How would battles in space actually go?

[sdfgeoff]

Let's ignore physics, and assume we have laser guns, anti-gravity, counter-inertial-drives, and a pyroGX zipping around in space.
Let's also assume we have some people who want to fight each other in space.

What would it look like?
How would modern strategy evolve to fit the third dimension? Would moves like flanking work, when you now have so much more space to fill?

Would ships be long and thin, like they are currently, or would they evolve into spheres/disks/what?
If you had long-ships, you could broad-side someone, but if you had disks, you could point an edge at them, and pound them with a third of your weapons, while rotating to keep damaged sections out of the way of new fire, and to let weapons cool down. A sphere would have no clear place to attack (unless it's the death star), but would be impracticle to move. Probably better for guarding something.


I suspect that initially at least, it would be two ships, as heavily armoured as possible lobbing missiles at each other, and using CIWS to take out the other guys missiles until one of them took too much damage.
But I also think that as technology developed, fighters (or at least drones) would come into existence. What better to take out those missile turrets than small, hard-to-target vehicles?
At that point it would be two mother-ships lobbing missiles and fighters at each other... If we throw beam weapons into the mix though, strategy changes hugely, as now you can target a non-front-line ship easily and accurately. If you had something to protect, you'd have to gather yourself into a solid wall between the beam and the target to protect it.

So, for you writers and brains out there, write, (or present in another way), present a semi-realistic confrontation between two groups of equal-technology people in space.

[Isaac]

Before I give my opinion I assume...

Assumption 1: Resources will become almost infinite, mining asteroids and moons for raw material.

Assumption 2: Technology is good but not vastly superior to what we currently have; we can't teleport.

Assumption 3: People travel in spacecraft similar but much larger than the space shuttle.

I'm seeing lots of smart missiles. The majority fights would be between individuals at very long distances. For actual close combat, smart missiles of the two attacking parties would get between their ships, letting these ships get distance from the actual fight.

[Krom]

Beams are pretty impractical as an offensive weapon, although some high powered lasers could be useful for destroying or disabling incoming missiles for instance, but generally missiles or mass driver type weapons would be far more practical against larger targets at long range. The problem with a beam is that it has to be held on the target long enough to do some damage, which could be made unreasonably long with relatively simple countermeasures like making the ships hull out of a highly reflective material.

I think the things that would matter the most in space combat would probably start with stealth, if you can't locate your opponent, you can't shoot them either. So your ships heat/radar signature would be hugely important. Other stuff like decoys could also be pretty effective, especially when you consider there would be no radar observable difference from punching a mass driver round through a real ship, or through a lead balloon the same size and shape as that ship. And I think odds are the vast majority of fights would take place at well beyond practical visible range (barring the use of telescopes).

Missiles and mass driver weapons could also have tremendous range, as long as you can locate your target and calculate any effects of gravity on the path, you could hit them with a missile or a slug from thousands or even tens of thousands of miles away without using a lot of fuel/energy to do it. How long the effective range of mass driver shots would be, would depend on how maneuverable the ships were, the more maneuverable, the less range the gun would have (since ships would be able to avoid shots). Meaning if a mass driver fires its slug at 5 miles per second, but the target ship is 25 miles away, they would have 5 seconds to get out of the way. Or if they were 250 miles away, they would have 50 whole seconds to get out of the way, it all depends on how quickly the ship can dodge. So depending on the ship, if it is small and highly maneuverable like a fighter, 5 seconds would probably be plenty to dodge. But if it is big and bulky, even 50 seconds could be pretty uncomfortable to get out of the way. Missiles are a bit tougher because they could make in flight corrections all the way up till impact, so they would require various countermeasures (like burning them up with lasers/throwing off their guidance with chaff/destroying them with shotgun like rounds from a mass driver/etc).

Armor is another thing to consider, from a ground based space launch it is a ridiculous idea because it is far to heavy to get into space economically, but if you were mining asteroids and got the necessary materials from there, it is quite possible to heavily armor a space ship. Of course it would also be a tradeoff between armor and maneuverability, which could be fatal depending on how effective the weapons are. I imagine a mass driver slug at 5 miles/sec relative velocity could penetrate rather a lot of armor, so it would probably be better to just dodge it rather than trying to stop it. Probably armor would be limited to thick enough to stop bits of shrapnel from a uncomfortably close missile detonation, but otherwise light enough that if you were hit by a weapon directly it would not be something you would expect to survive.

Odds are the focus would be on offensive weapons, range and stealth, since defense against modern weapons is just too impractical and once you remove the atmosphere from the equation they become even more effective. The only real reduction in effectiveness would be for missiles, right now the shock wave from a missile causes a lot of damage even if the missile doesn't hit the target directly, but in space there would be no significant shock wave because there is no atmosphere so the missile would pretty much have to physically contact the target to be effective.

