Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

I wouldn't take Atomic Rockets as the final word on everything.

The major function of a combat information center is to collate all the different data inputs into usable forms and then distribute them to the different parts of the ship. Basically, making sense of the tactical picture so the ship can actually act on it. The major thing you'd want from the CIC is cryptologic protocols, these could allow you access to communications networks or give insight to strategic objectives. In the Army, at least, crypto gear often came with built-in thermite charges or "burn bags" so it could be destroyed quickly in case of an emergency.

If you can keep the ship you get a new ship. I would imagine a space capable warship is not cheap. Picking apart how someone builds their stuff can reveal secrets, uncover weaknesses, and even offer tactical or strategic insight into how they fight.

Portable field radios also have the kill spot where a few quick shots from even a handgun will do them in.

There are only so many parts of comm gear that could possibly hold the high value data. If your going to lose the ship may as well turn it into molten slag.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 2nd 2018 at 2:33:21 PM

Its not like naval ships were all that survivable in WWII and they still fought to the death.

Sure the big ones may have had 2-300 survivors when they cooked off, but that's of a a crew of 2-3,000.

Hell HMS Hood only had 3 men survive.

I feel like the lethality of naval combat is vastly underestimated, when compared to space.... sure space would be even MORE lethal, but its not like terrestrial naval combat was super survivable when your ship got shot to hell.

I'm of the opinion that space combat would be less lethal than wet naval combat simply because a space ship doesn't sink when you shoot it. Yes, it might explode but you're not going to have crew trapped in compartments as the ship is gradually crushed by water pressure. Assuming you can get everybody into suits and have blow out panels for fuel and ammo the biggest threat to the crew is a lucky hit to engineering or CIC.

This does create an interesting scenario of a ship loosing it's ability to fight but otherwise being intact. In this case, you'd want to capture the ship so you could refurbish the hull and add it to your own fleet.

I’m not sure if this is still true, but way back when the unmanned aircraft I worked on had explosive seams inside their avionics trays. They weren’t enough to fully destroy the aircraft, but they would trash all the electronics when they went off.

Archon: I remember hearing about some system that could potentially destroy the sensitive material in some UAVs. It shouldn't be too hard to rig certain sensitive systems like the ships data sensitive areas to melt or be turned in small pieces of floating debris as possible.

Bel: The ship going boom is likely going to kill most of the crew and/or damage any personal protective environmental suits. Even a small breach in a protective suit can prove fatal. The other big issue is assuming the crew person escapes with a suit with a full load of survival expendables and the bells and whistles to help find them they can only carry a limited quantity of expendables. Air is the big bottleneck as even with LOX you can only carry so much air and variable use rate depending the state of the individual breathing oxygen will affect how long the stores last.

SAR has to travel to the location and the longer it takes the less likely anyone is to survive. SAR also tends to avoid launching in mid-battle.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 2nd 2018 at 7:12:20 AM

True, space craft dont sink, but... well let's put it this way—given a choice, would you rather leap into the water, which, granted, might have sharks or buring oil in it; or a vacuum that will freeze dry you in seconds, asphixiate you, and kill you with various forms of radiation? Granted, you might have a space suit which will delay the inevitable for a few hours...

Edited by DeMarquis on Aug 2nd 2018 at 7:55:21 AM

With no disrespect to the brave crew of HMS Hood, she didn't exactly 'fight to the death' so much as 'suffer an unlucky hit that showed just how badly the full refit she never got was needed'.

The ship that did that sinking, the Bismarck, in turn also didn't 'fight to the death', it was running the f- away after that engagement and was only destroyed because a torpedo bomber attack damaged its rudder and forced it to sail in circles, otherwise it would have gotten away... And it ended up going down with most of its crew only because of then scuttling charges the crew set in preparation for all hands abandoning ship were detonated too soon, otherwise most of the crew would have successfully evacuated the ship.

And if you look further you'll find that ships sinking in combat were relatively rare not just in the World Wars, but throughout all engagements in the previous century. (Relatively. Yes, the number is in the hundreds, but it's on the low end of the hundreds, while the total number of ships that survived to decomission is in the high end of the thousands.)

In naval engagements, a really bad hit can mean brutal and inevitable death, but that's by no means guaranteed, in fact while gruesome when it happens, it actually happening is a rarity.

Spacecraft in a space war would not be so lucky. At the ranges such combat would take place in, both sides in a relatively even match can put out enough fire to completely destroy the other side before the first salvo even reaches its target and the locations on a spacecraft where hit can be catastrophic are... Well... Pretty much everywhere.

