Space Combat Techniques Discussion

[Hielor]

But back to what Polaris said. Now I'm wondering, if you were to fire the main thrusters behind a planet like Mars (relative to Earth), escape the orbit and then coast towards Earth, would sensors still pick up the approaching ship against the background of space, or would this constitute a 'stealthy' approach. Obviously the ship starts off in an east to west orbit around Mars in order to be behind it relative to the Earth. I'm thinking that it wouldn't be possible, but I've been wrong before lol so I'll just check.

Assuming that your ship contains anything at all, it will still be warmer than the background radiation and should be able to be picked up.

 

[Urwumpe]

Exactly: If it does do work in side it, you can't make it as cold as the background.

You could of course have directional stealth and make your spacecraft in one direction as cold as the background. But then you need to make the other side(s) of the spacecraft much warmer - you need to do work for pumping the heat.

 

[SolarStorm]

Exactly: If it does do work in side it, you can't make it as cold as the background.

You could of course have directional stealth and make your spacecraft in one direction as cold as the background. But then you need to make the other side(s) of the spacecraft much warmer - you need to do work for pumping the heat.

A heat pump. I never thought of that.:hmm: Interesting.

 

[Ghostrider]

Why are we so darn focused on the whole stealth thing? By the sound of it, it would look like you cannot fight in space if you can't have stealth. Wrong: mankind has been fighting for generations without stealth craft, without radar, without gunpowder and even without rocks.
There's no stealth in space? Very well, then we make up tactics that account for stealth not being possible. If you can't have an advantage, you have to adapt. I have yet to see the tank commander that has an issue with his tanks not being able to fly.
We'll compensate with active countermeasures, heavy defences and lots of firepower. As I said before, space battles may well resemble a cross between submarine and tank warfare.

 

[RisingFury]

Why are we so darn focused on the whole stealth thing?

Because it's a refreshing change from bickering about space lasers?

 

[Ghostrider]

Because it's a refreshing change from bickering about space lasers?

Can't we bicker on actual tactics as defined by the environment and technical issues? Armaments are a function of tactics and battle environment, so we should discuss that before shoehorning megaparticle cannons in our capsules.

 

[Izack]

Can't we bicker on actual tactics as defined by the environment and technical issues?

We'll have time for that when this and OMP are completed and we're all fighting each other. :lol:

 

[Pyromaniac605]

We'll have time for that when this and OMP are completed and we're all fighting each other. :lol:

I'm starting to think we won't need OBSP, we're all fighting as it is. :lol:

Darren

 

[SolarStorm]

Can't we bicker on actual tactics as defined by the environment and technical issues? Armaments are a function of tactics and battle environment, so we should discuss that before shoehorning megaparticle cannons in our capsules.

You're quite right about the environment, but remember that humans have been/are/will be extremely adept at manipulating their environment (how do you think we got into space in the first place?) Technical issues aren't a problem because they are only limited by the laws of physics, which are in turn limited by engineering hurdles, which are limited primarily by limited types of materials. But as we discover and make more materials, (let's say for arguments sake that space combat is going to take place sometime in the future) then new possibilities open up, so with designing combat spacecraft for the future, at the moment 'technical issues' is simply limited to the laws of physics as we do not know what materials there will be in the future.

As for your earlier comment, Ghostrider:

Why are we so darn focused on the whole stealth thing? By the sound of it, it would look like you cannot fight in space if you can't have stealth. Wrong: mankind has been fighting for generations without stealth craft, without radar, without gunpowder and even without rocks.
There's no stealth in space? Very well, then we make up tactics that account for stealth not being possible. If you can't have an advantage, you have to adapt. I have yet to see the tank commander that has an issue with his tanks not being able to fly.
We'll compensate with active countermeasures, heavy defences and lots of firepower. As I said before, space battles may well resemble a cross between submarine and tank warfare.

