One book I had been reading, "Brass Man," had an interesting way of putting it.
Eventually, AI was developed, and then it took over in what was called The Quiet War due to the fact that nobody noticed it happening till it already happened. They took all the important places, and due to their efficiency everybody was really comfortable, had machines doing their job, so when other humans tried to take control back with revolutions, nobody else wanted to. It's hard to have a rebellion when people are happy.

That said, the smartest man yet to live had created a direct interface with one of the AI. His brain shorted out after just 23 seconds, but because of human creativity and the sheer power of the AI, they came up with millions of great technologies, including the Runcible concept, allowing people to dip into underspace (think of it like... 0 dimensions, everything exists in the same spot) which could then be pulled out at another one, bringing immense amounts of energy with it.

Anyways, I got sidetracked. So these massively powerful AI had to create warships after the Prador attacked the Polity worlds. One of their designs was the Jack Ketch. Now, all of their warships had the ability to reconfigure their shape, and never had to worry about humans inside, combined with extreme speeds...

And then there were two of them, based on the same model, that rebelled in hopes of gaining access to Jain tech. The Jack Ketch had to stop them. Basically, what you ended up with, were these massive behemoths flying around this Gas Giant at speeds measured in thousands of G's, shooting millions of rockets that had their own sub-mind AI capable of intricate maneuvers. I won't tell you the rest, you'll have to read the books, but I'm sure you can tell that that would make an insanely awesome movie.

I think it depends entirely on what weapons we have when we do get to space combat.

If big weapons can be fitted on tiny fighters then thats all we will have. Why would govts spend billions developing large spacecraft when a tiny fighter would be cheaper? If however we need a massive generator to power said weapons then ships will get bigger to accomodate.

Look at terrestrial fleets, once battleships ruled the waves but as soon as large weapons capable of taking one out from a small plane were launched, fighters rule the waves.

As for the stealth argument I wouldnt discount it, after radar people were convinced stealth planes would be impossible.

Personally I imagine spaceship combat becoming rather like submarine combat with vessels as small as they can be hiding and searching for each other but it can easily go anyway. Space combat will be adapated based on the weapons, the weapons wont be adapted to the ships.

The fighters rule the waves make sense, because there's horizon that blocks the battleship's view...that does not apply in space...

Stealth make sense on planes because the way to detect planes is using radar to bounce signal off the plane, which the stealth counter by using materials which absorbs it...in space...you can do that with radar detection...but since spacecrafts generate heat that is noticably higher than the cosmic background radiation, it's useless...just detect the heat...

And you can't hide in space...RCS usage can be detected from 1AU away using today's equipment...don't even think about advancement in detection will do in the future...

True fighters are more effective because they are faster and move in 3d but my point was about weapons. If you could mount large weapons on a small spacecraft why build big ones?

You dont think there will be a stealth detection arms race? Just because detection is ahead now doesnt mean it always will be. Also there are ways to mask heat they are not very effecient at the moment but they could be.

I am not saying what the future will be just thats its unpredictable.

One reason being waste heat...

Sure, you might fit it on fighter, but if you don't have adequate heat radiator, your fighter will melt...

There will never be a war in space, period. It's like nuclear war (in fact, it probably would be nuclear war). No matter what defensive measures you dream up, be it stealth, force-shields, or giant armoured battlecruisers, there will always be a way for one side to completely obliterate the other.

Assuming our space culture is based on planets, you are twenty different kinds of screwed. Let's face it, there's no way to move your planet out of the way if anyone decides to shoot warheads or kinetic projectiles at it. War would last however long it takes for both sides to deliver their payload, and then everyone would be dead.

Assuming our space culture is based exclusively in space, i.e., everyone lives in mobile space ships, the problem becomes one of logistics. Even if you can dodge those newfangled homing missiles (which I sincerely doubt), you're eventually going to run out of resources. Mining ventures out to any body of mass with a predictable orbital pattern will earn you a nuke and a whole lot of "I told you so"s. This, of course, cuts both ways, so everyone loses their income and everyone starves.