I have to agree with Rob on this one. Space is a lot more dangerous than the waters of Earth. While severe battle damage and even nearly whole crew losses are pretty horrific space has a whole of host of nasty environmental hazards.

There will sometimes be survivors but I would expect to be closer to submarine like crew losses from a battle killed sub. That is your not really expecting to find anyone and even if they do survive the destruction of their vessel the hostile environment and the lack of life support will kill them sooner rather than later unless they are really lucky.

When I say lucky I mean like that one guy who was trapped underwater for 3 days at about 80 feet lucky before he was rescued. The Nat Geo article lists a number of hazards he had to survive outside of the luck of having a large air bubble to make it out of that.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Aug 2nd 2018 at 8:19:29 AM

To be overly technical and pedantic, most sinkings happen after the battle because it takes too long for a ship to sink beneath the waves while shells and torpedoes are flying. They finish sinking after the shooting has stopped far more often than not.

Most of the time where ships "go down fighting" while shooting is ongoing, they typically suffer some kind of catastrophic breakdown. As in the ship-explodes-with-all-hands kind of breakdown or sinks so rapidly and violently there's no escape kind. Take IJN Yamato, fought to the last against US Navy airpower, and blew the fuck up while lying on her side (and under attack). Of over 3000 crew, only a couple hundred made it out alive. (Rescued by other ships surrounding Yamato while under fire from American planes.)

I would point that by comparison space would have left a lot fewer alive if any. The sheer number of injuries, damage to personally worn equipment, and the need for a personal life support systems make survival a lot harder by comparison. You can't pull your trousers off and use them to float to safety in space.

Even if we assume the use of conventional weapons no more lethal than we have now, ships suffering damage they might survive in the water are far more likely to mean the ship and its crew are dead or well on their way to being dead sooner rather than later.

I would not underestimate the amount of damage of even our smaller weapons.

I’ll second that, modern weapons are unbelievably lethal. We’re talking single torpedoes and missiles capable of mission killing whole ships, or worse.

Even the Exocet, one of the smaller antishipping missiles, can do a surprising amount of damage. The hole torn in the side of the USS Stark was huge. A hole that big in a spaceship would have been catastrophic.

Agian, the argument isn't that space is less lethal, it is that the lethality of Terrestrial Naval combat is being under estimated in the assumption of the person who thinks "They just wont fight"

No its already a death sentence for ships that cook off, or submarines that crush... and yet they still fight.

Sure space is even more lethal, but there isn't going to be that much of a change in morale between 1 in 10 men surviving, and 0 in 10 men surviving.

What your instead going to see is a lot of the stuff mentioned like with traditional naval fighting, where they will dance around each other, and be fast to retreat, but it wont stop them from shelling each other if it does come down to it.

Edited by Imca on Aug 2nd 2018 at 9:23:00 AM

I had a friend who majored in Computer Science. In one of their classes, they talked about different methods to protect against data theft, including a mention of Fire. I can't recall if they literally meant melting your hard disc platters with thermite or if it was a typo of "Firewall," but she claimed that for the rest of her time in college, she always tried to include thermite charges as part of any proposed security solution. Because it was funny.

Humans will deploy, regardless of the long term danger, because young people hate to look like cowards, and dont really believe it will happen to them anyway. Recall the extremely high casualty ratios for bomber crews in WWII, yet men went regardless.

Edited by DeMarquis on Aug 3rd 2018 at 9:25:26 AM

Oh, space is way more lethal but yeah it won't stop people from doing horrible things to each other in space.

Plus, the total number of casualties is likely to be much lower than terrestrial conflicts.

So, when it comes to energy weapons (not lasers,) you can pretty much make up whatever mechanics you want for them right? I know physical objects have to follow orbital mechanics, not sure if say, a Plasma Torpedo would follow the same laws.

Plasma is a physical object, so unless something really exotic is going on it would obey orbital mechanics.

If it has a physical vessel or a method of generation that also has to obey those orbital mechanics.

Hell, even light has to, although it takes more than a star to affect it much.

Tactical Fox:

Define "Plasma torpedo" here. Is it a conventional missile that generates and releases a cloud of plasma upon detonation? Or is it like Halo and a ball or lance of plasma guided by magnetic fields as it hurtles through space?

Latter

Doesn't matter. Either one would go into orbit around a planet or a star like anything else with mass. As an extra variable, however, the latter would be strongly affected by nearby magnetic fields.