You sunk my...

[Sponge]

you don't fight a war just to destroy ships. you fight a war to take planets and resources.

Okay, great. The enemy has a ship guarding their planet. What are you going to do? Sit there taking potshots at eachother for months, hoping someone forgets to fire a counter-missile (which would be a pretty big fuckup, seeing as you'll know of a missile threat at least 20 days beforehand)?

if the enemy aren't a threat, and you are defending a planet, why chase them?

Did I say chasing them in such an instance would be a good idea? I think you did, actually.

to close the distance, a ship needs to fire engines to get at the right heading to make an intercept. The other ship can now just drop some missiles on a timer and go the other way. As the enemy closes on the missiles, they get going, and it's already too late.

Why would said "enemy" go toward the "other" ship? They can engage from afar. This missile dropping strategy hinges largely on the enemy getting very close before the missiles become active (ie, give off heat signatures).

When they retreat from missiles, the defender wins.

You can't retreat from something capable of accelerating considerably faster than you. Here enters counter-missiles, or, more simply, heavy missiles designed to target and pursue oncoming missiles. Alternatively, swarms of light missiles could be used instead.

also, if your missiles are going faster than the ship, even if it takes months, (assuming the missile still has fuel for maneuvering and power for sensors), it will catch up.

Hence why you shoot them down. At a distance of under a light second, this becomes a chore. When you have a few weeks notice, it's just a matter of launching some counter missiles.

the opening volley would most likely be launched days from the target, but most of the combat would more than likely be at distances of light seconds.

This is sort of inconsistent with what you were saying earlier, but I agree. Opening volleys are still likely to be fairly ineffective, because light minutes just grant too much reaction time for anything not moving at the speed of light.

EDIT: also, why do you assume that the missiles would be obvious to the enemy before the thrusters kick in. if they are on passive sensors, or waiting for a signal, they just look like more space debris. you could also launch the missiles to coast closer into range as the enemy approaches whatever you are defending, and activate when they get close.

I didn't mean to make any such assumption. You made a statement that seemed as if you were implying the drop and run technique to be viable. It would never be used simply because no ship would needlessly chase another full well knowing that a trap is very likely. Rather, both ships would fire opening volleys and then try to close the distance so that their weapons would actually become effective. The problem with launching missiles and letting them coast is that if you were to then accelerate toward the enemy, you'd pass up your missiles. Sure, they'd be all but invisible to sensors, but they would realistically never reach their target. The advantage of missiles is that they're light enough to achieve nice speeds. If they're coasting, they loose their viability. Now, if you were defending a planet, this would become more viable, as you are less likely to approach the enemy-- they'll probably come to you.

and, why would combat be short and quick when travel, even in system, takes months to years.

Not saying it should be quick. I'm commenting on the effect ranges of weapons. If you know something is coming for two weeks, you can shoot it down. If you know something's coming for an hour, it becomes MUCH harder to shoot it down. Especially when the enemy ship is also bearing down on you with railguns. My guess is that space battles would be more or less a game of chicken. You'd start by shooting missiles and getting close. Your opponent would probably do the same. As you got closer, your midrange laser weaponry would enter its effective range, and that would be engaged. Under a lightsecond, and the highspeed railguns kick in. Once those railvolleys start showing up, the PD kicks in and the two ships engage their evasive maneuvering to avoid hitting each other or getting too close to react to missiles effectively.

[Ixranin]

you don't fight a war just to destroy ships. you fight a war to take planets and resources. if the enemy aren't a threat, and you are defending a planet, why chase them? When they retreat from missiles, the defender wins. also, if your missiles are going faster than the ship, even if it takes months, (assuming the missile still has fuel for maneuvering and power for sensors), it will catch up.

Wouldn't the attacker have the advantage? Following most of the logic you're using, the attacker could launch missiles from an incredible distance towards what you're defending. You'd either not notice them or write them off as "space debris" until they suddenly activate at close range to your planet/space station/asteroid/etc.

[Skrim]

Now for defenses, as a continuation of my previous post.

For point defense, any kind of above-mentioned weapon can be miniaturized and used as a point defense system, though in my opinion, missiles and lasers would work best.

For other defenses, each kill type has separate requirements:

4A1: Whipple shields, heavy composite armor.

4A2: Composite armor or any heavy armor plating.

4B1A: Any armor plating. Reactive and composite would work better, though.

4B1B: Electromagnetic or explosive reactive armor, and composite armor.

4B1C: Composite armor or any heavy armor plating.

4B1D: Whipple shields or any spaced armor plating.

4B2: Very heavy advanced composite armor with NBC protection. Still sort of inadequate, though.