Low Observability Tecnology/Stealth Technology is currently the single most important tactical advantage one can have in warfare. You alluded to combat in space as being like submarine warfare, but with submarines, 'silence is golden' and what is silence? Answer: Stealth. Submarines spend most of their time crawling along at 5 or 10 knots (some really quiet ones can move at 15 or 20) not belting along as fast as they can, or shooting at anything they hear. They barely use their active sonar because it's really only effective at shorter ranges and it's like a massive signal that screams "Here I am. Kill me!" You also drew a parallel between space warfare as being similar to tank warfare. Now that's a dangerous analogy, as the tank, in terms of 'technologically advanced army vs technologically advanced army' (which space combat is bound to be) died in the '80s (maybe even the '70s) with the development of the guided warhead. I'm talking about many small warheads with shaped charges or high kinetic energy being delivered with a single artillery shell/missile, sea/air/land launched cruise missile, air dropped dumb/smart bomb, or space dropped guided darts. There's also 'tank plinking' (aircraft plus lots of GBU-12s plus laser designator), man portible antitank missiles, Fuel-Air Explosives, and that's just a tiny portion of the conventional arsenal. A $10,000-$100,000 shell, missile or bomb for a battalion of multi-million dollar tanks? I like those numbers. Even if they only get one tank (simultaneous computer glitches?) it's still worth it in monetary terms. Then there are 'tactical' nuclear weapons (for a not so economical result.)
Take this away from the lesson of the armoured vehicle (or spacecraft) over the invisible one: armour is made of materials, and materials have Ultimate Tensile/Compressive/Shear Strengths and can always be broken. No tank commander is complaining because they're not up against a force with these sorts of weapons. They're up against forces whose most powerful weapons are RPGs, weapons of 1940s vintage!:blink:
It boils down to the phrase: you can't shoot at what you can't see, and you can't kill what you can't shoot at.
Therefore, you can't kill what you can't see, so be as invisible as you can be. (Cool. That rhymes!:lol

As for the idea of heavy support, it's not worth it. Best example I think is the Vietnam Air War, where the Linebacker raids required hundreds, even thousands of supporting aircraft for just one B-52 raid. Fighters, Fighter-Bombers, Airborne Early Warning, Chaff Layers, Fuel Tankers, Wild Weasels, Airborne Jammers, etc, etc. Of course, this was to attack Hanoi, the most heavily defended city on Earth (Moscow defenses would have been a milk run by comparison). Another example is trying to attack a Carrier Group at sea with another Surface Group. You'd have to fight through antiship cruise missiles, followed by medium ranged antiship missiles, followed by short ranged missiles, followed by the outer screen's guns before you get a glimpse of the carrier. The whole time, you'll be under attack from waves of aircraft from at least 1000 miles out from multiple directions. To reach cruise missle range would be improbable, medium missile range would be suicidal. The only weapons platform that could get there would be a submarine. Lying in wait, completely silent near the ocean floor, it just has to sit there until the group rolls over it, then fire its torpedoes. Stealth wins again.

 

[jedidia]

Technical issues aren't a problem because they are only limited by the laws of physics, which are in turn limited by engineering hurdles

That's the wrong way round. Physical laws are the limit of ANY engineering. Something going against the laws of physics (and stealth in space goes against a most foundaitonal one, which is thermodynamics) can't be engineered in any way, period. an engineering hurdle is something that would theoretically work, but we can't just find a practical way of making it happen with our means (most popular example currently: Fusion power. No law of physics preventing it, indeed mother nature does it happily a billion times over, but we can't just replicate it with our limited means. Maybe we never will, but I sure don't hope so).

There might be a chance that a law as laid down by us is just plainly wrong, because of a glitch in the theory. For such a well established law as thermodynamics, the probability for that converges towards zero, I'm afraid.

 

[Ghostrider]

I used the submarine/tank analogy to suggest slow-manoeuvering vessels in a hostile environment and massive firepower.

As for tanks being dead, they're far from it: tanks are still the mainstay of any conventional ground force because you can't take ground and hold it with airplanes. Properly supported, tanks will mow down defences and blast open a path for your troops like nothing else on the battlefield. As for the capability to seek and destroy them, take a look at Yugoslavia in 1999 when NATO's vaunted air forces couldn't find the vast majority of Serbian armoured assets and wasted millions of dollars in "smart" ordnance on wooden mock-ups.

