Subject:
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Re: Combat strategies and tactics in space. Was: Jormungand Carrier Strike Craft
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.space
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Date:
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Tue, 19 Oct 2004 05:23:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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1096 times
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I didn’t say that you didn’t account for the physics involved, I said that
you didn’t consider what impact the sheer scale of space would have on combat
strategies and tactics. One can postulate methods around the laws of
physics as currently known, but only within reason.
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The scales are still staggering by normal conparison. Consider a battle at
earth to moon distances . Detection time is in the order of 2-3 seconds to
cover the distance. Lets use a 300 G acceleration...d=1/2AT^2, and one light
second (300 000 000m/s)=.5*(300*9.81)*t^2
You end up with 451 seconds between launch and arrival.
Giving you almost 7.5 min to react, and get out of dodge.
(although during the last second, the object travels 1 327 293 m (1327 km, or
about the distance from here to Calgary, give or take...)
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That much is obvious. At any rate, I should’ve specified that I meant
distances beyond the Earth’s (effective or measurable) gravitational
influence. For the sake of discussion, imagine a battlefield of not greater
volume than the Solar System.
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See above why it is not practical, IMO, to have a battle space much larger than
a few tens of thousands of KM, not much bigger than area defined by LEO.
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posed an assumption the validity of which is contingent upon
clearly defined technical parameters, and as such, must be stated. If such
has not been developed, this statement is not an argument but rather a
technically baseless opinion.
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True, which is why I think that a battle space of in the order of 30 000-60 000
km “square” is a practical limit for a insystem drive that does not have near
instant acceleration. Even given cannon accelleration rates, or lightspeed
weapons, a battlefield much larger than 60 000 km across allows the opponents to
manouver outside of attack profiles. You’d have a elaborate dance until somone
got unlucky.
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Not true, radar and laser (active) detection are not practical above a
certain distance, depending on the ranges involved and the powers and
resolution of the transceiving sensors. Furthermore, active use of sensor
systems isn’t a good idea for general use, as it clearly identifies one’s
position and vector, for little gain. Even if one does have a good idea as to
the enemy’s location, return signals might take weeks to detect, at which
time you might not even be in a position to receive sensor echos. In order to
do so, one would have to know the vectors of the enemy in the first place, in
which case it would be pointless to even use active sensors. Passive sensor
use would be much better for these reasons. The situation is quite analogous
to submarine warfare.
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Passive sensors are not really practical either due to sensor and transmitter
lag. If you can eliminate the transmission lag, then they might play a part,
but until that happens, too bad, so sad.
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How’d you reach that line of reasoning? You’re assuming that we will have
switched to a defensive type of warfare. The Strategic Defense Initiative
(Starwars was a name given by political and media detractors of SDI) would’ve
been much more useful in a scenario in which we executed a first-strike than
one in which we try to absolutely stop all enemy weapons from detonating on
target. One would use offensive weapons to destroy the vast majority of the
enemy’s retaliatory ability, and then use defensive systems to intercept the
percentage of the enemy’s weapons that would inevitably survive and be
employed. I think this scenario would be more applicable to space combat than
any defensive based warfare.
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Which is why some of us think SDI is a BAD idea in the first place, because it
puts people into a use it or loose it mentality. MAD was a good, agreed on
stratagy. Neither side could see a way to “win” a nuke war. Now, what happens
when the US pushes NK too far right now? They are in a use it or loose it
position...they are going to gamble that the US wants LA or Honolulu more than
it wants Seoul. They may be wrong, but the US is going to loose just the same.
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What do you mean by “advanced”? The weapons of which I was speaking
(enhanced-radiation and bomb-pumped x-ray lasers) are merely different types
of nuclear weapons. Enhanced-radiation weapons work by maximizing the fusion
output of a bomb in relation to fission output, as the spectra of radiation
emitted by fusion is more applicable to the role of enhanced-radiation
devices than the radiation spectra of fission. This is accomplished with a
multitude of techniques, such as removing the third-stage of a
fission-fusion-fission (FFF) bomb, which would otherwise use the energy
emitted by the fusion stage so as to undergo fission and enhance the bomb’s
yield. I’m not sure exactly how X-ray lasers work, but somehow fibre optics
are used to channel the radiation emitted by the bomb (FF, I believe, though
it might also be accomplished with an FFF bomb or plain fission bomb) into a
phased stream of x-rays.
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Best book for a non techinical disscussion on some varients of nuke devices is
probably “Project Orion”, which makes interesting science fact reading anyway.
I’d thoughly recommend it to any si-fi reader.
(and no, X-ray lasers don’t work by using fiber optics...the gamma radiation
pulse is used to convert something that is optically clear to X rays into X rays
from gamma radiation. I think Styrofoam is one of the chemicals of choice.
Read Moorland’s essays about the H bomb to gain a better understanding, but
suffice to say, all of the detail design for FFF bombs is classified. Born
classified, in fact. By careful engineering and testing, it is possible to get
up to 85% directed effects of a nuke. There is some more about it in Project
Orion, but not much because of the problems of classification of all information
and the fact that Orion were not the bomb designers “at work” but them at play
instead. (and they were so darn’d close...so very close, but so far away)
Physical realities would dictate how large a volume a space battle could occur
within. If FTL is limited to large objects, then a small volume battle will
result. If FTL sensing and commo are also in existance, a larger volume will
result. If FTL weapons and sensors/commo exist, then truely massive distances
are possible between combatants. (limited by how fast FTL is). The relative
energy of objects at truely astounding velocities mean that if you can hit a
opponent, they are basically dead.
James Powell
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