4B3: Something not yet invented. It would have to try and blow off as much antimatter as possible into space and not allow it to annihilate too close to the hull.

4C1: Ablative armor, reflective armor, refractive/defocusing materials.

4C2: Ablative armor, electromagnetic fields, defocusing mechanisms.

4D: Not having a crew, any armor plating.

4E: Being unmanned and non-organic. And of course, any armor.

4F: Faraday caging. Sufficiently thick armor with NBC protection.

[Wicky_42]

Also with missiles and railguns - why not combine the two? Launch a smart projectile from a railgun: instant high speeds, less fuel mass needed in the projectile to travel the same distance, giving lighter, more manoeuvrable missiles. Throw in ecm warheads to counter enemy countermeasures and point defences, and add some laser warheads into the mix for added fun that detonates farther out than standard warheads and you have a fast moving, agile, defence-resistant and powerful long ranged weapon system.

Interesting. My first concern would be the targeting computer. I should think it would be incredibly difficult to shield a computer from some of the most powerful magnets imaginable.

Shielding wouldn't be that hard - electromagnetic fields can be blacked in the same way that other em radiation is - with something conductive. Protect the missile computer systems with a faraday's cage analogy, for example. Obviously the strength of the field is going to be considerable, and possibly more than modern tech could compensate for, but we're talking about sci-fi here, with a firm basing in current tech. Not hard to see what we already have developed by technological advancement.
_________________

The light bending tech I talked about earlier could go a long way to reducing engagement ranges by considerably reducing the effectiveness of active sensors - if em radiation can 'pass through' the ship because it is coated in the stuff then that's most of our current detection methods fucked right there. Couple that with a system to direct the ship's heat emissions - eg, a 'beam' of waste heat directed out the stern, and thus undetectable passively until an object or the observer pass through the beam - and you have a good start on stealthing technology. Gravimetric sensors would probably be much harder to counter, but they are pretty damn fictitious at the moment, so lets just ignore them.

So, a technology that's being worked on now could well be something that could change the theoretical future of space warfare. Capable of rendering a ship immune to laser weaponry and making it very hard to detect, it seems like an interesting proposition to me. Then there's the negative refractive index stuff, capable of potentially bouncing lasers back at the target or creating a perfect mirror against active em sensors - potential there for powerful chaff, laser dampening screens, dangerous anti-laser armour etc.

Couple those technologies with missiles and you get hard to detect, fast-moving projectiles that could deploy a cloud of sensor fucking chaff around the target, preventing it from maintaining a lock on any targets outside the cloud, whilst the attacking ship maintains a very good idea of the location of the target. Just one idea that occurs to me.

[Malahite]

First, on mass drivers and reilguns - they might be, as someone mentioned, a good weapon, but you have to remember, that giving them kinetic energy requires also some amount of energy spent. Plus, you have to watch out for recoil - a turret mounted gun could be just ripped from the hull upon firing. A side-mounted gun could price inside the hull. If we have hulls able to resist structural damage that can be caused by recoil in such gun then I think we'll also near hulls that can protect from that kind of projectile.

Second. I think think our combat zone, to be efficient, should start with a few kilometres, and end at max. 100-200 km. Ok, maybe even 500km Why? It's the effective distance for most of the weapons we mentioned. Like everyone's been arguing, at higher and extreme distances most weapons become unusable.
If two hostile ship/fleet captains meet, there can bee three outcomes - both decide to engage, one side decides to engage, neither decides to engage. In the first condition, both move in effective firing range [note: not maximum firing range.] and see who's lucky this day. In second condition, one fleet decides to withdraw, while the other gives chance, shooting from maximum range. In the third, no shooting occurs, maybe except some show-off salvo.

Also, placing a missile one an enemy route requites knowing WHERE the enemy will move. That's not that easy in space. Plus, if we know tat 100%, then it's more wise to place mines, instead of rocket [thou, in space, one doesn't have to differ that much from another].
Also, such 'hidden' missiles would require some sort of system that activates them. So, they could be picked up as electronic devices, not space derbies. And hiding this kind of emission would probably give another, and so on, and so on, until our missile must be the size of a large truck, just to get undetected by sensors. But then, we have the human eye, and mass detection...

[Darlos9D]

I've read a bit about this. The article I read seemed more geared toward using materials like this to create cloaking materials: materials invisible to the human eye. While sensors would likely be able to see the stuff, this "laser armor" could have the interesting side effect of rendering the enemy ship completely invisible.

Not sure that being invisible would be any use in space. Though maybe you weren't talking about space here.

Somebody else said something about cloaking heat signatures with similar materials. I think I need to explain what the heat signatures ARE exactly, to show why this isn't really feasible, as far as I know.