[woodchip]

Read David Webber's "The Honor Harrington" series. I think he does a decent job of what space warfare might be like. Missiles are the weapon of choice,with some designed solely for electronic spoofing, chaff missiles for messing up the enemy's radar system and of course the warhead missiles where-by he who has the longest range missiles wins

[Top Gun]

The unfortunate thing for us sci-fi nerds is that you almost certainly wouldn't see anything resembling small manned fighters...the necessary equipment and supplies to keep a human pilot alive are far too massive, and the G-forces involved would most likely crush them anyway, at least without the theoretical counter-inertial tech that geoff mentioned. Drones would definitely be the way to go in that regard. Krom's right that most of the actual combat would involve mass drivers or missiles, and take place at pretty significant ranges.

[sdfgeoff]

Hmm. Some interesting points made here.
I also posted this on another site, and they came to the same conclusion: stealth and not being detected is the key to survival.

After that came two opinions:
- Missiles
- Mass-driver

Missiles are good for super-long range, but are easy for CIWS to see and target.
A mass-driver is defeated simply by moving slightly, but nearly impossible to stop, even if you can see them. Hence: manouverability of ships is quite important.

I reckon though, that to try make missiles defeat the CIWS systems, they would slowly turn into drones. Probably not human-pilotable due to speed, but in order for a missile to get through, you either have to overwhelm the CIWS (needs lots of missiles), or be able to dodge. Insane AI could handle this, but then you have to have pretty decent control systems on board, and some brain will change the explosive warhead to a gun of some kind.

Advances in electromagnetics may mean the end to mass-driver warfare too. As a projectile comes out of a mass-driver barrel, it's probably magnetized slightly, or at least it could be magnetized. (assuming a rail-gun style launcher). By creating a massive electric field you could change it's course slightly, and if the projectile was in the field long enough, it would miss. because ships won't be close (to avoid the enemies shots), there should be plenty of time.
Also, in space mass is the most vital aspect of your ship. If you have some fabrication system, then losing mass means you can repair your ship less, and so on. This would lead to a rise in energy weapons.


Someone elsewhere mentioned hit-and-run style attacks:
You see your enemy at long range, accelerate towards them, and hope they don't notice you until you've passed them, at which point your mass-driver shells and missiles hit them.
But the best defence against that is simply tennis ball sized pieces of lead arrayed around your ship. They would shred anything coming past at high-speed.



Yes, I posted this at both sites.

[Duper]

Read this Starting about half way down. This is a long read. It's the Codex from Mass Effect and space combat. In Mass Effect, projectiles are used most of the time in conventional warfare. Beam weapons on ships aren't really the standard. Also main guns are fixed so the ships need to be moved to line up a shot. It's an interesting read.

For fun, watch this . It's a funny little thing in Mass Effect 2 that you happen upon. ^_^ It alludes to space combat and Mr.s Sir Issac Newton.

[sigma]

Wars in an outer space never will be because the economy of any country in the world won't sustain such expenses. Wars in Earth orbit too, I hope, never will be because after such war all near-earth space will be so littered by fragments that the mankind won't be able to hold in an orbit even couple of tiny communication satellites, not to mention space telescopes and other.

[Avder]

The unfortunate thing for us sci-fi nerds is that you almost certainly wouldn't see anything resembling small manned fighters...the necessary equipment and supplies to keep a human pilot alive are far too massive, and the G-forces involved would most likely crush them anyway, at least without the theoretical counter-inertial tech that geoff mentioned. Drones would definitely be the way to go in that regard. Krom's right that most of the actual combat would involve mass drivers or missiles, and take place at pretty significant ranges.

I think Drones would be borderline useful, depending on the electronic capabilities of the opposing ship. If the drone is remotely piloted, it's not too hard to send a signal out on the right frequency that would knock out communication between the drone and its pilot. One possible way of getting around this is if we manage to find a non-EM method of communication over long distances, perhaps harnessing the so-called "spooky action at a distance" quantum teleportation effect somehow, or if we discover some other field similar to EM that can be used as a transmission medium, somewhat how "subspace" in Star Trek, and "hyperspace" in Star Wars are used for communication.

Now, if we can create a drone intelligent enough to discern friend from foe on its own, then drones become very viable, since they can be launched with a list of targets and their priorities. Then it becomes a question of if the opposing ship has countermeasures that can fool that drone, and would likely need to be very sophisticated since any artificial intelligence able to maneuver with autonomy in 3-d space must undoubtedly have very good visual capabilities in multiple parts of the EM spectrum, which would defeat a simple "blast it with bright light" sort of thing that can render a humans vision useless.

What I think space combat will come down to is a lot like submarine warfare is now. Lots of stealth involved. Considering that electronic camouflage is starting to get close to "cloaking device" territory, I do not think it will be all that hard to hide a ship in the blackness of space by the time man has developed the ability to build such ships. What I envision is something like the battle at the end of Star Trek 2, where both ships are fumbling around blind trying to get any clue of where the other is before going for broke. Electronic signals can be used to trace where you are. That means if you ping your opponent with some kind of EM pulse, he's going to know you're out there, and likely your range and quite possibly your direction as well, and depending on the quality of his camo, you might not get any useful data back if you sent out a pulse in a frequency range that he is shielded against. Much better for stealth will be passive arrays of sensors looking for anomalies in the EM background noise, much like how passive sonar works.

So yeah...submarine warfare in space. That's what I envision when I think of realistic space combat.