Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

You don't need an AI as has been repeatedly pointed out. All you need is a reasonably sophisticated expert system for a standalone system. Really that is it. It doesn't have to have free will at all to be a functional war machine. It doesn't need to be an AI to be a sophisticated or capable system. Humans are a far bigger problem then any sophisticated computer system because they have far more physical constraints. There is simply no way around that short of not being human.

Who watches the watchmen?

Yeah, if you're using Windows 95. See, the thing is, by the time we actually need space fighters (ie, by the time we have someone on another world to actually fight), computers will be way more advanced. Hells, we may even have cyborg computers, which have all the advantages of a biological mind (presuming normal computers don't), without the half-a-ton of unnecessary baggage a body brings with it.

And humans have an automatic half-second lag anyway, since it takes a limited amount of time to react to stimulus. Oh, and unless you're down to ranges of a few km you'll be flying by instrument anyway, so everything bar data-link lag is still against you, 'cause a blind pilot will not be any more effective than a blind computer.

Indeed, let's instead go to missile land, that way you don't need to actually bring any hardware back.

@Tuefel

I don't think any expert system, no matter how complex, is going to be able to keep up with the chaos of war. All an expert system does is look at the data it's given and searches it's knowledge base for a match. However, war is chaos and misinformation is just as important as actual fighting. More so if Sun Tzu is to be believed. People have studied war their entire lives and still get surprised. However, there are still great generals that pop up now and then and win battles against all odds. When others have tried to copy them it's often ended badly (It's suspected that Robert E. Lee was trying to copy Napoleon at Gettysburg).

@Matt

Missiles always seem to lead to stalemates, though. You fire some missiles. Some of the missiles act as counter missiles and knock out some missiles. ECM then dupes some missile. Lasers knock out some missiles, then railguns with fragmentation rounds knock out some missiles and by the end of it you'll be lucky to get any hits in at all. Considering that spaceships don't sink you'll need to hit something that causes secondary explosions or you're not getting any kills.

Eventually you're going to run out missiles and then you're back to square one sans a few billion dollars.

I believe otherwise. Not only can a sufficiently sophisticated system react far faster then any human they can also collect and analyze data far faster then any human. There is a far lot less big deception gambits in fighter type combat then there is in grand strategy. Even then the machine can easily outpace the human in prediction but possibly detecting the ploy before it can be executed. They are completely unaffected by the many factors that can rapidly degrade even a top notch military pilot to a severe degree.

Who watches the watchmen?

And how are you taking out the enemy with drones/fighters? Strafing them? Good luck on that.

For further issues with fighters, what does a fighter give you that a drone doesn't? The ability to make creative decisions apparently. What does a drone give you that a fighter doesn't? Well, let's just say, unlimited endurance, increased payload per unit mass, flexibility of shape, etc. Putting people in fighters makes them bigger and more expensive compared to drones, increases fuel usage, and adds nothing to sensors or weapons, all for the advantage of someone being able to make a decision a few seconds earlier, but which is probably no better than the computer one, as the chances are high that any decision that requires a decision to be made means the craft is in a situation where it's blind anyway, so the chances of a better decision are about 50/50.

edited 9th Aug '15 12:25:45 AM by MattII

Besides, the lag issue doesnt mean that you have to put humans right in the attack craft, it means that you have to keep the humans within a few tens of thousands of kilometers. A well-armored command module with point defense would be able to serve as C&C for several dozen drones, I would imagine.

As for fighters themselves, it depends on what you mean by "Fighter". The term generally implies a certain minimum level of maneuverability. Otherwise what you have is a manned patrol craft, which is what I would call a weaponized Gemini capsule.

edited 9th Aug '15 5:46:21 AM by DeMarquis

Spacefighters would rely on two things. First, breathable liquid as the only form of >10 G compensation and second, swarm tactics using carriers

Breathable liquid means that a fighter could accelerate more than humans are normally capable of handling. The blood is rendered neutrally buoyant and such. The new limit becomes when parts of the body start tearing apart due to slight differences in density. Or the craft collapses under the strain.

On the other hand, breathable liquid doesn't scale up well. A liquid G-suit would be incredibly bulky and heavy making it impossible to move about the cabin. Flooding the cabin wouldn't work either. Anyone at the back of the ship would be put under massive pressure while anyone at the front would have the opposite effect, having so low pressure that actually getting enough oxygen might become an issue.

