delta-V is sharply limited. On the order of a few minutes. Then you can't dodge any more, and you die. Or it takes obscene amounts of power. Gigawatts, for a ship your size.
Also, not sure where the "hundreds of meters of titanium" came from. It's not gonna happen.

TOM said...

Well, with all my respect to previous good arguments, I'm still not entirely convinced, that unmanned space fighters are unviable for deep space.

From 100.000 km, one tenth arc-second error in targeting /sum the following things : jamming from carrier, light-lag, random acc, small errors in targeting servos/ mean an 50m miss.
If the fighter squadron has the power-output to take out an avarage enemy ship /and wasp swarms do have the power-output to take out a large mammal/ then you dont have to give an interplanetary cruiser the same SCALE of acceleration and nimbleness.
Well, you can of course... like you can convert a present day cruiser into a huge airship with many rotors.

Let'see :
It wouldnt have to fear from torpedo subs, underwater mines.
It wouldnt sink if its belly got hit, it could dodge a poorly aimed cannonball.
It could cross the ocean faster.

Just it is very expensive...

For big voyage, you need an amount of redundancy, and high-specific impulse low-thrust main enginge, and i have doubts, that capital ships dont require at least some engineers, to oversee reactors, mend broken coolant pipes, replace fryed relays, take care of electric fires things like that.


Well okay, it is practical to have your pilots in bigger safety for tactical level decision making :

- Enemy battery rate of fire one shot/ten minute, after one minute, full acc.
- After five minutes, fire all your interceptor missiles
- This is but a weak frigate, fire main cannon on 70%
- Take the course of those wrecks for a kinda cover
- Triangle formation, use jammers at same time, so enemy missile will follow superposition
- Inverse orb formation for attack
- Spike formation for most effective focus fire
- Decelerate to intercept enemy fighters/missiles
- just accelerate, we will handle them

Strategic decisions will come from the captain like :
- charge that destroyer
- flank that cruiser
- try to ram that dreadnought
- okay you can retreat with that damaged craft

Byron said...

Don't you ever quit? :-)
From 100.000 km, one tenth arc-second error in targeting /sum the following things : jamming from carrier, light-lag, random acc, small errors in targeting servos/ mean an 50m miss.
If the fighter squadron has the power-output to take out an avarage enemy ship /and wasp swarms do have the power-output to take out a large mammal/ then you dont have to give an interplanetary cruiser the same SCALE of acceleration and nimbleness.
Well, you can of course... like you can convert a present day cruiser into a huge airship with many rotors.

If you have systems accurate to .1 arc-seconds, (and we can expect to do somewhat better, though I can't remember where that was discussed) then ships won't engage at .3 light-seconds. Because that 50 meters is going to be enough to render a cruiser immune to enemy fire as well.
And before you rescale and try again, remember that a cruiser will mount a better laser, which is both more powerful, and has a smaller aiming error. I expect that sort of thing to balance out.
And I really fail to see how wasp swarms are relevant.

For big voyage, you need an amount of redundancy, and high-specific impulse low-thrust main enginge, and i have doubts, that capital ships dont require at least some engineers, to oversee reactors, mend broken coolant pipes, replace fryed relays, take care of electric fires things like that.
This is mostly true. The question is why it's relevant. Assuming similar drives, the fighters will not have significantly better performance.

Rocketeer said...

Never mind, I found my error - in my integrals I changed T to 1/25th of a second but did not change the other factors. That caused a bunch of problems.

I'm really sorry for posting what I now realize is nonsense. Can I ask the admin to delete it?

Byron said...

Never mind, I found my error - in my integrals I changed T to 1/25th of a second but did not change the other factors. That caused a bunch of problems.

I'm really sorry for posting what I now realize is nonsense. Can I ask the admin to delete it?

Don't worry about it. People make math errors all the time. At least you were willing and able to do the math in the first place.

rocketeer said...

Willing, but not all that able, I have no practice doing integrals because I just learned how to do them a few weeks ago. Also, it's weird how the first comment to this blog was total nonsense :)

Rick said...

Welcome to a new commenter!

I don't want to delete a valid post, even with mistaken calculations, because it leaves replies that will no longer make sense.

Anyway, we all screw up calculations around here sometimes.


As a general rule, I think small spacecraft are better suited to kinetic-centric combat than laser-centric. Other things equal a big ship can carry a bigger, more powerful laser installation.

Yes it can also care more kinetic target seekers, but several smaller ships can match its total payload, while several small laser cannons don't match one big one.

The problem for 'fighters' is that small ships carrying kinetic payloads may as well be killer buses.

But anyone new to this discussion should also read Space Fighters, Reconsidered?

TOM said...

Sometimes I'm really stubborn yes...

If small laser cannons focus fire, they can match a bigger one, cant they?

50m can be enough if you face the side, or radiator wings of the cruiser, and if the squadron spreads out like an orb, they can get into the right angle.

Otherwise i dont say that a cruiser's laser cannon isnt better... but the point is, that even when it can hit half the fighters, the other half can still take it out.
That is where wasps and mammals can into the image, swarm tactics.
Small, fast units with high-power output long recharge rate attacks can take out bigger more powerful units.


I say, the fighter has a different kind of drive than the cruiser, i cant tell exact details, but it is a kind of lower specific impulse high thrust drive.

I dont say carrier is superior to destroyers+dreadnought or SUPER BATTLESHIP, but has a high score on availability, and excellent for shore missions.
If you plan lunar and asteroid scenarios in your campaign you should have a carrier.
(Notes : ok you can bomb down the lunar base I mentioned from afar, but fighter attack can be cheaper with less unwanted collateral damage.
If you rebel against the Empire, you ll start your campaign with orbital fighters and giant cargo ships, you have to make theese templates useful)

Otherwise I commented on Revisited thread, well i wish the link on atomic rockets was redirected to there.

TOM said...

My further thoughts on fleets and weapons :

Maybe tightbeam scanners will be used to counter enemy jamming, then the fighter will know, when to burst full acc.

About their particle cannon : they have to expend all their coolant after fire, and need an hour long cooldown (for example).
Their power source can be also expendant : chem fuel, alpha-particles ingnited nuclear fuel? anti matter battery?
The carrier can produce antimatter, we can store it for an hour... but it is unreliable for long-term usage.

So I say, you need to know what kind of scenarios do you expect.

Cruisers are superior for patrol, area control, (counter-)pirating.

Carriers are superior for shore missions, one is superior against a cruiser... but due to their bigger delta-V they might attack in packs.

Dreadnought+destroyers, super battleship superior for deep space, but has a lower score on availability.

(And even they will be eaten by the mega mother ship and its fighter swarms. The mother ship meant to invade backwater colonies.)

Anonymous said...

Call me old-fashioned, but I think Ye Olde Phalanx Turret would still be a pretty effective weapon in space, especially since it suddenly gets infinite range. One might choose to reduce the calibre and p'raps add a slim handwavium liner to the barrel (for lower friction). And once i'm in space, do I still need rifling in the barrel?

Rick said...

Welcome to a new commenter!

I do encourage 'anonymous' commenters to sign a name or handle, to make the conversation easier to disentangle.

On guns, follow the link a few comments up to 'Space Fighters, Reconsidered.'

In practical terms, range will be still be limited (by flight time and aiming precision), but much longer than terrestrial gun range.

But in practical terms, I suspect that *interesting* space combat will take place at fairly close range, in circumstances where rules-of-engagement considerations require human presence on the spot, rather than robo/remote systems.

Rick said...

If small laser cannons focus fire, they can match a bigger one, cant they?

The big one should be able to focus fire, too. And note that with suitable optics a single laser (or laser bank) can either zap multiple targets through multiple telescope mirrors, or one target through one big mirror.

I should mention to Nyrath the need for a link to the 'Reconsidered' post!

TOM said...

Otherwise : I returned to the topic, because I have talked with other people, who knows physics, they called the Space battleship Yamato role of fighters lame, but it seems to me, they didnt really refused the idea of carriers.

Of course big cannons can focus fire also, but ultimately, their max range will be limited by light-lag, and reasonable chance to hit a fly.
Well if they use particle cannons, I guess, they give less degrees of freedoms, if you decrease the power output of such thing, then the beam will be slower, and it is not good.
With a cyclotron, I think, you can use even chem fuel to drive a generator, to charge up that cyclotron, so even a fighter can make a big boom for once.

If they use lasers, i had the idea to carry a lens, that roughly the same size as a cruisers lens.
Then the carrier can focus on the fighters lens, that refocus the beam to the enemy, so effective range could be doubled.
The fighter would be still smaller and agile than the big one.
I didnt see, what is wrong with that imagination, maybe i slipped it over.

But i think particle beams are the best, as they cannot be reflected, they can be much more efficient, just you need to get close enough.
(They would shine even in deep space, wouldnt they?)

Anonymous said...

Argh.

You're forgetting tactical nuclear warheads. Which brings a 'lancer' with a small gun for fighting lancers into the game against the big guys.

Give Battlestar - the re-imagined one - some credit here. Here's the basics of how a fight went down with them:

(a) A battle usually took place in a rough plane-like box
(b) The Battlestar would set up a "flak barrier" in order to both catch incoming fighters and incoming ordinance way outside of where it could hurt it
(c) The fighters were mostly there to make sure that neither side snuck heavy ordinance or boarding parties past the big ship-to-ship defenses in a tiny little one
(d) They used somewhat Newtonian physics. In (a majority of?) episodes it shows specifically fully Newtonian physics, when the plot allows for it.
(e) At least for the humans, they couldn't fit FTL engines in the little ships
(f) The structure of the battles and technology make it make SENSE - even by your standards - that there would be motherships, fighters, etc.

I'm not a Battlestar fanboy but I was extremely happy about how they handled things (vs. most media depictions).

I did a quick Google. Start watching this video at 2:24 for some examples. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US04yhUQS_I

TOM said...

In BSG, small ones got FTL drives, we could see it when they returned to Caprica.
(Well at the end of the third season I hoped the Cylons will exterminate those people but that is another thing.)

Otherwise nuclear warhead isnt really needed IMHO, if the missile got any chance to reach anywhere near the big one, it has to be so fast, that it will tear apart a ship with kinetic energy.
Of course one could ask, why dont you simply fire a bigger torpedo from the big one, when a fighter is more expensive than a torpedo.

So I guess they has to be equipped with strong (big recharge time) beam weapons, and/or lenses, like I mentioned, they can be superior for missile hunt, if the enemy uses missiles with reinforced front and remote control (vulnerable back).

Well I cant say I'm really convinced they will use carriers in space instead of building big battleships (credit to Byron), but giving options and arguments to people isnt a bad thing IMHO.
It is a possibility, that carriers will fill the role of battlecruisers, we use carriers in air (refuelling plane), on ground, on water, we build such things instead of bigger tanks, battleships, heavy bombers (or airships).

FBH said...

I realize I'm super late to the party here but I think you might be slightly off on games of space chicken.

Unless Lancers are really well armoured then it's likely you only need the kinetic energy of one + it's missile to make a kill, not two. Against big ships you'd be more interested in maximum energy, so approach from the front.

Thus you can kill enemy lancers from the sides. This creates a more interesting dog fighting environment if nothing else. I don't think they'd really be manned though, not if you can fly them remotely. Then again, this applies to all aircraft. We're likely to take the humans out and put them back at bases within the next two or three decades anyhow.

Launchers would need to be relatively close (that could be anything depending on how fast drives are). At longer distances, the enemy will turn and run away, outrunning your projectile. Apart from this defence could consist of point defence measures and infra-red jammers similar to those used by modern helicopters.

There might even be a distinction between interceptor lancers and strike lancers too. Interceptors would be like world war 2 heavy tanks, with about equal armour on all surfaces. Strike on the other hand would likely have all their armour forward.

I could further see a rivalry developing between their crews. Interceptor jocks disdaining the sacrificial strikers while strike pilots joke that interceptor crews don't have the nerve to fly their craft into the often fatal run at the front of an enemy battlecraft.

Byron said...

FBH:
No, you're not too late.
First off, I'm skeptical of the concept of lancers, given that a missile can perform the same function, and you don't have to worry about getting it back. It can use up all of its delta-V to attack, instead of having a limit of 49%. The only exception is when an expensive engine can outperform a cheap one by a significant amount, enough that it's worth trying to get back. The only possible example that I can think of is a fusion torch.
Even if lancers do exist, they would not be manned. Period. In place of a man, you can put another ton or two of munitions, and you don't have to write letters home if the thing is destroyed. Remote control is easy to do in space.
The distinction between interceptor lancers and strike lancers is interesting. I'm not sure the concept of interceptor lancers makes sense, but a small vehicle that can attack incoming projectiles from an unarmored side does make a good deal of sense. A lancer is a poor choice, given that it must place itself on an intercept course. Any kind of projectile is likely out for the same reason. The simplest solution is a redirection mirror for the lasers of the larger ships.

TOM said...

Hi Byron.

"The only exception is when an expensive engine can outperform a cheap one by a significant amount, enough that it's worth trying to get back. The only possible example that I can think of is a fusion torch."

Yes, i came to similar conclusion, although i rather thought about fission reactor, or anti-matter battery, charged up by the mothership or battleship.
That can give enough performance to reach near the enemy ship.

Yes, combat mirrrors are also my choice of arnament, maybe interceptors can also hold short-range particle cannons, that punch more, enough to damage enemy batteries and sides.

Byron said...

TOM:
Yes, i came to similar conclusion, although i rather thought about fission reactor, or anti-matter battery, charged up by the mothership or battleship.
That can give enough performance to reach near the enemy ship.

I'm not so sure about either, at least on a tactical scale.
Fission: While a fission reactor is too expensive to throw away, an NTR will not outperform chemfuel enough to be useful. On a strategic scale, a nuke-electric system would indeed be useful. I worked out a design for that somewhere around here.
Antimatter: Antimatter engines are going to be cost-limited by the antimatter, not the engine. Antimatter missiles are entirely plausible.


Yes, combat mirrrors are also my choice of arnament, maybe interceptors can also hold short-range particle cannons, that punch more, enough to damage enemy batteries and sides.

I'm not sure what said particle cannons would do. The point of the mirror is to be able to hit the sides of a missile. While the particle cannon might burn out the electronics of a missile, it would require a whole mess of equipment aboard the defender. I'd opt to keep the thing simple, cheap, and light.

TOM said...

Ok Byron, I am not that familiar with prices and performances, efficiency.
Fusion torches are fine to me.

It is a question whether we need just so called Strikers, or Interceptors can be useful.
I dont know much about particle cannons, but reflective armor arent that useful against them, and magnetic trains imply me, that electromagnetic acceleration is quite efficient, unlike lasers.

Well IMHO, the line between Interceptors and Destroyers can be blurred, but of them are short-range small ship with heavy firepower, Interceptors are rather dragged, while Destroyers are rather refuelled for a longer voyage, and Destroyers can intercept targets at longer distances on their own.
Interceptors should be rather spherical, as they can be attacked from every direction.
Their dedicated mission can be protect the Strikers at close range while wielding enough firepower to ruin Destroyers and Frigates and already damaged capital ships with beam weapons, if they attack in squadrons.

So I think about kinda pocket-destroyers, brown-water navy, while true destroyers and frigates are rather green water navy.

Byron said...

TOM:
It is a question whether we need just so called Strikers, or Interceptors can be useful.
I dont know much about particle cannons, but reflective armor arent that useful against them, and magnetic trains imply me, that electromagnetic acceleration is quite efficient, unlike lasers.


Reflective armor isn't useful against lasers. And these defender drones are not meant for offensive action. At all. The entire purpose is to be able to attack the sides of a missile, which are likely to be significantly less armored then the front, at least under conventional design schemes. I doubt if it will be more effective then the main shipboard laser except at very close range.

I'm not sure where "Interceptor" and "Destroyer" came from. Again, the only reason that I would deploy these things is to aid in close-in missile defense. Not for offensive operations.

And BTW, the term is blue-water navy, not green-water navy.

TOM said...

They also call frigates green water navy.
It is a bit different from blue water. /lesser range/

"Reflective armor isn't useful against lasers."

Why not? If it is also cooled, than it only melts down if you can focus to an area smaller than your mirrors.
Or at least gives you protection.

Interceptor was the term FBH used, and he compered them to heavy tanks.
Destroyers are among the smallest battleships.

So i can imagine the former one, theese cannon-boats as short-range spherical pocket destroyers.
Strikers are the reusable missiles.
And now you say, you can also imagine light missile and fighter interceptor gunboats.

Byron said...

TOM:
Why not? If it is also cooled, than it only melts down if you can focus to an area smaller than your mirrors.
Or at least gives you protection.

No, because that's not how laser mirrors work. First, a laser mirror will generally be a Dielectric mirror. It only works well on a vary narrow range of wavelengths. Unless you know exactly what wavelength your enemy will use, it's useless. (And I'd have different lasers use very slightly different wavelengths for exactly that reason. You literally can't armor against all of them.)
While an area of similar size to your mirror is unlikely to get damamged (the intensity on the mirror is low enough to avoid heating issues, among other things), that is because the mirror itself is quite vulnerable to damage. Most of a ship isn't. If a laser does hit a normal mirror, most of it will initially be reflected. However, enough will be absorbed to destroy the reflective coating, which then renders it useless.

Why not? If it is also cooled, than it only melts down if you can focus to an area smaller than your mirrors.
Or at least gives you protection.

Interceptor was the term FBH used, and he compered them to heavy tanks.
Destroyers are among the smallest battleships.

So i can imagine the former one, theese cannon-boats as short-range spherical pocket destroyers.
Strikers are the reusable missiles.
And now you say, you can also imagine light missile and fighter interceptor gunboats.

This is where you've lost me. FBH described interceptors as having all-around armor, similar to that of a WWII heavy tank. I don't think that was meant to imply operational similarity. They were supposed to attack strike lancers from the side.
There is no reason to use a small battleship against fighters. Lasers have strong economies of scale. Also, "short-range" is a misleading term in space.

My only suggestion is a small, remote mirror. It is not designed to attack fighters, or anything of the sort, mostly because there are no fighters. It is designed to allow a laser to be fired at the back of an incoming missile. Either the missile is armored all around, in which case I probably skip the drones and kill it from the front, or it's not, and I send it out and kill it from the side. The defender does not get close enough to the enemy fleet to need serious armor (it's probably a couple thousand kilometers out at most, and if things are going right, the enemy has bigger problems right now, like inbound kinetics of his own.)
There is simply no point in having fighters. Maybe they reprogram some kinetics to seek out and attack these sort of platforms. In which case, the defenders keep an eye out and try to dodge, or maybe shoot down a couple. In no case would anything that resembles a fighter except on the most broad level possible be in use.

