realistic spaceship combat

[The diplomat]

Assuming plausible near future tech (no warp drive, no star trek type shields), what would spaceship combat really be like?

Tech wise, say we have nuclear or ion engines, basic lasers weapons (like the prototype ABM laser), powerful radars of course, and ICBM-like missiles.

It seems to me that spaceship combat would be more like modern day submarine combat:

1) cat and mouse detection game
Space is so vast, that even radar signals would take time to return off of a target. For example, If I am orbiting Earth, and the enemy ship was around Mars, it would take ~10 mn for my radar signal just to reach the enemy. You would also haver to send out a very powerful and narrow radar beam in order to get any signal back. Since radar gives away your position, like submarines, spaceships would probably rely on passive sensors that just "listen" for signals from the enemy. So, like submarines, spaceships would probably rely on a long preliminary detection phase, where both sides jockey for position and try to hide and detect the enemy first.

2) close combat
Combat would probably occur over short distances. YOu would attack when both ships are orbiting the same planet. You could not attack over long ranges (distances ~earth-mars or earth-jupiter), when even light takes minutes or hours to travel across, and your missiles would require days to reach their target. Could you fire an ICBM at a target when the missile would take several weeks to reach the target? Probably not!

Any long range combat would probably involve unmanned drones. A ship would launch a bunch of drones that would be capable of conducting limited search and destroy missions on their own.

3) 1 hit = 1 kill

Since we don't have magic shield tech that absorbs any hit, ships would probably be very vulnerable to attack. Like with current aircrafts or subs, a single missile hit would be devastating. Like with current naval warfare, defense would probably involve trying to shoot down the incoming missile, evading the incoming missile, and confusing the missile's sensors with jamming or decoys.

I think for all these reasons, near future spaceship combat would probable be very similar to modern naval and sub combat.

[GePap]

I don't know about radar beign the main method of detection: Maybe it works better outside of an atmosphere, but given the distance and perhaps background radiation..why wouldnt passive means, liek searching for the other shiops emmisions, be just as usefull? After all, if you can see them in radr, they would see you, but if one shot equal one kill, would it not be better to relly mostly on passive searches, track his emmissions while keeping your low?

Edit: woops, just read the beginning of the radar part... :O

As for one shot one kill: well, you can make ships in sections, so that if one section is taken out, it can be dropped and the ship and its crew could stil try to survive. You don;t have to deal with the problems of such a heavy medium as water, or the issues of being so close to a gravity well, like being on a planet, so that getting hit means going down, and going down means dying.

[Kassiopeia]

Tech wise, say we have nuclear or ion engines, basic lasers weapons (like the prototype ABM laser), powerful radars of course, and ICBM-like missiles.

What about rail guns? Using high-speed projectiles in a vacuum should be pretty simple.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by GePap
As for one shot one kill: well, you can make ships in sections, so that if one section is taken out, it can be dropped and the ship and its crew could stil try to survive.

Totally agree. In fact, I think the first manned ships to Mars will probably have a modular design, similar to the ISS, where you can assemble the ship by just assembling the appropriate modules.

Originally posted by GePap You don't have to deal with the problems of such a heavy medium as water, or the issues of being so close to a gravity well, like being on a planet, so that getting hit means going down, and going down means dying.

It seems to me that space could potentially be more dangerous. If a sub crew get enough warning of a catastrophe, the sub can blow the ballasts and quickly rise to the surface where the crew can be rescued within hours. In space, there is the threat of vaccuum and radiation, and a rescue mission could take months.

As you mentionned, spacecrafts would probably have separate sections like subs, where a section can be instantly sealed off to protect the rest of the ship in case of hull breach.

[Az]

The Diplomat: there is no point at Radar detecting some one orbiting Mars from Earth. What would you do to them, anyway?

Besides, I don't think we'll see small ships like the ones in Star Wars, more of enormous motherships ( maybe with fighter wings escorting them).

And yes, they'll all use Railguns.

[GePap]

It seems to me that space could potentially be more dangerous. If a sub crew get enough warning of a catastrophe, the sub can blow the ballasts and quickly rise to the surface where the crew can be rescued within hours. In space, there is the threat of vaccuum and radiation, and a rescue mission could take months.

I would agree that space is a far more hostile medium to life than anything on earth: my point is how easy it is to fight o live(or die) another day. What happens, for example, if the sub is hit in a way were it can't release ballast? Even if the ship can be cordoned off into compartments, once the ship is sinking, gravity and water pressure will combine to mean probable doom, unless the sea floor is nearby: unless a good sumersible is on hand, eventually the outside rpessure makes rescue less and less possible.

In general what i mean is that the likelyhood of the crew living through a catastrophich hit somewhere on the ship might be higher on a spaceship that a sub, though the issue of eventual rescue is worthwhile. I would say though that I think battles far away from planetary bodies seems unlikely to me, just like most naval battles. Few naval battles happen ut in the middle of nowhere in the ocean, if only becuase the low probability of crossing paths in the high seas. Space would most likely be similar, with shipping routes, and parts of space that would be almost empty. While Saceships might seem like subs, imagine how much fuel it would take to be able to "cruise" space? I think it more realistic for ships to have two sorts of engines, ones for travel near planetery bodies, and engines to try to cut travel time between planets.