Swarm tactics are self explanatory but consider that a missile can not be retrieved no matter how successful it is. By that reasoning it's most economical to make missiles as cheap as possible. However, this makes the individual success rates very low. Fighters, since they can be expected to return, can be made with more advanced, more expensive components and if they fire from a shorter range they can get a higher success rate. All the while keeping the carrier, which keeps all the fuel, food, and ammunition stores, out of the line of fire.

@Demarquis

I just don't trust drones farther than I can shoot them. Keeping the C&C away from the bulk of the firepower also strikes me as foolish.

Tiny problem with that. People can't breathe liquid and liquid doesn't stop G forces. The same limitations are there.

Who watches the watchmen?

Except that you've got it wrong, you can put any grade of components on a missile, and the higher the grade, the more successful the missile will be, up to a point. Fighters, because you need to retrieve them have to use high-end components, which makes them bloody expensive. They also need to carry much more fuel (they have to get home again), which means they need more powerful engines to achieve the same level of manoeuvrability, and that's before you figure in the half-ton mass of the cockpit, which will add several times its own weight in necessary engines and fuel, plus adds a large number of components that must be maintained.

Oh please, don't tell me you're going to stick all of the weapon on the fighters, there's no way that's practical, not when you can mount basically fighter-sized missiles (that is, missiles the size of fighters) on you battleships.

edited 9th Aug '15 1:53:12 PM by MattII

That and smaller ship means smaller armaments. It might be ok for short range fighting, small ship interdiction, or harassing.

Who watches the watchmen?

Liquid Breathing is a thing http://gizmodo.com/can-humans-breathe-liquid-1156138301

And has been in the works for nearly 50 years http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3191624/

Likewise, liquid G-suits also exists http://www.flightgear.dk/newsuit.htm

So it's not a great stretch that humans develop the technology further, developing more effective breathable fluids in addition to perfluorocarbons.

Except you clearly didn't read the article. Your not doing any breathing an array of machines are doing it for you. It also requires more equipment then just breathing in gases.

Who watches the watchmen?

Irrelevant. The system works. It can be developed further. Having a machine breath for you still means you're breathing.

In fact, being a complex system with lots of heavy components would necessitate a setup where the pilot doesn't need to move from his station for any reason short of an emergency exit. A setup like a cockpit, perhaps.

@Matt

I never said that I didn't like drones. I just don't think it's wise to control them from tens of thousands of kilometers away.

edited 9th Aug '15 5:43:46 PM by Belisaurius

As it is, fighter pilots today require mechanical assistance to breath while flying their planes. Unless the masks' designed purpose is to look cool.

Bel: Not irrelevant at all what is irrelevant is your incorrect assumption that liquid in the lungs does anything to stop the effects of g forces on the body in the first place or that humans are somehow able to operate even close to normal under high G's.

First the machinery is the kind that is you on a hospital bed and immobilized to prevent injury from shifting while several machines need to work to move the fluid in and out of your body and maintain the pressure at a safe level. Your lungs can't move the fluid you are completely reliant on the functioning of the machines. Add in that if any of those necessary machines fail your fucked. It needs all of them working to work in the first place. Never mind you are increasing the logistics and complexity of oxygen systems for no gain against what G-forces do to you. G forces are not the same thing as atmospheric pressures. The liquid system is also significantly more complex then just the standard method of breathing in gases and has way more points of failure that result in loss of oxygen to the brain.

It isn't pressure on your lungs that is the problem with G-forces it is the fact that G forces cause the blood and fluids in your body to pool in different parts starving the brain of oxygen from lack of blood flow. That is why pilots wear G-suits that put pressure on various parts of the body to keep the blood from completely flowing away during high G maneuvers but even that has hard limits namely limited time for those maneuvers. Liquid in your lungs doesn't negate the effects of G-force stresses and what it does to people in fact it will very likely make the situation worse because G forces affect all fluids in the body. Sustained G-forces are far harder on the body then short duration forces. Sustained G's above human most human tolerance means sustained loss of blood flow to brain. Filling the lungs with that fluid won't change that and is very likely complicate it. What is blood again? Yeah liquid it isn't the only fluid in your body shifting around under G-load. Your talking about adding another fluid that will shift and flow putting strain and pressure on one of your vital organs into the mix. The average human blacks out at 9gs from lack of blood flow. That breathing system won't change that.

