Sci-fi Military Tactics and Strategy

Spaceport defense and security, skirmishing and capital escorts, airless moon invasion, personnel transport, etc.

See, my big issue is that a dropship survives re-entry on a regular basis but somehow is vulnerable to plasma and laser fire.

Re-entry is quite different than lasers or plasma. For one, most weaponized plasma is in the temp range of stars. It doesn't "melt" armor, it vaporizes it on contact. The residual heat does the further melting.

Secondly, plasma weapons sometimes fall under the umbrella of Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better. Plasma can carry impact force. A heat shield tile built for re-entry in reality doesn't really hold up to impact. What do you think did in Space Shuttle Columbia? An ice chunk fell off and damaged the re-entry tiles. An ice chunk that did zero damage to anything else.

Most heat shielding is also on one side and less heavily shielded across other surfaces and sort of like Tom pointed out its more about how much energy you are depositing across a given surface. Even ablative layers like on the shuttle and capsules will give away if you put in enough power into your shot. Most high energy weapon strikes would have additional side effects such as kinetic effects from the rapid heating that could crack, damage, or displace some of the ablative protection. One of the space shuttles was done in by a tiny hole in their heat shielding on re-entry.

Even if it can eat a shot it doesn't mean it can eat several.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Dec 13th 2018 at 10:40:46 AM

Assuming three equally as capable, equally armed and fortified, moons of a faction's home planet, what factors would use to decide which to attack first, if attacking all three was not an option?

You can assume these moons either have atmospheres (i.e like Pandora) or have no atmosphere at all (Luna)

Not enough information. What is the long term strategic goal of attacking at all, what other resources do the enemy have, if any, how many resources do we have in comparison, and what is the tech level?

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 20th 2018 at 1:11:13 PM

If these three moons are all identical, then there's no reason to prefer one over the other and you might as well roll a die. Presumably, though, they are in different orbits. Having three moons at the same orbital distance and period would be hilariously unstable and require some herculean engineering to maintain, marking the civilization doing it as at least Type 1, and therefore not someone you want to casually mess with. (Humans are still Type 0.)

So, the main question would be: what is the strategic value of these moons to the attacker and to the defender?

• If they are capable of maintaining and launching ships and/or long-range weapons, then they have high value and should be taken out before a planetary attack is feasible.
• If they are not capable of operating independently, and they're in orbits like Earth's moon, then the attacker could simply ignore them and go for the planet. Our moon is over 300,000 km away; it takes weeks and enormous effort to get there with current tech. If we had a base there, it would be no threat at all to a hypothetical attacker, or could be isolated and picked off at their leisure. ^note Low Earth orbit is around 2000 km from the surface, or ~5300 km from the center of mass. This is where attacking forces would park their ships. The trip from the Moon to get in a position to counterattack something in LEO would be 150 times longer than the trip from the surface. Space is big, yo.

• If the attacker wants to occupy them and/or keep their infrastructure relatively intact, then you have the same basic scenario as a planetary invasion, just on a smaller scale. If this occupation succeeds, they'll have forward bases that can sustain their own forces, giving them a massive strategic advantage. If it fails, then they have no business attacking in the first place.
• If the attacker doesn't care about any of that, then long-range bombardment should suffice to eliminate any meaningful resistance, after which they can move on to the planet.

As for which to pick first, I'd go for the one in the farthest orbit, and/or the one that is most isolated by distance. Obviously, which this is may depend on the orbital mechanics of the system in question and will change over time. Then do your invasion thing and go on to the next, etc.

The major strategic risk is that, if you can only attack one target at a time, whichever you aren't attacking could presumably reinforce and/or counterattack, which calls into question the balance of forces in this scenario. Hint: it doesn't look good for the attacker.

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 20th 2018 at 1:32:07 PM

The goal is to keep their resources intact, because this setting takes place in a single star syste. All three moons can launch ships/fighters, and are have tons of untapped resources that the attacker needs (it's sort of like oil in our case. Sure we CAN get a lot more of it, but the long term damage to the planet to get more of it wouldn't be worth it).

The goal is to control all three moons, but not attack the planet quite yet, until they've set up FO Bs, and built up a staging force. This DOES however give the defender massive incentives to try and rebuild their lost fleet as quickly as they can to take back, but I figure it's a balancing act and race against the clock.

Yup, they're nowhere near in the same orbit. No super advanced civilizations here.

I'd like to think that could be a deception tactic. Try to lure the counter attack forces to the main Area of Operations, and then having a second fleet swooping in, almost unopposed.

At that tech level, I see no possibility of a planetary-scale invasion succeeding, so it's basically moot. That said, if you can control all three moons, you have a tremendous strategic advantage, and can probably negotiate whatever terms you want.

The main problem is occupying and holding the first base. That's where your supply lines are the most problematic. Once you have it, your supply line becomes vastly shorter and you have a position from which to launch attacks on the others. Presumably you'll get counterattacked at some point and will have to deal with it.

In space war, the attacker always has the advantage if the defender is occupying a fixed position.

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 20th 2018 at 2:16:31 PM

Would atmosphere or no atmosphere make any difference here?

Other than how your landing craft are designed and what you need to equip your troops with, not really. Both sides, assuming they're the same species, would face approximately the same challenges.

