What's the best way to conduct it? What will we see soon?
Bonus: Best way to assault a space station or base?
Double bonus: Do any Western governments have real plans for space warfare cqb?
Space Warfare
What's the best way to conduct it? What will we see soon?
Bonus: Best way to assault a space station or base?
Double bonus: Do any Western governments have real plans for space warfare cqb?
There's a great short story of two immortal pilots in spaceships having a battle. One of them is chasing the other and has fired his weapons, the other is flying away. The guy in front eventually wants to surrender but he needs the chaser to self destruct his missiles. So he contacts him and realises the guy behind is long dead from damage.
So he has to run forever, fix his spaceship forever because if he ever slows down the missiles catch him and he dies as well.
>making the missiles slower than the ship at max speed
Sounds like a poorly written story
There is a much better one about a boomer astronaut on a small moon running from his colleague because resources are running out. He tricks the other zoomer guy to shoot at him with a revolver and then computes the orbit of the bullet and lures the zoomer in its trajectory. The zoomer is too brain-rotten from TikTok to be able to do math by hand so has no clue what the boomer scribbled on the ground and gets shot by his own bullet.
Sorry to say anon but that's not remotely how orbits work. To catch someone, you actually slow down
If it's the one I'm thinking, by Larry Niven, they're flying interstellar with Bussard Ramjets scooping up hydrogen so infinite fuel as long as you don't slow down and approaching asymptotically the speed of light so the guy behind him can never catch up if he doesn't slow down. No orbits involved. The guy in the lead ship eventually becomes a moron because the medical tech can keep him alive indefinitely but can't preserve his brain perfectly.
Yeah I remember that one too, the missile has AI and chases them relentlessly eventually everyone on the escaping moon-ship uploads as AIs but it's not like Baxter ever has any recognizable characters
There's a Stephen Baxter short story from one of the Xeelee books about this sort of scenario.
>What's the best way to conduct it?
Fully automated drones, smart mines and other delayed weapons, DEWs, relativistic particle beams or hyperkinetic projectiles fired from stealthy platforms at a distance, etc. Nothing directly involving baseline humans.
>What will we see soon?
Nothing. Starship will be the first time humanity will be able to put serious mass into space at low cost with high cadence. There's nothing to be fought over until people are living up there and actually staking claims on limited resources. So it'll be a long while yet, while computers and AI keep getting ever more powerful ever faster.
Don't expect anything that looks remotely like any fun scifi. Space sucks for meat humans and we will be worse than useless in battle. The only way we could have had anything remotely fun would be if the US had gone Sea Dragon and such and figured out cheaper bulk lift back in the 70s, the USSR had been somewhat less shit and thus been able to make something happen too, and permanent moon bases, large space stations, and so on had happened, preferably with nuclear drives also developed in space so that serious Mars and outer planet exploration could have happened by the 80s/90s and serious economic usage such that space wasn't just prestige but actually generating serious returns for both countries. Then there'd have been a 10-30 year window where the economy and mass lined up with there not yet being good enough computers to not have humans play a serious role.
That's not the world line we found ourselves on though.
space isn't real
>What's the best way to conduct it? What will we see soon?
Disabling stuff with ground laser
>Bonus: Best way to assault a space station or base?
Future, plot intercept to your target.
They cannot shot you or you huge spaceship and its debris will annihilate the station and create a debris ring lasting decades to centuries.
Math velocity without burning a hole into the station
Deploy unhackable, unjammable drones whose job are to counter any laser or weapon that try to harm your troops
Send troops to take control of outdoor accessible system
Have a melee fight with the remote drone that aren't jammed or have their own AI.
Send troops inside, with a system that create an temporary airlock behind them, unless you are ok depressurizing every room.
Troops use melee weapon or occasional harpoons so you don't punch a billion of holes in the pressurized area.
Use the force
Fire a torpedo in the exhaust port
Get medal from the princess
>Double bonus: Do any Western governments have real plans for space warfare cqb?
Every western governments have anti-sat missiles and might have a laser project like the Chinese, but probably not.
France launched its last military satellites with a guardian who actually look all around the satellites surrounding.
They know Russia & China have been sending micro-satellites that try to get close of their satellites to see how they can disable them (probably with a laser shot).