Notice I haven't mentioned lasers yet. All this becomes a moot point if our space culture has electromagnetic weaponry. You can't dodge it, and you can't see it coming. In this case it's about whoever pushes the button first.

Basically, space war suffers from the MAD principle. Mutually Advantageous Destruction. If your enemy knows where you are (and God help you if you're trying to hide in space), your enemy can kill you. Conventional space warfare is an oxymoron.

But it does make for fun science fiction.

-Bigglesworth

I'd have to say that it all depends on what kind of technological advances we make. There have been enough people above me claiming that the following WILL be the case:

- stealth will not be possible
- everyone will use instant kill weapons(like nukes)
- planets can't be defended because they can't move
- And other such claims

I say this is complete speculation and based on nothing but current technology & research and looking to the past. To dispute the above 3 issues for example, I can think of the following theoretical technologies:

- stealth will be possible through "fazing" out of our universe into an alternate one.(Replace universe with dimension or whatever you like.)

- active defenses such as shields, defensive lasers/plasma cannons/etc., space change weapons(that expand or contract space to redirect any matter or energy), etc. will make defending against any kind of weapon possible.

- See above active defenses for reasons why they don't have to be able to move.


Now the above goes for anything anyone can think of. If you can't think of a theoretical technology that can dispute your claim about the future of space warfare, your not trying hard enough. So I'm not even going to try to theorize what it will be like, because I can never be sure and the possibilities are endless.

It doesn't make a great deal of sense to base theoretical future technology on imaginary laws of physics. That said, you'd have to stretch science fiction to the point of magic to get rid of the fundamental problems of space warfare. I don't care what kind of technology you dream up, spaceships are never going to be stealthy and planets are always going to be big defenseless targets.

The elephant in the room here is that little show stopper known as reality. In reality, things like phasing through space or building planetary force shields are either impossible or pointless. Your ultimate invisible spaceship is my ultimate invisible missile. Your force shield is my force shield destroying device.

It doesn't matter where technology goes in the future. Building spaceships so you can fly out and do battle is like building giant robots to fight with swords. I'm not saying the technology will never be there, but I do question the practicality.

-Bigglesworth

There are no ways to mask heat in space. you will have to go below 3 degrees kalvin and doing so will break the laws of thermodynamic.





To tell you the truth i question the practicality of tanks and fighter jets, i mean whats the point????? i build these tank they build anti-tank missiles and kill my tank and then i kill their anti-tank crew with another one and so on and so on etc.

War is not practical in a perfect world, but we don't live in one.
I can probably come up with 5 scenarios of some kind of space warfare between nations on earth in the next 100 years.

just for funnsies here is one, in 2*** (enter random number) earth have a bustling space industry with colonies on the moon and lots of traffic from the surface to various destinations in the inner sphere of our solar system.
On November the 13th a group of (enter a name of your favorite terror group) hijacked 3 super-freighters from the lunar orbit and headed for a collision course toward earth in a continues burn of 1 gee.
One of the frighters was intercepted 30 min's away from earth by another frighter ramming into her, both frighters where destroyed there were no survivors.
Another of the 3 ijacked ships was targeted by plantery based laser and missile systems and completely burned upon reentry.
Unfurtonatly the last hijacked frighter sorvived long enough to enter a a solid body to the earth atmoshpere and crashed right into (enter a name of a large city) with millions of dead and injured.

The catastrophe led to a massive arms race with every nation building armed patrol crafts initially to defend against another catastrophe like the one that happened but later on bigger and more heavely armed and armored ships out of mistrust of the other nations.... you can finish this scenarion yourself.

Warder

of course you can, at a sufficient distance

of course reasonable engagement ranges you can't - but really, in space everything is artillery

O nos, its the attack of the Handwavium brigade  :p . Armed with the best psudeo-science the innerweb can buy!(Actually I blame Star Drek). While there is nothing wrong with space battles in the realm of fantasy, after all there is a huge industry built around it(includeing this game hehe), the thread is devoted to 'real' space combat. The old cannard of 'Future tech will make your rational and well thought out assumptions totally irrelvant is the classic retort of the psudeo-science club. But, lets for the sake of argument, follow that line of reasoning for a bit.