See, space is a vacuum. Therefore, heat cannot be transferred to it, since there's no matter in it for the heat to transfer to. Now, any space ship, filled up with machines, is going to generate heat. If that heat can't transfer out to space, since there's nothing for it to transfer to, then the ship would overheat. The only way to get rid of heat on a ship would be to actually collect the heat in some kind of matter somehow (probably a gas or liquid) and then blow that matter out of the ship.

So, maybe you could mask the heat of the ship itself. But how do you mask those clouds of heated gas and liquid that come out if it? Those will clearly give off their own heat signature.

Couple that with a system to direct the ship's heat emissions - eg, a 'beam' of waste heat directed out the stern, and thus undetectable passively until an object or the observer pass through the beam - and you have a good start on stealthing technology.

So, how would that work? Even if you shoot out a concentrated jet of matter, it'll still emit radiation in all directions.

We'd have to devise some system to greatly take advantage of the phenomenon of heat loss through radiation before this problem would be totally solved, and I have no idea how one might "speed up" that process.

[Draco18s]

See, space is a vacuum. Therefore, heat cannot be transferred to it, since there's no matter in it for the heat to transfer to. Now, any space ship, filled up with machines, is going to generate heat. If that heat can't transfer out to space, since there's nothing for it to transfer to, then the ship would overheat. The only way to get rid of heat on a ship would be to actually collect the heat in some kind of matter somehow (probably a gas or liquid) and then blow that matter out of the ship.

Wro-ong!

Outer space has a temperature of 3 Kelvin, give or take a half a degree or so.

If you pump water into space, guess what, it freezes. Guess that heat went somewhere.

[Skrim]

Wro-ong!

Outer space has a temperature of 3 Kelvin, give or take a half a degree or so.

If you pump water into space, guess what, it freezes. Guess that heat went somewhere.

The temperature of empty space is 2.73 Kelvin, thanks to the ever-present Cosmic Background Radiation.

If you pump water into space, it will freeze eventually, but it'll take a rather longer time than if you put it into really cold air or other cold fluid.

Heat can be transferred to space, but it will be in the form of infrared radiation instead of convection. The energy exists as infrared-spectrum photons. That's where it went. But because radiating heat is slower and more difficult than giving it to passing fluid molecules, space is, in the end, a good insulator.

The Space Shuttle, with it's low-powered engines and general primitiveness(compared to the stuff we're talking about), has to keep it's cargo bay doors open in space to avoid overheating. Combat spacecraft in the future would only have bigger problems.

The light bending tech I talked about earlier could go a long way to reducing engagement ranges by considerably reducing the effectiveness of active sensors - if em radiation can 'pass through' the ship because it is coated in the stuff then that's most of our current detection methods fucked right there. Couple that with a system to direct the ship's heat emissions - eg, a 'beam' of waste heat directed out the stern, and thus undetectable passively until an object or the observer pass through the beam - and you have a good start on stealthing technology. Gravimetric sensors would probably be much harder to counter, but they are pretty damn fictitious at the moment, so lets just ignore them.

So, a technology that's being worked on now could well be something that could change the theoretical future of space warfare. Capable of rendering a ship immune to laser weaponry and making it very hard to detect, it seems like an interesting proposition to me. Then there's the negative refractive index stuff, capable of potentially bouncing lasers back at the target or creating a perfect mirror against active em sensors - potential there for powerful chaff, laser dampening screens, dangerous anti-laser armour etc.

Couple those technologies with missiles and you get hard to detect, fast-moving projectiles that could deploy a cloud of sensor fucking chaff around the target, preventing it from maintaining a lock on any targets outside the cloud, whilst the attacking ship maintains a very good idea of the location of the target. Just one idea that occurs to me.

Heat is VERY easy to detect in space - the Space Shuttle's weakling main engines can be detected out to the distance of Pluto, and it's effing maneuvering thrusters can be detected as far as the asteroid belt. With current technology.

Your heat-beam would have to be so advanced that the heat emission in all other directions would have to be 2.73 Kelvin, so as to blend in with the background of space.

Some of your waste heat could be recycled back into electricity using nanoscale "quantum dot" infrared photovoltaics, a technology currently under development. But some heat would still be left over, since you can't reach 100% energy conversion efficiency in accordance with thermodynamics.

As to how your going to direct this heat into a beam, though, I don't know. Any device that moves heat around generates more heat in the process. You'd need some kind of advanced nanotech, with a method to prevent infrared photons from tunneling back and undoing your hard work.

