Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

Huh.

So, Sci-Fi showing a squadron or two destroying smaller ships by themselves isn't *that* far fetched, then?

Jas: Pretty much. A squadron of fighters can carry a surprising amount of firepower. Even the limited capacity stealth craft can carry enough punch in internal bays could do a number on even a large ship. Even the smallest US fighter, the F-16 can carry Harpoon missiles. This is a single hit from a live warhead Harpoon missile during trials.◊ It killed the ship. Harpoons with inert warheads have mangled ships pretty badly during sink Exercises.

Smaller ships have less overall mass and internal volume to make compartmentalization as effective as a large ship can. The pics I showed of the sink-ex were of craft that had volatiles removed and those weapons still did horrendous amounts of damage. The Smallest weapon, the Hellfire missile, blasted a large hole in the ship. Had that hit say a command center, a loaded weapons station, a fuel bunker, missile launchers, or direct hit on a loaded turret things would be pretty damn bad. You do the same to a US supercarrier with the hellfire you could cause a mess but overall the amount of damage would be a lot less than on Modern Destroyers or Cruisers. You also have to remember just how powerful modern missiles are.

So yes actually fighters can and have caused extensive damage to warships both large and small with just a few hits. That is because the weapons they use are rather very powerful. Both the US and Japan lost several carriers in one battle to nothing more than one good hit with an AP bomb or a couple of torpedos.

Even if the ships aren't killed fighters can do enough damage to take an enemy vessel out of the fight.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Nov 16th 2018 at 10:49:32 AM

What about their main guns? Like, what would the A-10s main gun (assuming it was out of missiles and just wanted to have a last fuck you to a ship) do to the armor?

I'm kind of imagining the star fighters destroying air defenses or their equivalent and then using their main gun in tandem at different parts of the ship.

Most modern warships are not heavily armored and the A-10 shitting out its AP rounds would likely pass through quite a bit before stopping. It would likely do a fair bit of damage with its HEI rounds as well. The downside is the gun is pretty short ranged compared to other options.

^ There's also the downside of rapid fire autocannons just not doing any meaningful damage per round. You can rake a ship with 30mm and most of it is little more than superficial at best. It's really really hard to sink a ship with smallbore cannon fire.

We had a bit of a discussion either in this thread or the other one that if you want gun armament on a Space Fighter (and this can apply to missiles, lasers, and whatnot), you'd want something a little more powerful as opposed to More Dakka. Something packing by modern terms at least 40mm in wallop.

That's easily done by a Plasma Cannon or railgun systems or various particle beams or whatnot. With conventional munitions you'd need something with some oomph. 40-57mm would be a good start, you wouldn't want to go over 125mm because then you run into ammo and/or recoil concerns.

For ship killing you’d probably be better served by missiles than guns. More flexible engagement envelope, less risky for the smaller ship, and more economical in terms of space than the kind of heavy weaponry you’d need to deal serious damage to a ship.

As others have mentioned, the hard part is hitting the ship, but that's not a new problem for aircraft to overcome, hence their traditional preference for swarm tactics, hitting the target from multiple vectors at once, which has been a reality of naval air combat tactics since the 1940s. A US Navy warship during World War II would feature a wide variety of air defenses, to include machine guns, auto-cannons, larger "dual-purpose" guns firing proximity-fused shells, networked gun mounts that could be remote-controlled with the assistance of gunnery computers, and all of it tied into the ship's radar system to find targets miles away.

A modern warship's air defenses make one of those warships look absolutely undefended. A Hornet driver would be mildly offended that the enemy ship didn't even try to protect itself. But modern anti-ship weapons are similarly more advanced. A single bomber probably wouldn't be able to take down a modern destroyer, but as with the World War II pilot in a Dauntless dive bomber, they probably won't be coming alone if they're making a serious effort. You'll see lots of missiles flying both directions, electronics countermeasures going off every which way, and of course flares and chaff and point-defense weapons being popped off as planes and ships make last-ditch efforts to protect themselves.

All that's assuming there isn't a submarine or two nearby to make things really chaotic. Especially since many newer subs carry the same sorts of anti-ship missiles that the surface ships and attack jets might.

In a sci-fi setting, expect a similar dynamic between smaller ships and bigger ships, assuming everything else being equal. Obviously, if one side is much more advanced than the other, there's a force multiplier in play.