Give me a few centuries of technological advance and run lets see what it gives us:

) New Materials, cheap superconductors, amour better able to withstand the rigors of space, smaller more efficent (more powerful) power generation, faster computers, more accurate sensors, better life support, automated damage control systems, robotics. Take your pick some or all. You can have all this and more but the underlying peculiarities of battle in space...well..they dont change. Thats been explained numerous times in this thread.

Secondly, no one here is stating space warfare is not possible, even under the conditions discussed in this thread, it is, that is not open to question. Its practicality and limitations certainly are, but not the notion itself. Its amazeing how entrenched the notion of the one-man 'space fighter' is in Sci-Fi culture, no matter how many times its demonstrated just how impractical they are as a 'real' weapon platform,the geeks just cant let go of them. Never underestimate the power of the mass media, they can make you believe anything they want you too   

I agree. Airships are so much snazzier.


That is quite an astounding proposition. Please explain to me how you intend to detect electromagnetic waves before they reach you. Avoid using the term "spidey sense" in your response.

-Bigglesworth

of course you can't actively detect them when did i claim you could



in this case i was referring to the first, not the second propostion

edit: u could also use ur spidey sense tho

its obvious what it would be as of right nows technologys

lasers are out its a good idea but to many problems

Railguns are a good idea but the range just isnt good enough

i think that space combat would be between stealthed chips launching long range MIRVed nukes at eachother or Nets OR using something like Shiva Star to destroy all electronics on the enemy ship but mainly i think it would be a battle of who would go faster if there was a "warp drive" i think there would almost never end with the destructing of a ship it would always end with one ship running away

There is no way to stealth ships if we agree with any semblance of known physical reality. Even if we shift the whole damn thing into the "ether" like Hawking's little particle pairs, it will still leave a radiation signature like a giant uranium strobe light. Plus the crew would die.
Let me make this simple:
There are no stealthy ships.
There are no stealthy ships.
There are no stealthy ships.

Please, people. Write this down on the blackboard until it sinks in.

-Bigglesworth

Starfighters are stupid weapons. Despite what pepole say, starfighters are hideously inefficient. Compared to a missile of similar size, they really don't have any advantages. Missiles don't need to worry about Gs, fighters do. Missiles don't require all the bits needed for a pilot so they can stuff lots of explosives or even multiple warheads plus extra fuel or even counter-countermeasures! Missiles can be mass produced, while fighters need to be built and then train a crewmen to operate and maintain it, unlike a missile which has simpler maintenance and can controlled by ordinary crew. A starfighter also needs lots of space in its mothership for munitions, fuel, spare parts etc. which could be used for... More missiles!

The only real advantage a starfighter has is its ability to change targets, but its not hard to make a missile to do that but you increase the risk of the missile being taken over or what have you.

So for the future (if we ever get FTL technology. This is necessary for wars in space, or any ship sent to attack will be obsolete by the time it gets to the target and proceed to be slaughtered), space warfare would mostly center around missile boats, ECM and point defense, and maybe lasers as secondary weapons. Mass drivers sound nice in theory but unless they travel near light speed they are very likely to miss compared to a laser (light speed) or missile (fast and guided).

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT INCOMING. TO AVOID BOREDOM, SKIP TO THE END.



Looking at that piece of history we can safely predict the future in vague terms (nothing precise of course).

Let me put forward the most basic factors that influence any kind of combat.
-Terrain
-Weather
-Resources
-Desire/Will/Needs
-Technology

TERRAIN:

Be it on land, sea, air, or the vacuum of space, battles will always revolve around the terrain. It is the most important factor (IMO) since it dictate rules and boundaries that can not be broken.

WEATHER:

Anything in space that can affect combat and is constantly changing can be considered as "weather". Like for example a moving group of asteroids.

RESOURCES:

Resources are finite. The scope of the combat, the ability of man to engage in combat relies largely on the Resources which are available to do combat.

