What do you guys, think space warfare should be like.

homefleet, you give some good point...thanks!

About stealth in space...not very useful, since even though you might be able to control the path of EM rad by using metamaterial, but this also means that you can't see outside or anything...if you want to see or shoot, you either need to calculate everything beforehand (only good for escaping, hey, that might be a good application! Who knows...it still doesn't look good though...), or expose yourself...

Okay, about nuclear bombs, looks like both wanderer and Jedmonds only talk about fission weapon, what about pure fusion weapon? Not much worries about radiation (with right combination...) which can both be advantage and disadvantage...

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Hello

Just for the record I want to say that I AM an Aerospace engineer.

Wanderer17, You are being a jerk, a somewhat knowledgeable jerk but still a jerk, do not take every thing you read like a word from God and please drop the attitude, it's not helping.

Having said that I would like to point Wanderer that your basic points are quite valid allthough I don't agree with your conclusions.

Lets assume that you have your Nuke-Missle armed ships what is thier Delta-V? what is the missile Delta-V? do you have PD? and if so of what kind? what is your Magazine capacity? how many missile can you fire in one barrage? and the most important question, how much will it cost.

We have a saying: "An angineer is some who can build in 1 cent what every idiot can build in 1 dollar"

I'm not going to speculate how space combat will be mainlly because I got to get back to work, I will recommend that you take a look in Attack Vector:Tactical.
It is the most accurate hard sci-fi simulation game out there that I know off.

Warder

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weapon tech will improve since ballistics inside of hulls is a bad idea.

Not if you're boarding party has self contained life support systems. Then it's a great idea.

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Keep in mind, I'm not a physicists or a weapon expert. I can only give my opinions.

I think that, ultimately, missiles armed with nuclear, fusion, or anti matter warheads will not be feasible in space combat. A missile is relatively slow and, thus, vulnerable to interception. Even today, we are experimenting with anti missile weapons systems that show great promise. The US Navy recently test fired an honest to God railgun. Once power sources for weapons like rail guns become compact enough, then it's going to make missiles obsolete. A weapon like a railgun is a point and shoot, one shot, one kill weapon. Missiles generally aren't that stealthy (Tomohawk cruise missiles are only stealthy because they can do terrain following flying, which won't apply to space warfare) and with a weapon like a railgun, anything like a missile would be an easy target for interception.

In space, your missiles are going to be visible coming from a long way off. Those missiles are going to be dead meat for even basic anti missile defensive systems. The only way to do serious damage to an enemy with missiles would be to fire them in prodigious numbers to overwhelm point defenses, or do like they did in David Weber's Honor Harrington series, and mix in missiles with ECM into your missile salvoes. While this might potentially work, you'll need constant resupply of missiles, creating a logistical nightmare, not to mention taking a lot of industrial capacity away from warship construction to ammunition production.

For the same reasons that missiles will, I think, not be viable as space ship weapons, I think fighters are a dead letter. I think that detection in space warfare will be a relatively simple matter, and maneuverability isn't going to be as useful as it is in modern warfare. You're going to need ships that can take a hit and keep on coming. Fighters don't fit that formula.

I expect that space battles will involve mostly the use of line tactics between large warships armed either with energy weapons, or high velocity projectile weapons. These projectile weapons might simply be kinetic energy weapons, projectiles with no warheads that rely on their impact velocity. I suspect you'd also see these hyper-velocity projectiles armed with nuclear warheads. While, with projectile weapons, you still have ammunition supply problems, supplying your fleet with metallic projectiles, or even nuclear tipped projectiles, would be much easier than supplying huge numbers of missiles. I'd also expect to see coherent energy weapons, which might not have the range of projectile weaponry, but would have 'ammunition' for as long as the ship had power.

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Space combat will be very similar to the naval combat seen in WW1. As stated, fighters/missles will be useless - as by then technology which can easily blow that stuff out of the sky will exsist. It will really come down to who can produce the most, the largest, and longest-firing ships.

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Keep in mind, I'm not a physicists or a weapon expert. I can only give my opinions.I think that, ultimately, missiles armed with nuclear, fusion, or anti matter warheads will not be feasible in space combat. A missile is relatively slow and, thus, vulnerable to interception. Even today, we are experimenting with anti missile weapons systems that show great promise. The US Navy recently test fired an honest to God railgun. Once power sources for weapons like rail guns become compact enough, then it's going to make missiles obsolete. A weapon like a railgun is a point and shoot, one shot, one kill weapon. Missiles generally aren't that stealthy (Tomohawk cruise missiles are only stealthy because they can do terrain following flying, which won't apply to space warfare) and with a weapon like a railgun, anything like a missile would be an easy target for interception.