The g-force of a rocket launch is limited by the cargo it is carrying. In the case of a manned mission, it is limited by what a human is able to endure. High levels of g-force can damage the body and at around 9gs most humans black out as blood struggles to reach the brain. Astronauts normally experience a maximum g-force of around 3gs during a rocket launch. This is equivalent to three times the force of gravity humans are normally exposed to when on Earth but is survivable for the passengers. Astronauts are trained in high g-force, wear g-suits and must be correctly prepared.

Astronauts are already pushing the limits of sustained G-forces during a launch and some maneuvers and at 3 G's they have a hard time moving. You are not going much higher then that before your effectively immobilized.

The final nail in the manned craft coffin of high g myth is the fact your not going to be doing much moving at all. The higher the G's the harder it is to move to the point of immobility. Humans have limited strength the only way to circumvent that is to not be a human.

You know what doesn't have any of those issues ever? Automated machines. No blood, no muscles, and no squishy brain. You can put machines through far higher sustained G-forces compared to humans because they don't have the biological limitations that humans do. Drones have a significant advantage over humans because of a distinct lack of several limitations on their possible overall max performance. Limitations that exist on manned craft solely because they are manned.

edited 9th Aug '15 6:36:10 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Let me stop you right there.

You seem to be under the impression that only the lungs are going to be filled with breathable fluid. This is Not the case. Filling the lungs is actually just a secondary measure to prevent the weight of the fluid in the cockpit from crushing the lungs under acceleration.

Again, not much of an issue. The pilot is utterly unable to move from the cockpit. Sure, the system could fail but that's true about any life support system with similar results.

Regardless of all of that (I'm not qualified to comment one way or another) but the basic objection to the fighter design you specified is that there is no reason to put a weapon on a fighter, have the fighter fly out to a certain point in space, and then fire the missile. Just give the missile more fuel and it can get itself there with less fuss.

As for needing a human on-board to make decisions, that depends on the overall tactical situation. If it's a set-piece battle between fleets far from a population center, I dont see any reason you need a human to make the firing decision. Anything flying at you not broadcasting an encrypted "Friend" signal is the enemy, kill it. In crowded orbital space, with neutral non-combatants around, that's a different story. So there's a range of tactical situations, some of which benefit from human decision making more than others. Police patrol craft may have no choice but be manned. But my earlier point was that just putting humans in a small space ship doesnt really make it a fighter- most conceptions of "fighters" involve a craft that uses manuverability as it's main defense against hostile fire. It only really works in contexts where the ratio of trajectory change is very high compared to the velocity of the munition and target. When an F-15 pulls a steep dive, it's change measured in units of acceleration is very high compared to it's velocity in the direction of travel (i.e., it's speed in a turn is not that much less than it's speed going straight).

That isn't going to work in space. Directional speeds using current technology are measured in tens of thousands of miles per hour. Changes in direction are measured in tens of miles per hour at best. Any technology which increases directional change speed is also going to add proportionally to speed in a straight line, so this is unlikely to change. No one is going to "dodge" a missile. But that's what a fighter does. So- no space fighters. Or bombers, for the reason I gave above. Fast patrol craft are the closest you can get, I think.

edited 9th Aug '15 7:31:17 PM by DeMarquis

An evasion based small ship isn't going to get anywhere, I agree. However, what about a base or carrier based strike craft?

The fighters are big enough to mount warship grade missiles but not big enough to carry any reloads. The fighters zip out to engagement range, take their shot, then scurry back to the carrier for reloads and replacements. The carrier is always doing it's best to stay out of the line of fire while shooting down the fighters is mostly meaningless. They aren't very expensive and most of them are drones with a few humans to troubleshoot as needed.

There is no "engagement range" in space. Ranges are infinite, and weapons are limited more by fly-time to target than distance. Like I said, you could more easily and cheaply just give the missiles the fuel to get themselves to target, why waste resources on a mobile launch platform? "Scurrying back to the carrier" is not exactly how it works out there. Two ships firing at each other, using current chemical rocket technology, are likely to be going at a relative speed measured in tens of thousands of miles an hour at distances measured in thousands of kilometers. At that range and speed, the delta-v required to do a u-turn in space is likely to be prohibitive. That's why you fire one-way missiles- the alternative is doubling the fuel, and more than doubling flight time. While the fighter is slowing down and preparing to go into reverse, it's practically motionless with regard to the target, and at it's closest approach as well- conditions under which it's very likely to get shot. Unless there is an astronomical body with sufficient gravity to provide a sling-shot trajectory change, sending manned craft on a fly-by shooting mission is a very expensive and risky proposition. What tactical advantage does it bring to compensate for that expense and risk? Bear in mind that hauling weight is a zero sum game in space-given the choice between one manned "fighter" or maybe an extra ten self-guided missiles, again what's the advantage of the one? It's just not a scenario that seems very plausible.