Of course, tanks without support are dead ducks but modern warfare takes air support in the equation. Shaped charges and guided weapons were thought of being the death of tank warfare already in the '60s (and in fact a lot of research went into more manoeuverable light tanks) but then we came up with reactive and then composite armour.

Taking on a MBT from the front or even the sides with a RPG is not exactly healthy - I wouldn't do it with a tandem-warhead Panzerfaust III which is a far superior weapon and getting within 300m of a tank is calling it very close. However, fire-and-forget medium-range weapons such as the Javelin are changing again the equation, so I expect the next step to be active antimissile countermeasures in the form of CIWS like the Metal Storm guns (useless against personnel but good against incoming rounds). The Russians are already working on such systems or so I have heard.

As I said, stealth is an asset but you cannot base your whole strategy around it. It's the safest way to lose a battle.

 

[SolarStorm]

That's the wrong way round. Physical laws are the limit of ANY engineering. Something going against the laws of physics (and stealth in space goes against a most foundaitonal one, which is thermodynamics) can't be engineered in any way, period. an engineering hurdle is something that would theoretically work, but we can't just find a practical way of making it happen with our means (most popular example currently: Fusion power. No law of physics preventing it, indeed mother nature does it happily a billion times over, but we can't just replicate it with our limited means. Maybe we never will, but I sure don't hope so).

There might be a chance that a law as laid down by us is just plainly wrong, because of a glitch in the theory. For such a well established law as thermodynamics, the probability for that converges towards zero, I'm afraid.

What I meant was that if something isn't ruled out by physics, then it may still be ruled out by engineering limits, and these do change. Also, controlled fusion on earth has already occured, many times in fact but it hasn't been efficient enough to produce electricity yet. They're building a tokomak in France right now to attempt this. And I'm not trying to forego the laws of thermodynamics, I'm trying to utilise them. Why can't stealth in space be engineered? A heat pump/heat exchanger/refridgerator or whatever you want to call it (they're the same thing) can surely offer a degree of lower observability for one side of a craft for the obvious tradeoff of the other side in relation to IR.

As for tanks being dead, they're far from it: tanks are still the mainstay of any conventional ground force because you can't take ground and hold it with airplanes. Properly supported, tanks will mow down defences and blast open a path for your troops like nothing else on the battlefield. As for the capability to seek and destroy them, take a look at Yugoslavia in 1999 when NATO's vaunted air forces couldn't find the vast majority of Serbian armoured assets and wasted millions of dollars in "smart" ordnance on wooden mock-ups.

Ghostrider, you're not taking any ground in space, so in this respect, it is more like aerial warfare (but sea warfare is still probably more accurate.) The decoys might work for LEO combat though, as there's enough junk orbiting the earth.

Of course, tanks without support are dead ducks but modern warfare takes air support in the equation.

Close Air Support is only useful when it's close. Anything beyond LEO and you're a long way from the Air Force, Navy or Army.

Shaped charges and guided weapons were thought of being the death of tank warfare already in the '60s (and in fact a lot of research went into more manoeuverable light tanks) but then we came up with reactive and then composite armour.

ERA is only single use (when it's actually hit), and even Chobham armour is made of materials that can be broken.

Taking on a MBT from the front or even the sides with a RPG is not exactly healthy - I wouldn't do it with a tandem-warhead Panzerfaust III which is a far superior weapon and getting within 300m of a tank is calling it very close.

True. But why not attack from behind or above?

However, fire-and-forget medium-range weapons such as the Javelin are changing again the equation, so I expect the next step to be active antimissile countermeasures in the form of CIWS like the Metal Storm guns (useless against personnel but good against incoming rounds).

The 36 barrel prototype (I'm assuming you're talking about the 1.62 million rpm gun) only holds 180 rounds and takes a long time to reload, (we're talking about at least 1 minute minimum.) It's probably best descibed as a long range shotgun. Pretty much all of metal storm's current products would be useless against missiles and great against personnel.

As I said, stealth is an asset but you cannot base your whole strategy around it. It's the safest way to lose a battle.

