Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

Seems like it would be faster and safer for the fighters to stay in battle and be reloaded in situ as needed.

Faster yes, but how would it be safer?

There's no such thing as safer when in a combat zone. Not under imminent or immediate danger yes, but safer no. The only way a space carrier would be safe is its fighters are keeping the enemy beyond arm's length. At which point it's operating like modern carriers.

But if the space carrier is in the area where ordinance is being slugged around, it won't matter the method of reloading, recovering and refueling its fighters.

A fighter with no means of self defense is an easy target, refueling in the middle of battle would reduce the time that the fighter is unable to fight. Along with shorter refuel time, you would also keep the enemy away from the carrier.

edited 28th Apr '17 4:46:39 AM by TheOnlyFish

Perhaps, but unless the refuel/rearm drones are like, anime fast and able to catch up with the fighter and dock with it in the midst of combat maneuvering, any fighter pausing to rearm in the middle of a dogfight is gonna end up a kill mark on some other guy's fighter. Never mind if it's an actual bigger support craft that has to fly in and do the rearming.

So either the fighter returns to dock with a bigger ship, like a carrier (where at least they can be under a protective umbrella of the mothership's own armament and armor like in BSG), or they withdraw to a rearm/refuel waypoint somewhere between the two. Location and existence of said waypoints might vary dynamically during a battle, but it at least gives options between "Pop a squat in the middle of a furball" and "Run back home".

How quickly the rest of the battle follows you to wherever you need to go to rearm will depend a lot on how both sides utilize their forces. Maybe you can time it right so your wave of reinforcements hits the furball right as the first wave is disengaging. Maybe the enemy can't afford to follow you due to supply limitations of their own (they also need to refuel and rearm, or they know they will need to by the time they get to your resupply point, due to having to chase you there).

And once in a while, it doesn't work at all, just like how airfields and carriers get destroyed or disabled in Real Life from time to time.

Rearming in the midst of a dog fight is unrealistic. Retreating to the cover of larger ship's turrets and rearming there is likely, but them you might as well refuel in a ships hangar. You could have a few ships like the Venator-class Star Destroyer. It is a sort of jack of all trades, it has sufficient firepower and can carry and provide supplies for 400 star fighters.

Which is more dangerous? Stopping what you are doing in the middle of an action, plotting a return trajectory, and expending delta v to go back where you came from (then return again), or rendezvous with an automated resupply drone just before you run out of ammo?

And if the drone is destroyed? It would have to be pretty big to carry supplies and defense. It would be slow and need a bigger engine and more fuel. At this point it would be a target for battleships, it too dangerous to bring it to the middle of battle. Why have one large ship one fighter when you can have a large ship that accommodates for most, if not all, of the fighters. That's the advantage of a carrier.

It need be no larger than a modular resupply pod that attaches itself to a hardpoint.

If it has no self defense it can be destroyed easily. You wouldn't need to even engage the enemy. Your pilots would be cut of from any supplies.

edited 28th Apr '17 8:53:25 AM by TheOnlyFish

Could have the drone have limited one-way FTL abilities to solve the speed problem.

Not if you wanted to reuse them, that would get expensive after a while.

The drones have the same chances as missiles in the same environment- better, actually because they are trying to intercept a cooperative target. They wont be "in the danger zone" for very long, they will be small, and depending on how the orbital dynamics of the battle zone worked out, they could be quite challenging to engage.

Meanwhile a fighter low on ammo and fuel who is maneuvering out of the battle zone is just as vulnerable.

The problem with the drones is that they raise the question of why not just use the drones to attack instead of the fighters. Best not to draw too much attention to the elephant in the room.

You could ask the same thing now.

Drones are superior to maned fighters now, a firebee kicked the ass of multiple top gun aces in a dogfight.

The simple fact is though that the military doesn't always follow logic in its equipment.

In this case, the military might just be genre savvy.

The reason now might just be inertia. Drones are still a new technology.

However, if your settings has drones that have the capabilities necessary to follow fighters around in battle and rearm them, the audience may wonder why no one is using them as weapon platforms.

edited 28th Apr '17 2:11:43 PM by Aetol

Part of the reasoning in some of my settings are legal reasons. Drones may be more effective than humans but rules and laws prevent them from being widespread, due to paranoia or a need to drive humanity forward. Any number of reasons.

Because humans will never trust something that's completely autonomous that literaly kills people with proficiency without some type of human in the middle. Not to mention manned fighters don't need a signal however encrypted, to operate.

In my harder settings, fighters aren't used and remote drones are. Or ships just fire at enemy ships.

Immy: The problem with the Firebee was they had limited range for control and was still human controlled. They were typically controlled by chase planes for long range missions or had to stay in range of a ground facility with enough elevation to maximize transmission range. Modern drones get longer control range but rely on signal relays.

The possible ideal solution is an all automated or nearly all automated drone with the AI like the one shared previously.

Drones in my verse simply aren't viable outside of extremely specific scenarios and only for the short term, in space. In a terrestrial setting it's a bit more viable, but not by much.

Re: killing people without human intervention: we already entrust missiles with that. Point it at a target, it dies. Only difference is that a drone would be reusable.

Re: need for signal: only if the drone is remote-controlled. And tender drones would have the exact same problems anyway.

Human's on the trigger though.

Attack drones which are rearmed by tender drones, which are resupplied by other tender drones.