TOM said...

Ok, good points but :

A capital ship cannot perform all-around attacks.
It needs an escort IMHO, otherwise the enemy has only need strong frontal shields /armor/.
So capital ships either need destroyer or frigate or fighter escort. As combat mirrors can solve much of the firepower problems of small ships, i see fighters viable at present point.

Also the Strikers needs protection from incoming interceptor missiles, and those little missiles arent that easy to hit from far away, your big cannons should rather target the big targets.
If the enemy has an advanced line of defence against kinetics, mirrors, mines, then fighter firepower can ruin it, and again the big guns can focus to the big hard targets.
Also I think, it is the best to intercept incoming things as soon as it is possible, before it can reach full speed, final, top acceleration stage.

Byron said...

A capital ship cannot perform all-around attacks.
It needs an escort IMHO, otherwise the enemy has only need strong frontal shields /armor/.
So capital ships either need destroyer or frigate or fighter escort. As combat mirrors can solve much of the firepower problems of small ships, i see fighters viable at present point.

Yes and no. The problem is that tactical maneuver is virtually nonexistent. The velocities built up during cruise will be more or less unchanged during the battle itself. Getting into flanking position will be a case of splitting the fleet. A capital ship and its escorts won't do so.
The problem with a combat mirror is that it has to be rather precisely aligned with that of the firing ship, so it's limited to working close to the ship that provides the beam.
The point of a defender is explicitly not to get the beam closer to the target. In all likelihood, the time when the redirected beam is more intense then the beam would have been if fired normally will be measured in seconds. The point is to avoid the armored faceplate of the kinetic and mission-kill it faster.

Also the Strikers needs protection from incoming interceptor missiles, and those little missiles arent that easy to hit from far away, your big cannons should rather target the big targets.
Again, there are no strikers. Missiles will almost always do the job better. And things like interceptor missiles are simply facts of life. Small countermissiles might be incorporated into the missiles themselves, but a dedicated fighter is unlikely.

If the enemy has an advanced line of defence against kinetics, mirrors, mines, then fighter firepower can ruin it, and again the big guns can focus to the big hard targets. Also I think, it is the best to intercept incoming things as soon as it is possible, before it can reach full speed, final, top acceleration stage.
The problem is that fighters are very vulnerable to enemy fire, and would likely be the first targets of said big guns. Also, there are generally easier ways to defeat the defenses in question. Take my defenders. The best solution is to add some laser-guided high-acceleration rounds to the mix. Outwardly they are indistinguishable from normal rounds, and they're seeded throughout the salvo. When the salvo approaches the defenders, the big ships illuminate them, probably with the comm lasers, and the special projectiles attack. The defenders are far more useful after the salvo has passed, and given that the salvo is more or less planar, it would have very little effect.
A fighter, on the other hand, would have to come very close indeed to the enemy fleet to attack said defenders, which makes it very vulnerable to the laserstars.

FBH said...

Bryon.
Thanks for the friendly reception.

First off, I'm skeptical of the concept of lancers, given that a missile can perform the same function, and you don't have to worry about getting it back. It can use up all of its delta-V to attack, instead of having a limit of 49%. The only exception is when an expensive engine can outperform a cheap one by a significant amount, enough that it's worth trying to get back. The only possible example that I can think of is a fusion torch.

I don't think this is something we can really assume. It depends on the cost of the entire device (for lack of a better term) vs. the military budget of the state involved. Expensive engines would definitely put things back towards the reusable side of things of course, but

Ultimately I think this would end up as a judgement call, and actually something a human on the scene would need to decide. Is this target worth the lancers I'm sending to kill it? If it is, they maybe used as missiles themselves. If not then the provision of munitions on them allows them to


Even if lancers do exist, they would not be manned. Period. In place of a man, you can put another ton or two of munitions, and you don't have to write letters home if the thing is destroyed. Remote control is easy to do in space.


Agreed on teleoperation. This will apply to all future fighter craft so we'd better just learn how to tell stories about drone pilots. The only way you could get a piloted lancer is if you resort to alternate history.


The distinction between interceptor lancers and strike lancers is interesting. I'm not sure the concept of interceptor lancers makes sense, but a small vehicle that can attack incoming projectiles from an unarmored side does make a good deal of sense. A lancer is a poor choice, given that it must place itself on an intercept course. Any kind of projectile is likely out for the same reason. The simplest solution is a redirection mirror for the lasers of the larger ships.


Well I'll admit that I'm assuming an environment which is mostly all kinetics here. A Laser mirror dogfight is pretty interesting though, and if you can do that then that's how interceptors would operate. I can easily see a dogfight developing between two swarms of mirrors.

All of that said, one thing to keep in mind is that a swarm of teleoperated drones is in some ways going to be a lot less fragile than a single, expensive battleship. Guidance systems and firepower (nuclear weapons) are now at the point where armour is more than a little meaningless. Even if you're using lasers, hits to sensors would rapidly mission kill a battleship.

With that in mind a highly maneuverable drone that can turn armour plate against an incoming attack and even if lost has eleven more sisters may well be a fairly attractive way to operate.

Byron said...

FBH:
I don't think this is something we can really assume. It depends on the cost of the entire device (for lack of a better term) vs. the military budget of the state involved. Expensive engines would definitely put things back towards the reusable side of things of course, but

Ultimately I think this would end up as a judgement call, and actually something a human on the scene would need to decide. Is this target worth the lancers I'm sending to kill it? If it is, they maybe used as missiles themselves. If not then the provision of munitions on them allows them to

The problem is that for reusability to make any sense, the lancer must have a significantly lower mission cost then the missile, and be used quite a few times. Two things can limit use rate. The first is peace. If a typical navy only fires missiles every 20 years, the cost of the missiles used is probably minor compared to that of replacing those that have passed their service life. The second is war. The survival rate of the lancers will depend on quite a few things, but I doubt it will be terribly high. Also, I'd be very surprised to see more then one mission per battle. In either case, you really wouldn't expect that many cycles from the thing. And reusability really drives up the cost.

Well I'll admit that I'm assuming an environment which is mostly all kinetics here. A Laser mirror dogfight is pretty interesting though, and if you can do that then that's how interceptors would operate. I can easily see a dogfight developing between two swarms of mirrors.
Nobody seems to get this. They are not that close to the enemy ships. I'm seeing maybe 10% of the range to the enemy. If that. It's just not possible to get something recoverable farther out in the time you'd have after the strike is detected. So there's no reason to dogfight. The mirrors from the main ships would be far more effective against the opponents defenders.

I'll reply to the rest of your post later. I've got to go.

Byron said...

All of that said, one thing to keep in mind is that a swarm of teleoperated drones is in some ways going to be a lot less fragile than a single, expensive battleship. Guidance systems and firepower (nuclear weapons) are now at the point where armour is more than a little meaningless. Even if you're using lasers, hits to sensors would rapidly mission kill a battleship.
I'm not so sure about the sensor hits. Quite a bit of sensor hardening is possible, as is offboard targeting. The fine aiming is done through the laser optics themselves, and if those are gone, so is the laser.
The problem with drones in a laser-dominated environment is that lasers have very significant economies of scale. A single 10 meter 100 MW laser is significantly better then four 5 meter 25 MW ones. The battleship, despite being a unitary target, slaughters them one by one before they can range on it.

With that in mind a highly maneuverable drone that can turn armour plate against an incoming attack and even if lost has eleven more sisters may well be a fairly attractive way to operate.
How much dispersion of forces to go for is a perpetual question. The problem is that parasites are generally a bad idea. Using lancers is economically questionable, lasers and coilguns scale quite strongly, and using a parasite drone to launch missiles is just silly.

TOM said...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/agp-6.htm

Otherwise, i found this one.
This tells me, that torpedo boat carriers could be useful.

About the reusability thing : it depends on the situation. Yes if i need to eliminate a few pirate ship or whatever, it doesnt count.

But lets presume something bigger like Mars and Earth fights over the rare resources of the asteroid belt.
There will be a prolonged conflict, with lots of orbital combat, that is fighter speciality.
And you can use local materials as propellant.
Also between two asteroids, you wont build up THAT much speed, as in case of direct interplanetary course.

About the mirror thing : yes you can only mirror-fire to a missile if there isnt much distance between the mirror and the cannon, but the sides of a battleship are MUCH bigger targets.

Also while there is an assumption that there is no horizont and fog in space, i think with strong enough jamming systems, theese things can be reproduced, a heat sign of the enemy isnt that different from a heat sign created by a big IR lamp.

About the mirror armor thing : Stanford experiment proved, reactions can be FTL, if the medium slows down light. So I would make a thick layer that slows down light, that gives time to the mirror under it to tune to correct frequency.
Well it is just my idea...

Anyway, i think most laser hits wont explode the vessels, just fry sensors and sensitive electronics, so while most fighters will be damaged, a good number of them can be reused.

I tryed to answer the major points, i will look back later.

TOM said...

http://worldofweirdthings.com/2011/12/30/why-space-fighters-would-actually-be-useful/

This article deals with the issue, that while long-range missiles exists since long time, planes like U2 could also solve the recon thing, reusables like planes are still viable against targets like vehicles, that arent so hard but can dodge.

So an all-around attack would require the divide of fleets.
Why dont you do that?
Escort ships accelerate at flanks, capitals slow at middle.
The escort ships can counter the manuevers of the giants with their bigger acceleration.
So you can attack once from multiple directions.
In case of bigger fleets, divided fleets, you need "green water" ships for sorrounding, for smaller battles, fighter delta-V can be enough.
Or they can fill in some gaps.

You might has the option, that a single Striker could hit multiple targets, escort ship and capital ship.

Fighters could actually fire medium sized cannons with the help of supercapacitators /currently i think about carbon-nanotubes/
Not giant cannons, but they are a waste of energy against small targets.

What about the possibility to use dual combat lenses?
You can spend XX seconds to align the first one perfectly with the help of laser, then to two ones can refocus a beam to a target normally outside the range of the cannon, 2 light-secs for example.

If fighter squadron dont scatter much, and use strong jamming signals /maybe redirected from their battleship/ enemy will rather see a shifting cloud instead of distinct targets, like you see one big light source instead of little densely packed lamps.

Even in hard-SF there are plenty of possibilities and variables that opens the possibility to invalidate the earlier centuries dreadnought model IMHO.

FBH said...

The problem is that for reusability to make any sense, the lancer must have a significantly lower mission cost then the missile, and be used quite a few times. Two things can limit use rate. The first is peace. If a typical navy only fires missiles every 20 years, the cost of the missiles used is probably minor compared to that of replacing those that have passed their service life. The second is war. The survival rate of the lancers will depend on quite a few things, but I doubt it will be terribly high. Also, I'd be very surprised to see more then one mission per battle. In either case, you really wouldn't expect that many cycles from the thing. And reusability really drives up the cost.

Hmm. Agreed I guess. I suppose we do need fusion drives for this to be viable.


I'm not so sure about the sensor hits. Quite a bit of sensor hardening is possible, as is offboard targeting. The fine aiming is done through the laser optics themselves, and if those are gone, so is the laser.


If you have off board targeting then you're going to hit communications arrays instead. I'm not really sure how you'd go about hardening a radar array, a camera or a IR sensor against a 25MW laser strike or a kinetic potentially moving at hundreds of meters per second.


The problem with drones in a laser-dominated environment is that lasers have very significant economies of scale. A single 10 meter 100 MW laser is significantly better then four 5 meter 25 MW ones. The battleship, despite being a unitary target, slaughters them one by one before they can range on it.


Well it depends how laser dominated. If we're at a point where physical projectiles become non-viable, then large platforms make some sense. However if we're using any kind of missile, anything that can carry a nuclear warhead then they're not. The same applies to wet naval battleships really. A single platform is simply too vunerable to modern firepower, be it smart targeting or nuclear bombs.

How much dispersion of forces to go for is a perpetual question. The problem is that parasites are generally a bad idea. Using lancers is economically questionable, lasers and coilguns scale quite strongly, and using a parasite drone to launch missiles is just silly.


The problem is that you don't need them to scale. The accuracy of even systems right now is enough to render a single large platform extremely problematic.

I'm not sure what your objection to parasite drones to launch missiles is though. The sample principle as a missile bus applies. You want to carry multiple warheads without providing full delta-V, electronics or whatever for all of them. You may not want to release them all at once, for instance you might want to shoot some at other parasite drones, some at the enemy carrier and some at the installation it's defending.

Even if you don't reuse it, you can get pretty exciting combat from a remote piloted drone dogfights.

Byron said...

TOM:
Otherwise, i found this one.
This tells me, that torpedo boat carriers could be useful.

That's a tender, not a carrier. There is a difference. I don't believe that that particular class even carried the PT boats in question. They certainly never used them in the manner of a carrier, deploying them at sea in combat.

About the reusability thing : it depends on the situation. Yes if i need to eliminate a few pirate ship or whatever, it doesnt count.
There will be no pirates. It's too hard to dispose of the captured ships. And lasers work well for that scenario.

But lets presume something bigger like Mars and Earth fights over the rare resources of the asteroid belt.
There will be a prolonged conflict, with lots of orbital combat, that is fighter speciality.
And you can use local materials as propellant.
Also between two asteroids, you wont build up THAT much speed, as in case of direct interplanetary course.

So lancers only work in a prolonged conflict, which nobody plans for. Also, you underestimate the delta-V requirements. And asteroids don't really have orbital space.

About the mirror thing : yes you can only mirror-fire to a missile if there isnt much distance between the mirror and the cannon, but the sides of a battleship are MUCH bigger targets.
You seem to be under the impression that hitting the target is difficult. It's not. Killing the target is difficult. Hitting the side of a battleship pointed at the mothership is going to require significant angular separation, which means that the drone is likely to be a long way from the target. And do nothing more then warm it up slightly.

Also while there is an assumption that there is no horizont and fog in space, i think with strong enough jamming systems, theese things can be reproduced, a heat sign of the enemy isnt that different from a heat sign created by a big IR lamp.
Not really. The fact is that a system for jamming is going to have to be significantly more powerful then the things it's masking. Which are radiators driven by the full power of a ship's reactor. So you need to make a jamming platform that puts out more power then your ship over the long term. Also, things like occlusion filters can deal with said jammer.

About the mirror armor thing : Stanford experiment proved, reactions can be FTL, if the medium slows down light. So I would make a thick layer that slows down light, that gives time to the mirror under it to tune to correct frequency.
Well it is just my idea...

No. Tuning a dielectric mirror is done at the factory. Even with a thick layer of diamond, doing so on the timescales described would be impossible.

Byron said...

Anyway, i think most laser hits wont explode the vessels, just fry sensors and sensitive electronics, so while most fighters will be damaged, a good number of them can be reused.
The problem is twofold. First, you have to win to reuse them. Second, a fighter is going to have to come in close to do any damage. At that range, a total kill is quite likely.

This article deals with the issue, that while long-range missiles exists since long time, planes like U2 could also solve the recon thing, reusables like planes are still viable against targets like vehicles, that arent so hard but can dodge.
Both of that guy's arguments are red herrings. First, any weapon has a point of no return. Period. I can't recall a bomb any more then I can recall a missile. The apparent difference is in the timescale. That particular ability is of far more use in limited operations then it is in a full-scale war.
Second, there is no weight limit on a missile in space. Build it as big as you need. And a fighter generally behaves like a missile. It can't sit there and hit the target repeatedly, unless it's firing missiles.
And remember, there's no atmosphere. Dodging is already factored in. And recon drones make sense. I have no problem there.

So an all-around attack would require the divide of fleets.
Why dont you do that?
Escort ships accelerate at flanks, capitals slow at middle.
The escort ships can counter the manuevers of the giants with their bigger acceleration.
So you can attack once from multiple directions.
In case of bigger fleets, divided fleets, you need "green water" ships for sorrounding, for smaller battles, fighter delta-V can be enough.
Or they can fill in some gaps.

I'm not sure where this is coming from. It's like proposing to use PT boat to add to your battle fleet. Also, tactical maneuver is out. Any ship that fights using a similar drive to the one that it cruises under is not maneuverable. Period. For fighters to work, they'd have to have some magical fighter drive that allows them to put on delta-Vs in the same region as that of the bigger ships within a much shorter timeframe. A fighter using chemfuel would have an average transit velocity no higher then maybe 2 km/s. Nuke-thermal might allow 4 km/s. At most.

You might has the option, that a single Striker could hit multiple targets, escort ship and capital ship.
It's called a missile bus. Load a missile with multiple submunitions instead of a unitary warhead.

Fighters could actually fire medium sized cannons with the help of supercapacitators /currently i think about carbon-nanotubes/
Not giant cannons, but they are a waste of energy against small targets.

This assumes that the power generation system is the driver of vessel size, and that the system to generate the laser is a minor contributor. I really don't think that will be the case.

What about the possibility to use dual combat lenses?
You can spend XX seconds to align the first one perfectly with the help of laser, then to two ones can refocus a beam to a target normally outside the range of the cannon, 2 light-secs for example.

That requires the drone to have a mirror comparable in size to the one on the main ship, which removes it from the category of expendable drone.

Byron said...

FBH:
If you have off board targeting then you're going to hit communications arrays instead. I'm not really sure how you'd go about hardening a radar array, a camera or a IR sensor against a 25MW laser strike or a kinetic potentially moving at hundreds of meters per second.
Depends on the spot size of the laser. A kinetic will mess up anything on the surface that falls in its path. The solution to comms is simple. Deploy a repeater behind the bigger ships. Or, if they're drones, the command ship coordinates everything.

Well it depends how laser dominated. If we're at a point where physical projectiles become non-viable, then large platforms make some sense. However if we're using any kind of missile, anything that can carry a nuclear warhead then they're not. The same applies to wet naval battleships really. A single platform is simply too vunerable to modern firepower, be it smart targeting or nuclear bombs.
Depends on how much money you have. Yes, the entire fleet should not be a single platform. At the same time, if you have money for dozens of battleships, they become viable.

The problem is that you don't need them to scale. The accuracy of even systems right now is enough to render a single large platform extremely problematic.
Laser pointing is more difficult then you might expect. And I'd gladly pit a single big laser against a bunch of fighters of the same total cost.