edited 9th Aug '15 8:57:17 PM by DeMarquis

Bel: Let me stop you right there because you are still colossally wrong. You still need the full set of machines to breathe regardless of what else you fill with fluid human lungs don't breathe fluid. What you proposed changes nothing about the g forces. The body will be affect all the same regardless of the presence of fluid or not and affected in the same way by the exact same amount of force. Filling everything with fluid is even worse. You have a mass shifting around you and in you if you fill other body spaces and your still getting directly affected by the G forces. If you fill the body cavities with fluid that isn't helping at all and no it doesn't stop crushing, tearing, or the fluid shifting with g forces in the first place. You don't evade gravity by jumping into the ocean and water balloon. Its still there. The G forces are still there and acting in full force on the person. Again this is G forces not atmospheric pressure they are not the same forces. Your idea does not change anything at all.

Again a machine does more with less by leaps and bounds. We already have space craft proving that.

Who watches the watchmen?

@huefel

When the blood in the human body is pulled towards the feet the fluid is also pulled towards the feet. The body is mostly water an is therefore incompressible. The feet and legs must expand to accomedate the blood pouring into them. However, the fluid is also pulled towards the feet and exherts a squeeze on the feet and legs. Exactly the same as the blood being pulled towards the feet. The blood can not displace space near the feet and is forced to stay where it is.

This is the core principle of the liquid G suit. It doesn't keep the limbs from flying apart, it cancels the actual effects of G forces on the body's circulatory system. It exherts pressure equally on all parts of the body.

The breathable liquid parts is only for accelerations of over 20 gs, to counter the weight of the G suit on the wearer's torso.

I really don't know why you seem so opposed to such a simple system and feel ashamed that I had to explain it to you like a child.

Bel: I am opposed because it doesn't work that way and you have a gross misunderstanding of how most g resistance equipment in general actually works. It sounds like you are talking about a fluid filled capsule. Even if you weren't and were referring to the actual liquid G Racing suits they don't stop or cancel the g forces either and in fact work on the exact same general principle as the pneumatic g suits with the exact same general limitations on the pilot.

If you are talking about a fluid filled capsule.

First all the fluid including ALL of the bodily fluid will be moving in the direction of the force. That also includes your eyeballs and sustained high forces do unpleasant things to your eyes because of fluid pressure. Like going blind. That exterior fluid isn't going to magically compress or provide pressure in the manner your described at all it is going to do is pool just like everything else and that will be the direction of pressure. The blood isn't just pooling in your feet it pools in the direction of the force through out your body. It can pool in your arms, hands, waist, groin, legs, and feet. If it is in the direction of your head it will pool in your brain which can cause red out which is the same thing as a grey out only from excessive blood pooling in your brain. What are you going to do about that compress the neck?

Unless that fluid force just happens to be moving in a direction to put pressure on the arteries and blood vessels it isn't going to do squat to stop the blood pooling especially if it is all being pulled in the direction the blood travels inside anyways. If the force is heading for your feet so is that fluid guess what direction your blood vessels and arteries in your legs run in? Yeah towards your feet. You would have to pressurize the fluid in terms of atmospheric pressure not g forces that are effecting everything in that space equally to get anything to happen.

Second no you aren't canceling out the effects of G forces on the circulatory system unless you are magically canceling out the g forces in the first place. The presence of the fluid does not stop that at all. The fluid in the lungs is not going to stop effects of g forces on the lungs or anything else for that matter. You don't even need the fluid in the lungs for short duration 20 g resistance.