• Taking off from a body without an atmosphere is marginally easier than with, since your craft don't have to deal with friction on the way up.
• Landing on a body without an atmosphere eliminates reentry heat while adding the problem that you have to apply braking thrust.
• Landing on a body with an atmosphere lets you use parachutes and atmospheric compression to slow down, but means you need heat shields.
• Combat without an atmosphere is easier since you don't have to worry about friction, diffraction, or the other pitfalls of shooting weapons through air.

Worth noting is that these would have to be some pretty massive moons to retain an atmosphere. Earth's moon is too small to hang onto one even if it had a magnetic field.

Edited by Fighteer on Dec 20th 2018 at 7:36:49 AM

Ok so just got through a book that had a Space Born Gunship. The way the beast works was it was more like a multi-role strike fighter with some fighter to fighter capability. Its firepower worked well in space and dirt side. It used a combination of missiles, plasma of course, and lasers. It was a fairly big craft requiring something like 22 crew total for an ideal complement. It was packed to the gills with guns, defensive internal and external weapons, and systems for both ships to ship but also ship to surface combat.

Ultimately it was just called Gunship out of reflex or mostly because it seemed like a multi-role craft geared towards the ground strike role but capable of all the others just fine.

"The goal is to keep their resources intact, because this setting takes place in a single star syste. All three moons can launch ships/fighters, and are have tons of untapped resources that the attacker needs (it's sort of like oil in our case. Sure we CAN get a lot more of it, but the long term damage to the planet to get more of it wouldn't be worth it)."

Ok, so what I take from that is the strategic goal is to capture and utilize the moons natural resources in such a way that they can be utilized to support attacks on the enemy's remaining bases. This is essentially island hopping, in space. Fighteer is right in that normally you would attack the one farthest from the home planet first. The only problem with that would be the enemy likely expects that, and may have fortified that particular moon the most, in which case the default strategy is to attack the next one, thereby simultaneously capturing one moon and cutting off the other one from the home planet. Fascinating complications ensue as the defenders take measures to prevent that, and the attackers attempt to counter the counter-measures... But the defenders cant be strong everywhere, lest they overextend themselves. At that point it basically comes down to an intelligence war—will the defenders successfully conceal their true deployments, or will the attackers learn where their strengths and weaknesses are? Read the story to find out!

By the way, Fighteer is also right regarding the relative size of the moons of Earth-like planets. Most of them normally arent even as large as the moon we have, let alone larger. If your plot will accomodate it, you might consider setting your story in the system of a gas giant like Jupiter or Saturn. That could easily give you dozens of moons of various sizes and resources, some with atmospheres, some without. One of the moons might even be the species' home "planet", so to speak.

An interesting concept. That’s not the only work where vessels we might more easily classify as frigates or corvettes are referred to as gunships and fighters. Those names might persist more out of reference to a ship’s tactical role than its size.

Gunship in the context of the story is just sort of a weird fit. It has the ability to freely transit from space to the surface and back.

I always wanted to see a remake of Das Boot, set in space. A ship that size would be more or less perfect.

So I'm thinking about crew weapons and such, be it in a tank, a mech, or some crash landed vehicle. I've been pondering because I often see the crew outfitted with pistols of some sort. Wouldn't they be outfitted with something more than a sidearm like a P90 PDW or something similar?

Depends on the conditions. They could be armed with anything from a survival rifle to an automatic carbine (or the functional equivalent therof, given the universe).

Here's a RL pistol-caliber semi-auto carbine that I happen to like.

Edited by DeMarquis on Dec 23rd 2018 at 7:48:11 AM

Historically vehicle crew/pilot weapons have been all over the map. Typically they use pistols (especially pilots) with provisions for ground vehicles having a compartment for some submachineguns or carbines. For example World War Two era US vehicles typically had a rack for a couple M1 carbines or M1/M3 submachineguns.

Modern stuff sometimes isn't much different for example MH-60 crews typically carry only pistols. But sometimes it's little different than anyone else gets, for example the M1 Abrams main battle tank has a compartment near the loader's position that stashes a couple M16's. (I think it's near the loader, it is in the turret section of the crew compartment.)

Shortest answer would be equip the crew for the likelihood they would need to fight their way out (as opposed to evade capture), the likelihood their vehicle would be taken out of action on top of that. Meaning truck, IFV, Humvee-equivalent, tank crews might use the same infantry rifle or carbine the infantry do or they might pack a submachinegun/PDW type. (In addition to a pistol.) Pilots of all stripes would use mainly pistols.

The Air Force used to issue a variety of survival rifles, less intended for self defense and more for foraging in the wilderness given the broad distances that an Air Force bomber would be expected to cover even in peacetime patrols.

It basically boils down to what you have room to take along. Some weapons like handguns and some smg's and even the survival rifles are either naturally compact or collapse down to a smaller size.

^ I remember reading about Air Force survival rifles being takedown rifles in the 1950s. Something that would stash in an Ejection Seat in two or more parts.

Edited by MajorTom on Dec 24th 2018 at 6:00:02 AM

Yep. That is one of the examples I was thinking of. I have a soft spot for takedown rifles because they typically use simplified designs.

I was going to design a take down survival rifle FOR SPACE but then I realized that existing designs are already so simplified that you wouldn't need significant changes.

The Kel Tec SU-16 has a takedown version that would work well as a survival rifle.