I'm not sure what your objection to parasite drones to launch missiles is though. The sample principle as a missile bus applies. You want to carry multiple warheads without providing full delta-V, electronics or whatever for all of them. You may not want to release them all at once, for instance you might want to shoot some at other parasite drones, some at the enemy carrier and some at the installation it's defending.

Then why not make it a missile bus and be done with it? The performance penalties to recover something like that are staggering.
As an example of the above, here's something I posted on a different forum:
I'm going to take one of the more common scenarios, using a fighter as the first stage of a missile. Let's assume that we wish to launch our missiles at 50% of exhaust velocity. That gives us a starting mass ratio of about 1.65 (e^.5 if you wish to be pedantic). That means that about 40% of starting mass is fuel to accelerate. After we launch the projectile, we need 40% of what's left to decelerate to a stop, and then however much we want to get home. I'll assume that missile throw weight is 30% of launch weight. That leaves us with .3 launch weight to return. .12 of that is spent coming to rest. I'll lastly assume that we wish to return at 25% of exhaust velocity, which gives .072 fuel and .108 bringback. So, for 100 tons launch to put 30 tons on target, we spent 59.2 tons of fuel. Yes, a carrier might have a larger magazine, but that will be more then offset by the fuel requirements. And don't forget we have to cram engines, tanks, structure, and maybe crew into the last 10.8 tons, which likely means low accelerations and thus long cycle times, reducing throw weight farther. In comparison, for the 89.2 tons, if we chose to fire straight rockets, we would get 54.1 tons throw weight. That's an 80% increase. I know that a decent bit of that might be engines and tanks, but assuming we're firing kinetics, that doesn't matter.
I think this proves my point clearly enough.

TOM said...

"So lancers only work in a prolonged conflict, which nobody plans for. Also, you underestimate the delta-V requirements. And asteroids don't really have orbital space. "

I hope, nobody plans for a deep space conflict at the first place...
The point is : asteroids mean cover, mean the fleets has to slow down if they intend to capture the mines.

"First, any weapon has a point of no return. Period. I can't recall a bomb any more then I can recall a missile. "

The point is that theese "bomb" can be a cheap chem-fueled thing, not a very expensive long-range craft with at least nuclear reactors, dodging ability etc.
If you dont win you also lose a big battleship, that carried single-use missiles, so i dont see the point of it.

The calculations at the end I guess valid now, but if a deep space war will have ANY chance to become real, then most things will be different.

"And do nothing more then warm it up slightly."

That assumes the sides are armored, if you dont split fleets, you can armor only the front.
The fighter can still take out the engines if it hits the side of an escort ship.
Unlike a missile, a fighter can do damage from middle range with cannons, batteries, sensor arrays or comm systems or mirrors, radiator wings are soft targets.
It dont have to enter into point blank range.

"For fighters to work, they'd have to have some magical fighter drive that allows them to put on delta-Vs in the same region as that of the bigger ships within a much shorter timeframe."

They have bigger acceleration, they can produce more delta-V in short times, of course their short range wont allow them to make big voyages.
Of course you need to do the splitting in time.

The jamming systems dont need bigger output than the reactor, the radiation quicky disperses, the light of the jamming systems are controlled, like a reflector, that illuminates dark, it blinds you temporary. If they generate white noise, no matter how narrow wavelength do you use.
If you use offboard targeting, then you also suffer from indirect targeting.

"That requires the drone to have a mirror comparable in size to the one on the main ship, which removes it from the category of expendable drone."

That assumes, the mirror is the expensive thing. I think not, there will be hundreds of orbital mirrors for power generating.

TOM said...

One more thing : ok you need bigger mass for the sake of reusablity.
But this mass will allow you to fire your warheads from a cannon, they wont be any slower, and you dont have to enter into point blank range.

Byron said...

TOM:
The point is that theese "bomb" can be a cheap chem-fueled thing, not a very expensive long-range craft with at least nuclear reactors, dodging ability etc.
So? I've never proposed a nuclear-powered tactical missile. An NTR does not have enough of a performance edge on chemfuel to justify using it, and nuke electric is useless on a tactical scale. For this debate, I'm assuming that all missiles are chemfuel.

That assumes the sides are armored, if you dont split fleets, you can armor only the front.
The fighter can still take out the engines if it hits the side of an escort ship.

That assumes taking out the engine will have an effect on the battle. And the sides could be lightly armored. Just enough to prevent that from happening.

Unlike a missile, a fighter can do damage from middle range with cannons, batteries, sensor arrays or comm systems or mirrors, radiator wings are soft targets.
It dont have to enter into point blank range.

So? Even at medium range, it's a sitting duck for the bigger lasers. The simple fact is that a bigger laser is more effective.

They have bigger acceleration, they can produce more delta-V in short times, of course their short range wont allow them to make big voyages.
Of course you need to do the splitting in time.

That's not what I meant. In a battle between nuke-electric ships, chemfuel and NTRs will not have the delta-V to make really viable fighters. And nuke-electric is way too low-thrust to do the job itself. The fighter needs a magical drive that doesn't work for bigger ships to be viable.

The jamming systems dont need bigger output than the reactor, the radiation quicky disperses, the light of the jamming systems are controlled, like a reflector, that illuminates dark, it blinds you temporary. If they generate white noise, no matter how narrow wavelength do you use.
If you use offboard targeting, then you also suffer from indirect targeting.

Laser jammers, then. Those can still be dealt with. Shootback systems, if nothing else. And filtering can cut the white noise to a manageable level.
And indirect targeting is nothing the computers can't handle.

That assumes, the mirror is the expensive thing. I think not, there will be hundreds of orbital mirrors for power generating.
That's not even close to the same thing. These mirrors will have to be much more precise, stand up under acceleration and thermal loads, and slew rapidly. Theoretically, it's best to have the mirror and the laser cost about the same.

One more thing : ok you need bigger mass for the sake of reusablity.
But this mass will allow you to fire your warheads from a cannon, they wont be any slower, and you dont have to enter into point blank range.

Now you want to add a cannon? That drives the mass of the system up even more. And no matter what, the warhead has to enter point-blank range. And it has to do most of what a missile would do.

TOM said...

That cannon can generate a plasma beam, that peels much part of a ship, making it inoperative.
Taking out the engines criples to ship, so it cant dodge a warhead.

Byron said...

That cannon can generate a plasma beam, that peels much part of a ship, making it inoperative.
Taking out the engines criples to ship, so it cant dodge a warhead.

What? I'm confused. First, the plasma is a result of the laser strike. Not a beam at all. I suppose it could be said to peel the surface, but the damage will be limited to the surface. That would be limited damage to the thrusters and sensor arrays. Not nearly enough to disable the ship. At the same time, the fighter suffers far worse damage, due to the more intense beams of the enemy fleet.
The primary engines will not be used to dodge. That's the job of the thrusters.

TOM said...

"First, the plasma is a result of the laser strike."

I mean a particle beam. Plasma beam is shorter in text.

"That would be limited damage to the thrusters and sensor arrays."

( I would count in defence turret targeting systems. )
Once they gone, you are free to nuke the ship.
Or send a hypervelocity torpedo, even if it is hit, the shrapnels can still take out the ship if it cant dodge.


Otherwise ok I admit MOST LIKELY, fighters are meant for orbital combat. The cover of a celestial body strips the battleship from its biggest advantage, superior range.


Little OFF :

Byron, you asked me once if i ever quit and admit defeat?
I havent done it (yet) because of two things.

One, i kinda enjoy bringing up new ideas to test them, i want to create an interesting space battle scene, big ships just shooting each other is not enough, as you said, barely any room for tactics etc...

Second, kinda personal, some jerks really irritate me who believe themselves seers of future.
You are a good man, with good arguments, i have nothing against you, but others think they free to call others dumbass for trying to justify some SF things.



ON : the new list of my speculations :

What if lasers wont be dominant weapons? They arent famous for being very effective.
Missiles ok, good, but too expensive to rebuild in a prolonged conflict.
Then maybe hipervelocity shrapnel and plasma /particle beam/ cannons will be dominant. Fighters can dodge.

What if a fighter can handle a cannon that has a range of more then one light-sec?
You can barely track the small ship due to light-lag, limited sensor and gun tracking servo accuracy.
But it can still hit your sides.

"Magic fighter drive unviable on big ones" : antimatter afterburner for the sake of dodging and firing.
Slow return after it.

In theese cases, the fighter would wield hundred MJ anti-ship cannons.
We could already build a 33 MJ railgun, but arent anywhere near to build an interplanetary ship.


Or :

Fighters control the missile buses with lasers from one light-sec, (as the missiles are going to be BLINDED from thousands of km-s) while carrier try to remain safe 2-3 light-secs away.

Or... well FTL comm with entagled particles can be in the realm of hard SF IMHO. Then the fighters can be targeting devices, like in Space Battleship Yamato.

In theese models, fighters only fight each other, and long range missiles.

Byron said...

I mean a particle beam. Plasma beam is shorter in text.
A particle beam won't do that. It's no more effective then any other weapon for a given amount of input energy. Particle beams are most effective against nanoscale systems like people and computers.

( I would count in defence turret targeting systems. )
Once they gone, you are free to nuke the ship.
Or send a hypervelocity torpedo, even if it is hit, the shrapnels can still take out the ship if it cant dodge.

And they're free to nuke you. Also, tactics like rolling to present undamaged sides counteract a lot of it.

One, i kinda enjoy bringing up new ideas to test them, i want to create an interesting space battle scene, big ships just shooting each other is not enough, as you said, barely any room for tactics etc...
That's what we do here. I've stopped looking for ways out of it, though.

What if lasers wont be dominant weapons? They arent famous for being very effective.
What does that mean? Space-based lasers can be quite effective. I'd suggest you read Space Warfare V. Actually, read all of the Space Warfare series.

Missiles ok, good, but too expensive to rebuild in a prolonged conflict.
Maybe. Depends on the type of missile.

Then maybe hipervelocity shrapnel and plasma /particle beam/ cannons will be dominant. Fighters can dodge.
I'm going to assume that you mean hypervelocity projectiles instead of shrapnel. Shrapnel is the term for the fragments generated an explosion. The problem with using such a system is getting the projectiles to said velocities in the first place. That generally requires large coil/railguns. And while fighters can dodge, so can bigger ships. It just takes a bit longer.
Particle beams, on the other hand, are only very marginally easier to dodge then lasers, as they travel very close to c.

What if a fighter can handle a cannon that has a range of more then one light-sec?
You can barely track the small ship due to light-lag, limited sensor and gun tracking servo accuracy.
But it can still hit your sides.

Highly doubtful. The best estimates we have for PMF laserstars place their range below .5 ls. And that's with much bigger lasers then could possibly be mounted on a fighter. Particle beams can't be that different.
There are other disadvantages to being a small vessel. First, you have to get by with cheaper, less accurate systems. Second, the target sizes are not too dissimilar. Third, even a side shot will still not be perfect. The shot could go 'above' or 'below' the target. Fourth, if the bigger ship hits the fighter, the fighter is done for, so it will probably try to hit the fighter. Given enough time, it will.

Byron said...

antimatter afterburner for the sake of dodging and firing.
Slow return after it.

No reason that doesn't work on a bigger ship. Also, if you have enough antimatter to do this, you're out of PMF.

In theese cases, the fighter would wield hundred MJ anti-ship cannons.
We could already build a 33 MJ railgun, but arent anywhere near to build an interplanetary ship.

Yes. However, it's a long way from being a viable space-based weapon. For one thing, it produces way too much waste heat.
Also, there's more to a weapon then just the energy of the projectile. How often can it fire? Is the projectile guided?
If it takes a 100 MJ hit to cripple the big ship, I'm going to guess at 20 MJ to take out a fighter. The other ship can return 5 to 1 in fire against the fighters for a given amount of energy.

Fighters control the missile buses with lasers from one light-sec, (as the missiles are going to be BLINDED from thousands of km-s) while carrier try to remain safe 2-3 light-secs away.
That's just offboard control. No reason to need humans there. Also, I'd quibble with calling these things fighters.

Or... well FTL comm with entagled particles can be in the realm of hard SF IMHO. Then the fighters can be targeting devices, like in Space Battleship Yamato.
Same as above. Viable. Not fighters. Likely unmanned.

TOM said...

Well, I talked about drone fighters, that at least needs human operators for tactics.
/Yes i can only justify manned fighters for police operations, or with Dune like magitech./
With fighters, it is possible to have all-around combat and tactics.
And theese can make the things interesting.

The last two case : I think theese offboard targeting devices should be used for hunting missiles and each other. You never know the chance, when a group of hipervelocity missiles overwhelm your defence systems, they are best to be intercepted midway.


Sides attack : Again if you dont do this, a strong frontal shield is enough. You can roll away the damaged sides, but then, the fighters can attack the already damaged sides, if they snipe a location, where the armor is gone...
Yes, the peeled off fighters can be also nuked, but lose half of the fighters are better than losing the battleship, if they can peel it.

Antimatter afterburner : it can be used on a battleship, like you could equip a water ship with many rotors and jet engines, to be able to fly. Also if anything happens to the antimatter it is better to lose a fighter than a battleship.

TOM said...

"Second, the target sizes are not too dissimilar."

If they are on the same scale, why doesnt fighter vs bomber a good analogy?

Lets assume a big las-cannon have a 15 minutes recharge or cooldown time.
Fleets relative speed compared to each other is about 100km/s.
During that quarter hour the ships could cover roughly 100.000 km.
That solves the range problem.

Also, what if there will be only giant motherships and it is fighters and bombers?
The motherships main cannon can eat anything, but dozens of small targets might manage to get in range.

At first kinetic bombardment, then all-around attacks to vulnerable parts.

Byron said...

TOM:
With fighters, it is possible to have all-around combat and tactics.
And theese can make the things interesting.

Not really. They still have to get into position, which is harder then you believe given the limited delta-V available.

The last two case : I think theese offboard targeting devices should be used for hunting missiles and each other. You never know the chance, when a group of hipervelocity missiles overwhelm your defence systems, they are best to be intercepted midway.
You have yet to make a case for hunting missiles with these things. First off, they're easy to counter. The first salvo of missiles targets the fighters. Unless their defenses are strong enough to absorb said salvo, they become a nonissue very quickly. If their defenses are strong enough, I don't think the big ships would have much of a problem in the first place.
Second, how exactly do they kill these missiles? While it is better to kill missiles before they can drop their submunitions, countermissiles can do the same job. The fighters would just be a more expensive way of doing the same thing.


Sides attack : Again if you dont do this, a strong frontal shield is enough. You can roll away the damaged sides, but then, the fighters can attack the already damaged sides, if they snipe a location, where the armor is gone...
Yes, the peeled off fighters can be also nuked, but lose half of the fighters are better than losing the battleship, if they can peel it.

And there are fighters on all sides how, again? Also, I said surface damage. The armor is still intact. And remember that a bigger mirror (bigger ship) is more effective for the same amount of energy then a smaller one. Fighters have no chance in a laser duel at anything like equal power/cost.

Antimatter afterburner: it can be used on a battleship, like you could equip a water ship with many rotors and jet engines, to be able to fly. Also if anything happens to the antimatter it is better to lose a fighter than a battleship.
You still have to store the antimatter aboard the battleship while in transit. That's a serious risk right there.

If they are on the same scale, why doesnt fighter vs bomber a good analogy?
My point is that a side aspect is really not that much bigger then a front aspect. It's like the bullseye being a line across the target instead of a dot in the middle. If your system is good enough, it really doesn't matter. If it's bad enough, you're still going to miss quite a bit. Also, there's likely to be a good bit of foreshortening of the target unless you manage to get totally side-on.

Lets assume a big las-cannon have a 15 minutes recharge or cooldown time.
Fleets relative speed compared to each other is about 100km/s.
During that quarter hour the ships could cover roughly 100.000 km.
That solves the range problem.

What? Where did you get the idea the laser would have a cooldown on the order of 15 minutes?
If the laser is continuous-wave, then it doesn't have a cooldown time. If it's pulsed, the cooldown/recharge is likely seconds.
Also, 100 km/s is quite fast for the general tech assumptions.

Also, what if there will be only giant motherships and it is fighters and bombers?
The motherships main cannon can eat anything, but dozens of small targets might manage to get in range.

At first kinetic bombardment, then all-around attacks to vulnerable parts.

Then the mothership's cannon will eat the fighters, too. There's nothing that would prevent a laser being fired at low power, and all else equal, the bigger laser wins.
And kinetic bombardment is unlikely to leave much mopping-up. Either it's dead or it's not.

TOM said...

"You still have to store the antimatter aboard the battleship while in transit. "

It can be dragged in separate containers, also the main problem is, when you are hit, sudden power-surges etc.

"And kinetic bombardment is unlikely to leave much mopping-up."

It is a possibility that only tiny shrapnels arrive.

In case of missile-hunters, they can dodge the shrapnels easily, while a big target with lesser acc. has a rough time with it, with fighter lasers you can spare interceptor missiles.



Well I read that current day high-energy lasers have hours long recharge times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility

"One important aspect of any ICF research project is ensuring that experiments can actually be carried out on a timely basis. Previous devices generally had to cool down for hours to allow the flashlamps and laser glass to regain their shapes after firing (due to thermal expansion), limiting use to one or fewer firings a day. One of the goals for NIF is to reduce this time to 5 hours, in order to allow 700 firings a year.[19]"

I also read navy free-electron laser has pretty much cooldown time, but i can be wrong.

Byron said...

It is a possibility that only tiny shrapnels arrive.

In case of missile-hunters, they can dodge the shrapnels easily, while a big target with lesser acc. has a rough time with it, with fighter lasers you can spare interceptor missiles.

I'm highly doubtful of that. Particularly at 100 km/s, even tiny shrapnel would be lethal.

The NIF is an awful example of a high-power weapons-grade laser. It's a piece of laboratory equipment, and requires insanely high energy pulses over very short timespans. A laserstar has a lot more time behind it, and is engineered for space use. Not to mention the fact that it uses a different technology, which is more efficient and easier to cool.

TOM said...

If the tiny shrapnel only scratches you, you might survive the hit, if you dont store antimatter on battleship.

If even a tiny shrapnel can do such things, it will be important that you can dodge, missile hunters can dodge easily, a blue water ship is essentially a huge fuel tank, it can provide big delta-V and specific impulse, but not good acceleration.
Also numbers, do you want to lose half the fighters, or half the battleship?