DESIRE/WILL/NEEDS:

This one should be easy, combat might not even occur if one side does not have the will to fight. One side might decide to retreat, if the desire for that thing they are fighting for is not enough to expend the resources needed to adquire/defend it. And if one side is in desperate need of that target, they will not refrain from doing whatever is necesary to obtain it.

TECHNOLOGY:

This go right after Resources, as it dictate the abilities and capabilities each side will posses.


Almost all arguments put forward in this thread have been presented after assuming a possible set of "values" for the factors presented here.

For example, Figthers. Arguments like "they are not worth it", "they are inefficient", "they are cheaper". They might be worth it and maybe even cheaper if the techonology allows it. They might be more efficient if the terran favors them.

Taking another history lesson, people though tanks were inefficient, until Germany showed the world how to use them. People thought small lightly armed fighter planes were not worth it until Pearl Harbor. People thought head on calvary and infantry charges were the best tactics until the charges were met with machine gun fire.

As we have only recently moved beyond our moon, we can not safely assume much about the Terrain and Weather of space's effect on manned space travel/combat. As we have not set foot on any other planet beside Earth, we can not assume much of the Resources we will find in space. As most people think of space as simply a new place for expensive recreational exploration(in other words, a money sink and play ground for nerds), we can not assume how our Desire/Need/Will will change when we learn more about space. And as our technology have been progressing almost exponentially in the last 100 years, we can not safely assume what technologys will exist in the next 100 years.

To end this wall of text, we simply can not say anything about space combat for certain at this time. REMEMBER, Necesity is the mother of all inventions. Right now, there is no necesity for space combat.

The no stealthy ships argument is bogus. As long as you need something to see a ship, you only need to be invisible to its eyes. It doesn't matter how noisy the rest of the ship is.

What sort of things will help?
#1: Be in a noisy place. There will be places where you are difficult to spot by sensor, and if you use local elements as reactive propellent you'd be none the wiser. Dust clouds, asteroid belts, even the backside of an asteroid are good places to hide.

#2: Stay out of occupied space. Occupied space is the place where governments spend loads of taxpayer funding to keep loaded with sensors and other security implements. If there are no eyes, no one can see you.

#3: Hide in plain sight. There's no better place to hide than plain sight. If you are a registered freighter surrounded by registered freighters, you can bet that you'll be difficult to detect.

Space ships are expensive things. As long as ship recovery remains profitable, and the people inside have personal rights, there will be a preference for disabling weapons over those that completely annihilate. Complete annihilation of ships is not only bad for business, it is bad for the public to see as well. Just look at our own typical police force, armed with light guns, clubs, and tazers designed to take suspects down but not kill them. If every drunkard driving on the curb were hosed down with automatic fire and missiles, you'd have a very upset populace (and likely a broke government as well!).

You can bet that your average joe will not be able to get their hands on militarized or registered weapons (wow, just like today!). Pirates have no use for space vapor, so they'd most likely favor weapons that disable rather than obliterate.

Hiding in a dust cloud or asteroid belt is like running with a torch through a crowded street. Sure, there are lots of people around you, but you're still the only moron holding a torch. Good news is, you can hide behind big stuff. Bad news is, no one is going to forget you exist just because you went behind a moon. The peekaboo strategy only works when you're five.

As for the rest of your points, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. You lost me at occupied space, and I gave up at registered freighters.

Look, we can boil all the stealthy ship arguments down into three categories:
-Physics Impaired
-Acts of God
-and Contrived Circumstances

Would everyone please just classify your own stealthy ship theories before submitting them? Better yet: classify them, realize your ideas suck, and keep them to yourselves. If you don't say silly things, you may someday nurture an ego large enough to rival my own.

-Bigglesworth

Oh Mr. Wiggles, I'm sorry that the constant war of stealth vs. detection is lost on you. Yes, as long as there is a unique imprint on the fabric of space-time, something will be able to see it. However, the KEY POINT is whether it can be spotted with reasonable resources on a proper budget.