Edited by AFP on Nov 17th 2018 at 8:23:37 AM

The catch with gunfire vs a ship is that it works best when it is roughly concentrated in a given area. From as far back as WWII they knew that to achieve maximum effect with a gun run they had to focus their fire as much as possible. A few good hits can fuck up a ship dozen good hits in the same area can produce quite noticeable effects. As an example, a few stray rounds from target practice accident in the 80's messed up the bridge of a US amphibious carrier. A 20mm CIWS re-engaged a drone bouncing off of the sea and a few stray rounds hit the ship's bridge. The bridge was notably damaged, one person killed, and one injured. The 20mm CIWS fires a saboted 15mm Kinetic Penetrator round made of either tungsten or DU at a velocity of roughly 1.1km/s. They have tested them in sink exercises deliberately firing into a target and they can do a surprising amount of damage.

While I wouldn't discount a gun attack especially with modern ammo because we have ample proof they can do a lot of damage, missiles still offer a lot more flexibility and capability.

Looking at other known examples of both deliberate and accidental attacks with the sum total of all weapon systems, bombs and missiles do horrible damage and do a lot of it immediately in a given area. Sea Sparrow Missiles fired from a US carrier in an incident against a Turkish ship in the 90's I think it was killed and injured a bunch of the crew and crippled the ship. The Sea Sparrows are fitted with 90lb Annular Blast-Frag warheads. Not exactly the best ship killers. The Turkish ship was an Ex-US WWII destroyer the Turkish Navy had taken possession of in the 70's and two anti-aircraft/AShM missiles fucked it up pretty badly. The US has demonstrated in the last couple of years how badly Surface to Air missiles can fuck up enemy ships with SM-6 tests fired on surface targets. Even relatively small AShM like Exocet or the US AGM-119 "Penguin" can do a fair bit of damage or even kill a surface ship.

Since we are talking Space Fighters mostly if we do it soft enough to have space fighters but hard enough to use realistic weapons, they will likely be firing missiles. If we go with softer representations we have an abundance of fighter craft to choose from around the middle of the scale to the softest sci-fi.

The newer Space Battleship Yamato anime is a favorite for soft sci-fi. They blend the stylistic WWII/Modern Combat blend like naval and fighter engagements with some pretty crazy over the top sci-fi material. They have fighters kill the equivilent of a carrier with anti-shipping missiles and a strafing run on the bridge.

But bear in mind that normally, fighters will attempt to target the largest/most important ships in the enemy's fleet, not the escorts themselves, unless they have no other choice.

So let’s change this with Space Bombers. Let’s say a B1 lancer equivalent.

What changes?

You're running up against the limits of soft sci-fi. What precisely is the difference in capabilities between a B-1 bomber equivalent and a naval corvette equivalent?

It also depends on the bomber, I'd argue using a Y-Wing as a example of a bomber is a good choice, as it's essentially a missile bus packed with explosives.

Don't go Starfortress, never go Starfortress

De Marquis: That isn't exactly true outside of fiction. Not only would attacking the escorts be beneficial it is a part of modern tactics. That is you take out or damage some of the escorts going in to reduce the efficacy of their defensive screen. You punch a hole or reduce the amount of defensive firepower that is going to screen incoming threats with your initial strike. You can also partly overwhelm a defensive screen by focussing some of the attacks on the escort forces. They are consistently more effective if they can focus on protecting a specific target. There are also other benefits of taking out escorts namely killing off offensive power as well as defensive power. Several varieties of ships used in escort duty are also key targets like guided missile cruisers because of the overall threat they represent. The general tactic for attacking a fleet in a modern sense is multiple attack vectors with multiple groups of missiles all at once with some of the attacking escorts.

We aren't anywhere near close to the limits of soft sci fi by any measure.

Tactical: Bigger weapons loads. Bigger munitions possibly with longer standoff ranges and more powerful warheads. Strategic bombers like the B-1 up the overall payload they haul around quite a bit compared to even large fighters. Instead of carrying two to four cruise missiles, strategic bombers like the B-1 can carry around 20+ cruise missiles depending on the missile types.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Nov 17th 2018 at 2:41:49 PM

That is precisely the reason why none of my universes have an equivalent of a strategic/heavy bomber like a B-17, Tu-22M or B-52.

