Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

Aside from bulk and complexity, none really. The more stuff you pack into your defensive projectile, the more energy it takes to get to its point of intercept and the easier it is for something to go wrong.

edited 8th Jan '18 11:06:56 AM by Fighteer

Damn, Fighteer you haven't posted in this thread in a minute, lol

Magnetic shrapnel, maybe? A near miss might be enough to cause induction currents in the target.

I am not sure magnetic attraction would provide enough force to pull it into the target even from brushing contact.

Anti-Missile weapons fall into one of two categories these days and efforts to create a third. Counter missiles, gun fired projectiles, and future directed energy weapons.

Fighteer has a point. The more you pack into it the heavier the shell gets. Then again it would not be the first time various projectiles have had multiple effects packed into a projectile though I can't ever recall something as complex as an EMP weapon/Frag warhead combo. It is certainly possible though. For things like gun fired projectiles you mix the ammo types in with each other in varying ratios. For missiles that gets a bit trickier as they only have so much room in their body to house warheads. So you have to choose.

Honestly one of best things you could shoot at another missile is a missile swarm.

One method I'd heard of for creating an EMP involved a bomb anyways, so figure just wrap one of those in segmented wire and fire it out of a cannon.

INDUCTION Tuefel, We're using the magnet to create an electric current on conductive surfaces it passes by.

That is not how induction works.

Based on what I remember from my ham radio license exam, that's exactly how inductance work. Might require electromagnets instead of regular magnets though.

AFP: I had to dig around a bit to find what they called the process. "Explosive-Driven Flux Compression Generators".

This is a PDF link from the FAS Federation of American Scientists on the subject.

Brief new Scientist article on it as well.

I would dare say this isn't something you pack into smaller auto-cannon shells but rather missiles. It may be feasible to give it a fragmentation package of some sort.

edited 8th Jan '18 4:12:19 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I am making some pretty massive assumptions about how the magnetic shrapnel passes the target but the gist is that as long as the angle of motion isn't parallel to the magnetic field you'll get some of the magnet's momentum turned into an electrical current.

Boy don't make me point a Twin Buster Rifle at your arse.

Yeah, but enough to induce a significant amount of current, or create enough of a magnetic field to perturb a projectile's motion? You're talking an immensely powerful magnetic field. If you want to do that, don't house it in a projectile, but have a ship whose job it is to generate that field and intercept missiles with it. Maybe a drone ship so the field doesn't endanger its crew.

Although I suppose at a certain level a remote drone with a powerful magnetic field generator and an EMP missile become increasingly difficult to tell apart.

For reference, the Earth's magnetic field at sea level at the equator is 31 microtesla. You need a field of 10 tesla to levitate a frog. The strongest continuous magnetic field ever produced in a lab is 45 tesla, and the strongest pulsed magnetic field ever produced in a lab is 10^3 tesla. Neutron stars produce magnetic fields of 10^6 to 10^8 tesla.

edited 8th Jan '18 5:43:20 PM by Fighteer

Does levitating the frog cause any physiological harm to it?

Not as far as I know, but all I have to go on is a few You Tube videos on the subject.

I sort of like the idea of a dedicated ship that can muck about with projectiles with a powerful magnetic field. Sort of an alternate PD type ship. Though as Fighteer implied that has an obvious downside of drawing fire towards said ship. Maybe a re-usable/Disposable towed array of some sort?

For all the silliness that comes from being based on Star Trek technology, the Starfleet Battles game system had a nifty idea in the form of a "Wild Weasel" drone that would simulate the sensor signature of a ship, attracting all incoming missiles to it for a period of time. Said sensor echo would continue for a few seconds after the drone was destroyed, as well. An EMP drone or a magnetic trap drone could similarly be a fire-and-forget point-defense system.

Heck, just a simple thermonuclear bomb detonated in empty space would create enough radiation to fry almost any electronics nearby.

edited 8th Jan '18 8:13:55 PM by Fighteer

There was a plotline in How Much for Just the Planet? about decoys which were basically inflatable starship-shaped balloons. It was by far the least silly bit in the book. And it was very silly.

So I was thinking back on Fox's carrier stealth group that conducts raids unilaterally behind enemy lines on the last page and I was thinking...

Assuming the right circumstances and a charismatic leader, would it be possible for that group to be loyal to the captain? More so than the Human government?

I'm posing this as a scenario where they fail a critical mission, and to avoid bad PR, morale tanking, the human government would blame them (and be somewhat justified in doing so, sacrificing their reputations for the greater good)

How plausible would it be that if the Captain says "Fuck that," and the crew follows him/her? and they do their own thing since they're pretty much fucked anyhow?

It’s always possible. Whether it is plausible depends very much on the setting. Whenever you have a tightly knit group of elite troops with a charismatic leader, you run the risk that part or all of that group will become more loyal to their leader than to the military institution as a whole. The risk is increased if this unit is frequently sent into hairy situations with no backup or direct support. There are ways to mitigate this risk: rotating staff, planting internal security agents, forced promotions, etc., but they depend on how smart the military and/or political leadership is and the degree to which they are willing to sacrifice performance for reliability.

There are countless stories built around the dynamic of a small group of military personnel going rogue out of loyalty to their direct commander. Setting such a group up for a fall to deflect blame for some failure is one of the classic ways to instigate such a defection. It’s an instantly recognizable trope.

edited 11th Jan '18 9:16:43 AM by Fighteer

There's precedent for that with Roman Generals marching on Rome but that's pretty difficult to pull off. In the case of Caesar, his legions were certain he could stay in power and make it all legal after the fact.

It would be easy with an unpopular government but without it we're talking treason.

That's a catch-22 in and of itself. With frequent rotation of staff you get more security risks of leaks of operations, even with compartmentalization (and considering you're constantly behind enemy lines, if you're competent enough to be on said group, you're smart enough usually to put two and two together), and you risk throwing off the unit's cohesion with constantly training newbies more than necessary.

It would be as if, during the US Civil War, after being blamed in part for the defeat at Gettysburg, JEB Stuart,instead of returning home, led his men off into the frontier to start their own colony.

I've watched that show, their descendents return in the 21st century and wage war on the various fractured polities that make up the former United States. A Mad Cat gets blown up in every intro for some reason.

edited 11th Jan '18 2:48:58 PM by AFP

It's treason either way, but the idea is that a sufficiently popular and well-managed government shouldn't have disgruntled elite military units going rogue; if they do, it reflects something very broken underneath. Also, this really has nothing to do with sci-fi; it's a universal trope.

edited 12th Jan '18 6:29:26 AM by Fighteer

What do you think would be required for that group to operate indefinitely behind enemy lines? If we're talking a space ship they'd need ways to repair and rearm, replenish fuel and life support, and replace any personnel or equipment losses.

Would that require a home base? Would it be possible (well, anything is possible, but more like feasible or practical) to have a ship with the necessary facilities to operate indefinitely?