And again, in orbital combat, without superior range, the battleship can be overwhelmed, with its low acceleration it is more easy to keep the beam focused to a point, until you drill through the armor.
Although... in orbital combat, the huge fuel tank will be almost depleted... but fighters of a mothership will be still more expendable, while defender fighters can rely on either stealth or cover.

/In case of an asteroid, you can use cover like in a building fight, in case of a moon, you change course behind, and dont use thrusters until you fire. due to background radiation, you will be harder to detect./

Byron said...

TOM:
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.

If the tiny shrapnel only scratches you, you might survive the hit, if you dont store antimatter on battleship.
I'm going to assume that the engineers can be good enough that antimatter isn't a death sentence. Also, by the time sufficient antimatter is available to make these afterburners practical, I expect we'll have significantly better engines then we do today.

If even a tiny shrapnel can do such things, it will be important that you can dodge, missile hunters can dodge easily, a blue water ship is essentially a huge fuel tank, it can provide big delta-V and specific impulse, but not good acceleration.
Also numbers, do you want to lose half the fighters, or half the battleship?

The problem is that if the missile breaks soon enough, the battleship can also dodge. There are things called thrusters for such a job. Also, you overestimate the survivability of fighters relative to battleships.


And again, in orbital combat, without superior range, the battleship can be overwhelmed, with its low acceleration it is more easy to keep the beam focused to a point, until you drill through the armor.
Although... in orbital combat, the huge fuel tank will be almost depleted... but fighters of a mothership will be still more expendable, while defender fighters can rely on either stealth or cover.

This is why you don't take the battleship into low orbit. There is no reason you would need to. Stand off and snipe. You might have some launches for boarding and such, but I see no reason to use lots of fighters.

In case of an asteroid, you can use cover like in a building fight, in case of a moon, you change course behind, and dont use thrusters until you fire. due to background radiation, you will be harder to detect.
Harder to detect, if your reactor isn't running. And even if it isn't, the cover is not going to be tactically useful. Systems built to detect objects a very long way away should have no problem at much shorter ranges even with a planetary background. Also, asteroids are generally quite small, which reduces their value as cover.

TOM said...

"I'm going to assume that the engineers can be good enough that antimatter isn't a death sentence."

Not necessary of course, still it will be very expensive to use on a blue water ship, less expensive on a small one, and has some risks.

"The problem is that if the missile breaks soon enough, the battleship can also dodge."

Yes of course. But a fighter has to face with one or two interceptors, a battleship has to face with an entire swarm, as missile buses release their warheads, and it is still a big target, and dont have that much acc due to its huge mass.

Interceptors vs missile buses : a missile bus can release one warhead to counter the interceptor, and also hitting a bullet with another one... isnt that trivial.
A fighter laser can kill the main rocket of the missile bus, then guide its allied kamikaze bombers /missile buses/ from afar.
Mirrors vs fighter attack from side... the mirrors will be completely undefended from a small "bullet" from a missile bus.
Fighters might also target them, enemy battleships cannon will rather focus to inbound kinetics.

No need to expose your capital ship if fighters can do the job properly.

Also there is a possibility, that they will use particle cannons instead of lasers due to low laser efficiency, you might cant just fire a particle cannon with lover energy. You can, but then the beam will be non-relativistic.

" Stand off and snipe."

Eventually, you have to come close.

Also PDF /Planetary defence/ can have even bigger cannons (hidden perhaps), thicker armor, you can counter it with kinetic bombardment of course, but kinetics will deplete, PDF can still have nukes and manufacture new missiles...
It will be risky anyway of course.
But in a prolonged conflict, PDF will win i think, they might expect a rescue fleet also...
/Again, my frame is Mars vs Earth in asteroid belt. In a peaceful situation where only police and antiterrorist missions needed, manned fighters are good./

So i see assault boats viable to charge and sorround the celestial body, while the battleship gives support fire from afar.
( I also talked about the possibility of shaft fighting, if you want to capture a mine. Or attack a missile battery, cannon from close range after manuevering through cliffs under radar. Death Star like scenarios. )

About recon : jammers are useful against the battleship, and small probes dont have the same accuracy.

I dont say battleship is all inferior in orbit, but lose many of its advantages, you might want to spare it for deep space.

TOM said...

Sorry for late thought : i think its kinda like the situation they encountered in WWII.

Bismarck was a huge battleship, heavy air defence, it had a superior range compared to fighters' torpedos, flaks were effective against wings etc...
But one fighter and torpedo came through, vital part damaged, it became uncontrollable, good as gone...

After theese experiences, they choosed to sacrifice firepower in favor of carriers, that can stay out of harm.

Capital ships will be very expensive, and essential to carry munition, fuel etc...
It is completely imaginable to me, that they will want to keep them out of harms way, and use fighters, green water escort, at PMF, kamikaze bombers /missile buses again/ to do most dirty job, and keep capital ships for the role of long-range support fire.

Byron said...

Yes of course. But a fighter has to face with one or two interceptors, a battleship has to face with an entire swarm, as missile buses release their warheads, and it is still a big target, and dont have that much acc due to its huge mass.
True. However, the fighter can be targeted by a lighter missile, and has weaker defenses. The bigger acceleration argument is counterbalanced by the fact that the bus has to break earlier against the battleship then against the fighters.

Interceptors vs missile buses : a missile bus can release one warhead to counter the interceptor, and also hitting a bullet with another one... isnt that trivial.
Then you get into dueling defense clouds. It's quite possible, particularly in space.

A fighter laser can kill the main rocket of the missile bus, then guide its allied kamikaze bombers /missile buses/ from afar.
Mirrors vs fighter attack from side... the mirrors will be completely undefended from a small "bullet" from a missile bus.
Fighters might also target them, enemy battleships cannon will rather focus to inbound kinetics.

I'm not sure what you mean here. The fighters are just as vulnerable as the mirrors (if I'm reading this right). Also, you keep forgetting cost. For an equal cost, the missile/laserstar complex is more powerful.

Also there is a possibility, that they will use particle cannons instead of lasers due to low laser efficiency, you might cant just fire a particle cannon with lover energy. You can, but then the beam will be non-relativistic.
What is your obsession with particle cannons? There is no practical reason to use them. Also, please stop using numbers from modern research lasers for future weapons lasers. Efficiency should be somewhere above 50%.

Eventually, you have to come close.
Why, exactly? There is no reason that a vessel has to come closer then its weapons range, which is likely to put it outside low orbit.


Also PDF /Planetary defence/ can have even bigger cannons (hidden perhaps), thicker armor, you can counter it with kinetic bombardment of course, but kinetics will deplete, PDF can still have nukes and manufacture new missiles...
It will be risky anyway of course.
But in a prolonged conflict, PDF will win i think, they might expect a rescue fleet also...

I'm familiar with the problems of invading a planet. In no way do fighters help with that. It's either big lasers or lots of missiles. No way around it.

/Again, my frame is Mars vs Earth in asteroid belt. In a peaceful situation where only police and antiterrorist missions needed, manned fighters are good./
Yes, though I would not call them fighters.


So i see assault boats viable to charge and sorround the celestial body, while the battleship gives support fire from afar.
( I also talked about the possibility of shaft fighting, if you want to capture a mine. Or attack a missile battery, cannon from close range after manuevering through cliffs under radar. Death Star like scenarios. )

And this occurs where, exactly? It's not possible on any celestial body I'm aware of. At least not with space fighters.

About recon : jammers are useful against the battleship, and small probes dont have the same accuracy.
Not really. Jammers are not that effective. Look at Atomic Rockets for more details.

Bismarck was a huge battleship, heavy air defence, it had a superior range compared to fighters' torpedos, flaks were effective against wings etc...
But one fighter and torpedo came through, vital part damaged, it became uncontrollable, good as gone...

Not how it happened. Bismarck was not a terribly good battleship, and it was used wrong. Also, remember that fighters use same medium in space that the ships do. So stop using naval analogies. Please.
Also, what are you using PMF to mean? It stands for Plausible Midfuture, for the record.

TOM said...

"The bigger acceleration argument is counterbalanced by the fact that the bus has to break earlier against the battleship then against the fighters."

Ok, counterbalanced.
You will lose half the fighters, not half the battleship.

"Then you get into dueling defense clouds."

And i count fighters into a part of it.
The fighters arent defenceless like mirrors, they have strong engines to dodge.
IF they have antimatter engines, while it is to expensive to use on a battleship, like it is too expensive to make waterships fly, then some naval analogys can be used.
I also think you underestimate fighters range and firepower, yes it will remain under capital ships, but they can scale up range with focus fire, the most expensive part IMHO is to drag the vagons of fuel, munition, equipment, not the firepower and necessary accuracy.

"What is your obsession with particle cannons? "

Maybe they will have bigger efficiency than 50%. I dont know for sure, but it is also a possibility, that might change calculations.

"And this occurs where, exactly?"

Any big (metallic) asteroid or moon.
You can nuke half of it, then fighters attack the other half near to surface, using the advantage of terrain. Descend into the giant shafts of the mines like a riverboat in a river.

So you want to remain far? Ok they just keep manufacturing new and new waves of missiles underground until they will win.
After a good bombing run, you have to charge IMHO.
PDF will take out a good number of ships with their hidden cannons and missiles, but then they will be exposed, ready to bomb down.
Eventually you have to unload your troops to take over the mines and infrastructure.

Byron said...

The fighters arent defenceless like mirrors, they have strong engines to dodge.
The mirrors have engines too, you know. And dodging doesn't solve everything. It's possible to throw a bunch of small projectiles which don't break until the last minute if at all. Soda Cans of Death, if you will.

IF they have antimatter engines, while it is to expensive to use on a battleship, like it is too expensive to make waterships fly, then some naval analogys can be used.
You're really reaching with this one. Antimatter engines are a very long way off, and I'd imagine that by the time they're practical, we'll have at least demi-torches, removing a lot of the performance advantage it gives you. Though I applaud you for the best reason yet for fighters being different.

I also think you underestimate fighters range and firepower, yes it will remain under capital ships, but they can scale up range with focus fire, the most expensive part IMHO is to drag the vagons of fuel, munition, equipment, not the firepower and necessary accuracy.
No, I don't. Assuming focus fire means concentrating fire from multiple fighters on one point, it won't work. The pointing accuracy is almost certainly lower then the spot size.

Maybe they will have bigger efficiency than 50%. I dont know for sure, but it is also a possibility, that might change calculations.
Unlikely. I'd be amazed if the particle accelerator would have significantly higher efficiency then a laser. My best estimate for PMF laser efficiency is about 65%.

If you wish to seize an asteroid, suppress the defenses on one side, then land troops. No fighters needed. (Yes, landing boats will be required. I don't count them as fighters.)

TOM said...

As i wrote, the fighters will attack the other side of the moon or asteroid, and possibly the giant shafts using the horizont and terrain to their advantage.
The other side can still hold suprises, missile batteries waiting for new amount of munition, for example.
The transport boats also needs protection, IMMEDIATE reaction to appearing new threats, surface units, hidden batteries.

"It's possible to throw a bunch of small projectiles which don't break until the last minute if at all. "

Yeah like flak cannons.
That is why i said, battleship vs missile buses and fighters vs interceptor missiles is roughly counterbalanced, but you can lose half the fighters.
Yes i dont exclude mirrors as an advanced line of defence.
But at that point, you have to face tenth time as much threat, as missile buses release their warheads, missiles will reach their full acceleration.

Also what about the point, that the fighters can guide the missile buses, so even if you blind them, they can still hit?

You cant guide them from light-secs away... Small probes will be hunted down. You can harden a sensor, but to blind a missile will be still much easier.

"Though I applaud you for the best reason yet for fighters being different. "

Thank you i file this. :)
I hope we will never have an interplanetary war, only police operations, but in a hard-sci IMHO, i have to assume at least one major breakthrough.

TOM said...

Sorry for late thoughts again...

I still had two another idea : how about focus fire to battleships giant mirror? If it only reacts to a narrow area of waves, you can deform it, so it will lose superior range.

You said it is not enough to drag a single giant combat mirror to battle, not good enough waste heat treatment etc. How about make it single shot, it will be melted or badly deformed, but it can deliver a crippling shot to a battleship, if you properly align it with low-energy lasers.
Mirrors will be cheap, they will be manufactured for power generation in space in peace.

Maybe there will be also single-shot bomb-pumped lasers.

Byron said...

As i wrote, the fighters will attack the other side of the moon or asteroid, and possibly the giant shafts using the horizont and terrain to their advantage.
They're in space. That's not really possible. To follow the terrain, they'd have to expend fuel constantly. Also, there is no reason that the defenses can't be suppressed from orbit.
And munitions won't be resupplied on the timescales involved here. Building new ones will take days at a minimum.

The transport boats also needs protection, IMMEDIATE reaction to appearing new threats, surface units, hidden batteries.
The ranges for the battleships are less then a light-second. The difference in reaction time is negligible.

That is why i said, battleship vs missile buses and fighters vs interceptor missiles is roughly counterbalanced, but you can lose half the fighters.
That really doesn't work. Fighters will be expensive. They aren't used today just because they are expendable. They aren't.

But at that point, you have to face tenth time as much threat, as missile buses release their warheads, missiles will reach their full acceleration.
Not really. Chemfuel missiles will have burn times of a few minutes at the outside. They'll spend most of their time coasting. Killing them before burnout would require your fighters to be right in the lap of the enemy.

You cant guide them from light-secs away... Small probes will be hunted down. You can harden a sensor, but to blind a missile will be still much easier.
Why not? Guide it in until it's a few second out, the blow it up. No more guidance needed. And why is a fighter so inherently survivable? Expendable probes may be killed, but you can put a lot of them out there.

I still had two another idea : how about focus fire to battleships giant mirror? If it only reacts to a narrow area of waves, you can deform it, so it will lose superior range.
Yes. Except for the fact that the big mirror can do the same to you from much farther away.

Single-shot mirrors are an interesting idea, but I'm not certain of the practicality of it. It's entirely possible that the pulse would have to be on a very short timescale, limiting the amount of energy delivered.
Also, there is a world of difference between a solar power mirror and a laser mirror. They are not remotely comparable. The solar mirror has to deal with a steady, not terribly intense stream from a constant direction at a constant focal point. The laser mirror has to shift focus, deal with much higher intensity beams, and slew.

Maybe there will be also single-shot bomb-pumped lasers.
I've heard different things about that. It's possible, but kinetics will often do the job well enough to make it difficult to justify the R&D dollars.

TOM said...

If lasers became absolutely dominant, then maybe it will be worthy to develop a nuke-pumped laser, with that, even some fighters can ruin a battleship's defence.

" To follow the terrain, they'd have to expend fuel constantly. Also, there is no reason that the defenses can't be suppressed from orbit.
And munitions won't be resupplied on the timescales involved here. Building new ones will take days at a minimum."

Yes, they need fuel, just like current airplanes.
Going around with fighters require less fuel than going around with battleship.
And if the other side attacks your landed troops with short-range missiles?
Or there are big munitions already underground, but they could fire a limited number of them?

Kinetics are limited, and if you dont go near with your battleship, it is not sure you can just destroy hardened bunkers.
Fighters can use more simple bombs to do the job.
They can intercept missiles from close-range, that the battleship can see beyond 0.01 arcsec... sensor and tracking device accuracy is still limited.
Otherwise, 1 sec till you detect the threat and the light to reach the target... that can very well mean the loss of at least one assault boat. It will hurt the troops morale, that you dont escort them.


For ship vs ship :
Ok, sum the following things : intercept missile buses /possibly they will have fusion torches in far future/ halfway, before you have to deal with an entire swarm of chem-fuel warheads and full speed, acc. main rockets.
Instead of sending out lots of probes, that will be sitting ducks to fighters and interceptors, use your fighters for guidance.
If you make your light cone so big, that you can guide light-secs away the blinded warheads, main rockets to reach the vicinity of the target, then they will tap into your communications, and after they learn your exact frequencies, they will jam or hack the guidance.
Fighters arent cheap yes, but a missile bus is a kamikaze bomber...
A fighter might kill more of them.

And they will be still more expendable than battleship, sorry i know you asked me nice... but why did they built carriers originally?
IF there is any chance, that the fighters can get the antimatter afterburner, the WWII analogy will be good.

You can say it is outside PMF, you can be right, personally i seeking justification for space battles that worth a few pages, without hyperspace.

Byron said...

If lasers became absolutely dominant, then maybe it will be worthy to develop a nuke-pumped laser, with that, even some fighters can ruin a battleship's defence.
Maybe. I'm uncertain of how much better a bomb-pumped laser would be. While it wouldn't have to get into contact, I'd have to get fairly close. Factor in the higher cost, and I'm not sure it's a winner. Could go either way.

Yes, they need fuel, just like current airplanes.
Going around with fighters require less fuel than going around with battleship.
And if the other side attacks your landed troops with short-range missiles?
Or there are big munitions already underground, but they could fire a limited number of them?

More then slightly confused. If you're in orbit, going around is assumed. Following terrain, even in zero-G is very expensive. The others can be dealt with by long-range laser fire and guns on the transports themselves.


Limited just means you have to bring a bunch of them.

Otherwise, 1 sec till you detect the threat and the light to reach the target... that can very well mean the loss of at least one assault boat. It will hurt the troops morale, that you dont escort them.
There are point defenses on the assault boat. Also, it's not normal to escort landing craft on the final run today, either.

Instead of sending out lots of probes, that will be sitting ducks to fighters and interceptors, use your fighters for guidance.
Yes. If the other side has fighters, they're also sitting ducks for my battleships.

If you make your light cone so big, that you can guide light-secs away the blinded warheads, main rockets to reach the vicinity of the target, then they will tap into your communications, and after they learn your exact frequencies, they will jam or hack the guidance.
No, they won't. Proper system design can avoid this. Use lasers and encryption. Cracking even modern encryption on a tactical timescale is going to be difficult.

Fighters arent cheap yes, but a missile bus is a kamikaze bomber...
No, it's not. Kamikaze implies that you're using a plane as a missile. It's a missile. End of story.

but why did they built carriers originally?
IF there is any chance, that the fighters can get the antimatter afterburner, the WWII analogy will be good.

Initially, the carriers were built as scouts. Not an issue in space. Also, there are scaling factors even if you do use antimatter afterburners. Which are a bit outside PMF.