So, your stealth spacecraft will have to be unmanned(the freakin' 285 Kelvin life support system on a manned ship will obviously be a big lighthouse showing your ship's position), it's engines will have to be off, any active sensor would have to be off, weapons would have to be inactive, and it would need some high nanotech to reabsorb heat, direct it, and concentrate it into an infrared beam.



Present-day experimental "cloaking" tech is really quite primitive. We've got materials that can bend microwaves around them, and could have stuff that bends other spectra around it too. But this is for bending radiation falling on the cloaked object - how well would it hide radiant emissions from the cloaked object itself? Sure thing, you could use it against radars, laser trackers and eyeballs, but passive IR sensors would still get you. It would also be useless if you have your engines/weapons/radar on.

As for laser defense, sure you could mitigate it using such special materials that reflect, refract and twist the laser, but that material would be taking at least some of the directed energy itself - it would need to be able to survive the laser hit to a reasonable extent itself before it could be used to protect something behind it.

[Deltaflyer]

Actually attackers will always have the advantages, seeings as they mostly have-

A) The element of surprise.
B) Scans of enemy vessels to optimise their own effectiveness and
C) The fact that they can bombard from range, whilst defenders are, for the most part, sandwiched against the planet.

[FIREST0RM000]

Alright, I think many of the people posting here are migrating onto different subjects and tech levels. I'm working under the basic assumptions that:

-there have been no world altering breakthroughs at the time we are discussing.
-no serious nanotech. maybe some, but nothing that would allow some of the stuff I'm hearing.
-the attacker wants to take a planet, not destroy it. If they wanted to destroy it, they'd just start throwing asteroids.
-there is no FTL. engagements are taking place inside of the solar system.

this is by no means a requirement for what we're talking about (this isn't even my thread), but would everyone please at least give the basis of their assumptions. I'm having trouble figuring out if some people are clueless, or talking about something else.

Also, it you are debating, siting your source helps. so do quotes.

I'll get around to defending my argument in a little bit.

[Sponge]

-there have been no world altering breakthroughs at the time we are discussing.
-no serious nanotech. maybe some, but nothing that would allow some of the stuff I'm hearing.
-the attacker wants to take a planet, not destroy it. If they wanted to destroy it, they'd just start throwing asteroids.
-there is no FTL. engagements are taking place inside of the solar system.

You and I, at least, are on the same page. Except with the throwing asteroids part. I don't see how that would be possible. High-yield nukes from orbit (possibly salted bombs if you're after population) for bombardment, and lasers for smaller targets. Alternately, if high-yield nukes were unavailable, railguns would also suffice. Special, higher mass rails would be a plus.

[Malahite]

I'll bump an idea - what about converting heat into other forms of energy?

[Wicky_42]

Problem is Malahite that every engine we currently know of and can conceivably construct produces waste energy as heat - even converting heat would generate more heat. Heatsinks are pretty much the only way to go - doesn't Mass Effect have something along this line? Heatsinks that are pre-cooled during normal operation, then used for short duration thermal stealthing before having to be cooled off again before the ship overheats.

Skrim, with regards to the heat beam, potentially merely channeling all the heat from the ship into one focused spot would create an infra-red beam that could be focused through static means to be directed away from the enemy and large bodies liable to reflect the beam back in the wrong direction. I'm not going to pretend that this would be a perfect solution - even space dust could potentially give up a trace. However, it would be VASTLY harder to detect than a shining thermal object against the 3 K background of space.

As to how to focus the heat... well, central heating in reverse? I'm sure that a mere water pump could shed more heat from sufficient surface area exposed to space than it would generate, and there's obviously far more efficient systems out there. Couple that with a system of temporary storage heatsinks for use in pre-combat situations and you have a means to get close to the opposition without your heat signiture giving you away. Even if traces were detected, potentially it could be more difficult for the enemy to get a precise fix on your location or velocity, making your attack still highly effective.

As to electromagnetic emissions, a lot depends on the sensitivity of the sensors being used against you as to how much em shielding you are going to need in order to maintain combat readiness in a stealthy approach.

These stealth ideas aren't meant to be the end-all in combat invisibility - I'm envisaging them to be more a means to close with a target. If the opposing fleet isn't tied to defending a fixed objective - starbase, planet, crippled ship etc - then there's no reason for them to stand and fight if the odds aren't in their favour (I believe points to this effect have already been made). Therefore, the only ways to force a battle with a foe would be
a) to FTL into their position, presuming insufficient warning from such a system as to prevent the enemy fleeing (FTL varies so much from series to series that this is impossible to decide on, so let's just ignore it),
b) to catch them in a head on high speed intercept, where they are travelling at too high a velocity to decelerate fast enough to prevent an engagement - probably hard to pull of at will, relying as it does on both sides travelling towards each other at high sub-light speeds,
and c) to sneak undetected into optimum weapons range, giving you the advantage of already moving against a static target as well as already being in range, forcing the opposition to either slowly try to accelerate away, suffering huge casualties or to engage your mobile force unprepared.