I still think that if it's possible to implement it in space warfare, it's a good place to start. After all, staying hidden has worked for at least the past two and a half millenia, why give up now? And what battle was lost because of stealth?:huh: It sounds interesting.

 

[Ghostrider]

Ghostrider, you're not taking any ground in space, so in this respect, it is more like aerial warfare (but sea warfare is still probably more accurate.) The decoys might work for LEO combat though, as there's enough junk orbiting the earth.

Well, in fact space warfare should be considered as area (or rather volume) denial. The only real estate worth fighting for would be LEO however - unless you plan to put a mass driver on the Moon and be a harsh mistress on Earth.

ERA is only single use (when it's actually hit), and even Chobham armour is made of materials that can be broken.

That's the old battle between the arrow and the shield - or armour.

True. But why not attack from behind or above?

That's actually what you should do, trying to hit the top of the turret where the armor is at its thinnest or blow through the bottom of the hull with a shaped charge mine. However, you only have the luxury of choosing your terrain and setting yourself up if you're very lucky and if your position aren't blown to kingdom come by artillery. A shock attack with tanks will break through your position unless you have tanks of your own.

Pretty much all of metal storm's current products would be useless against missiles and great against personnel.

Yes but as you correctly pointed out, it's just an engineering problem. If it's required for tanks to have CIWS, then tanks will have CIWS. It only makes sense and I would expect Russians to implement any system of the kind first, because they've got lots of tanks and are not afraid to use them.

After all, staying hidden has worked for at least the past two and a half millenia, why give up now? And what battle was lost because of stealth?:huh: It sounds interesting.

I didn't suggest giving up stealth or having battles lost because of it. I say that the key to winning battles - or at least not lose them - is to adapt and not to cling to some key concepts if they're not applicable. If you run into the enemy and are spotted, you don't hide but you engage first and strike hard. We didn't give up aerial warfare because of radar, back when stealth aircraft didn't exist, we adapted to battle scenarios where the enemy was supposed to use radar and surprise wasn't the key anymore.

Anyway, space warfare in LEO would be a real knife fight (sorry, colonel McQueen, couldn't resist it) with opponents coming up over the horizon and letting loose as soon as a firing solution is computed, with a considerable advantage going to the one shooting first - not very different from close quarter gunfights.

 

[Hielor]

Why can't stealth in space be engineered? A heat pump/heat exchanger/refridgerator or whatever you want to call it (they're the same thing) can surely offer a degree of lower observability for one side of a craft for the obvious tradeoff of the other side in relation to IR.

Since you're making all the arguments that have already been rejected on this page, perhaps you should go read that instead of arguing with us.

Specifically:

...Redirecting the emissions merely relocates the problem. The energy's got to go somewhere, and for a fairly modest investment in picket ships or sensor drones, the enemy can pretty much block you from safely radiating to any significant portion of the sky.
And if you try to focus the emissions into some very narrow cone you know to be safe, you run into the problem that the radiator area for a given power is inversely proportional to the fraction of the sky illuminated. With proportionate increase in both the heat leakage through the back surfaces, and the signature to active or semi-active (reflected sunlight) sensors.
Plus, there's the problem of how you know what a safe direction to radiate is in the first place. You seem to be simultaneously arguing for stealthy spaceships and complete knowledge of the position of enemy sensor platforms. If stealth works, you can't expect to know where the enemy has all of his sensors, so you can't know what is a safe direction to radiate. Which means you can't expect to achieve practical stealth using that mechanism in the first place.
Sixty degrees has been suggested here as a reasonably "narrow" cone to hide one's emissions in. As a sixty-degree cone is roughly one-tenth of a full sphere, a couple dozen pickets or drones are enough to cover the full sky so that there is no safe direction to radiate even if you know where they all are. The possiblility of hidden sensor platforms, and especially hidden, moving sensor platforms, is just icing on the cake.
Note, in particular, that a moving sensor platform doesn't have to be within your emission cone at any specific time to detect you, it just has to pass through that cone at some time during the course of the pre-battle maneuvering. Which rather substantially increases the probability of detection even for very narrow emission cones.