TOM said...

They can put the nuke-pumped laser to the torpedo, so it dont even have to reach point-blank range.
And it will be crucial, that you intercept them halfway.

"Following terrain, even in zero-G is very expensive."

Yeah, airplanes arent that cheap...
If it is so expensive forget the whole deep-space conflict thing, IMHO in PMF there will be only orbital combats.

PDF can also have a destroyer, it can play hide and seek from your battleship for ever. And when anything gets close, attack it.

Fighters dont enter into range of battleship (unless they attack the very the same time as the kinetics...)

Probes will be hunted down by interceptor missiles and fighters.
You cant track a moving target from two light-secs away.
/1g acceleration, it moved 80m before you could do anything./

"It's a missile."

Then it cant dodge shrapnels, the first or second interceptor missile will take it out.

Ok assault boats can be armed, but they meant to transfer people.
They cant dodge missile shrapnels so easily for example.

Scaling issues : in Warhammer40k, fighter is a 100m long ship compared to km long capital ships...

So you want to build separate :
- defence mirrors
- swarm of guidance probes
- jam pack the missile buses with defences
- heavily armed assault boats
- ignore the very possibility of beyond horizont attacks and shaft-fighting

Instead of building fighters.
Ok, that is a possibility, but i think one platform for all theese jobs is a good choice.

Byron said...

They can put the nuke-pumped laser to the torpedo, so it dont even have to reach point-blank range.
And it will be crucial, that you intercept them halfway.

The question is how close it has to get. It won't be point-blank, but it won't be detonating as soon as it clears the tube, either. Even then, interceptor missiles are likely to be effective.

You apparently don't understand the part about following terrain being expensive. It will have to be slow enough that the control system can respond in time. The ship will have to thrust to stay up. Then it has to move up and down and maybe side to side to avoid terrain. It burns a lot of delta-V very fast.

PDF can also have a destroyer, it can play hide and seek from your battleship for ever. And when anything gets close, attack it.
Until it runs out of delta-V. Then it's stuck in an orbit the battleship can kill it in.

Fighters dont enter into range of battleship (unless they attack the very the same time as the kinetics...)
Then they're a recoverable first-stage missile bus. Or the lag between the kinetic strike and the fighters is way too long.

1G is a very significant acceleration. Requires chemfuel, which limits delta-V.

- ignore the very possibility of beyond horizont attacks and shaft-fighting
There is no horizon, and shaft-fighting is so unlikely as to be laughable.

TOM said...

" Even then, interceptor missiles are likely to be effective. "

That is why fighters need to protect the missile buses.

"It burns a lot of delta-V very fast."

More then take a BIG circle around the asteroid with a battleship?
Battleship vs PDF destroyer, i think the first one will be depleted first... The destroyer can even get supply tanks.

There is horizont on the asteroid, shaft fighting is like river fighting.


"1G is a very significant acceleration. Requires chemfuel, which limits delta-V."

If that is too much, then you really need the fighters to intercept the missiles before you couldnt dodge the shrapnels.

"Then they're a recoverable first-stage missile bus. "

Well, i imagine them having also cannons against interceptor missiles.

Sum the situation, two ships 3-4 light-secs away, launching things.
The missiles and fighters meet halfway.
The fighters launching interceptors and firing cannons to protect own missiles, take out others.

Then depending on situation, tactics, technical soultions, etc, decelerate, avoid battleship (or at least dont enter into fatal laser range), help guide kinetics, attack together with kinetics, maybe kamikaze attack if situation is bad.

Even if fighter mortality rate proves to big, then you lose the return fuel compared to missiles. /And fuel or propellant got to be cheap./
If situation is good, you can return with a number of fighters, that can help you in next battle.

TOM said...

I wrote decelerate.

Or simply dont accelerate further, unlike the missiles.
Or set the distances and acceleration so that at halfway, lag isnt that big, but at the target, bigger.
Or escort fusion torched bombers that can go around the battleship.
Whatever will be exact capabilities.

Byron said...

That is why fighters need to protect the missile buses.
Or, you know, just accept that there will be some losses and make plans accordingly. The fighters will have to be quite close to the missiles, which given what the warheads are might be a bad idea.

More then take a BIG circle around the asteroid with a battleship?
Way more. The battleship is in orbit, so circling takes little fuel. Also, there's almost certainly more then one battleship.

There is horizont on the asteroid, shaft fighting is like river fighting.
Not really. More of a job for ground forces.

If that is too much, then you really need the fighters to intercept the missiles before you couldnt dodge the shrapnels.
Or just shoot them down the normal way, and hope you get enough. It's not a perfect game, but that's how it works.

Well, i imagine them having also cannons against interceptor missiles.
So now they go all the way? Then how on earth do they avoid getting killed? If they veer off early enough to stay out of the enemy's envelope, the missiles are vulnerable. If not, they die. Interceptor missiles are a fact of life. Salvo size is used to deal with it.

Even if fighter mortality rate proves to big, then you lose the return fuel compared to missiles. /And fuel or propellant got to be cheap./
Not even close. You also lose the cannons, the fancy command and control system, and all the stuff that was added because it's reusable. A missile engine has to start up and run once. Ever. Either you have to rebuild the thing after each flight, or build it to be capable of multiple starts. Either way, vastly more expensive.

TOM said...

Assault boats are very vulnerable when landing, they need immediate protection.
Then consider theese fighters to be part of ground forces...
Orbiting around an asteroid from long range takes LONG time...

Fighter vs missile bus price : calculate in, that each fighter will take out at least one missile bus, missile buses carry heavy payloads, they also need strong engines...

My point remains : fighters are superior for missile hunting, for hitting the missile, the ultimate limiting factor is sensor and tracking device accuracy, they can easily dodge the shrapnels with their small size low mass and superior engines they can fire to the missiles at point blank range and still survive it.
Even if you lose half of them, you saved your IPS.
Then they can attack sides and backs.

Byron said...

Assault boats are very vulnerable when landing, they need immediate protection.
I doubt it, but I'm not going to argue it any more. Maybe there are a few landing gunboats. Not real fleet fighters.

Then consider theese fighters to be part of ground forces...
OK. I think there are probably better ways to handle shafts, if they exist, but this removes these fighters from fleet service too.

Fighter vs missile bus price : calculate in, that each fighter will take out at least one missile bus, missile buses carry heavy payloads, they also need strong engines...
So? The fighter is larger and carries a bigger engine. Kamikaze attacks are never a good idea to plan for.

My point remains : fighters are superior for missile hunting, for hitting the missile, the ultimate limiting factor is sensor and tracking device accuracy, they can easily dodge the shrapnels with their small size low mass and superior engines they can fire to the missiles at point blank range and still survive it.
Not so much, no. The fighter either needs significantly more delta-V then the missile or will only have a brief firing window. Long-range lasers are a better deal, and can track with reasonable accuracy. If needed, interceptor missiles can be laser-guided, using a dispersed beam to illuminate an area.

TOM said...

OK, we made some progress. :)
This isnt nothing, but do some maths.

One battleship launches 20 missile buses.

Other 10 missiles, 5 fighters.

Every missile buses carries six warheads.
You need 50 to overwhelm battleship defence system.

Fighter vs missiles halfway : they only need to blind the incoming missiles, the missile buses cant control them properly.
And they will be completely defenceless against interceptors anyway, and fighters hit them sooner.

So you want to illuminate the target?
Ok you just mirror it to a decoy and amplify it, no need for code cracking staff... just analogous transformations.
Anyway, blinded missiles cant follow even an illuminated target.
Due to light lag and finite sensor resolution, you cant tell exact coordinates.
They dodge shrapnels easily.

When you face with many targets, you have to realign your mirror every time you pick a new one.
This depends of servos, you cant scale it down...

Ok, to overwhelm fighter defence, you only need 20.

Now you have 120 warheads. Not enough to overwhelm both fighters and battleship protection.
Every one of my stuff can take out at least one missile bus, you cant overwhelm battleship protection.

Lets say only one fighter remains.
That can guide even blinded warheads to dodge interceptors, decrease the mortality rate of warheads.
You cant do it from far away...

It is no wonder we still use fighters instead of jam pack bombers and missiles with interceptors.

You also got the horizont problem in space if you dont want just see but hit something.

Byron said...

Fighter vs missiles halfway : they only need to blind the incoming missiles, the missile buses cant control them properly.
Slightly confused as to how this works. They either have to melt the sensor, or keep the laser on it the whole time. The first is solved by command guidance until the projectile gets close, then it pops off the cap. The second requires the fighter to have about 4x the delta-V of the missile. Way too much.

Ok you just mirror it to a decoy and amplify it, no need for code cracking staff... just analogous transformations.
What is this supposed to mean? If the missile receives gibberish, it will ignore it.

Anyway, blinded missiles cant follow even an illuminated target.
Yes. I believe that was offboard targeting for interceptors I was speaking of.

Due to light lag and finite sensor resolution, you cant tell exact coordinates.
You can definitely get close enough for the terminal homing on the projectiles. Remember, a laserstar is also a giant telescope.

When you face with many targets, you have to realign your mirror every time you pick a new one.
This depends of servos, you cant scale it down...

For a dedicated defense system (which is easily as good as the ones on the fighters) maybe tenths of seconds. Or a phased array, which is virtually instantaneous.

Lets say only one fighter remains.
That can guide even blinded warheads to dodge interceptors, decrease the mortality rate of warheads.
You cant do it from far away...

Not really. The fighter is getting blinded itself, if it isn't killed outright. Dodging interceptors requires knowing where they are, which is either easy or next to impossible. The bigger ship has bigger sensors. And the fighter will get hit with all the interceptors if it's with the missiles.

You also got the horizont problem in space if you dont want just see but hit something.
NO!!!
There is a limit to weapons range. However, the fighter operates in the same medium as the battleship, and has smaller weapons. The best analogy for fighter-laserstar is this:
The fighter is a PT boat. The laserstar is an Iowa-class battleship as it was in 1992 (modern radar and all). Both vessels have their rudders fixed to about 1 degree travel, and the shafts on the Iowa have to be run at the same speed. Also, there's a long delay on the throttle. The two vessels are on converging courses.
The PT boat has modern computers, so it can virtually guarantee a hit on the Iowa if it gets in range.
How does the scenario work? The Iowa starts shooting proximity-fused 16" HE shells. The PT boat can't dodge. It dies.

Rick said...

I'm sort of lost in the current debate! Bits of a scenario without the full context.

But I don't see why lancer-esque missile platforms would have onboard pilots, versus keeping the human factor back behind the firing zone.

I can easily imagine remote-piloted lancer types that are used in recoverable mode when possible, and expended as missile buses when necessary.

And they might have a detachable cockpit module for use in patrol and inspection type missions, when you do want a human on the spot. Detach when onboard human presence is not needed.

Whether all these missions call for similar enough vehicles to be interchangeable is an interesting question - probably with no single answer.

Byron said...

Rick:
We've been doing this for a couple months. Half the time, I think I'm lost.

I can easily imagine remote-piloted lancer types that are used in recoverable mode when possible, and expended as missile buses when necessary.
As mentioned above, I doubt it. The problem is that recoverable mode adds tremendously to the cost, and isn't likely to be used that often. Maybe in some sort of enforcement vessel, where you have a good margin of technical superiority and the need to use weapons regularly. Sort of like what the US does with its carriers most of the time theses days.

Whether all these missions call for similar enough vehicles to be interchangeable is an interesting question - probably with no single answer.
Another interesting concept. This sounds more like some sort of patrol carrier, and less like a battleship, but I could see it working.

TOM said...

" They either have to melt the sensor"

That is what i think about. With sensors melted (and you cant put heavy armor on them, it will be still at least tenth times easier then killing the entire missile) they can hit a battleship remote guided, but not a fighter... get somewhere close, but unlike a PT boat, and unlike a battleship, fighters can dodge shrapnels quite easily.
That is where naval analogies become invalid, and aerial analogies come. :)
Well, because their small size and big acc. i would say, fighters can dodge hundred times easier than a battleship.
Battleship dont have thousand times more firepower than fighter sqadron. /To counter previously mentioned factor of ten and hundred/

Ok you have big telescopes on battleship, still there is light lag... You can calculate speeds, but still at critical moment, targets will provide rapid acceleration.

Interceptor fighters stay out of the range of the cannons if they only want to guide. (They might charge the battleship, if it is defence system is largely overwhelmed, or the situation is rather hopeless, and you want to ampute an arm to survive)
Lets say they only give an order to the warheads, when to provide full acc.
The interceptor missile can change it is speed at last seconds, you cant determine its real intercepting course from light-secs away...

Also in PDF, the enemy ship can hide behind the celestial body.
(Ok, there is a chance that some of them will be still blinded, although they can carry and deploy some probes to solve it. Still, they can be reused.)


Well return to storming an asteroid : after you battle with enemy fleets and PDF it isnt THAT likely that you have more than one battleship, that ready to sorround the enemy asteroid and kill every remaining defence from long range.

Shaft-fighting : the cavern-fighting in Space Battleship Yamato was wonderful :)

The reusability thing will sure cost more, but fuel got to be adundant, if there is any reality of a deep space war, and i rather thinking in reactors or at least ion-thrusters for light-secs travel then current chem-fuel engines. I dont think it will be really a big issue...
Rebuild and deliver your billion dollar hardware every time you launch it, THAT is the big issue.
Of course IMHO, i assume future propulsion systems will be good enough.


Build fighters vs interceptor missiles : yes the last one is cheaper. But the fighter can drag a number of them, use its reactors, ion thrusters to spare chem-fuel, use its superior computers to guide its missiles, so they can hit even a rapid accelerating target or avoid an enemy missile even when th target is providing acceleration, even after the missile is laser-blinded, use it is laser to give them some extra boost /laser-riding rockets/ use its cannons to take out enemy missiles.
And return.
Maybe not at first time, but on a longer run, they are more viable than simple interceptor missiles.

Again worldofweirdthings about logistics... and my frame is a situation where logistics count.

To sum it : you might scale up everything on a battleship, but unless you have tachion-radars you still cant deal with the combo rapid-acc and light-lag, and fighters and missiles can do it in the critical moments.
So the horizont problem occurs.
You can also get the lots of cluttered targets in the form of missile and fighter swarms.
That is my answer to Ken Burnside's arguments.

Huhh yeah it became pretty long, take time to digest it.

TOM said...

(Ok, there is a chance that some of them will be still blinded, although they can carry and deploy some probes to solve it. Still, they can be reused.)

Some of the fighters i meant.
sorry for mistypings.

TOM said...

Ok, i guess you like me, but a few add-ons.

Ok, you can make tricks, open the missile sensors in last secs, until it, remote guide etc.
However : damaging the missile so it cant track a FAST, SMALL target is still easier.

Yor flak shells can be taken out by point-range defence, explosives, shrapnel cannons, if you aim PUNCTUAL, the shrapnel cone can still hit, otherwise not.
It can be taken out by a small "bullet" of the fighter.
/By bullet i mean a small missile with minimal delta-V/
It can be taken out by a flak shell of a torpedo.
/Note, from now on, if i use the word torpedo it means missile bus, flak shells are bigger missiles, and bullets are small missiles/


I would still use the lascannon on the fighter, with it, it can kill three enemy torpedos (from front, side and back), and they can do nothing against it. And as previously mentioned, to boost my missiles.

Also i think, the fighter squadrons unified can have similar firepower to a not so big frigate.

About reusebility, single-start vs multiple start engines : i certainly not thinking in solid-chem fuel engines. Missiles also have to perform regular course corrections, they cant just rely on singe-start engines.

Byron said...

What is what i think about. With sensors melted (and you cant put heavy armor on them, it will be still at least tenth times easier then killing the entire missile) they can hit a battleship remote guided, but not a fighter... get somewhere close, but unlike a PT boat, and unlike a battleship, fighters can dodge shrapnels quite easily.
There are ways around that, too. Put the sensors on an arm in the back, and when the coast is clear, pop up and look. And the actual hitting can be done by the fragments after the burster charge goes off. Dodging either one will be hard.

Well, because their small size and big acc. i would say, fighters can dodge hundred times easier than a battleship.
Not that much, unless they use a different drive. Either the same drive, and an order of magnitude at the outside, or a much lower specific impulse drive. Which has delta-V issues. Also, the fighter can't burn as many fragments as a battleship can, and is vulnerable to smaller fragments.

Ok you have big telescopes on battleship, still there is light lag... You can calculate speeds, but still at critical moment, targets will provide rapid acceleration.
Not rapid enough. See fragments above. Also, light-seconds in the plural is ludicrous. At PMF levels, a light-second is longer then weapon range.

Also in PDF, the enemy ship can hide behind the celestial body.
But then they aren't able to stop me from doing what I want.

Well return to storming an asteroid : after you battle with enemy fleets and PDF it isnt THAT likely that you have more than one battleship, that ready to sorround the enemy asteroid and kill every remaining defence from long range.
Why not? I'm not going to send out a single battleship. Ever. And if I don't waste money on fighters, I'll definitely have several.

The reusability thing will sure cost more, but fuel got to be adundant, if there is any reality of a deep space war, and i rather thinking in reactors or at least ion-thrusters for light-secs travel then current chem-fuel engines. I dont think it will be really a big issue...
Please. The dollar cost of the fuel itself isn't the issue. The problem is the cost of shipping it out and using it. Before you continue this, look up the rocket equation.
And I've been assuming nuke-electric all along.

Build fighters vs interceptor missiles : yes the last one is cheaper. But the fighter can drag a number of them, use its reactors, ion thrusters to spare chem-fuel, use its superior computers to guide its missiles, so they can hit even a rapid accelerating target or avoid an enemy missile even when th target is providing acceleration, even after the missile is laser-blinded, use it is laser to give them some extra boost /laser-riding rockets/ use its cannons to take out enemy missiles.
Ion thrusters are useless in battle. Miligee accelerations have virtually no tactical significance.
Also, guidance is dead easy. It uses CBDR (constant-bearing, decreasing-range) principles. This means that the projectile will see the target as not moving across the sky. If the target moves, the projectile thrusts until it stops moving. I've done it in excel.

Maybe not at first time, but on a longer run, they are more viable than simple interceptor missiles.
This assumes that a force will fight frequently. That assumption is almost certainly invalid. Except for the patrol carriers, which I'm trying to flesh out.

Huhh yeah it became pretty long, take time to digest it.
We in the space warfare community have been discussing this for years. You haven't come up with anything terribly original.