If the engineering is advanced enough with Anti-Gravity technology, FTL Travel or just good enough power sources to keep a ship aloft in atmosphere indefinitely, what point is there to have a bomber analogue? You can get the same heavy hitting missile bus out of a corvette, frigate or destroyer with a lot more versatility and loiter time. Traditional bombers become obsolete, little more than SAM/fighter bait.

That said, I can see the advantage of having a light/medium type bomber or attack aircraft such as say like that of a B-25H Mitchell bomber-gunship, AC-130 or (up-sized?) A-10. Small enough and cheap enough you can build many more of them compared to starships with longer loiter times and munitions capacities compared to fighters and much more widely available than committing starships to fire support missions on the surface. Also, if you lose one it's not that heavy of a loss.

Edited by MajorTom on Nov 17th 2018 at 1:02:10 AM

Tom and De Marquis: The difference between a Corvette and the B-1 is quite literally massive. The difference is both internal volume and overall ship mass. You are talking about the difference of 216 metric tons for the bomber with an absolute max loadout and fully fueled vs an average mass of 2,000 metric tons for a variety of Corvette or Corvette like craft. Even the smallest modern Corvette out masses the bomber by an approximate 5 to 1 ratio. You guys apparently don't appreciate just how much mass is actually packed into a surface navy vessel.

In terms of mass by wet navy ship, you are looking at Fast Attack Craft and Guided Missile Boats like the Osa II or US Pegasus class craft whose fully loaded mass is a whole lot closer to that of the B-1. Even then the average fast attack/patrol craft on average have 100 more tons than something akin to the B-1 in terms of mass.

I would point out that for that mass the US Pegasus class craft packed 8 Harpoon missiles and a 76mm rapid-fire naval cannon.

Aircraft do not compare very favorably in terms of mass for craft, munitions, and fuel to wet navy vessels. They can't take advantage of buoyancy. Spacecraft don't have to worry about air resistance or lift either so sort of like wet navy ships they have a leg up in overall comparable mass. That is a lot of mass can be packed into surprisingly small spaces.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Nov 17th 2018 at 4:31:37 AM

But we arnt talking about wet navy/atmospheric aircraft. Space capable equivalents will overlap to a much greater degree because they are designed to operate in the same medium. That said, it sounds like you think the difference is in the number of reloads for the main missile, and the variety of point defenses on the corvette. Given soft sci, we can suppose that smaller craft tevel faster than larger ones. So are bombers simply configured for a single high speed attack, while corvettes have much greater loiter time?

I feel like we're kind of bumping into one problem with the "ship type" discussion, namely that there isn't actually a standard way of defining different ship types in Real Life, let alone in different sci-fi settings.

That said, I feel like a sci-fi version of a strategic bomber might look something similar to how the smaller starships in Star Trek function, the Birds of Prey and the flying saucer ships like the Defiant and Miranda. That said, we've also seen fighters function more or less as bombers, making bombing runs and lobbing off photon torpedoes in massed volleys against larger starships.

Also, I'd like to point out that the Starfortresses worked just fine, the Resistance just didn't properly screen them from fighter attack. Also, that consistent Star Wars problem of inconsistently presenting how starships are able to maneuver and fight (is the Star Destroyer a Mighty Glacier that can barely maneuver, or is it a Lightning Bruiser that can run down some of the fastest ships in the setting? For that matter, same question for the Millennium Falcoln, which even in the OT they couldn't decide if it was a slow clumsy freighter that couldn't outrun a Star Destroyer or a fast agile freighter that could chase TIE Fighters)

For softer sci-fi, the heavy bomber type might pack a salvo of missiles to saturate enemy defenses with, or heavier guns for strafing runs. Star Trek and Babylon 5 both favor the idea of the fast gunship concept, where groups of smaller agile warships swarm the bigger ones and prevent them from effectively massing defensive fire.

Missiles tend to complicate sci-fi, because frankly they can make things kind of boring when the fight turns into who can launch or shoot down the most missiles. There's a reason that the Honor Harrington books eventually turned into political intrigue and espionage with space battles rather than straightforward military sci-fi.

Edited by AFP on Nov 17th 2018 at 5:30:01 AM

De Marquis: If we try and use ship classifications as we do now the general trend is overall mass and general missions. Pretty much all ships have some crossover but the various types do certain missions better until you start getting into specialized ship roles.