I cannot think of any other common means of forcing an engagement that the opposition wouldn't want to commit to. Any ideas?

[Skrim]

I'll bump an idea - what about converting heat into other forms of energy?

Click Here.

Skrim, with regards to the heat beam, potentially merely channeling all the heat from the ship into one focused spot would create an infra-red beam that could be focused through static means to be directed away from the enemy and large bodies liable to reflect the beam back in the wrong direction. I'm not going to pretend that this would be a perfect solution - even space dust could potentially give up a trace. However, it would be VASTLY harder to detect than a shining thermal object against the 3 K background of space.

As to how to focus the heat... well, central heating in reverse? I'm sure that a mere water pump could shed more heat from sufficient surface area exposed to space than it would generate, and there's obviously far more efficient systems out there. Couple that with a system of temporary storage heatsinks for use in pre-combat situations and you have a means to get close to the opposition without your heat signiture giving you away. Even if traces were detected, potentially it could be more difficult for the enemy to get a precise fix on your location or velocity, making your attack still highly effective.

Oh. So you're expectations are lower - merely to decrease detection range. That would simply require you to put out less heat in the direction of the enemy looking for you.

Still, detection ranges, given future military-grade space sensor tech, would exceed those of present-day stuff as far as detecting spacecraft is concerned. So... :
-You still can't turn on your engines.
-You still can't fire any weapons.
-You still can't use any active sensors.

And still, unless you cool your spacecraft down to double-digit Kelvins, detection range would far exceed weapons range. So you'd
-1. Have to have a really low heat output in the direction of your target.
-2. Have to attack with long-ranged missiles, which are easier to intercept than, say, swarms of short-ranged missiles or barrages of mass-driver slugs, or lasers, or particle beams.

Without these criteria met, engagement plan C(as described in your post) won't be possible, because you'll still be tracked for a decent while(days or weeks) before you actually get into optimum weapons range.

Engagement plan A requires FTL. FTL would revolutionize things so heavily that I wouldn't even try imagining it.

Engagement plan B sounds possible and reasonable if your willing to spend the Delta-V on a high-velocity intercept. The costs and profits of doing this would depend on the value of whatever it is that the attacker wants to attack, and the defender wants to defend.

This entire argument would have to be divided into tech levels with specific propulsion, detection, weaponry and defense technologies available at each to avoid mashing things up too badly. Even 30 years of tech difference means a whole lot - like comparing F-22 Raptors with F-4 Phantoms. Or worse, F-4s with WW2 piston planes.
Somebody can't be talking about ion-drive powered craft with nuke missiles and laser turrets while somebody else is talking about antiproton-drive powered craft with annihilation missiles and neutron beams.

You and I, at least, are on the same page. Except with the throwing asteroids part. I don't see how that would be possible. High-yield nukes from orbit (possibly salted bombs if you're after population) for bombardment, and lasers for smaller targets. Alternately, if high-yield nukes were unavailable, railguns would also suffice. Special, higher mass rails would be a plus.

Throwing asteroids can be done by strapping some powerful thrusters on to them and remotely aiming them on an impact course with the target planet. It would only be used if you really want genocide and really want to see every last being(not counting microorganisms) on that planet dead.

It would of course be simpler to use a massive barrage of thermonukes and mass-drivers to do the same thing, but it is possible. Maybe even better if you've got the asteroids strapped up and ready to rumble before you've completely destroyed the poor planets remaining defenses. That way you could send the signal out to bring in Doomsday as soon as the last defending ship crumbles.

As for lasers and other directed energy weapons, they'd not be my choice because of the amount of energy they waste as they descend through the atmosphere. I'd use asteroids for massive carnage, nukes for general-purpose genocide, and Gauss coilguns for selective destruction and terrorizing of the population.

Of course, if it was up to me, it would only be used against aliens. Filthy alien scum.

[Darlos9D]

As I described earlier, some long-range planet-obliterating technology would only really require some 50+ ton of material launched at very high speeds. By the time we're living on enough other planets to consider doing something that drastic, we'll probably have the mass-driver technology required to make it happen. And the ability to plan the proper trajectory, taking the motion of bodies into account. No chemical or nuclear explosives required, really. It might not make the planet explode right out, but it would screw up the ecosystem and the surface of the planet enough to where whoever is living there probably wouldn't be trying to fight you anymore, assuming they even survive.