Byron said...

However : damaging the missile so it cant track a FAST, SMALL target is still easier.
Why? Either it works or it doesn't. I don't see much in between.

I would still use the lascannon on the fighter, with it, it can kill three enemy torpedos (from front, side and back), and they can do nothing against it. And as previously mentioned, to boost my missiles.
Slightly confused here. You're making really unwarranted tech assumptions. Why three missiles?

Also i think, the fighter squadrons unified can have similar firepower to a not so big frigate.
At a vastly higher cost. I've been over this. A bigger laser is better then several small ones of the same size/cost, unless the scaling is really wonky. That is also an unwarranted assumption.

About reusebility, single-start vs multiple start engines : i certainly not thinking in solid-chem fuel engines. Missiles also have to perform regular course corrections, they cant just rely on singe-start engines.
That is not what I meant. Engines for launchers are not designed to be started repeatedly without maintainence. Jet engines, for example, are. I'm really not sure how I can better explain this. A missile has to start once, and maybe cycle a few times. If it was to be reused, it would then have to be stripped down and overhauled. A fighter can't do that, which is going to raise the cost and mass of the engine.
I'm not sure how to explain this better.

TOM said...

"Also, light-seconds in the plural is ludicrous. At PMF levels, a light-second is longer then weapon range."

I talked about missiles, that can have more than one lightsec ranges.
And now i thinking in two-three light-sec missile combat.
And guide them. An advanced defence mirror can dodge for example. A destroyer might also move so the shrapnels will miss the mirror.

The fighter can break up the missiles hunder times nearer to dodge the shrapnels, with explosives or lasers. If you only remote guide the missile, than the fighter will be at the edge of the shrapnel cone, more easy dodge.
/And i thinking in fusion torches and antimatter./
And mostly your fighters have to dodge, not battleship, with much less fuel.

Of course there will be losses. But again, you lose part of fighter swarm instead of part of battleship.

If the torpedos drag heavy flak shells the fighters can keep up with them to protect them at least halfway, the lag wont be that big.
They can have similar amount of delta-V if they decelerate halfway and only guide later.

Enemy fleet is coming, then you fire a torpedo amount that overwhelms the defence systems 70% percent. The fighters and bombers can take care about the rest.
If you only use torpedos, they will send forth the obsolate ships, then kill you when munition is depleted.

Propellant or hydrogen can be reloaded from most celestial bodies, a comet for example.

Two fleets relative speed is 100km/s a torpedo can add 20km/s a bomber 10km/s that doesnt scale down things.

By the way the return fuel costs will be still only a small percent of the entire fleet's or convoy's fuel costs.

TOM said...

Otherwise if multiple start engines and double fuel is so expensive, is horizont really enough justification for present day aerial fighters?
U2 recon planes are not new inventions, since at least a decade, we could have used stealth recon drones, we could equip missiles with radars, make kamikaze bombers with lots of interceptor missiles...

Yes we can agree, there will be no fighters until eliminating a single enemy fleet will solve a thing, that is not a good story.

If we fight for the asteroid belt, then it will be way more easy to produce more fuel then remanufacturing torpedos.

Byron said...

I talked about missiles, that can have more than one lightsec ranges.
And now i thinking in two-three light-sec missile combat.

A weapon traveling at 100 km/s (which is very fast) will still take about 50 minutes to cross a light-second. This would almost allow a vessel to run a missile out of fuel using its main engine.

The fighter can break up the missiles hunder times nearer to dodge the shrapnels, with explosives or lasers. If you only remote guide the missile, than the fighter will be at the edge of the shrapnel cone, more easy dodge.
Actually, the fragment cone would not work that way. This past weekend, I investigated that further, and discovered that the fragments would be traveling at several hundred m/s. This gives it a few seconds of danger, and a short range, but makes it impossible to dodge.

/And i thinking in fusion torches and antimatter./
That's fine, but I'm not. And even if I was, it wouldn't change the underlying math.

Enemy fleet is coming, then you fire a torpedo amount that overwhelms the defence systems 70% percent. The fighters and bombers can take care about the rest.
Useless. The problem is that kinetic kill is either going to be too little (as in no penetration) or too much (as in everything is dead).

Propellant or hydrogen can be reloaded from most celestial bodies, a comet for example.
Nope. The fuel will require careful refinement. That's not going to be doable by every ship around. Plus, in a lot of regions, celestial bodies are rare and often going in the wrong direction.

By the way the return fuel costs will be still only a small percent of the entire fleet's or convoy's fuel costs.
What? Fuel costs something because it has to be hauled around before it gets burned.

Otherwise if multiple start engines and double fuel is so expensive, is horizont really enough justification for present day aerial fighters?
Several things. First, the fuel requirements for air travel are significantly lower then for space travel. And it's double fuel instead of quadruple fuel. A fighter will fly hundreds of times over its lifetime, which can't be said of a lancer. The computer does all the maneuvering anyway, so there's no reason for live training.

If we fight for the asteroid belt, then it will be way more easy to produce more fuel then remanufacturing torpedos.
That's a big if. The asteroid belt is quite scattered, so ready fuel can't be assumed, particularly given that economic activity is likely to center around metal-heavy asteroids. Also, a fleet is likely to require far more mass in fuel then it does in missiles of any kind.

TOM said...

"This gives it a few seconds of danger, and a short range, but makes it impossible to dodge."

Depends on target size, and when can you make the missile unable to track. Fighters have more time. The giant mirror of battleship is vulnerable even to small shrapnels.

Why isnt double amount of fuel enough for long return?



"A weapon traveling at 100 km/s (which is very fast) will still take about 50 minutes to cross a light-second.
This would almost allow a vessel to run a missile out of fuel using its main engine."

And if the projectile has fusion or antimatter drives?




"Useless. The problem is that kinetic kill is either going to be too little (as in no penetration) or too much (as in everything is dead). "

I dont really understand that... that is why you need reusables /if there will be missile combat.../ you maybe need to recall them, or send them to another target.
If there will be missile combat... you can only overwhelm PDF in missile combat. Fighters and bombers take of from surface, protect you from missiles, then fires their own to the exhausted ships.

"That's not going to be doable by every ship around. " There can be a refinery ship, and in war, every little island can be significant. /Like Pacific war between USA and Japan./

So there can be supply base on water asteroids also.


(
However i really start giving up writing hard-sci... :( in soft-sci mini black holes as projectiles and tachion radars are allowed... i want to stay consequent.
) Or no war just police and covert operations...
Sorry for OFF.

TOM said...

Oops i missed something.

What if bomber sqadron drags a big single-shot mirror to vicinity?
It can be fired by energy stored in supercapacitators.

And it will be still more cheap then a blue-water ship.

Byron said...

Depends on target size, and when can you make the missile unable to track. Fighters have more time. The giant mirror of battleship is vulnerable even to small shrapnels.
First, the mirror will have shutters to protect it from that sort of damage. Second, the danger circle is going to be several hundred meters across. I really question your ability to create that much positional uncertainty. And the fighter is vulnerable to much smaller fragments then the battleship is.

Why isnt double amount of fuel enough for long return?
No. Twice as much delta-V, yes. The problem is illustrated by this quote from later on:
that is why you need reusables /if there will be missile combat.../ you maybe need to recall them, or send them to another target.
All of these require you to get it back quickly, meaning lots more then 2.1x delta-V. The lancer is not anywhere near as flexible as an air fighter. It can only attack targets near its original one, and particularly if it's at 2.1x delta-V, it has to drop its munitions to come back. Either it's a reusable first stage, or it takes an incredible amount of delta-V.

There can be a refinery ship, and in war, every little island can be significant. /Like Pacific war between USA and Japan./
That had to do with the range limitations on airpower. Also, they bypassed quite a few.

However i really start giving up writing hard-sci... :( in soft-sci mini black holes as projectiles and tachion radars are allowed... i want to stay consequent.
Writing hard sci-fi is kind of unpleasant. You have to be willing to challenge your assumptions on how the tech will work.

What if bomber sqadron drags a big single-shot mirror to vicinity?
It can be fired by energy stored in supercapacitators.

And it will be still more cheap then a blue-water ship.

Not enough. I'm skeptical of single-shot laser equipment, as I see no technical reason why a reusable system will be significantly more expensive. That means it costs almost as much as a real laserstar, and is nowhere near as useful.

TOM said...

Why is it, that multiple start engines are so expensive, why multiple fire mirrors arent?

How about only damage the missile guidance systems? You still need to dodge, if it is aimed punctual, if the battleship has to dodge, it will cost hundred times more fuel then a fighter to dodge.

If they decelarate halfway, they can give your torpedos a vital protection halfway while they dont need bigger delta-V.

Byron said...

Why is it, that multiple start engines are so expensive, why multiple fire mirrors arent?
Because not all technology is the same. The laser needs to avoid damaging itself at all during operation or it's useless. Startup is negligible.

How about only damage the missile guidance systems? You still need to dodge, if it is aimed punctual, if the battleship has to dodge, it will cost hundred times more fuel then a fighter to dodge.
I'm not sure what this means. Damaging the guidance system will largely take out the missile. Even if it goes boom, the fragments will likely be too dispersed to pose any real threat. Yes, you might need to burn one or two, but that's it.

If they decelarate halfway, they can give your torpedos a vital protection halfway while they dont need bigger delta-V.
Nope. The missile will likely do almost all of its acceleration at the beginning. If it doesn't, halfway is absolutely as far as you can take it. Any farther and you'll overfly the enemy while decelerating.

TOM said...

They can use EMP weapons against the missiles, that only ruins the electronics.
Currently microwave thing are much more efficient than lasers, you can have Faraday cages, but eventually the microwave will raise currents in it /as far as i know/ and the electronics will be gone, while the missile body remains.

What if they will use hypervelocity bullets boosted by a plasma stream?
Principle is like this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_sail
Yes it can be repelled, it would like to an energy shield, but it can be overwhelmed in swarms.

"If it doesn't, halfway is absolutely as far as you can take it. Any farther and you'll overfly the enemy while decelerating. "

Yes, i said halfway (roughly), when the two missile groups meet, that will be a critical moment.

Byron said...

They can use EMP weapons against the missiles, that only ruins the electronics.
Currently microwave thing are much more efficient than lasers, you can have Faraday cages, but eventually the microwave will raise currents in it /as far as i know/ and the electronics will be gone, while the missile body remains.

EMP weapons are a possibility, but they have drawbacks. Diffraction will occur much faster, limiting range. Also, they're not going to be terribly reliable.
The Faraday cage is safe, but stuff has to go in and out, which is where it will fail.
To sum it up, possible but unlikely.

What if they will use hypervelocity bullets boosted by a plasma stream?
Principle is like this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_sail
Yes it can be repelled, it would like to an energy shield, but it can be overwhelmed in swarms.

Not going to work. Plasma sail acceleration is very low.

Yes, i said halfway (roughly), when the two missile groups meet, that will be a critical moment.
Then you meet the opposing missiles at high speed, which sort of cancels out the benefits of long-range interception.

TOM said...

"Also, they're not going to be terribly reliable."

We can already build phased-array microwave stuff, and have a variety of microwave weapons.
Do you want to say, you cant see exactly whether you fried the circuits or not?

Byron said...

We can already build phased-array microwave stuff, and have a variety of microwave weapons.
Do you want to say, you cant see exactly whether you fried the circuits or not?

My understanding is that EMP is vastly overrated as a weapon. Anything in space will have to be radiation-hardened, which makes it even more difficult. It's an interesting idea, but probably impractical.

TOM said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Byron said...

Currently, satellites are turned off in case of a solar storm.
I'm aware of that. It's a safety precaution. The chances of a problem are fairly low, as I understand it.

But anyway, the missile can drag a load of needles a bit separated from the main engine, they will be released upon destruction, so the missile turnes into a hypervelocity shotgun.
Yes, that could be done, and would be more effective then a simple charge.

Burning all the pellets will be not so easy.
So? You deal with it. Dodge, shoot, armor, whatever. Also, the fighter would be vulnerable to flechettes that would bounce off a battleship.

TOM said...

Currently, satellites are turned off in case of a solar storm. And that cause a nanoTesla flux.

But anyway, the missile can drag a load of needles a bit separated from the main engine, they will be released upon destruction, so the missile turnes into a hypervelocity shotgun.

Burning all the pellets will be not so easy.

Just out of curiosity, i assume you have a good basis to say, you can also hit something that you can see under one arcsec... but what is it exactly?
I heard they developed a computer-aimed sniper rifle, but hit something so small is harder then tracking a mosquito with a laser pen.
And calculate exact position isnt enough, exact fire control is difficult.

TOM said...

Sorry i deleted and reposted.
I dont say you cant dodge, but dodge with battleship will be way more expensive than dodge with fighter.
Also lesser fletchettes will be more easy to burn.

Byron said...

Just out of curiosity, i assume you have a good basis to say, you can also hit something that you can see under one arcsec... but what is it exactly?
I heard they developed a computer-aimed sniper rifle, but hit something so small is harder then tracking a mosquito with a laser pen.
And calculate exact position isnt enough, exact fire control is difficult.

The fine details of aiming are rather tricky, but lasers have an enormous advantage in that they can be targeted like a single-lens reflex camera. The optics are also used as a telescope. When your target is in the middle of the image, pull the trigger.
The exact pointing accuracy is open to debate. I expect that it will be on the order of a couple mircroradians at most (somewhere under an arcsecond).

Byron said...

I dont say you cant dodge, but dodge with battleship will be way more expensive than dodge with fighter.
Also lesser fletchettes will be more easy to burn.

Yes, that is true. However, it ignores the fact that there are a lot more little flechettes flying around, which makes dodging or burning them harder. There will be some time increment required to retarget, which degrades fighter performance. Depending on the differences in armor and size, the pattern size might not be terribly different, but the fighter is far more likely to have to dodge then the battleship is. The battleship is also substantially more likely to be able to intercept the bus at long range, which reduces the cost of dodging significantly.

TOM said...

Two things : while it is really outside of PMF, do i get it right, that with cosmic rays no exact THEORATICAL limit to multiple light-sec ranges?
/Yes i know theory and reality is different but i making steps toward soft-sci./

Also, you said, a justification for fighter is the lots of training hours. Well, AIs also need to be trained, when there are new developments /I do know it/ that will also require lots of flying hours or days.

Also i had the idea, what if the bomber would be the giant mirror, giant cannon that has (near) the reality based maximum range?
Unlike and old century cannon, you dont need all the mass of battleship to fire the cannon, you mainly need energy, you can store it in nanotube condensators, the mirror can be a receiver for recharge beams maybe...

The fighters would drag lots of missiles, and they would have a fusion torch or antimatter afterburner.
If torpedo targets bomber, fighter intercept it before it could fire the short range chem fuel missiles.
If it targets the fighter, fighter fires all of its payload, then it will be so light, that it will outrun most chem missiles.

If you dont send a big fusion torched torpedo, just smaller amounts of missiles, they will be eaten by fighter and bomber defence systems.

Then the most effective way would to counter theese threats is fighters and bombers.
The carrier would be basically a huge main engine and ammunition base that should stay out of fight.

Byron said...

Two things : while it is really outside of PMF, do i get it right, that with cosmic rays no exact THEORATICAL limit to multiple light-sec ranges?
/Yes i know theory and reality is different but i making steps toward soft-sci./

I'm not sure, as I'm not an expert on particle beams. However, I'd guess that the generator is going to be very large, and that the beam will spread slightly due to random drift among the particles.

Also, you said, a justification for fighter is the lots of training hours. Well, AIs also need to be trained, when there are new developments /I do know it/ that will also require lots of flying hours or days.
Given that the computer controls everything and the human tells it where to go, I'd doubt that there's much need for flight training. If there is, then use a vessel that behaves like the main ship, but is just the cockpit and a small engine.

Also i had the idea, what if the bomber would be the giant mirror, giant cannon that has (near) the reality based maximum range?
Unlike and old century cannon, you dont need all the mass of battleship to fire the cannon, you mainly need energy, you can store it in nanotube condensators, the mirror can be a receiver for recharge beams maybe...

The biggest problem is likely to be heat management. Even if you can fit enough energy aboard for a battle, getting rid of the heat would be a problem. Also, given the size of the system, it's probably easiest to just go with the normal laserstar.

The carrier would be basically a huge main engine and ammunition base that should stay out of fight.
That's the problem. Should would probably fail occasionally. Back during WWII, land bases were the preferred method of airpower deployment precisely because they couldn't sink.

Byron said...
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Byron said...
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TOM said...

Well i saw some deletions but i could read it.

Well, with gamma rays the spread isnt much bigger then cosmic rays, yeah keep dodging lasers would still rather require tachyon radars and very good engines...


If the carrier is unloaded and stay behind it has at least equal chance of survival as a battleship, it could outrun most missiles, the others would be intercepted by the advanced units.

There were words about orbital combat, yeah that is the most interesting.
I wonder on the following, in order to kill really hardened targets with lasers (after you fired all your bombs), you need to get close, then it would be bomber and fighter range.

i also wondered on the following things : ok, targets in space are hardened against EMP. They are hardened against X-rays UV etc. Does that mean lasers are inefficient?
What about using manuevering defence "nets" against missiles?
With only 100 km/s relative speed, a little gram could ruin the missile electronics at least.
If you fire missiles at them, they only make some holes in it.
Then the defence against the shrapnels could be shifted toward dodging.
Fighter vs battleship : hunder times less firepower vs hunder times more dodging... but battleship dodge cost thousand times more fuel.

Also, our AIs need retrained every time we see a new type of passport.
Little changes in engines, arnament, etc, would require training. Well it is not bad to get battlefield tests also, return the black boxes, examine the engines...

Byron said...

The deletions were me misposting replies to the most recent blog post. Join in there.
I'll deal with the rest in the morning.

TOM said...

The latest blog post, in here Rocketpunk Manifesto?

By the way i thought about orbital combat, asteroid mine capture.

The fighters vs battleship equations reverse, PDF have more armor, more range, way more kinetics...

i thought the following situation : you launch your bomb swarm, but you cant be sure which targets will be killed.

The fighters going after the bombs can kill the rest with precise kinetic and laser strikes.

And you might have a narrow window of opportunity... after it, crew, comps, systems recover from the shockwaves, dust clouds scatter, digged-in coilguns can fire again, (note that their arc of fire is limited, so they cant target vessels nearby) PDF ships return from other side with new pack of munition...

