Newtonian Space Combat

[Nephtys]

Lasers to blind sensors and nuclear missiles to kill would probably be the normal combos. No need to get any more fancy then that

Nukes would be the sensor blinders, and lasers for the kill. A nuke exploding nearby would be extremely bright, several orders of magnitude brighter than the surface of the sun. Most of this light normally gets blocked due to the disintegration of the bomb itself and the irradiation of the surrounding atmosphere.

But there'd be nearly no pressure wave. Only temperature and radiation, most of which ships will have armoring against. And the flash would be extremely fast.

Of course there'd be no pressure wave. There'd also only be radiant heat and hard radiation to worry about, but ships can't armor against that.

To armor against such levels of hard radiation, you MUST have high density material, such as lead. This level of armor is not suitable for spacecraft which need to save as much mass as possible, simply put. A nuke is far more viable a weapon than any laser save at point blank ranges.

[RedImperator]

Lasers are lousy space weapons. At the energies necessary to kill at any kind of useful range, heat dissapation becomes a major problem. You'll either need huge, vulnerable radiators or an open cycle cooling system which will limit the number of shots you get to the amount of gas you can carry.

[Spice Runner]

It would seem to me that the optimal warship would need for weaponry would be lasers covering every angle for point defence and long range guided missiles. What other realistic systems would such a ship need to be superior over others, besides propulsion and armor?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Neutral Particle Beams (NPBs) would be possible, since that's the only other beam weapon that has the flexibility of a laser and speed. Other than that, you're limited to missiles that can be shot down by CIWS or railguns that suffer pretty much the same problem.

[Ariphaos]

To armor against such levels of hard radiation, you MUST have high density material, such as lead. This level of armor is not suitable for spacecraft which need to save as much mass as possible, simply put. A nuke is far more viable a weapon than any laser save at point blank ranges.

Nukes of any respectable use are big and slow - about 6 pounds per kiloton. Nothing that big is going to get anywhere near a target - even the railguns we're talking about will be firing projectiles measured in grams if not milligrams. The radiative and thermal damage they will be doing will be limited to the inverse square law, entailing that these things get within several kilometers to actually damage a ship, and within a kilometer to be certain of killing it. Remember, any ship with computer or living components on it has to have some radiation shielding just to enter and leave a planet's Van Allen belts.

[Nephtys]

To armor against such levels of hard radiation, you MUST have high density material, such as lead. This level of armor is not suitable for spacecraft which need to save as much mass as possible, simply put. A nuke is far more viable a weapon than any laser save at point blank ranges.

Nukes of any respectable use are big and slow - about 6 pounds per kiloton. Nothing that big is going to get anywhere near a target - even the railguns we're talking about will be firing projectiles measured in grams if not milligrams. The radiative and thermal damage they will be doing will be limited to the inverse square law, entailing that these things get within several kilometers to actually damage a ship, and within a kilometer to be certain of killing it. Remember, any ship with computer or living components on it has to have some radiation shielding just to enter and leave a planet's Van Allen belts.

Six pounds per kiloton? That's phenomenal. You do know that even a tactical device of 10 kilotons (60 pound warhead in your book), is going to be more phenomenally deadly than ANY railgun? The reason? Guidance. You can actaully hit a target, instead of spraying for thousands of klicks and praying for a hit.

And please, the radiation that a ship would likely encounter going interplanetary is not even close to a nuclear weapon's output.

[RedImperator]

The main problems with nuclear weapons in space is the inverse square law; therefore, the solution is to oversome it somehow. The most obvious answer seems to me to be either an X-Ray laser or some kind of nuclear shaped charge that sends most of the device's energy in one direction (I know the US was fooling with that idea when it was planning Star Wars, but I don't know if anything came of it).

[Nephtys]

The main problems with nuclear weapons in space is the inverse square law; therefore, the solution is to oversome it somehow. The most obvious answer seems to me to be either an X-Ray laser or some kind of nuclear shaped charge that sends most of the device's energy in one direction (I know the US was fooling with that idea when it was planning Star Wars, but I don't know if anything came of it).