[Sandman]

I say that detection equipment will evolve much more quickly than stealth equipment, unlike underwater, there's little to mask the presence of a spacecraft. We can already track bits of space junk of a decent size from Earth. But what about a stealth spacecraft? Apart from the ludicrous cost (both procurement and maintainence) of stealth, a spacecraft which attempted to absord incoming tracking signals would quickly overheat.

So I think that a cat and mouse game is unlikely.

Laser are too power-hungry to be much use for anything other than targeting and communication, a decent ship would have cooling systems, reflective armour and smokers to deal with all but the most intense laser beams.

Missiles would be highly useful, in my view, particularly as they would not have to be particularly steamlined, and could have a more efficient shape, such as a sphere or an teardrop.

Armour would probably be pretty good, probably very thick, but low mass stuff with multiple layers, able to slow down and absorb kinetic weapons, rather than reflect them. Alternatively, if you could mine asteroids, you could build a powerful space 'tank', a slow, but heavily armoured warship than can laugh off low power munitions.

Defensive devices would include cooling systems and smokers against lasers, electro magnet cages to protect vital systems aginst solar flares and EMP weapons, chaff to distract missiles and enemy detection systems and most importantly for lightly armoured ships, agility to avoid incoming weapons fire. I'm not convinced that devices to shot down incoming missiles, bullets etc, would be that effective, since even if a missile was destroyed, it would still have a shotgun effect on the hull, not to mention the possibility of missiles that deliberately split into smaller pellets to confuse defensive fire.

[Az]

Missiles would be highly useful, in my view, particularly as they would not have to be particularly steamlined, and could have a more efficient shape, such as a sphere or an teardrop

Oh, no, the most efficient form storage-wise will be used. a cube.

[FrustratedPoet]

How would explosions work in space? Given that it's a vacuum I doubt there'd be much flames and stuff like you often see in movies, but I ain't exactly a scientist.

[gsmoove23]

Missiles would probably be pretty useless as missile defense systems will probably improve more quickly, unless you could overpower the defenses with missile swarms. At long range they could be destroyed easily enough to avoid damaging shrapnel. Short range is another story.

Still, it would probably be much more cost effective to have rail-guns and such. Though if spaceships were to approach enemy planets or bases they could probably easily be destroyed by missile swarms.

In general the whole idea sounds way too costly, maybe people will just be sensible and leave it all to a game of chess.

[Az]

Railguns will be awesomely deadly. How about a 3 Barrel Gattling Railgun? Imagine this bad boy on an space, launching these 2 feet long slugs with immese speeds, like a hail of deadly hornets.

Asteroidal installations, will probably have lasers. Lasers seem to work, and with thinner atmospheres, they could reach space.

[Sandman]

Oh, no, the most efficient form storage-wise will be used. a cube.

But a cube is inefficient in terms of the material used to make it. A sphere is better if you want to mimimize the volume of the device, and thus it's mass. The sphere will also stand up better to space dust and anti-missile fire.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Active detection measures would be suicidal. Trying to radar (or any other active measure) to find someone in space would be like standing out in the desert on a totally dark night with a flashlight.

You won't see anything, but the whole world will see exactly where you are.

As for combat, railguns and hypervelocity dumb projectiles are silly - you'd have to have extremely close ranges in relation to space, to accurately hit something - keep in mind that enemy spacecraft would be moving pretty fast.

Movement is totally different from the nonsense in the movies - every time you apply thrust, you accelerate, so if you have constant thrust, you have constant acceleration. Nothing brakes you in a practical time frame, so to slow down, you thrust in the other direction.

Combat would greatly favor defenders, and one time of weapon that would work well is analogous to a particularly nasty type of anti-shipping mine. You have an automated missile launch/detector/mine system, that sits in a given area (yeah, you have to have a lot of these, but same with manned ships) and uses passive visual and infrared detection to find ships.* Once one detects something, it initiates a narrowband, low energy signal with a narrow field antenna to a communications center, where other sensors are ordered to change direction to improve the tracking of the enemy ship.

Once the enemy ship track is established, you can select a missile dispenser or two, and have them initiate a low energy launch (you're zero G, so not a lot of thrust is needed) to get them away from the dispensers, and on their way to the path of the enemy ship. The missiles stay in low-thrust, low emission, passive detection only mode until they close within a specific range, then they switch to high thrust and active target acquisition mode.

Ideally, the enemy ship is suprised at one or two inbound missiles at close range without warning.

* This is easy to do with current technology. Just take CCD imagers with a given field of view, and constantly take a series of short exposure images. It's simple data processing to sum the values of all pixels in the CCD field, and compare that number to the number for previous exposures of the same area. If there's a difference, you have either a reflective object, or something passing in front of another object. Once you have a suspect field of view that has some activity in it, you can then focus other detectors on that area and try to get a visual/IR read on it.

[Az]

But a cube is inefficient in terms of the material used to make it. A sphere is better if you want to mimimize the volume of the device, and thus it's mass. The sphere will also stand up better to space dust and anti-missile fire.

I don't understand anything you said, except the last sentence.
Why is a cube inefficient in terms of the materials used to make it?

[gsmoove23]

Unless you were running through an area with alot of junk, which you probably wouldn't be, these objects could probably be detected by the ship pretty easily, and taken out at a sufficient distance. Active detection systems would hardly be ridiculous if you knew you were in an area where you were going to be seen and you had a reasonable assurance that you could disable incoming missiles.