Byron said...

TOM:
The latest blog post, in here Rocketpunk Manifesto?
The Last Battleship

Well, with gamma rays the spread isnt much bigger then cosmic rays, yeah keep dodging lasers would still rather require tachyon radars and very good engines...
I'd expect any form of particle beam to spread more then a gamma-ray laser. More then a visible laser for that matter. Getting the particle beam that tightly focused is tricky.

If the carrier is unloaded and stay behind it has at least equal chance of survival as a battleship, it could outrun most missiles, the others would be intercepted by the advanced units.
Yes. However, you now lose half the fighters half the time, and all the fighters and the carrier half the time. Not sure what the point is.

I wonder on the following, in order to kill really hardened targets with lasers (after you fired all your bombs), you need to get close, then it would be bomber and fighter range.
Maybe. Even then, a bigger laser is more powerful at shorter range. I don't see the fighter as having an advantage here.

i also wondered on the following things : ok, targets in space are hardened against EMP. They are hardened against X-rays UV etc. Does that mean lasers are inefficient?
Not really. They aren't hardened against X-rays or UV, for one thing. EMP has a completely different damage mechanism. The lasers will do physical damage, which can't be "hardened" against except with armor.

What about using manuevering defence "nets" against missiles?
Interesting concept. I don't see why it wouldn't work, but the mass might be kind of high.

Fighter vs battleship : hunder times less firepower vs hunder times more dodging... but battleship dodge cost thousand times more fuel.
You ignore the part where the battleship has ten times more armor as well.

Also, our AIs need retrained every time we see a new type of passport.
That's a modern expert system. Projecting it onto a warship control system 200 years from now is doubtful.

The fighters vs battleship equations reverse, PDF have more armor, more range, way more kinetics...
The only way to deal with that is More Dakka.

The fighters going after the bombs can kill the rest with precise kinetic and laser strikes.
Include some sort of system which allows you to retarget the second wave of missiles. Then do so after the first wave is done. Then close to destroy anything that's left.

TOM said...
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TOM said...

About cosmic rays : atomic rockets classified them as ultra-short wavelength lasers, and you can also achieve million km range with gamma rays.


With PDF you work with very tight time schedule, dust clouds, shock waves, overheating lasers only hinder the enemy for short time.

Battleship can be million km-s away, when it arrives, PDF can be ready to fire with great power again, also you cant be sure, they dont have a hidden giant laser.

Byron said...

About cosmic rays : atomic rockets classified them as ultra-short wavelength lasers, and you can also achieve million km range with gamma rays.
Ah. I was thinking of particle cosmic rays. Gamma-ray lasers are so far out there, I'm not even prepared to speculate on what they'll be like.

With PDF you work with very tight time schedule, dust clouds, shock waves, overheating lasers only hinder the enemy for short time.
Not really. It's best to launch all the kinetics you think it will take, plus maybe a 25% safety margin, and hit them all at once. Particularly with big kinetics, survival is unlikely if you get hit.

Battleship can be million km-s away, when it arrives, PDF can be ready to fire with full power again, also you cant be sure, they dont have a hidden giant laser.
That's what intelligence is for. Also, after you think they're all gone, send in sensor drones, then one battleship. It's not perfect, but no military solution ever is.

TOM said...

" Particularly with big kinetics, survival is unlikely if you get hit."

Most times, shrapnels will arrive.


So you said, that narrow-band filtering is good against jamming.

Then how about cool fighter's frontal armor to 2.7 K with liquid helium, and use a narrow-band filtering around it?
You can detect it, but lets say your accuracy is only 0.1 arcsec.
And lets say fighters lasers will have a range of 100.000km.
They cant get your exact position, but the carrier's huge scope can do it, and send the exact coordinates.
If fighter use the thruster, you only see, where it WAS, and cat get exact new speed.
If you send an IR camera behind it, it will be insta-killed when near.
If fighter passes in front of a star, use holographic stealth and decoy clouds.
The goal is just accuracy dropping, the battleship cant provide big acc, so the coordinates determined by carrier will be good enough.

TOM said...

I also thought about a mainly defensive role. Just advance and protect battleship from missile buses, with "bullets" and defensive nets /ok, with their big mess, they are rather part of point range defence system/, lesser firepower wont be that big problem, the remaining small shrapnels can be burned.

Then two battleship charge each other, battleship vs battleship, fighters vs fighters.

At the end there can be a battle between largely ruined battleship vs fighters, with laserstar damaged, the battleship lose the superior range.

In PDF, they can be reusable first stages of missiles.

-----

Back to previous idea, if fighters are launched prior to missiles, they can attack the same time, most times, missiles will be eaten, but that gives time for advance, then fire to laserstar with all you got.

It can be also a possibility, that carrier let the enemy advance and it dont intercept them halfway, but in the middle of first part.
Then, constant acc with its ion thrusters or maybe sails /maybe the majority of ships will be sailed to save fuel/ it can catch up with them.

---------

Planet storm : if there will be light-minute bombing ranges, the fighters wil lhave to guide the second wave of bombs.

Byron said...

TOM:
DO NOT GO THERE! That way lies madness. Stealth in space has been discussed at length elsewhere. It doesn't work. At all.

I also thought about a mainly defensive role. Just advance and protect battleship from missile buses, with "bullets" and defensive nets /ok, with their big mess, they are rather part of point range defence system/, lesser firepower wont be that big problem, the remaining small shrapnels can be burned.
But what advantage does it have over mounting the guns on the battleship directly.

I'm a little unclear on the rest of your suggestion, and it's getting late. I'll see if I can figure it out in the morning.

TOM said...

I didnt said stealth exactly, just limited accuracy of aiming due to lower IR and physical cross-section.

But OK other things : in defensive role, fighters attack beyond the range of battleship cannons.

Otherwise : PDF can have a space station or GIANT defence ship with even bigger firepower and range then battleship. And it can hide from a kinetic storm, and eat smaller storms.
But if you force it to hide, then fighters can whizz around the planet and fire at it from point blank range, bombers can have a coilgun to give enough delta-V to a nuke.

And : so it is a disadvantage compared to missile, that it has bugger fuel tank, lower acc.

What if it didnt carry the return fuel?
PDF or MOTHERSHIP can have launchpads, a present day railgun can boost something to 2km/s in air, give the spacecraft or missile a head-start of 10 km/s it is good head start.
If the fighter survives the attack, then launch the return fuel tank after it, you can launch it faster, because it has no delicate electronics, and decelerate it with a crude single-start chem-fuel engine.
This system can be also used to drop supplies to ground forces (or drop THEM), for example.
The mothership can be a mobile operation base for your fleet, tend frigates to attack multiple enemy convoys and protect your own, with its barrages, it can weaken the defence of charging battleships so the fighters have bigger survival rate.

Yeah the aircraft carrier is also a capital ship.
The big advantage of the system is : fighters can make kinetic strikes, as they can defend itself from interceptors, and also attack the laserstar from a range.
Supply a number of green water ships and land, reinforce ground forces.

Byron said...

There is no way to generate tactically useful uncertainty. Your plan involves a tremendous amount of extra work, and is foiled by networked sensors. Also, the giant liquid helium tanks are a bit of a performance drain.

Otherwise : PDF can have a space station or GIANT defence ship with even bigger firepower and range then battleship. And it can hide from a kinetic storm, and eat smaller storms.
Hide how? Changing orbit that much is non-trivial.

But if you force it to hide, then fighters can whizz around the planet and fire at it from point blank range, bombers can have a coilgun to give enough delta-V to a nuke.
And they get into position this fast how? Because if it doesn't hide, they're dead. Again, missiles work better.

PDF or MOTHERSHIP can have launchpads, a present day railgun can boost something to 2km/s in air, give the spacecraft or missile a head-start of 10 km/s it is good head start.
If there are people aboard these things, they're goo. Even if not, 10 km/s is very fast to shoot something so massive.

If the fighter survives the attack, then launch the return fuel tank after it, you can launch it faster, because it has no delicate electronics, and decelerate it with a crude single-start chem-fuel engine.
Interesting thought, but I'm not sure that the loss of tactical flexibility makes it worth it. What if you get attacked during the week or two the fighters are coming back?

Byron said...
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TOM said...
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Bryce said...

I agree that dogfighting and fighters engaging each other and larger ships at close eyeball range would be extremely rare, and of course so would the sounds of lasers zapping through the vaccum of space and the fact that for some reason no in in Sci Fi is ever effected by the lack of gravitiy in space. though I could see fighting space craft on occasion getting in close unintentionally, In a Sci Fi environment with ships that approach even 1/10th the speed of light (which would be about 18,000mps) engaging with each other, even if they are fighting at hudreds of thousands of miles of distance it wouldn't be hard for them to find themselves close up within a matter of seconds. Especially because most space battles wouldn't be over empty space they would be about approaching or defending a planet moon orbital space station or asteroid. Another possibility would be a sci fi where small transported ships do all the fighting for larger non combat type craft that carry them for defense. It wouldn't be my vision but its a not unreasonable possibility. I remember reading another post on here about really powerful lasers, that could shoot like over a million kms with devastating effect, but they would have to be huge and would take a lot of recharge time. I imagined a specialized ship that would sorta look like the Hubble telescope and would be a giant laser cannon. It would be highly deadly with one shot one kill potential and out range just about everything but would have a hell of a time scoring a hit, especially against a very tiny constantly maneuvering target. Yes a laser light is way faster than the fighter and anything else cuz its light but the fighter might be faster than the computer/gunner and ability of some big ship to turn for its weapon to be facing the right spot. "Fighter" type spacecraft might actually be slower when it comes to traveling in a straight line for hours, like smaller sailing ships were slower due to smaller sails. But like the smaller sailing craft they would no doubt be way more maneuverable and in space you could go any direction so they could take advantage of that. They would probably have a pretty good shot at avoiding missiles with use of countermeasures and maneuverability. The best weapon against them would probably be some kind of flak, basically space junk, even just tiny pebbles moving fast enough could knock out a small lightly armed "fighter". Or smaller machine gun like laser cannons on the sides of big ships. But these sort of "AA" weapons probably wouldn't be effective unless the fighter got in close. The fighter could definitely operate in a scout role using active sensors and retreating and relaying targeting info to ships with the bigger laser and/or kinetic guns. They are harder to hit and more expendable. I think their main offensive capacity would be to launch missiles, they couldn't carry many but could return to a larger ship to restock. To make an analogy to Army tactics for a moment the small space craft deployed from a larger one could be seen as a bit like the light skirmishers with javelins or rifles, cavalry scouts in the Civil War era or a HUMVEE or other light vehicle with a TOE anti tank missile on it. I think if you looked out the window in a space battle(some people here are anti window, I want my space ship to have windows) you probably would either only see a tiny dot or nothing at all, and thats including friendly ships. That doesn't make for a very good movie scene in the opinion of Hollywood. Though I personally kind of disagree, make it mostly about the action on board the ship and the fear and claustrophobia, a submarine movie basically.

TOM said...

In the other topic (Last Battleship) there were pretty much info about the topic i could only add a hew things :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littoral_combat_ship

"Iran have been seen developing "swarm boats" to be used as harassing vessels in the heavily contested littoral waters of the Persian Gulf. To counter the threat, the US Navy has been developing a ASUW Littoral Defensive Anti Surface Warfare doctrine, along with vessels such as the littoral combat ship."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Attack_Craft

Theese things are good for orbital combat, they dont even need double fuel for slow return, as either gravity helps the return in defence, or they remain in low orbit, or maybe land, when they attack.

IMHO in PMF there will be mostly orbital combat and patrol.
/In an operatic setting with interstellar ships, i guess they will rather care about reusability than return fuel/

Greg said...

There is one very good reason NOT to "go drone" and take the pilot out of a putative space fighter: jamming, either deliberate on the part of the opposition or as a result of natural phenomena. There's also the issue of signal lag. At even just the relatively small distance between Earth and the Moon, it's ~2.5 seconds one way. That's a minimum 5 second lag between sensory input from the fighter and response from the pilot. At any appreciable speed that lag is enough to poof the fighter.

And let's talk computer control. Unless your fighter's computer is AI (which is a whole other disaster waiting to happen), then it is limited to the programming input before hand, in which case it lacks the ability to make split-second adjustments to flight, targeting, etc that a human pilot can OR if it's up-datable, you still have that signal lag problem.

Byron said...

Greg:
There is one very good reason NOT to "go drone" and take the pilot out of a putative space fighter: jamming, either deliberate on the part of the opposition or as a result of natural phenomena. There's also the issue of signal lag. At even just the relatively small distance between Earth and the Moon, it's ~2.5 seconds one way. That's a minimum 5 second lag between sensory input from the fighter and response from the pilot. At any appreciable speed that lag is enough to poof the fighter.
Neither one is the case. Jamming is impractical with laser comm systems, and the time lag is unlikely to be a major issue, particularly because most proposals have the controller closer to the drone. See this for more details.

Byron said...

And let's talk computer control. Unless your fighter's computer is AI (which is a whole other disaster waiting to happen), then it is limited to the programming input before hand, in which case it lacks the ability to make split-second adjustments to flight, targeting, etc that a human pilot can OR if it's up-datable, you still have that signal lag problem.
Could you elaborate on this? What sort of split-second adjustments would be required? I assume the computer can maneuver in accordance with commands from control (we do so all the time) and that the system does an adequate job of pointing the weapons. Nowhere do you need some mythical human 'flexibility'. For more on this, see Space Warfare XIII.

Greg said...

Addressing two posts at once (this is a more condensed version of my original longer post which the system seem to have 'eaten'):

First, lasers can indeed be jammed, either intentionally or by environmental factors.

1) Drop a load of water between your battlezone and the transmitter. Water vapor crystalizes into ice. Ice reflects/refracts the laser, and the control signal is lost. (Also a good defense against weapons-grade lasers).

2) Flood the battlezone with laser light of your own. The receivers on the drone can't pick out what is their control signal and what is laser "noise". This also means that on many vectors, an outgoing laser has a chance to get "lost" in the ambient light emitted by the primary.

3) LOS. What do you do if your opponent is on the other side of a major obstacle (ie, a planet). This also applies to radio, btw.

Other problems with laser comm:

1) time lag (again). Even at light speed, it's still a ~3 second round trip for an Earth-Moon distance signal.

2) That's a problem when your reciever can at any moment be forced to take an evasive action that puts it (assuming it's only travelling at Earth orbital speed) 30km+ off it's projected flight path. Add in the fact that by the time you even know you've lost signal lock, that receiver may have changed heading and/or speed again.

On to computer control:

Again, assuming we aren't talking AI (which is it's own disaster just waiting to happen, just ask Colonials or the humans of Skynet's Earth).

"Dumb" computers are excellent analyzers and linear thinkers. That's also their shortcoming. Non-AI computers cannot think. They cannot act outside the prescribed boundaries of their programming. They cannot be "inspired" or deceptive. They cannot engage in either strategy or tactics.

They are limited to being reactive. They cannot act proactively, and are slow to adjust to rapidly change, as they have to start their process or analysis and reaction from square one every time the situation changes. In short, they are inflexible, incapable of non-linear thinking.

Here is a very good article about the overall superiority of the human brain over a computer:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C001501/the_saga/compare.htm

Byron said...

Greg:
1) Drop a load of water between your battlezone and the transmitter. Water vapor crystalizes into ice. Ice reflects/refracts the laser, and the control signal is lost. (Also a good defense against weapons-grade lasers).
No, it doesn't work against high-power lasers. The water crystals will sublimate anyway in the vacuum, and a high-power laser will vaporize them very quickly. And getting the crystals between all of my other ships and the drone would be a good trick, if you could do it reliably.

2) Flood the battlezone with laser light of your own. The receivers on the drone can't pick out what is their control signal and what is laser "noise". This also means that on many vectors, an outgoing laser has a chance to get "lost" in the ambient light emitted by the primary.
I addressed exactly this in the paper I linked to. Won't work.

3) LOS. What do you do if your opponent is on the other side of a major obstacle (ie, a planet). This also applies to radio, btw.
I believe they're called relays.

1) time lag (again). Even at light speed, it's still a ~3 second round trip for an Earth-Moon distance signal.
You (or anyone else) has yet to prove that said lag will be militarily significant, at least to the point of outweighing the advantages in cost (and therefore in numbers) that drones allow. If a drone is 90-95% as effective as a manned warship for 75% of the cost, which one do you go with.

2) That's a problem when your reciever can at any moment be forced to take an evasive action that puts it (assuming it's only travelling at Earth orbital speed) 30km+ off it's projected flight path. Add in the fact that by the time you even know you've lost signal lock, that receiver may have changed heading and/or speed again.
You're confusing ships/aircraft and spacecraft. Any evasive action will be limited to a G or so. At 3 seconds lag, that translates to a displacement from its predicted position of 45m. I expect the comm spot will be substantially larger. And this assumes that the evasion was unanticipated.


"Dumb" computers are excellent analyzers and linear thinkers. That's also their shortcoming. Non-AI computers cannot think. They cannot act outside the prescribed boundaries of their programming. They cannot be "inspired" or deceptive. They cannot engage in either strategy or tactics.

They are limited to being reactive. They cannot act proactively, and are slow to adjust to rapidly change, as they have to start their process or analysis and reaction from square one every time the situation changes. In short, they are inflexible, incapable of non-linear thinking.

You're looking at this all wrong. The drone is not operating independently. There is a commander that is within a few light-seconds. He is the one who does the thinking. The drone receives commands like "turn to 174,+34, thrust at .1G, and open fire with primary laser on target 3." It would receive the same commands if he was onboard, just a bit sooner. It would also cost significantly more.
As previously mentioned, see Space Warfare XIII for more details.

Also, your use of Earth-moon distances is a bit of a strawman. My usual proposal is more like .5 ls.

TOM said...

Hi again everyone.

Personally, i had to give up my refusal of drones, both Byron and Locki was quite convincing (even if a man on the exact spot means some advantage in a pure shoot and kill situation, will it worth to sacrifice good pilots? Locki said drone operators have a higher suicide rate than normal soldiers, so remotely piloted half automatic drones wont be terminators)
Also space is a simple environment, you dont need HAL9000 for automation.

Well threads are protected by images that most programs cant read, i wondered if a difficult environment can be reproduced by jammers that floods sensors and cameras... still, if a man has to only recognize the targets, and plan the correct course of action, it can be still solved with remote control.