 

[Wishbone]

Folks, you are forgetting about one practical consideration: orbital radius (SMa). The lower, the faster your goes both in absolute and angular terms. Whoosh, and it zooms across your field of view. If the difference with the background is low (which is a thing of the future), chances to detect kinda go down. Suppose your is detected, but you have enough delta V to change orbital period in the first "blind spot" and half an orbit later. What are the chances of tracking the ? Finding it again 1 orbit later? 10? 100?

 

[Hielor]

Folks, you are forgetting about one practical consideration: orbital radius (SMa). The lower, the faster your goes both in absolute and angular terms. Whoosh, and it zooms across your field of view. If the difference with the background is low (which is a thing of the future), chances to detect kinda go down. Suppose your is detected, but you have enough delta V to change orbital period in the first "blind spot" and half an orbit later. What are the chances of tracking the ? Finding it again 1 orbit later? 10? 100?

Except that the faster something is moving, the easier it is to see, because it's more obvious against the background (so you don't have to focus your search as much).

Plus, what "blind spot?" How do you know that your opponent doesn't have sensor satellites that are doing the exact same thing you are? If you can have stealth, so can they.

 

[Wishbone]

First off, are we talking about realistic (5 years ahead) or futuristic (metamaterials, etc.) tech? With current technology you sort of know where everybody's ground tracking stations/telescopes/lasers are, and can have low error predictions of where space based trackers are at any particular moment. Unless I'm mistaken (quite possible) there is not (yet) a tracking network without blind spots. You can detect low flying debris or satellites if you're forewarned, and simple angular observations aren't enough, you'd want to train your rangefinder on the object, too. BTW We're not talking about _manual_ detection of things high above, the process is quite automated, so low angular velocity threshold doesn't directly apply.

 

[Hielor]

First off, are we talking about realistic (5 years ahead) or futuristic (metamaterials, etc.) tech? With current technology you sort of know where everybody's ground tracking stations/telescopes/lasers are, and can have low error predictions of where space based trackers are at any particular moment. Unless I'm mistaken (quite possible) there is not (yet) a tracking network without blind spots. You can detect low flying debris or satellites if you're forewarned, and simple angular observations aren't enough, you'd want to train your rangefinder on the object, too.

:facepalm:
Given that space combat in the next five years is about as likely as me winning the lottery in the next five years (and I don't even play), I don't think anyone but you has thought this discussion was based in that timeframe.

In an actual battle situation, knowing where all of the opponent's tracking satellites are implies that there's no stealth, because why wouldn't they be using stealth technology to hide their tracking satellites? You can't assume that you have stealth and your opponents don't.

BTW We're not talking about _manual_ detection of things high above, the process is quite automated, so low angular velocity threshold doesn't directly apply.

Except that it does, it's fairly easy to have detectors that detect movement of things against a background--if you're slow enough, they won't notice you.

 

[Wishbone]

The thing is, with futuristic tech anything goes (pretty much). Why attempt simulating something that a) doesn't exist, b) hasn't been invented? As for detection, guess there's some confusion between radar and optical/IR imaging detection. With radars, you indeed have velocity cutoff to filter out noise when doing straight Doppler detection, detecting creeping vehicles would need MTI (moving target indicator). For imaging, recognition has advanced so much that no creeper has a chance (unless noise drowns the signal very thoroughly).

 

[jedidia]

The thing is, with futuristic tech anything goes (pretty much).

Well, let's call it "plausible", or, maybe more prudently, "foreseeable" future tech, then. I.e. Tech we know to conceptionally work once we figured out how to build it efficiently.

What I meant was that if something isn't ruled out by physics, then it may still be ruled out by engineering limits, and these do change.

That would be okay then, your prior formulation was somewhat misleading.

They're building a tokomak in France right now to attempt this.

They're trying to build one, which is exactly my point. We know the physical principles are sound, but we haven't overcome the engineering hurdles yet. Btw, the reactor cannot produce a sustained reaction yet, which is the major engineering problem. I agree that such problems can be overlooked for our purposes, but only to a certain degree. After all, building an artificial wormhole is only an engineering hurdle too... (take a ring of neutronium and spin it at the speed of light... oh well.)