The heart still has to try and pump blood that now weighs significantly more then it does at one g and just like the rest of the muscles in your body your heart has limited strength and the more g's over more time the harder it has to work. You could actually quite easily cause someone to suffer cardiac arrest you pile on enough sustained gs. This by the way is one of the reasons you have to have a rather healthy heart and circulatory system to be an astronaut because the strain of sustained gs on rockets we send astronauts up in is hard on the body but survivable. Add in the fact there will still be pooling of the body fluids no matter what you do the only way to stop pooling is to close off the pathways the blood travels in the first place. Restricting the pathways the blood moves through causes its own array of At best you can only slow it and provide some increased resistance for very short duration high g exposure. Sustained high g exposure will surpass the ability of the applied pressure and the pooling is still occurring only more slowly. If you sustain the cause of the pooling in the first place you will still succumb to the g forces pooling your blood. This will be over a matter of seconds maybe a minute or two if your lucky.

If you were talking about the racing suits you are even further out in the weeds. They are not that much different then g suits fighter pilots and astronauts use now.

The actual liquid G racing suits work in nearly the exact same way as other G suits only they use sealed pressurized passive hydraulic fluid muscles instead of pneumatics to control the pressure applying parts and at most only give them only 1.5 more G's of resistance. They do not cancel out the g effects on the pilot, they give them just a bit more resistance. Just like their pneumatic suits they have carefully located pressure points and bands that when fully pressurized push against the key points on the body that have arteries and blood vessels to help slow the pooling of the blood. The pressure bands have limited pressure abilities based on the liquid muscles design partly to prevent injury. The pilots still have to use the clenching and breathing techniques alongside the G suit just like other pilots using the pneumatic ones. Just like the other g suits most suits are not meant for sustained high g strain but short high g strain as in no more then a few seconds at most.

If you try to maintain the pressure on the blood vessels for extended periods of time by any mechanism you are very likely going to cause injury to the circulatory system including the heart. Common symptoms of such sustained pressure which causes the various blood bearing bits to contract are pain, lose of sensation in limbs, and muscle weakness. That by the way includes the heart. Sustained pressure causes injury to the artery walls in your body and cause them to spasm which can damage the heart or even lead to cardiac arrest. No you aren't going to be able to stop the effects of sustained g forces on a humans circulatory system in fact sustained g forces especially high g forces can cause injury and even possibly death.

No matter how you slice it at best your only getting a little bit of short term high g resistance not immunity from g forces. You aren't canceling out the g forces and sustained high g forces will still do you in if you sustain them for too long.

Human's resistance to G forces depends on duration of exposure and how high. The higher the g forces the shorter the time frame for resistance until you reach a point where the g forces are causing physical injury. The record for 1 second is 100g's and that was tested with a rocket sled in the 1950's. Sustained g force resistance is much lower because of the number of stresses it puts on the body and the higher the g forces the worse it gets and the harder it is one the body.

Who watches the watchmen?

Don't worry, the situation in which you'd really want quick contact is the situation in which a pilot would be of marginal utility anyway.

At which point you've kind of screwed the idea of a fighter, because most of them are drones. Also, they can't carry really big missiles, because those are the size of the fighter (I'm thinking along the line of the P-270 Moskit, almost 10m long and weighing about 4.5 tonnes).

Also, fighters need to maintain the cockpit at a comfortable temperature, which is something on the order of 285-300°K, which increases power usage, so you need either bigger batteries or a generator, thus more fuel, bigger engines, etc, and you likely also need to get rid of excess heat somewhere along the line, which means a sizeable thermal signature.

Oh, and as for the fluid cocoon, you'd only need that for maintained acceleration above say 10G, except that your fighter isn't going to have the fuel to do that (it can do 10G, or constant thrust, unlikely both at the same time), so there's no point.

Human's don't do well at that kind of sustained g force though at least for not very long. The first astronaut launches were at higher g's then the shuttle does now and were considered very rough on the astronauts but even then it wasn't for an extended period of time namely just long enough to get into orbit. The only way to avoid the g force problem is to take a lot longer to accelerate up to speed in any direction. The faster the acceleration in any direction the worse the g force. Same goes for any sudden change of directions. Drones and missiles both can sustain higher g forces in short and long term then people will ever be able to unless you start doing some interesting things to people. The machines can not only accelerate harder but tolerate much more violent g forces from change of direction.

Courtesy of NASA Quest

Who watches the watchmen?

I imagine they'll be wearing flight suits even better than modern fighter pilots wear, so high G thrusts of a few minutes shouldn't be an issue. Also, there's no atmosphere to manoeuvre in, so the maximum G you're going to be facing is that produced by the engines flat out, which I suspect won't get above a few G.