>France launched its last military satellites with a guardian who actually look all around the satellites surrounding.
Correct.
>They know Russia & China have been sending micro-satellites that try to get close of their satellites to see how they can disable them (probably with a laser shot).
Russian sats aren't really micro, they don't give a frick about protestations anyway.
The chinese have become a real threat up there.
The micro stealthy sneaky sats were rather Americans ones.
>https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRAVES_(système)
>https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lemonde.fr%2Feconomie%2Farticle%2F2007%2F06%2F20%2Fle-radar-graves-scrute-l-espace-et-detecte-les-satellites-espions-americains_925954_3234.html#federation=archive.wikiwix.com&tab=url
imagine fighting in that environment, then having your cord cut and get pushed away
I imagine in that combat any responsible side would equip their guys with those astronaut jet packs they had in the shuttle so they can thrust themselves back in the right direction
What sort of magic drones are going to be immune to lasers and other weapons?
>What's the best way to conduct it?
Really fricking big missiles that you can fire from one end of the solar system to the other (as long as you don't mind them taking a few decades to get there).
>What will we see soon?
Maybe a few kinda cool communications satellites, if we're lucky.
>Bonus: Best way to assault a space station or base?
Assuming you don't need anybody actually on the space station alive then put a series of small holes in every compartment to spill the atmosphere, then send in the marines, and have the engineers patch up every hole before you restart the life support systems on the station after taking it.
>Double bonus: Do any Western governments have real plans for space warfare cqb?
Do you mean atmospheric launched anti-satellite missiles? If not, then no.
>What's the best way to conduct it? What will we see soon?
Yes in the form of knocking out enemy satellites to disrupt comms and possibly dropping munitions. IIRC the US Air force toyed with the idea of using solid tungsten warheads
>Best way to assault a space station or base?
knockout life support, wait for them all to suffocate the board
>Do any Western governments have real plans for space warfare cqb?
No CQB is way too dangerous in space
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewarintro.php
Here, read this blog. It covers all the aspects of space warfare.
Massive volleys of missiles at long range opposed by Laser Point Defense. Macron Guns provide backup both as an inner PD layer and a secondary weapon for when the missiles run out.
Pretty sure a turbo autist created a website that goes over every element of travel, warfare, communications etc.....it's basically modern beyond visual range jet warfare on steroids as stealth is impossible, you can't hide.it's likely that it would be fully automated, just missiles endlessly cruising (no friction) for targets.
https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent2.php
The beam weapons page alone has 60.000 words.
Is it mostly peer-to-peer, or more similar to the current USN v Houthis?
>Double bonus: Do any Western governments have real plans for space warfare cqb?
I bet you have no real friends. Not real flesh and blood ones.
>Best way to assault a space station or base?
Negative matter planet delivered by hyperspace tube.
t. Doc Smith
>op pic
Hey, who turned out the lights?
its going to be missile wars and satellite jamming for awhile
>What will we see soon?
end of ICBM spam meta as cheap mass sat constellations get deployed that are equipped with simple interceptors. Any launch is detected they hit the MIRVs anywhere on the planet before they can even properly stage
Starlink and similar programs are demonstrating the feasibility of constellations for civ use, all it needs is more pragmatic minded leaders using it for military benefit then the likes of rather flawed and simple minded south africans
Main race for first stage is not Mars as some like to market, its getting cheap mass tonnage to low earth orbit. There you can build whatever you want in whatever configuration you want to send wherever you want. Even better if said craft has not to land on destination but can carry the orbital landing ship.
Second stage is prospecting and geological surveys with research outposts finding the best deposits of base resources across the solar system. Biggest candidate for space industrialization is not mars but the moon with its close proximity and presence of basic deposits. From which further industrial chains can spin off.
Mars and the rest of the foreign worlds is a distant third stage object and yet to be seen how it develops. Will it have national boundries where different states lay claims on different clay. Or semi autonomous colonies filling the role of state proxies. Like east indian company once did for the bong empire.
Drones zigzagging all of the place throwing rocket torpedos at space ships zigzagging all of the place trying to dodge.
>zigzagging
That's now how space works, anon.
*does a radial burn*
nuthin personnell, kid