A laserhead missile is a potent weapon if it can get worked out. But even a vanilla bomb seems far superior to any mass driver or shipboard mounted laser, which are not likely to even damage a target. That's the thing. Even though nuclear bombs aren't ideal, they're far more capable than anything else we can realistically expect to use at range.

[Sea Skimmer]

Nukes would be the sensor blinders, and lasers for the kill. A nuke exploding nearby would be extremely bright, several orders of magnitude brighter than the surface of the sun. Most of this light normally gets blocked due to the disintegration of the bomb itself and the irradiation of the surrounding atmosphere.

But there'd be nearly no pressure wave. Only temperature and radiation, most of which ships will have armoring against. And the flash would be extremely fast.

If the enemy ship has armor, which can repel the burst of hard radiation from a nuclear weapon initiated in space, then a laser isn’t going to do much against it either. But since this thread assumes physics matter, the target ship won’t be heavily armored and you won’t have an uber high power laser. Dispersion will make the laser ineffective as piercing anything at long range anyway, no matter how much power it has, while the dispersion will make it ideal for damaging antennas and optics over the entire surface of the target. With that done you fire the nuke, which doesn’t need to do blast or heat damage. Hard radiation will kill the enemy crew and wreck all the electronics on the ship. Target destroyed, even if it physically still exists.

[Admiral Valdemar]

You could get better results against armour with the railguns, especially if firing smaller rounds at hypervelocities that would easily rend radiation shielding and be far harder to hit than even the smallest tac. nuke travelling at velocity. Plus, if you ripple fire several rounds at once in a web pattern, you could increase your chances of a hit and saturate point-defence systems. Or, you could fire off a load of missiles, some with nukes, some with conventional warheads. Assuming CIWS is laser based, you're going to only get around it with stealth (hard on a missile even), or simple brute force (missile massacre).

For soft kills, the lasers and NPBs could be used to take out electronics and so on. Close-in, railguns would be preferable with the beam weapons acting as lightspeed point-defence and nukes being a little easier to use, albeit, with the risk of affecting you more if really high yield.

[Icehawk]

Exactly. I can see nukes maybe being an early years dominator of space warfare when we don't yet have the tech to build large high energy magnetic cannons or high energy beam weapons, but as technology improves over the centuries and we have the ability to shoot down missiles at range which we will I am certain, I honestly see it coming down to ships being more or less giant cannons with engines and if necessary lots of beam based CIWS covering them.

[Nephtys]

You could get better results against armour with the railguns, especially if firing smaller rounds at hypervelocities that would easily rend radiation shielding and be far harder to hit than even the smallest tac. nuke travelling at velocity. Plus, if you ripple fire several rounds at once in a web pattern, you could increase your chances of a hit and saturate point-defence systems. Or, you could fire off a load of missiles, some with nukes, some with conventional warheads. Assuming CIWS is laser based, you're going to only get around it with stealth (hard on a missile even), or simple brute force (missile massacre).

For soft kills, the lasers and NPBs could be used to take out electronics and so on. Close-in, railguns would be preferable with the beam weapons acting as lightspeed point-defence and nukes being a little easier to use, albeit, with the risk of affecting you more if really high yield.

You're thinking far too much in terms of cinematic TV space combat, and not enough about how it'd really likely turn up. Railguns are not going to be much faster in terms of velocity than hypersonic in any conceivable future, and at that velocity, they're dead useless at ranges greater than a few thousand klicks. THOUSANDS. That's nothing in space.

True. Railguns would be devastating against armor and there'd be no defense against a direct hit. The problem? You'll never get a direct hit outside of knife fighting range. To close to that range means you've already been decimated by nuclear missiles. Point defense is not an answer to missiles which likely have far superior acceleration profiles and stealth than your ship.

