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What future space combat would really look like

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Re: What future space combat would really look like

#101

Post by _Y_ »

rbanffy wrote: post #50
j_baker wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, now we're getting into the theoretical issues. For instance, if we develop wormhole technology, the ship could very well be there before the enemy can see it. Otherwise, I just don't see interstellar space warfare as being that practical if it takes years to launch an attack.

If I could create wormholes at will, I wouldn't traverse the wormhole with the whole ship - just the bombs would suffice.

Why waste bombs. If you can create wormholes at arbitrary locations just teleport piece of a star into a planet.

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#102

Post by tuppy »

zeteo wrote: post #86
srl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason, of course, is that war is just so much cooler when people are dying. Sources: G. Carlin. Honestly, though, I fully expect AI to advance sufficiently in the next 20 years that a 10s delay is sufficiently small, and the AI can handle anything likely to occur in under 20s on its own.

>I fully expect AI to advance sufficiently in the next 20 years Yes, people have been expecting AI to become human-like within 20 years for the past 6 decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellige... ("Researchers expressed an intense optimism in private and in print, predicting that a fully intelligent machine would be built in less than 20 years")

Huh, why do you require human-like AI to control a bunch of high-velocity objects, calculate intercepts, and release other high-velocity objects on those intercepts?

The only human-level decision that needs to be made is simply confirming the object is a target and should be attacked.

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#103

Post by zeteo »

Locke1689 wrote: post #98
zeteo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? My point was that humans on board can improvise (remember Apollo 13) and carry out their objectives even in the presence of a forewarned and intelligent opponent.

The major problem (which is addressed in the article, by the way) is that once you've set a course you can't really change it much at all. Newtonian mechanics really limits your options here. Warships and space battles would be completely preprogrammed: detect enemy ship; set course for enemy ship; accelerate to maximum velocity; attempt to kill enemy ship with automated systems and not die as you shoot past. This is…

Once you fire a rifle, everything is also Newtonian and deterministic. You still have to move into position, decide which target to fire at, with what ammo etc

What you describe is quite close to an actual weapon used in WW2, the SG 500:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagdfaust

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#104

Post by Tloewald »

It's an interesting topic for discussion, but the writer makes lots of "realistic" assumptions whil ignoring many others. Assuming this level of "realism" -- I.e. no unforeseen technologies -- we basically don't get enormously high delta-v for most kinds of useful ship, so the very high sustained accelerations (e.g. 4G) aren't going to happen. The discussion of perfect intelligence is good but fails to mention that most plausible spacecraft would be detectable at enormous ranges even with their engines OFF. Clearly almost everything will be automated and networked.

I think the writer starts out with the a priori assumption that there will be spaceships with a crew at one end and an engine at the other and works from there. I suspect you'll just have a swarm of networked drones. Why put so many eggs in one basket?

(We're already seeing this approach being experimented with on nuclear hunter killer subs, where firing at an enemy gives away your position, and giving your position away gets you killed -- the US Navy has been working on submarines tha launch drone firing platforms.)

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#105

Post by potatolicious »

j_baker wrote: post #35
pavel_lishin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that the individual ships themselves will also be very small. In fact, if a fleet is big enough, the communications gap becomes a problem - space battles may end up looking like a fight between two ant colonies, with small independent ships working together as a swarm, without any central guidance.

You never know. I'm sure you could have a more "distributed leadership". I'm sure this could be accomplished with a clever enough application of paxos.

I agree with the author in that it's unlikely we'll get a Star Trek scenario where a single ship can continue taking hits without much consequence. In all likelihood the first hit a spacecraft takes will destroy it.

In that environment you really want as many small ships as possible - large capital ships really work against you. Any centralized command system would also be trivially easy to destroy by concentrating fire on the command ship.

A swarm of distributed ships seems much more viable in this system.

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#106

Post by zeteo »

ricree wrote: post #99
zeteo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I fully expect AI to advance sufficiently in the next 20 years Yes, people have been expecting AI to become human-like within 20 years for the past 6 decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellige... ("Researchers expressed an intense optimism in private and in print, predicting that a fully intelligent machine would be built in less than 20 years")

Did you read the rest of his post? He didn't predict general intelligence within the next 20 years. Rather, he predicted that the special purpose weapons AI would be sufficient to handle the sort of latencies that would happen in some hypothetical space combat. Perhaps I'm reading your posts wrong, but it seems a fairly conservative prediction to me.

We're talking about replacing people in combat vehicles with AI. Considering the need for tactics, strategy and improvisation in a conflict that can take place light-years away, that won't work with anything less than general-purpose AI.

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#107

Post by dustingetz »

ohyes wrote: post #88

Space combat seems pointless to me. What exactly would they be fighting over? Presumably you want to reach space for resources, so asteroids, planets and moons with minerals, stuff like that. You might also want planets/asteroids/moons that are 'good' for colonization (easily terra formed or already life sustaining). You probably wouldn't see many fights where you are firing at the resource itself. No one with the mo…

i imagine each planet/unit of an inter-system civilization will not be self-sufficient. seige, baby. i think a study of earth's military tactics and goals will answer the questions raised by this post.

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#108

Post by Locke1689 »

rbanffy wrote: post #50
j_baker wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, now we're getting into the theoretical issues. For instance, if we develop wormhole technology, the ship could very well be there before the enemy can see it. Otherwise, I just don't see interstellar space warfare as being that practical if it takes years to launch an attack.

If I could create wormholes at will, I wouldn't traverse the wormhole with the whole ship - just the bombs would suffice.

If you can create wormholes at will, you don't need bombs. Put one end of the wormhole in the target and the other in the center of the sun.

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#109

Post by zeteo »

amalcon wrote: post #100
zeteo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, come on. Tank and plane crews are also "sitting in a glorified tin can", but that didn't preclude, say, WW2 from being vastly more strategic than any preceding conflicts. The crew still has to decide where and how the vehicle moves, what targets to fire at, with which weapons, which field repairs can and should be done etc. etc. etc.

Tank and plane crews are also "sitting in a glorified tin can", but that didn't preclude, say, WW2 from being vastly more strategic than any preceding conflicts. That was because military doctrine had adapted to the invention of radio at that point. That would actually go away at the kind of distances we're talking about. Thirty-second communication lag is enough to ruin the command battlefield view. Almost all of th…

>Almost all of those things were actually decided by the officers commanding the tank / plane battalions

You'd be surprised:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Villers-Bocage#Mornin...

Re: What future space combat would really look like

#110

Post by Locke1689 »

talmand wrote: post #92
sp332 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, there are quite a few telescopes that constantly scan the sky for tiny changes. And it's not just the size of the ship, but the burning fuel from its engines as it navigates near our solar system.

Good replies, but I'll combine my thoughts here. Ships CAN be bright, we have the tech now to make them dark. True, burning fuel is a big problem. Especially if they were traveling rather fast towards us and they flipped over to reverse thrust to slow down. But what if you don't burn fuel as a means of propulsion? I'm going with the assumption if that if someone wished to do something bad, say invading a neighboring…

The point was never that the ships themselves can be bright, it was that the radiation is easily visible.

The article was also operating within the realm of theoretically available technology. There are very few propulsion systems that don't emit hot matter out the back (like solar sails) and the article addressed them suitably.

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