But what if you use the "rail gun" to boost the missile initial speed and than build from there?
You should allso remember that a railgun projectile will have only the initial muzzle velocity and very limited maneuverability.
And anyway, down from 1 light sec, lasers will be the number 1 PD option, they can even be affective beyond 1 light sec but you will need to be able to predict where the missile will be in 2-3-4 seconds and fire to there, or if you have several lasers or a very fast rate of fire you can "fill" the space with a "wall" of lasers...

One more thing to remember is that missile aren't "slow" since you don't have squishy organics inside you can use accelerations that will kill a humane crew.

In space, your missiles are going to be visible coming from a long way off. Those missiles are going to be dead meat for even basic anti missile defensive systems. The only way to do serious damage to an enemy with missiles would be to fire them in prodigious numbers to overwhelm point defenses, or do like they did in David Weber's Honor Harrington series, and mix in missiles with ECM into your missile salvoes.

I am glad that you have such confidance in missile defence

but I would rather lose some missile than lose a ship (that is offcoarse if the missile cost a lot less than the ship, other wise I wouldn't build them

)

Looking at current tech, my WAG (Wild Ass Guess) about space combat in 100 years will be extreamlly armored slow moving behemoths armed with highly efficiante lasers and carrying lots and lots of heatsinks,fighting it out in ranges of light minutes. But that just me and I can assure you that I am 90% wrong (like most of us on this thread).

Good night
Warder

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Okay, about nuclear bombs, looks like both wanderer and Jedmonds only talk about fission weapon, what about pure fusion weapon? Not much worries about radiation (with right combination...) which can both be advantage and disadvantage...

Sorry about that,
In my orignal post I advocated using a multible, multi-functional fleets of ships not unlike what SINS currently uses.

I like the thought of lasers becoming a weapon of choice in space combat. It could remove the need for carrying aditional ammunition and missles all together. (making ships easier to operate over vast distances.)

Projectile weapons probably would not get removed for some time, instead getting used in realitive close range. Some of the best armor penetrating weapons we have now are not even explosives. One is just a metal "cone" that basicly turns into a molten drill bit and can punch a hole through a few feet of hardened steel, and whatever happens to be on the standing on the other side. Nasty stuff.

I would like to thank you Warderin, you added a new word to my vocabulary. WAG (Wild Ass Guess), man I love that.

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Space wars would be like "Battlezone", the game that came out around 1998, but there would be more planets and solar systems. You'd be able to control some kind of fighting craft on each planet and command a fleet of similar at the same time. Each planet would have different gravity and atmosphere. There would be missions where you went out with a small band, mostly to explore and figure out what the resources are, check out the plant and animal life. Then there would be a campaign involving colonizing the planets and building up huge fleets, battles on the ground and in space, diplomacy, spying, treachery, physics in space that's closer to reality, oceans, raging rivers of various elements, biotechnolgoy, nanoscience, sports, like surfing on a low gravity planet with waves five times as high as on earth or mountainbiking on the same low gravity planet.

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Thanks onyhow, stealth is useless in combat, if you can not find and the fire at your enemy. Also sense heat energy must go some where, does it mean that your ship will heat up faster then a ship with out stealth?

Another question I have the so called "smart guy" and any one else, is if your shields keep heat and other froms of energy out, do it also keep your heat energy form going out? I do no mean the weapons fire of missiles, lasers, or rail guns. I mean the heat energy produced in firing the weapons. Does having shields keep this waste heat energy in?

I like the fire the missile out of the rail gun Warderin, but can the software and hardware stand up to the magnetic fields produced by the rail gun? Last I check missiles gain the abilitie to be guide to there target thougth there software. And from what I have seen, magnetic fields and software don't mix well.

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Stealth probably won't be totaly useless in combat. You may not be able to completely hide yourself, but hiding/distorting your true nature, size, combat capabilites, ect. ect. would be a good tatic.

Got a few questions tho,
Since there is no stealth in space, if you "see" someone comming from lightyears away. Doesn't that mean your intell is allready a few years out of date?

What if you had faster than light travel? Doesn't that mean you could in effect see yourself depart after you arrive?

So in the case of faster than light travel, there would be no need for stealth since by the time people see you comming your allready there right?

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True its nowhere near doomsday people have envisioned. Death would only happen slower for the unlucky that would have to survive. Possible weather patern changes, colapse of a world economy at large, Massive political power vacums, and the enriched urainium/plutonium set loose by the explosions would filter through every part of the ecosystem.

