Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

@Flanker

Watch the Space Combat scenes in Babylon Five and the new Battlestar Galactica

Each similarly to more or less degrees of realism and each has different rules regarding the use of FTL technology in battle (as the two series feature very different forms of FTL)

@Fulltime D:

I'll definitely make sure to do so, cheers (I think it was you or someone else who recommended those two earlier). As Matt II said, I'll treat them with a pinch of salt, but that's just common sense.

Hopefully I won't have my naval forces acting like drooling idiots!

In the meantime, here's a question for you all - would I be correct in thinking that establishing superiority in space would automatically enable superiority in atmosphere and on the ground*

One thing to remember is that naval combat will almost always take place at the longest range at which significant damage can be dealt.

Robert Heinlien pointed out (in StarshipTroopers ) that even if a force has superiority in space, bombing the planet from orbit to get some grunts on the ground is like "burning down a house to get one flea".

Unless turning a nice green planet into a barren rock is the goal, the "navy" will have to send supplies to the "boots on the ground".

Take my example: While the EDF has faster ships, the Southern Cross uses raiders and more numerous ships to harass the Space Forces. The Cay can stay out longer and can both jump and warp around to mess with EDF ships and destroy convoys.

The EDF uses its ships to secure a planet, blockade it and drop ground troops on the enemy. If they can, they'll negotiate a surrender. It that fails, then the Ground Forces go in and dig them out, the Space Forces prevent them from escaping or getting reinforcements. The SCMC does the same, but with numbers instead of firepower. They choke off or "crush" the enemy with numbers. The Cay go in for the quick kill. They have no qualms about a Colony Drop to "pacify" a planet.

That's only the case if you can't spot the guys from orbit or air, if you can it's just the case of launching fighters, or precision munitions.

And if they occupy cities or farmland you need? The EDF fancies themselves as The Federation: "We don't drop things on people if we can't help it!" The Southern Cross takes your tack: "Find them from orbit and hit them, if you can't do that, cut'em off."

The Cay Union would rather drop a meteor on them first.

edited 4th Sep '13 8:27:23 PM by TairaMai

Even if you can it a window from high orbit, will the intel be good enough to hit what you are supposed to be aiming at?

IRL, that's one of the big problems with drones. The other problem is proportional response. Hitting one guy (or group of baddies) with a smaller weapon vs. dropping a large rock on their house (and collapsing the rest of the block).

In the end someone will have to stand on and hold a piece of ground. With help from ships, fighters, drones etc of course.

As for the quote, there's a big difference between an H-bomb and a fragmentation grenade. Heinlein was an excellent and forward-looking writer, but even he couldn't predict just how accurate future ammunition would get. Hells, the test of the M982 saw 92% of the projectiles landing within 4m of the target, and that's just the start.

edited 4th Sep '13 10:47:59 PM by MattII

^ You realize the orbital variety of Death from Above in a military sense would last an incredibly short time right? We see that happening today where ground forces vanish from sight and their bases once air superiority over an area is lost. Then you have things like in Korea where you have entire underground facilities even airfields built to where no bunker buster can really touch them.

Orbital to surface warfare is little different than the enemy having aerial supremacy. Just as there are ways to completely stifle (if not strike back from time to time) the enemy's aerial supremacy, there will be ways to stifle orbital supremacy. Unless you're the kind of xenocidal/genocidal bastard who is willing to glass an entire planet to complete uninhabitability you're going to have to set boots on the ground and get your hands dirty in a ground war.Note

Big facilities are not invisible, they'll show up on GPR, and they'll have access tunnels to the surface. From there it's a simple (though far from easy) matter of finding a tunnel and gradually opening it, probably with robots.

Also, unless you can destroy the enemy ships, space-superiority is not going to go away, because the ships will always be up there, at least in the short term.

edited 5th Sep '13 12:04:37 AM by MattII

It's like not superiority it's supremacy the heroes need. It's one thing to have numbers, but the numbers need to be used correctly and be able to take losses.

The Imperial Japanese and Nazi Germany had numbers and many Elite Mooks. But they had no staying power and once the allies got bigger and better, the war was over. Better tech and better tactics. Iraq had numbers, but Saddam was clutching the Villain Ball. The Coalition used better tech (cruise missiles, stealth, the M-1) and better tactics (the "hail mary" flank around Kuwait).

Between having numbers and sensors and the firepower to use it. Do the heroes fancy themselves the good guys and want to deliver a Patrick Stewart Speech to make the other side stand down? Or do they want to give them a Colony Drop because the Big Bad needs to be stopped?

Getting to the point they can worry about having the luxury of doing orbital bombardment requires space supremacy.

In my setting there's a system of informal rules, muost of which are legalized in some form by local governments:

Thousands of years in the future there are thousands of planets full of human populated planetary and lunar colonies with populations approaching the billions, thousands of newly evolved ethnicities, tribes, clans, social institutions, languages, religions, etc.