Remember defenses always are improved one step behind offenses. If you build advanced high-precision lasers for point defense, missiles could be rotated to prevent the lasers from concentrating long enough on one point, or have built in deployable decoys, carry MIRV heads or be fired in Macross-esque swarms.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Don't be ridiculous. Missiles with that amount of armour would be needlessly massive and far easier to hit, with or without rotating. Plus, a laser hitting it means material ablates off anyway which pretty much ruins any precision you had. And then there's the fact that point-defence lasers today need only knock out the highly delicate seekers and then you have a very useless mass moving nowhere near the enemy vessel. Missiles are even slower than railgun rounds and far easier to see. A saturation attack with them would have to involve dozens to take on any ship that has modern day CIWS in space, letalone a future laser or NPB based system. Hell, a near miss by an NPB would ruin the missile from EMP effects anyway.

I very much doubt such combat will take place at lightsecond plus ranges. Missiles would be plinked long before they hit and beam weapons would be too weak without far larger vessels and reactors meaning far larger and more cumbersome targest. Just because the playing field is that large doesn't mean combat need be at that range. BVR dogfights today still occur at dozens of klicks despite missiles that have far longer range existing. There's simply more to it than saying it'll be a push button battle with no "knife fights".

[Nephtys]

Don't be ridiculous. Missiles with that amount of armour would be needlessly massive and far easier to hit, with or without rotating. Plus, a laser hitting it means material ablates off anyway which pretty much ruins any precision you had. And then there's the fact that point-defence lasers today need only knock out the highly delicate seekers and then you have a very useless mass moving nowhere near the enemy vessel. Missiles are even slower than railgun rounds and far easier to see. A saturation attack with them would have to involve dozens to take on any ship that has modern day CIWS in space, letalone a future laser or NPB based system. Hell, a near miss by an NPB would ruin the missile from EMP effects anyway.

I very much doubt such combat will take place at lightsecond plus ranges. Missiles would be plinked long before they hit and beam weapons would be too weak without far larger vessels and reactors meaning far larger and more cumbersome targest. Just because the playing field is that large doesn't mean combat need be at that range. BVR dogfights today still occur at dozens of klicks despite missiles that have far longer range existing. There's simply more to it than saying it'll be a push button battle with no "knife fights".

Unlike railgun rounds, Missiles can of course shift course and at ranges of hundreds of kilometers, even a slightly erratic course could throw off lasers quite well. A laser may not even be practical for such a role as massed point defense, consuming an heavy amount of chemical or solid fuel, limiting rate of fire or ammunition capacity.

Also, missiles are not nessisarilly slower than railguns. For comparative mass, it's probably slanted towards the missiles for better performance anyway, given the increased bulk a railgun assembly and the power requirements would have.

Also, an NPB would not have any EMP effect in space. In vacuum, there's nothing to cause compton recoil/scattering.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Unlike railgun rounds, Missiles can of course shift course and at ranges of hundreds of kilometers, even a slightly erratic course could throw off lasers quite well. A laser may not even be practical for such a role as massed point defense, consuming an heavy amount of chemical or solid fuel, limiting rate of fire or ammunition capacity.

That's really an irrelevant criticism. The laser will likely be a FEL anyway, which requires no ammo, just juice from the reactor. The laser need not worry about erratic movements given a laser beam has no inertia and can track a missile no matter how agile from afar and hit it with ease. The missile also won't be pulling off insane stunts anyway without a huge amount of propellant and even then, that adds mass and pulling off such high gee moves via Newtonian mechanics can lead to skidding through the vacuum rather than rapidly turning. There's also little to stop you from firing a guided munition via a railgun anyway like the new guided rounds proposed for naval railguns today (only with a small propellant vernier system, rather than fins).

Also, missiles are not nessisarilly slower than railguns. For comparative mass, it's probably slanted towards the missiles for better performance anyway, given the increased bulk a railgun assembly and the power requirements would have.

The missile is continually accelerating, so unless it is kicked out by a railgun first, it takes time to reach far higher speeds and decrease time on target.

Also, an NPB would not have any EMP effect in space. In vacuum, there's nothing to cause compton recoil/scattering.

The dispersion of the beam would determine that. It would be more pronounced in atmosphere, naturally, but depending on the thermal properties of the beam and velocity of the particles, you could produce a cone that would envelope and critically affect the missile or ship's electronics and harm organics. Masers would be another alternative, though they are preferred in atmosphere given the atmosphere is translucent to microwaves anyway.