( In operatic setting you can have robot rebellion, but you can also have FTL comm... although they should rather like to telegraph than wifi, but from close range they can be still reliable. Also droning dont sacrifice much story elements. )

Immediate decisions mostly needed in more civil situations, like maintain peace and order, and that as an important thing in modern warfare ( see Irak and Afganistan) i think that is a thing that sceptics miss when they say motherships arent viable.

Byron said...

TOM:
Well threads are protected by images that most programs cant read, i wondered if a difficult environment can be reproduced by jammers that floods sensors and cameras... still, if a man has to only recognize the targets, and plan the correct course of action, it can be still solved with remote control.
I don't think that the situation is quite the same. The drone is not autonomous, so the human can do target recognition (even granting the efficacy of EW in space, which I'm none too sure about). The computer would control the pointing of the laser (or what have you) wither or not there was a human onboard, so there's no gain on that front.

Immediate decisions mostly needed in more civil situations, like maintain peace and order, and that as an important thing in modern warfare ( see Irak and Afganistan) i think that is a thing that sceptics miss when they say motherships arent viable.
Absolutely. Even then, the light-lag would only really be important in the equivalent of aerial combat (which won't happen). Human decision lag dominates at the scales under discussion. And it's not like everybody won't be used to some amount of light lag, anyway.

SouthernPhantom said...

I write fighters as being similar to modern-day naval helicopters. They're not a great deal faster than the ship itself, but carry excellent sensors and decent weaponry.

Additionally, they can be fired off an electromagnetic catapult to grant a velocity advantage. In an F-14-sized fighter utilizing a nuclear-thermal powerplant and liquid hydrogen reaction mass, ~25km/sec of delta-v is completely feasible and tactically relevant.

In terms of tactical employment, fighters are rare outside a carrier battle group. Usually, a flight or so is carried on the command ship of a capital-ship squadron. They serve as scouts, missile platforms, and general support craft for assault transports. Not quite X-wings, but it works.




Rick said...

A belated welcome to the comment threads!

Your mention of naval helicopters is interesting! Not quite the same argument, but see my post Space Fighters, Reconsidered.

Люси Сорью said...

So the thread that refuses to die STILL goes on? Clocking six years here, people. I also managed to read through the whole of it, so I either deserve a medal or an achievement unlock.

I'm wondering how much of the space fighter hate is grounded in knee-jerk reaction to Star Wars and BSG fame. Seeing how often X-Wings and Vipers get mentioned, it can give you that idea. Of course, it's not like I don't take potshots at SW and BSG (who doesn't now?), but my reasons have more to do with the way space fighters are portrayed (as WWII piston prop gunfighters instead of GLORIOUS JET POWERED GUIDED MISSILE MASTER RACE I much prefer, one curiously absent from -any- sci-fi) rather than with space fighters themselves.

That said, if we're discussing chemical engines, then I'm in agreement that manned chemfuel fighters make increasingly little sense. Even in an orbital environment, where we're better off with some future X-37 descendants.

I'm more sceptical at the capabilities of chemfuel missiles, at least anti-ship missiles, although at 15 000 km (.5 ls), I suppose, they could work fine. I'm more accustomed to half-second ranges, though, but my techlevel is similarly advanced. And even then, I'm sceptical as to whether it's cost-effective to throw expensive fusion engines in missiles, or even unmanned missile buses.

Of course, an ideal fighter (which is supposedly something like ideal gas) would still have the option of flying by remote. Possibly, if we do have manned fighters, the drone and the manned option would be interchangeable in a single hull. A slightly more interesting example would be a single manned fighter leading several unmanned ones in an anti-ship strike mission (read: drift to missile launch/enemy PD standoff range, launch missiles, flip 180 degrees and start burning back home as fast as possible), but I'm unclear how much utility that would have (besides shortening reaction times -for drone operators-). A more pure drone example would be drone fighters defending the carrier/battleship/battle group from incoming missiles/fighters, with the much shorter range allowing the drones to be operated remotely without any lookout/in-situ control aircraft (which might not be required at all). Of course, here in atmosphere dogfighting is pretty hard for drones, and will be (at least according to my friend who works in aerospace design - and I'm rather tempted to believe him than the crowd that reads Atomic Rockets like the Gospel), which is why modern UCAVs run ground strike missions for now on, but presumably it's easier to launch smaller missiles at bad bigger missiles in space. Not too much place for dogfighting here, either, just fly in, launch missiles, fly out. Flying out required because a miniaturized fusion engine (very much on the fringes of possible, but hardly breaking the laws of physics, and even then the drone fighter might look more like a Backfire bomber than a Reaper) is presumably too expensive to lose each time you need some ordinance thrown out there.

I'll still have my manned aerospace fighters, though!

*cackles madly*

Люси Сорью said...

Speaking of which, somebody mentioned something about Babylon-5 Starfuries running patrol missions, which sounds like a rather tempting idea (and my idea of a space fighter is closer to a Starfury than to an X-wing, except form, probably - although that's a credible justification for wings IN SPACE!), but alas, I haven't watched the actual show, so can anybody explain in more detail? It may convince me to finally give up and give B5 a try.

On the last note, sure you can say your 'fighter' is really a 'gunship', which is something I can definitely imagine Space Marines (here called Espatiers, Orbitjaegers, Spaceborne Troops (much like Soviet/Russian VDV than US Army Airborne) or Space Force Commandos) flying these kind of craft. With inevitable attack gunships appearing as an alternative to Space Hueys, although I'm more tempted to compare them to a Harrier Jump Jet.

Or some Optimistic Near Future™ reusable SSTO shuttlecraft, if comparisons with aircraft are -that- of a sore point.

TOM said...

Hi.

I also read, leaders of US. Air Force are rather skeptical about drones, it is one thing to do recon, bomb down some guerilla/terrorist, and another thing to defeat a real enemy...

But dogfight isnt likely in space maybe if you rather want to make a ship surrender, and take roughly the same course, to deal with the defender units one by one.

I thought a little bit about, maybe someone in the future want to remake Star Wars to be at least a very small degree hard, like they did with Batman and Dredd. Against an artificial moon 3000 units would be a little bit more realistic... after 3000 anti-proton missiles hit it...
Then TIE fighters could take off from inside docking bays to intercept enemies took an orbital flight path just above the surface...

About B5, i watched the first episode, i didnt liked it... are Centaurians that stupid, it is their racial identity that even an ambassador cannot control his rage??

I'm storytelling Warhammer40k i said the tau (who dont despise advanced computers) use advanced drone torpedos in deep space, but use fighters (mostly drones, lead by some manned squdron leaders if really fast decision making required) for orbital combat and secure, pacify captured worlds.
I changed "bombers" to corvettes, that are Hind copter like attack/transport vessels.

Люси Сорью said...

>But dogfight isnt likely in space maybe if you rather want to make a ship surrender, and take roughly the same course, to deal with the defender units one by one.

If your idea of a dogfight takes place at 5000 kilometers between both participants, then sure it can be called that. Really, it's more Soviet Naval Aviation strategic bomber ops IN SPACE than USN carrier ops IN SPACE.

Except that bombers usually don't need a carrier, and what would you land them on anyway, Habakkuk?

>I thought a little bit about, maybe someone in the future want to remake Star Wars to be at least a very small degree hard, like they did with Batman and Dredd. Against an artificial moon 3000 units would be a little bit more realistic... after 3000 anti-proton missiles hit it...
>Then TIE fighters could take off from inside docking bays to intercept enemies took an orbital flight path just above the surface...

Star Wars can hardly be saved even by most radical means.

It won't even have USN carrier ops IN SPACE that nBSG has.

This generation's penultimate space opera is still Mass Effect, though, and I'm still amazed how they show their work from time to time. Of course, then they shit all over it and dreadnoughts have decks parallel to the drive axis, contrary to what was stated in the Codex.

>I'm storytelling Warhammer40k i said the tau (who dont despise advanced computers) use advanced drone torpedos in deep space, but use fighters (mostly drones, lead by some manned squdron leaders if really fast decision making required) for orbital combat and secure, pacify captured worlds.

Imperium's torpedoes were pretty smart, too. There's not much you can improve on missile guidance even now, and I doubt it'd change even in the grim darkness of the far future where there is no logic.

Only macrocannon shells and lances are probably cheaper anyway.

Weber levels of missile spam are probably impossible, even at spitting distance with shipborne ICBM equivalents. And even in Honorverse missiles with on-board reactors are a major novelty.

>I changed "bombers" to corvettes, that are Hind copter like attack/transport vessels.

Hind wasn't that good as a transport, to the point when pilots refused to fly transport missions. Evac was done by Mi-8s anyway.

I'd expect boarding/inspection craft in space to carry side-mounted weapons, but dedicated attackers, if they appear, are better off ditching passengers altogether.

jollyreaper said...

Babylon 5 is excellent. Finish the first season. If you don't like it then, you won't like the rest. But it's a fantastic show.

TOM said...

"If your idea of a dogfight takes place at 5000 kilometers between both participants, then sure it can be called that."

Maybe not thousands kilometers, but yes large distances.

"There's not much you can improve on missile guidance even now, and I doubt it'd change even in the grim darkness of the far future where there is no logic."

I thought really smart attack craft can even protect itself from smaller interceptor missiles, (anti missile mines) a certain degree, i also think in W40k, average human missiles not 100% jamming and decoy proof.
(Well IMHO there are no perfect attack and defence system, but i guess they would laugh on a present day advanced missile, radar control, here goes the EMP, heat seeker, IR laser, you try to follow jamming, we launch a decoy that reflects the jamming laser to you, you try to direct it with a laser marker, sorry, you cant change the frequency and encoding fast enough to stop us from generating hundred false signals... etc
Of course i can still hardly save certain things in W40k, i really not the fan of robotic troops, but using drones for recon is perfectly acceptable to me... well the Admech uses skull servos. However it is also a part of the world, that average human life matters next to nothing. )

"Except that bombers usually don't need a carrier"

Smaller orbital craft can be operated from land bases, but it is cheaper to return to an orbital station or mothership for refuel, rearm, repair.
The last one can regroup both orbital and surface (aerial, aerospace) forces between colonies, and launch them after an initial bombardment softened up defences enough to get an acceptable mortality rate.


It is good to update my knowledge on Hind, although i think in space, it is easier to operate with mission oriented payload.


Thanks Jolly i think i will give B5 another chance, i hope not every characters are that stupid.
(I began to hate BSG, how could be the humans that stupid, it is so ugly to kill mass produced clones with a virus... but we give lethal threats to unwilling workers... )

jollyreaper said...

I've been a long critic of BSG for many reasons. It basically all boils down to they had no idea what they were doing, made it up as they went, and created a really stupid story with no redeeming qualities and by that I mean even the bits that were good were ruined by association.

B5, on the other hand, feels even smarter with rewatch. While not all the parts and pieces went as planned, some pretty fancy footwork made most of it fit. The experience is so rewarding.

The Centauri seem like clowns? The narn like bullies? You think you have the measure of the situation? Keep watching and don't read any wiki entries until you finish.

BSG had a higher production value and good actors but it was just destroyed by maggot-brained writing. Terminally stupid, ignorant, unforgivable writing.

Люси Сорью said...

>Maybe not thousands kilometers, but yes large distances.

But why would you go any smaller? What are your fighters, WWI biplanes in space, with pilots shooting each other with their laser revolvers (which were totally a thing in reality)?

>I thought really smart attack craft can even protect itself from smaller interceptor missiles, (anti missile mines) a certain degree, i also think in W40k, average human missiles not 100% jamming and decoy proof.

In 40k, maybe. But 40k is the modern edgy SW and should not be considered seriously.

In reality, a space Sidewinder would be a one-hit kill. Two if you're really lucky.

>Smaller orbital craft can be operated from land bases, but it is cheaper to return to an orbital station or mothership for refuel, rearm, repair.

So aerial tankers IN SPACE!

>The last one can regroup both orbital and surface (aerial, aerospace) forces between colonies, and launch them after an initial bombardment softened up defences enough to get an acceptable mortality rate.

...combined with AWACS?

Well, that's pretty much my idea of any space warship, period. Bomber, gunship and AWACS rolled into one.

Air Force guys would be forced to adopt at least -some- naval practice, though. Besides, Colonels and Generals sound awkward in space.

TOM said...

Ok, jolly you convinced me to continue. :)


"But why would you go any smaller? "
"In reality, a space Sidewinder would be a one-hit kill."

Well i can imagine something like using your lasers to take out each other's sensor arrays (including the majority of incoming missiles, i have doubts they will be one shot-one kill. yes if they hit, the target is gone, the point is to prevent that they, or their shrapnels hit) , telescopes, focusing mirrors, the most vulnerable stuff, then you have to go closer to hit with a coilgun with the remaining few backup sensors.
Maybe it is unlikely... but my point is, the more advanced the defence systems, to closer you have to get.
(Otherwise i said in W40k, that if a missile really hits, not just a few shrapnels scratch it, then even a kilometers long ship with warp shields and stuff like that is seriously damaged at least)

"So aerial tankers IN SPACE!"

Well, i would rather call the bigger ones mobile bases, but something like that. :)


" Bomber, gunship and AWACS rolled into one. "

I can agree, even the smaller ones could drop kinetic bombs, have pretty good sensors, and fine missiles.

Jim Baerg said...

I started reading the later comments on this post & am not finished, but I have some comments of my own on some comments from well after the original post, but still a few years old.

The Different Anonymous August 28, 2009 at 7:58 PM
"I haven't heard about it. Why have a missile with a FUSION drive and a FUSION warhead? When the missile gets there, just turn off the

controls and let the drive go BOOM"

Nuclear bombs don't work like that. If you don't do things just right a fission bomb will blow itself apart when only a minute

fraction of the fissile material has fissioned & you get an explosion not much bigger than that from a similar mass of chemical

explosive, ie: a fizzle. A sufficiently badly designed & operated reactor can be made to run away like at Chernobyl, but similarly the

fission energy released before it wrecked itself was a tiny fraction of the energy in the fuel & at least as much damage came from the

graphite fire.

Since no one has made a practical fusion reactor I suppose you could handwave the idea that a working fusion reactor could be made to

explode, but the proposed designs all feed modest amounts of fuel into the reactor at any time those designs couldn't explode all

their remaining fuel like a bomb either.


jollyreaper February 10, 2010 at 10:06 PM
"Yet here we are today utterly dependent upon oil but not starting crash programs to get off of it."
I recently ran across a fact relevent to why that is. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_the_Earth then click on the name of the guy who provided the funding & note where his wealth came from. What is good for the general public isn't necessarily what is good for the people with wealth & power.

I think most of the people reading this blog already know that the anti-nuclear talking points are at most deliberately misleading half truths, but the above noted fact says why the BS seldom gets questioned.

TOM said...

I imagine that if a fusion reactor's plasma containment systems damaged by enemy fire, the superhot plasma gets out and incinerates the crew and electronics of the ship...

My latest speculations how to make space battles at least a tiny bit like cool operatic stuff.

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=721385

Augustus said...

Perhaps you have an honor obsessed human culture or alien race. For them, locking a pilot into a rocket propelled torpedo with a fragmentation bomb or two strapped to it might make sense.

I personally think the "pinnace" idea is rather silly. Wouldn't the missile carrier simply use radar or other sensors to select and fire upon targets?

TOM said...

Pinnacles : due to light-lag, and finite telescope resolution, i think it makes sense to advance a pinnacle if there are really light hour distances.

I created a setting with prolonged free for all war in the asteroid belt. Since the goal is to capture the valuable mines, missions where cover and hiding do exists, are far from marginal.
There are also a good number of asymmetric battles, like commerce raid.
So i think, fighters that can attack beyond cover and reusable do make sense.
If there is already a 100km/s closing speed, 104 or 110km/s doesnt change that much, fighters also use coilguns and laser jammers against point range defence.
(Lasers, if you decrease distance to 100km from 10.000, a one meter mirror can focus as precisely as a 100m mirror from the bigger distance.)

Anonymous said...

"Yes, the fighter is fast and maneuverable - but not faster than a laser beam" lasers work by concentrating energy(light) into a beam to heat or similar effect an object, but with the exception of the highest intensity lasers are not instant kill.

Dani said...

Your Lancer concept here is very interesting. Would it be possible to have a human controller Lance-craft surrounded by a swarm of AI controlled drones, the drones working as suicide shields and radar confusion? The drones held in place using some kind of EM field and small thrusters for maneuvering? This follows the Zeroth law of space combat, but still uses AI to cut down attrition losses

Network Geek said...

Wouldn't it make more sense for the "space fighters" to be something more like drones, instead? Short range, with limited tactical ordinance and remotely piloted from a larger ship with plenty of armor and heavier weapons. It seems like a logical extension of the current drone technology and usage, to me. Imagine, if you will, a row of "cockpits", like the trainers in Space:Above and Beyond, if you all remember that show, but linked to drones and all in the belly of a large battle cruiser type of ship. It makes sense.

Anonymous said...

I have been researching this topic for some time now, nice to see others trying to figure this out! Through my research, however, I noted that the same technology that would allow us to expand into space would probably also have huge effects on our socio-economic and political systems. Assuming Moore's Law eventually plateaus off, how would we deal with the immense technology at our disposal? The ramifications of super-intelligent AI and bio-technical augmentation on society would be huge!
Has anyone here been figuring out how basic "sci-fi" society would be constructed? I know this is a little off topic, but I figure we can predict future warfare strategies better if we have a foundation for the civilizations we're referring to.

Unknown said...

wow it's like everyone here chooses to ignore military science. the fact is that space fighters will be critical if for no reason other than to perform CAS during planetary operations. missiles and drones would be incapable of performing such missions in any universe where physics is a thing.

Rick said...

The short answer is a quibble - but a big, important quibble: Close air support calls for atmospheric aircraft. Even if they are exo-atmospheric, deployed from orbit and recovering back to orbit (the latter being really, really difficult), the performance qualities needed for the close support mission would not make them well suited to fighting in space.

Arguably it would still be legitimate to call them 'space fighters', but they would not fit the popular usage of the term, which generally implies space combat.

Having said that, see also a later post here, Space Fighters Reconsidered.

http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2010/05/space-fighters-reconsidered.html

There I argue for the plausibility of a class of small spacecraft I call 'gunships', suited to close support missions in space. But I give them a different name because their missions and characteristics really don't have much in common with 'space fighters' as portrayed in Star Wars et al.

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