Modern earth anginst single ISD in low orbit

[Marko Dash]

So would the combined nations of earth be able to fend it off or destroy it? This is assuming we have forewarning and have time to assemble forces, prep nuke silos, etc.

[000]

Hasn't this been done already?

[Marko Dash]

I've looked through the first few pages of the search and found nothing similar. It returned over 400 pages, I'm trying to focus the search.

[Crazedwraith]

yes we have and no we can't.

[Batman]

This has been done before and Earth can't do squat because
a) we've got nothing than can reach orbit, and
b) a single HTL outguns modern Earth by several orders of magnitude.
If this is about Earth opposing an invasion things get more compex but we're still screwed.

[Marko Dash]

have we ever tried to launch an ICBM strait up? most of them are designed to hit targets around the world. they would need to be very high just to get to a point where they can free fall the rest of the way, what about the nuke armed satellites already in orbit. even if all of them were the little bombs 1-9 megatons there is a lot of them, to the SD it would be like getting hit by 5000 of its light tls, and the bigger ones 50mt are much more powerful. still not nearly up to the ISD's heavy guns, but the heavy guns are on the dorsal side.

[That NOS Guy]

Even if we hit the thing with all of the combined might of the worlds arsenal you know what that will do? Even at that, you assume all of the worlds weaponry is at least a megaton, which would be a suprise to me. 50 mt was a test, not a production warhead, and hint hint, they don't exist anymore.

I highly suggest you use the search feature and save us all some grief.

[Trytostaydead]

Let's say that we are able to launch them all at the ISD within a relatively short span of each other. It will still take time to reach the ISD coming up from the Earth and God knows where else. I would assume the ISD would be doing something else besides letting itself get by rather large missiles.

[Darkdrium]

I don't have time for a full reply, so I'll just say a few things.

1. There is no 50 MT nukes, the one built by the Soviets wasn't flight capable I believe, and yields are much lower than that.

2.You assume that the missiles won't be shot down.

3. Missiles satellites? What the flying fuck? Since when do we have those?

[Surlethe]

have we ever tried to launch an ICBM strait up? most of them are designed to hit targets around the world. they would need to be very high just to get to a point where they can free fall the rest of the way,

Do you know what a ballistic trajectory is? If we launch an ICBM straight up, it will come back down, which is not good.

what about the nuke armed satellites already in orbit. even if all of them were the little bombs 1-9 megatons there is a lot of them,

What nuke-armed satellites in orbit?

to the SD it would be like getting hit by 5000 of its light tls, and the bigger ones 50mt are much more powerful. still not nearly up to the ISD's heavy guns, but the heavy guns are on the dorsal side.

What makes you think the missiles -- if we could get them into orbit, which we can't -- would do anything more than bounce off the shields? This is an incredibly retarded topic.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

• A single HTL bolt has more energy than Earth's entire arsenal by orders of magnitude.
  
  An ISD is specifically designed to be capable of absorbing several dozen HTL bolts in typical ship-to-ship combat.
  
  ICBMs would be instantly spotted as soon as they launch, and PD guns would destroy them the moment they come within range.
  
  The ICBM sites would be incinerated by MTL shots as soon as the missiles launch.
  
  The command bunkers would be incinerated by multiple MTL strikes within moments. The deeper-buried ones would earn an HTL blast.
  
  The ISD commander would most likely order orbital bombardment on selected targets determined to be highly valued by Terrans, such as power-generators, large cities, military bases, etc.
  
  Ground troops, walkers, and possibly an entire prefab base would be landed on the planet as soon as it stops firing upon the ISD, rendering it a surface engagement.
  
  This topic has been done to death already, n00b.
  
  Your sig pic is illegal: too large.
  
  Welcome to SD.Net. Try not to die too quickly...

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

So would the combined nations of earth be able to fend it off or destroy it? This is assuming we have forewarning and have time to assemble forces, prep nuke silos, etc.

No. Modern Earth has zero chance against a single Star Destroyer. The combined nuclear arsenal of the planet is less than 30 gigatons (against a ship that has, using a fairly minimalist interpretation, about that much in the way of shields. Estimates extrapolated from the ICS put the ISD's shields somewhere around a few thousand gigatons.) The firepower of a single ISD is capable of slagging the entire surface of the planet, and the ship's HTLs have a minimum firepower of a couple hundred gigatons per shot, per weapon.

