On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 4:30 AM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote:
Evyn replied to me:
Ok, there are couple of ideas here the first is decide what your model
of combat is. How do you fight your wars? Which theatre are the big
questions answered in, in that in the Navel model the concentration of
your military expenditures are fleet assets, with which strive to
achieve Space/air Superiority over the contested Planet in this case.
This model works in that once achieved the High Ground the rest is mop
up by garrison troops that you can land at your leisure. This model
assumes that residual opposing ground forces will be forced into the
primitive aggressor in a Asymmetric conflict.
There are two aspects to this -- what is "dictated" by the technology, and
what can be "decided" by the writer of the setting? Even without near-C
rocks, it seems that the space force can always devastate a planet. Some
missiles will get through. That has to be neutralized by political means in
the setting, or only the Navy counts. It could be a formal treaty, an
unilateral declaration by somebody with enough power to make it stick (cf
Traveller, or David Weber), it could be MAD, it could be the inherent value
of earthlike planets in a setting which has few of them.
So assume that mass orbital bombardment is out.
But I still have the High Ground then i have access to detailed
intelligence, with the ability to deploy precision ground strikes by
means of through atmospheric bean and gunfire as well as guided and
dead fall munitions and Troop delivery and guidance.
The other model is the
ground warfare model, where ground based assets can resist/attack
space based assets with some impunity, thus a forced landing and
ground conflict is required to silence said space threatening assets.
If space assets must stay in orbit -- because hypering in and out would make
precision strikes impossible and area strikes are unacceptable -- the ground
forces have the advantage of hiding in ground clutter. But can a tank-sized
ground asset hurt spaceships, and would a battleship-sized ground asset
remain immune from saturation bombardment? It could be that something this
large justifies some collateral damage.
My current draft for a TL11 "Navy Aerospace Craft" does 6.4 G loaded and 8 G
light, with DR 1,000 armor and force screens. It would clearly be vulnerable
to tank-sized laser batteries which hide under some trees, or in a garage,
and get cued by ground sensors before the ship comes over the horizon.
In this case Close Air Support alongside ground based artillery
support is necessary.
Are ballistic tube artillery or bombardment rockets survivable against point
defense?
A lot of these questions you have decide with your background, Look at
Drake's Hammer's Slammers, he used central computing along side a
large distributed array to provide line of sight air defense out to
orbital ranges. Also used direct fire assets (Tanks and Combat Cars)
to suppress ground defensive fire so his ballistic artillery could
operate. Star Wars used planetary scale shields to protect ground
assets from orbital bombardment, such that a landing was required to
reduce the base.
But as i was saying you as the setting designer need to decide where
those action points are going to happen. In my most recent examples a
landing is forced out of line of sight of the protected region and a
ground siege is required.
As is the combined arms force landing, which
circles around to who provides Air Support and Ground fire Suppression
support and with what sort of assets. Dipping into the Traveller model
here as it supposes that all High Tech vehicles are air mobile the
exact line where a tank and a transatmospheric fighter/bomber/CAS ship
gets real blurry. And that lime might all depend on what that ship's
loadout is on that day.
I think there is a clear difference.
The tank is optimized for a direct fire duel with accurate, armor-piercing,
low-collateral-damage rounds. It can resist some hits in this class, at
least beyond 1/2D range, at least on the frontal arc. The point defense is
designed to deal with ATGM-equivalent missiles, which are shorter-ranged and
more numerous than SAMs.
The transatmospheric fighter or gunboat is optimized for quick firing
passes, which release a variety of ordnance in a short time before getting
the hell out of dodge. The armor is not enough to resist their own weapons.
The point defense is designed to deal with SAM-equivalent or shipkiller
missiles. The fighter might be re-armed for CAS or counter-ship strikes, but
it won't become a tank.
All I am pointing out is once you can float heavily armored vehicles
the specific differences become fewer and fewer. As a point of order
most Armored vehicles can not withstand fire from their own main
weapons, this is a design feature incase you need to quickly disable
one of your own vehicles in the field to keep from falling into enemy
hands...
Sidenote; there isn't a whole lot of difference between a MBT's main
Gun and a Ship's 5 gun, other than the amount of ancillary hardware
supporting the weapon.
Two points here:
The 3" or 5" gun on modern ships is no longer the main weapon. It is a
backup to the missile silos, with cheaper and smaller ammo.
That all depends on your engagement envelope and mission. Up close and
personal your missile assets ain't worth bupkis if you need to hip
shoot a target under a mile or so, Heck there are a large number of
smallish combatants that the Radars and directors won't pick up, and
that 50 caliber mount won't disable fast enough that you will be glad
you have some heavy direct fire for. The used to have a hand director
for the CIS for moments like these, now they are mount 20mm cannon on
deck mounts now. Plus the 50s and other small arms... But I digress,
Mind you and Abrams mounts a 120mm smooth bore and a 5 inch naval gun
is approx. 127mm, the big difference is the mission. The Tank needs to
hit hip shoot a direct fire shot at a target that is also moving
within terrain within a nautical mile or two, so a lot of it's wide
field target acquisition is from the sensors and reports of it's
platoon mates and associated scouts (Hint this is also how air
combatants work as well). While a Ship's 5 inch gun is it's
generalist, it does everything a tanks gun does, but it also has to
act as a artillery battery as well as such it gets more ancillary
equipment that is a pain to fit in a tank even though they are similar
sized weapons. Remember Tank main guns started out as Naval cannon....
And there are differences. The tank gun is optimized for maximum punch, at
the expense of RoF and range. Consider how many are still manually loaded.
The naval gun has about three times the RoF and several times the ready
rounds.
With autoloaders and a team of poor schmucks feeding the loading tray
as compared to that single poor bastard in the back of the turret.
But the point is after a certain point the main weapon on a tank and
air defence fighter are going to look the same if the are both armored
to the same levels. Because it always comes down to the Sacred
Triangle, Speed, Firepower and Defense. For every mission you want and
much of all three as you can aford while still being able to get the
job done.
I kinda hit all this with my above commentary. But also consider this
how big is the smallest effective combatant got to be? then doe the
trade offs for endurance from those minimal figures...
The smallest effective hyperspace warship needs to:
- Travel between inhabitated star systems.
- Detect stealthy warships at useful engagement ranges.
- Carry weapons which can put small to medium ships at risk.
- Carry armor and point defense to degrade the attack of other very small
ships, but not stop it.
Note that I'm calling for an "overarmed" craft -- it can threaten something
several times larger, but it will be terribly at risk.
Call it 100 tons, with four 4-ton shipkiller missiles and a decent laser?
I fear there is a lecture on Space power in the back of my head but
since I don't have solid terms to couch it in I am going to leave it
there.
But getting back to our little buddy the APC, who is he delivering and
what is their mission? From a SpecWarfare point of view, fast enough
to get us there and back in a reasonable time, stealthy enough to get
us in there without being noticed and hard enough to keep the flys off
if we have to beat feet. The quiet matters for the delivery and the
egress if the mission went to plan, the fast and hard if it didn't