But generally, if a planet unifies under a single government, their orbit (and sometimes but not always their moons) is considered their territory. If a System of planets unifies, the entire Star System is considered their territory. Unless separated in space, any alliance of multiple star systems can attempt to enforce their law in the space between their systems, but like the space between non-aligned systems, it's legally neutral.

edited 6th Sep '13 4:00:03 PM by fulltimeD

I'll keep that in mind, thank you! It seems to be a common theme in harder works that naval combat occurs at extremely long distances, though that's not surprising considering how insanely vast space is.

@Discussion:

Judging from what folks have said, it seems that if space superiority/supremacy has been achieved, it's probably curtains for the side that's suffering from space inferiority/denial. After all, they'll probably have targeted any surface to orbit weapon sites for disabling or destruction, so it'll be rather difficult to hit back. The only option I can see is dispersing and/or attempting to get reinforcements from elsewhere to contest the space around the planet again. Neither of which will be too effective, I imagine.

@fulltime D:

That's pretty interesting. So what implications does that have security-wise? I doubt this would happen in practice, but would a starfaring power be able to park a warship somewhere nearby to one of the system alliances and just go "Hey, it's neutral territory, I'm not doing anything wrong!"?

I've got a feeling that I might have misunderstood how it works, though.

But it's also ludicrously unrealistic because real war has never been fought at maximum theoretical ranges. Just look at air to air warfare. We've had detection and missile technology to engage aerial foes from over 100 kilometers away using today's technology. You can maybe at best count on one hand the number of times a 100 kilometer long missile lock has occurred. (But you'll quickly lose count of how many times missile locks and/or gun kills have occurred at visual ranges. And I'm not counting the World Wars into that number.)

Hell, there hasn't even been a naval engagement at sea where they fight at standoff missile ranges.

Regarding orbital forces, the Honor Harrington series goes into that at length from time to time. Essentially, in any major conflict, if an attacking force gains control of the planet's orbitals, they are legally considered to have a sword at the planet's throat, and the forces on the planet are expected to surrender at that point. If they don't surrender, the attacking forces may use orbital strikes against military positions, with the understanding that they will try to minimize civilian casualties. Thus far in the series, there haven't been any cases of planetary forces wanting to put up open resistance against a fleet of ships in orbit carrying hundreds of nuclear warheads and heavy beam weapons.

That said, there's also plenty of reasons in-universe for a military force to need "boots on the ground", including dealing with the local population and rooting out any enemy planetary forces that might be hidden or mixed in with civilian population centers (such as a military base in or very near to a major city, which happens all the time in Real Life.

I'm reading "House of Steel" right now, which includes lots of appendices of in-universe historical data, and one of the things it mentions is that one planet (a Lost Colony, as it happens) had a civil war that involved anti-orbital strikes as one of the opening moves (the rebelling faction were a very militant group of Space Amish that felt that nobody should have advanced technology. The irony of a group of fanatical Luddites engaging in space warfare is remarked upon.) Eventually, the inhabitants of the planet's orbital facilities, and the surviving members of their space coast guard band together to pool their resources for the best chances of survival, with the coast guard forces eventually developing the capability to launch orbital kinetic strikes. It's described as being a valuable asset, but not to the level of being a total Game-Breaker on a planet where nuclear weapons are used by both sides.

edited 7th Sep '13 2:52:50 PM by MattII

I think there's been a few since then, for smaller values of "fleet". Didn't the Falklands War involves ships fighting each other? And I'm pretty sure there were various such engagements in the 80's in the Med and the Persian Gulf due to various countries daring the US to enforce their Freedom of Navigation policies (the idea that a country's territorial waters end 12 miles from shore), and the US Navy proceeding to call the bluff.

The only actual naval combat in the Falklands War was HMS Conquerer's sinking of the General Belgrano (also the only time a nuclear-powered sub fired a shot in anger).

There very nearly would've been the first fight between aircraft carriers since WWII, but poor winds prevented launch of any jets from the Veinticinco de Mayo against the British task force.

edited 7th Sep '13 7:23:17 AM by Catfish42

And thanks to your post and a short wiki-walk, I have learned that Argentina has a naval aviation program, despite not having any aircraft carriers anymore (they practice on Brazilian and American carriers)

The PATRIOT vs Scud engagements did happen at the TMB's maximum ranges. Back in 1991, Iraq got lucky in that the Scud's broke up as they re-entered atmo. In OIF, PAC-3 batteries did a much better job and got all missiles fired at them.

THAAD prefers to hit in Exo-atmosphere, but can hit closer. AEGIS can hit targets in space.

For missiles it's the trackback and that any TBM launch can be seen as a WMD. For anti-stat missiles, the problem is that even with the best IR and radar, there is still the problem of resolution and IFF.

No, decoy balloons are not as effective as the media and most defense pundits assume they are.

@AFP:

That makes sense. It seems like the Honor Harrington series has one of the more logical ways of dealing with these issues.

@Range discussion:

I don't think that it's too outlandish to presume that space warfare will be performed at extreme distances, barring circumustances that make target acquisition or actually acting on such information difficult.

Also, I still need some help figuring out things, if it would not be too much trouble. I want to ensure everything is as logical as possible in my setting.

Edit:

Wa-hey, 100 posts! I'm glad to know that this thread serves a purpose!

edited 7th Sep '13 1:37:32 PM by Flanker66