No, they really won't overlap all that much because there is simply no reason to make them overlap to any significant degree especially when you have to juggle mass and internal space constraints. You have to make deliberate design choices to do that and ultimately that is a bad idea to varying degrees. As it is ship classes are largely decided by mass and general mission. In terms of mass alone your choices in mission, munition, endurance, and range are going to be limited. However the softer the sci-fi the more a ship can do to the point a single craft can theoretically do everything because the story demands it. By this point, most people give up on making sense of it and just enjoy the spectacle.

The difference is more down to mass and internal capacity as those two factors will dictate how much you can afford to pack into a ship. The more mass and internal space you have to spare the more capabilities you can give to the ship. A ship with 1,000 tons and room for larger systems is going to have appreciable differences in capability than a ship at 100 tons. The larger ship can also likely carry more expendables which means more operational range and time. Smaller and smaller craft have shorter ranges and operation times and become increasingly reliant on local support. They also have less flexibility in what systems they can pack into them. From that alone, you start to get a notable mission and capability divergence.

The more mass and internal space you have to work with the greater the possible range of weapons and other features you can pack into a ship.

Fighters and even bombers are more strike craft. They are reliant on localized support or a mothership. They can't carry as much in terms of munitions and expendables. Amassed they could offer serious threats but they are still defined by their limitations in systems overall compared to ships with appreciably more mass. A bomber like strike craft should be able to deliver hurt in certain conditions but it shouldn't be anywhere near to on par in terms of system options and capability to something with mass measured in several thousands of tons like say a Corvette.

AFP: I think any given sci fi story that is worth it generally lays down some variety of rules to define their navy and more or less adheres to it outside of das uber ships.

Space Battleship Yamato 2199 did a pretty good job of sticking to its overall defined ship types and capabilities.

Three Starfortresses went up in flames from one Tie Fighter that burned out and crashed into one. That is why they are terrible, nobody wants a bomber that will easily go up in flames and also take out any other major ships around it.

Tell that to the Amercians and there magnesium wonder the B-29

Bombers don't need armor to be dangerous, they just need to not be shot if your going to go down that route.... and there are multiple ways to do that...

The star fortresses lacked proper screening, and were too densly packed, it wasn't a ship type problem, it was a tactical stupidity problem.

If bombers have FTL what about just jumping near the the ship in question, drop a payload and punch out?

I think folks complaining about the Starfortresses' durability vastly overestimate the amount of armor protection most bombers carried in WWII.

As for jumping out right on top of the enemy, that requires a certain amount of precision and the ability to know where your enemy is. I don't get the impression that that's a common thing in Star Wars, though in the old Legends continutiy, there was one incident where the New Republic forces waited for the Imperials to use an Interdictor (a Star Destroyer with gravity well generators designed to pull ships out of hyperspace) to ambush one of their task forces, and then basically used the Interdictor itself as their anchor point to drop their reinforcements right on top of the Imperials.

Edited by AFP on Nov 18th 2018 at 4:41:45 AM

The survival rate for a B-17's crew to complete there tour of duty^note 8 missions before they were rotated back home was 1 in 4.... and they were on the high end of survivability. For those that don't know.

Even then the "survivbility" they did have came from redundancy and a lot of empty space in the bomber, not any kind of armor which if I recall correctly was something like a 20mm bulkhead inf front of the pilot's legs, behind the bombidere....

...

And well that was it, that was the entire armor for the whole aircraft.

The thing to remember for aircraft, and space attack vessels too is your weight is on a budget... or to use so many words

Any armor you are carrying is payload you are not.

Edited by Imca on Nov 18th 2018 at 4:33:14 AM

What about the Y wing bombers which were vastly more useful and less prone to turning to space dust?

If you simply want to transfer WWII naval air tactics to space, there's really nothing to solve, just do it. But thats not semi-soft sci, thats totally soft. In space, there is no reason why a "bomber" should go any faster than a battleship. Its all thrust to weight out there, and the bigger the ship, the bigger the engine, so it all averages out. If a corvette and a squadron of bombers mass the same, then by Tuef's own argument, they should have exactly the same capabilities, both in terms of spacecraft performance and firepower. But that's too realistic.

Is there something in between? Some semi-plausible reason that isnt true to real life, but works in narrative, why spaceships derived from aircraft designs are expected to perform differently from spacecraft derived from ship designs, when they mass the same (remember to add the entire squadron together)?