Uh, no. First 40% of the ICBMs would just fail to launch anyway due to their unreliability. The Soviet Union would intercept a large number of buses before they could discharge their warheads and nail individual warheads and bombers with their regular SAMs tipped with nukes. Most of the detonations would be multi-megaton airbursts and the radiation would rapidly dissapate into the atmosphere. Where ground bursts were used the radiation would be lethal for a week, safe for short exposure for another week then as healthy as living down wind of a coal power plant. Scrape three inches off the top soil, which will take a few months granted, then rebuild.

It does, disassembling weapons as a meens of transport has been military pratice for generations. Its why modern soliders are trained to assemble multible weapons from a box of assorted parts containing 3 complete weapons and random parts. Guerallia fighters have longed used the pratice to aviod detection. Countries used the pratice as a meens of devloping weapons but keeping them hidden. Its a sound military pratice used time and again.

Doesn't apply in space as those give off heat far in excess of the four kelvin temperature of space in the "dark side" and far cooler in the "hot side". Then you have to assemble the weapons which wastes time, food, air, water, money, and leaves the port authority wondering WTF you are doing with the assembly work and order you to heave to for an inspection.

Misidentifications have happened before, USSR nearly launced nuclear arms (less than 2 min away from doing at one point) over a small research rocket was fired by the US. (they knew it wasn't large enough to be a nuclear missle, they just didn't know what it was for sure) And had actualy shot down a passenger jet (and knew what it was) that had acidently flown into thier airspace. It is proven to have happened before and will happen again. Its just a matter of time. Far more advanced sensors and scanners may help deter but not prevent.

True to a point, but a Golden BB can not by any means be used as an effective argument. Works in trials, but not in a debate. Also which flight are you referring to? KAL 902 in 1978 or KAL 007 in 1983? Neither case really matters as both violated proper procedures leading the Soviets to believe they were spy planes and because neither pilots of the flights followed proper procedures of squaking, the Soviets deemed them spies and shot them down. The Soviets followed proper procedures, the KAL pilots did not. The shoot downs were thus justified. Yeah the Soviets were dicks in the aftermath, but that is irrelevant.

For starters, unbiased research is impossible since it is performed by humans and its proven impossible for a human to be truly unbiased. And I agree, idiots came to power and will countinue to do so. We have our people at large to thank for that.

Thats why you look for peer reviewed articles which remove most of the bias.

Nuclear power may be safe but far from being as efficent as it needs to be. We are currently hidding a mountain of nuclear waste under a mountain and pretending its not there.

Because of idiots like Greenpiece keep us from storing it at Yucca Mountain. Besides once we get our space program back on track we can send the waste into the sun if necessary though there are other alternatives. FYI We can reprocess spent fuel rods instead of dumping them in lead containers. It is just currently cheaper to dig up new Uranium than to reprocess spent rods. Also have you ever study economics as your grasp on how mass production drives prices down seems to escape you.

Yes it is, if you tried using the nuclear debate 300 years ago you would have been dismissed as unreasonable.

ROFLMAO... Please learn the difference between scientific fact and scientific theory.

FYI In refrence to the dogfighting, I failed to point out the US planes wern't even equiped with guns. Missles were thought to be supreme and guns were removed since a one shot = confirmed kill was the concept. When actual dogfighting came about US planes found themselves time and again at severe disavantages against thier soviet MIG counterparts.

That was indeed stupid as you should always have a backup system. However, a missile still allows you to nail a bomber stream alot more efficiently especially if that missile is packing a nuke. Guns are when you are out of missiles and you still need to make an intercept when there is no one else capable to make it and no time to RTB to rearm.

"Some idiots" were highly trained military engineers and stratigests, you can only call them that now since you have the luxury of aquired knowledge and experiance.

Who were told by other highly trained military engineers and stratigests that they were flat out wrong. Your point?

True, its not Star Trek. But then again you can go through all the models you want, get to the trial and find find it doesn't work.

Well duh, thats not in dispute.

Well your wall of ignorance is more disturbing, You've shown calcs showing missle vs fighter. I asked for a scenerio where missle vs fighter calcs determined an outcome in war.

You either have poor reading skills and memories or you are a completely dishonest jackass. I have backed up all my posts with verifiable information, which you have yet to do. My proofs are done. The burden of proof is upon you now. Show me calcs and explain why I should listen to you over the experts.

I am giving you three days to formulate the calcs or I shall assume you have conceded the entirety of the debate.