Modern nuclear warheads are typically under 10 megatons in total yield, have sophisticated altitude-sensing detonators, and an ICBM is generally a sub-orbital weapon. It's maximum altitude is typically well under 2000 kilometers (and for most ICBMs, well under 1000.) And the ICBM is a ballistic weapon . . . meaning it has no real orbital maneuvering capability. All of that means that our missiles would be entirely worthless against the ISD. They're not powerful enough, they don't go high enough, and they're easily shot down. The Imperial captain could park his ship up in geostationary orbit and be entirely untouchable by us, while he can readily rain down destruction on us.

In short, this is fucking stupid . . . what'd Earth ever do to you to deserve an ass-raping this terrible?

[Batman]

Ein fucked up his list tags but is nonetheless right about the sig pic, and by extension the sig size in general. I suggest you change those on short notice, Marko.
As for the quick retaliation Ein proposed, that might not neccessarily happen. I can easily see a puzzled ISD captain going "Um-tactical, am I seeing things or are they launching a pitiful number of pathetically slow incredibly large antifighter missiles at us?"- "Apparently so, Sir."-"Whatever for?"-"um-no clue, Sir."-"Very well. Stand by on PD weapons, and let's see what happens when they realize that doesn't do squat."

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

As for the quick retaliation Ein proposed, that might not neccessarily happen. I can easily see a puzzled ISD captain going "Um-tactical, am I seeing things or are they launching a pitiful number of pathetically slow incredibly large antifighter missiles at us?"- "Apparently so, Sir."-"Whatever for?"-"um-no clue, Sir."-"Very well. Stand by on PD weapons, and let's see what happens when they realize that doesn't do squat."

That point is actually debatable, Bats. It has everything to do with how the ISD commander would prosecute the engagement and nearly nothing to do with anything else. I assumed a pretty gung-ho hardass of a Captain with a militaristic personality.

[Batman]

As for the quick retaliation Ein proposed, that might not neccessarily happen. I can easily see a puzzled ISD captain going "Um-tactical, am I seeing things or are they launching a pitiful number of pathetically slow incredibly large antifighter missiles at us?"- "Apparently so, Sir."-"Whatever for?"-"um-no clue, Sir."-"Very well. Stand by on PD weapons, and let's see what happens when they realize that doesn't do squat."

That point is actually debatable, Bats. It has everything to do with how the ISD commander would prosecute the engagement and nearly nothing to do with anything else. I assumed a pretty gung-ho hardass of a Captain with a militaristic personality.

Hey, I'm Batman. I canonically suck at humour. (IOW, conceeded I should have put a at the end).
/aside/Do we have a frantic backpedalling smiley? /aside/
Besides, I used the 'might not neccessarily' qualifier. So there.

And yes, that was rather off-topic.

[LordShaithis]

So yes, one Star Destroyer = doom for Earth. Nukes will bounce off the shields, and the turbolasers will slag anything below that they damn well please.

In other news, welcome newb.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

have we ever tried to launch an ICBM strait up? most of them are designed to hit targets around the world. they would need to be very high just to get to a point where they can free fall the rest of the way, what about the nuke armed satellites already in orbit. even if all of them were the little bombs 1-9 megatons there is a lot of them, to the SD it would be like getting hit by 5000 of its light tls, and the bigger ones 50mt are much more powerful. still not nearly up to the ISD's heavy guns, but the heavy guns are on the dorsal side.

A) An ICBM, as has been pointed out, is a ballistic weapon. Shoot it straight up, it burns out sometime before perigee, and it falls back down. While some of the biggest ICBM rockets were capable of boosting something as big a Mercury capsule into orbit, maneuvering would be restricted to small orbital maneuvering thrusters only. You need a much bigger booster to send up something with a decent rocket motor of its own, and such a object wouldn't be capable of more than a few gravities of acceleration, and only for a very short period of time. Such a thing would be absolutely trivial for the ISD to shoot down, and we don't have anything remotely like it anyway.

B) Nuclear-armed satellites? The only place those exist are in badly written international military techno-thriller novels. The only nuclear-anything objects in Earth orbit are some defunct Soviet-era satellites that had small nuclear reactors aboard to provide power.

C) The ISD's shields can withstand many tens of gigatons as a baseline conservative estimate. Against nuclear tipped missiles that have no real way of focusing their power, it would be like shooting pellet guns at the armor belt of a battleship. And what does it matter how the ISD's weapons are laid out. This is space we're talking about. Space is three dimensional. The ISD only needs to perform a bit of rotating about its x, y, and z axes, and it can bring any combination of weapons to bear against Earth as its captain would like.

[Ghost Rider]

ISD's baseline is hundreds of gigatons.

Earth can barely muster gigaton in the TEENS.

Locked.