Yes, you can spend a trillion credits to find a spacesuit 5 stars down the road. No, there is no way any politician will buy it. And hell no, there is no way any future galactic empire will have the resources to scan the everliving hell out of every inch of space, every second, with absolute inerrancy and infallibility. It is simply NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

Then, when you put those sensors out there, who's to stop them from being vandalized or salvaged for their high value? Where are you going to find the advanced crew and safe passage to take care of top of the line technology at every crevice the galaxy has to offer? That is a LOT of funding that can only be done at the military level, and it would require a vast military expenditure at that.

What about civilians? How are you going to convince your run-of-the-mill captain to go broke for the $50mil 10^-23 sensitivity nanophalange sensor suite, when he can get his job done on his $2K radar package? Never mind that his cocky, noisy ship would need a overhaul just so that he doesn't blind the sensors on his own ship.

So you are still wrong. Stealthy ships will exist because the most cost effective way to keep tabs on space is going to be the cheap way, and stealth is made to defeat the cheap way. The real sensors, the kind made to find stealthed ships, are only going to be where they are most required.

A ship does not have to be a perfect cloud of non reactive amorphous energy to be stealthy. All it has to do is complete its objective and get out without causing a ruckus. A few scratched heads here or there is to be expected, of course, but nothing definite should be possible until you are well on your way to safety.

Two points.
One: It's Dr. Wiggles.
Two: Your theory falls under the "contrived circumstances" category. You're assuming we haven't yet mastered the mystical and futuristic art of thermal imagery.

Yes, be amazed as I reveal to you that mankind HAS learned to detect infrared electromagnetic emissions, and can even sort out the wavelengths by temperature! Drop your mouth open in awe as I assure you that the cost of such such a sensory apparatus is not only affordable, but it's dirt cheap in comparison with an actual spaceship. Gasp as I admit that that detections can be made within hours, at distances of over an astronomical unit!

I speak not of legend--oh no. I speak of that which we can nowadays use. So come ye out of your huts and caves, and enter the modern world. In case no one has informed you, we also have the the electric light bulb, so you can read late into the night about everything you've missed over the last couple centuries.

Unless your ship operates at a couple degrees Kelvin, there is not stealth in space. Okay? Does anyone else want to take this up, or are we done with the stealth theories?

-Dr. Wiggles

Infrared is GREAT for finding heated targets. Such as ships with people inside.

What about cold targets? Electronics and probes do wonders with minimal heat and energy requirements. They can function at remarkable range (just check out our primitive proves out there now), and the little black space van has no need to be anywhere in sight.


You can find a target over yonder in a couple of hours? That's fine. But there are THREE problems with that theory:
#1: You have to know WHERE to look.
#2: You have to know WHEN to look.
#3: Multiple hours to scan is a LONG time when the other two aren't certain!

This is a problem because space is BIG, and time, which is against you in any mission of espionage, is also BIG.

I'll put it again: Surveillance is NOT cheap. You can throw a million thermal sensors around, and it'll do you no good because they break down, need a functional processing center, and require trained people to act on it.

I don't know where you get this fantasy land where you can probe the entirety of space and time at once, but clearly some good drugs are involved.

Scorpiuscat, or any one else who have read the Honor Harrington series, can you tell me, how the missile pod thing works, and how it changed the shape of the battles in the Honor Harrington series. I have looked at wiki and found a lot of info, but what missile pods were, how they work and how they changed the shape of battles, was not will explained.

q for biggles:

let's say you have an awesome passive sensor. for fun, let's say it detects infrared only, though obviously you could make it detect anything you want.

wouldn't the fact that your infrared (or other) radiation only travels at c mean that a ship at a reasonably long range would have quite a difficult time accurately predicting the path of the giant blob of heat? certainly you can see it, but if the thing's a decent ways away they can't be reasonably tracked, which is certainly a _type_ of stealth?

or are you just assuming that anything that far away can't be hit for the same reason, even if you have lasers that go the same speed, so the 'stealth' would be functionally useless?

Carbon016, do you see any reason, to use coil guns and lasers together? As they both need energy from the ship, and produce waste heat for the ship. I mean, your going to heat up your ship faster if you use them together, instead of using a missile system and one or the other.