Fighters in space

[SWPIGWANG]

.......why fighter when you can missile?

and is there any good reason for space fighters to exist without having physics that make newton roll in his grave?

[Hotfoot]

.......why fighter when you can missile?

and is there any good reason for space fighters to exist without having physics that make newton roll in his grave?

In-system peacekeeping force. Small, fast ships with weaponry large enough to cripple/destroy most civilian ships, good response/deployment times, and for public appearance. While a formation of five fighters might not actually be that effective should a corvette come through, it looks impressive and makes people feel safe. It's good for maintaining a presence in a system.

Though remotely controlled drones might be a better choice overall, there's still the human aspec you've got to deal with.

[Ghost Rider]

Perpetual scouts...same reason we use infantry in some regard...missles can only attack nothing about defense nor anything about keeping territory.

[NecronLord]

A glance though my site's ships section(lamentably small, but growing all the time, the site in general) will tell you that I favour drones.

[tharkûn]

Because you need a platform from which to launch your missiles. If you have no mobile launch platforms (cap ships or fighters) then you have long, long ToF for your missiles.

If you have mobilely deployed drones than you had BETTER trust your AI developers (fighters kick the crap out of missiles for decision capabilities, anything less than full AI is going to be much less versatile than a fighter). This also means you are royally screwed if the enemy decides to start hacking your missiles. Remote control has the twin problems of hijacking and jamming.

Most likely this means you have to some platform for launching your missiles from, something in the feild with decision making abilities. The larger you make this platform, the more the scale works against you. A missile cruiser will not be anywhere near as mobile as a fighter. Taking all the resources you'd dump into your missile cruiser and building a fighter swarm is normally more cost effective. The fighters can overwhelm the cruiser and perform better.

This naturally leads to carriers and escorts. This allows you to minimize the mass on a fighter and maximize the operational radius (by having multiple shifts, recreation facilities, etc.). Escorts (fighters, destroyers, whatever) become viable because your carriers are too valuable to risk losing.

Drones have AI limitations, they are expensive and they have to be huge or short range. This is why the best solution is still fighters carrying missiles.

[HemlockGrey]

In my sci-fi universe, fighters exist becaue they are the only craft, along with mines, which are incredibly random, capable of slipping underneath an enemy capship's screens and either strafing it or delivering a missle payload without having to break the screens first.

[HemlockGrey]

Also, fighters exist to destroy mines and other fighters before they have a chance to damage the capital ship.

[NecronLord]

Drones have AI limitations, they are expensive and they have to be huge or short range. This is why the best solution is still fighters carrying missiles.

Not exactly.

Core Programming.
Never attack own or allied vessels
Attack Enemy Vessels
Investigate Nutral vessels, If Hostility detected set to enemy.

Attack defence and other functions. When each drone is built it is given multiple (wer're talking millions here) possible tactics and strategies. They can be directed to choose one by their parent vessel, or choose one based on a descision making algorithm. As such they are pretty much imaginative, Some may even be allowed to choose diliberately flawed tactics to confuse the enemy.

Remote Control Cannot Violate the core programming as the control algorithms controlling the drone are built in on manufacture, and can only be removed by replacing the drone's circuits. Drones are cheap when you consider that (in my universe at least) nearly every warship carries a machine shop capable of contructing pretty much anything that is required to repair the ship. Admittedly you normally must collect the matter to construct parts {though in an emergency most parts of the ship are disposable}

In essence you get equal abilities from a drone, faster construction, and superior numbers. Not to mention you can leave many fighter systems off a drone, life-support, inertial compensators, air supplies, ejection.

And in my universe, AI are trusted, think culture minds divided by between 500 to 1000. its easy enough to have them program the fighters beforehand (hell they can rewrite everything but the core programming in well under a centi-second before launch...

[NecronLord]

Further examples there are now armed predator drones, and Various other UCAVs are being reseached. They have far higher limits than the human body, e.g. they don't black out at high G. The same, by extention applies in space.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Further examples there are now armed predator drones, and Various other UCAVs are being reseached. They have far higher limits than the human body, e.g. they don't black out at high G. The same, by extention applies in space.

Although in SW, inertial compensators made up for that disadvantage. However, in SW, droids can be extremely intelligent, almost on par with humans learning ability-wise, so a droid fighter could be as random and unpredictable as a starfighter piloted by a human.

[MirrorUniverseSpy1]

I agree with Hotfoot.

[BenRG]

The big advantage of the manned fighter is its' flexibility. You can do a lot with them, from scouting to interdiction (basically bombing). A decent fighter pilot can handle a wide range of missions and a decent fighter can be modified for a wide range of missions (just look at the flexibilty of the F-16 Falcon series).

An AI drone has several limits, including the need to alter the software for different mission types. Also, an AI can be confused by contradictory and unexpected sensory input, while a human pilot would say "blow this for a day's work" and shoot at the nearest available target until they are clear of the melée.

[Hotfoot]

The big advantage of the manned fighter is its' flexibility. You can do a lot with them, from scouting to interdiction (basically bombing). A decent fighter pilot can handle a wide range of missions and a decent fighter can be modified for a wide range of missions (just look at the flexibilty of the F-16 Falcon series).

An AI drone has several limits, including the need to alter the software for different mission types.

Why would you need to alter the software? It's not as if data storage in the future is going to get substantially bigger. You can hold gigabytes of data in something the size of a walkman today, easy.

Also, an AI can be confused by contradictory and unexpected sensory input, while a human pilot would say "blow this for a day's work" and shoot at the nearest available target until they are clear of the melée.

Confused? I don't see how a drone could be confused. They can make snap decisions much better than humans, and are unhindered by any sense of morality or ethics. Confusion would only arise from shoddy programming of the AI, like using Window 95 as the AI's operating system. Also, what would make for unexpected input? If it was common at all, it would be accounted for in the programming before the AI would even be released for active use. If anything, AI drones are less likely to be confused than a human. Once they've been taught something, they never forget, and have almost instant access on how to deal with it. Humans forget things all the time, in comparison.

Also, consider: Drones would be faster, more accurate, more fuel-efficient, and work together to a degree humans could only hope to achieve. They would not worry about their wife and kids back home, have no fear of dying, and can be programmed with game theory in mind, so they can "take a hit for the team" if it would help to ensure success of an operation. Also, they would be cheaper to build and maintain in comparison to equivilant human vessels, and can be put into active service much faster. No need to train the pilots, no need to pay them, feed them, clothe them. No veterans benefits for "retired" AI (no retiring period, in fact, just retrofitting or scrapping), no life support, etc. etc.

Also, the value of the human life that's saved by not sending him into combat to die fighting the other side's drones is immeasurable.

[Darth Wong]

Confused? I don't see how a drone could be confused. They can make snap decisions much better than humans, and are unhindered by any sense of morality or ethics.

Which is also the problem. A soldier is obligated to disobey illegal orders, because he must defend his nation even from his own superiors or his own government if necessary. An army of drones, on the other hand, could be programmed for a national takeover in seconds. Indeed, a drone-based military would allow a sufficiently proficient hacker to conquer its entire parent civilization.

Avoid single points of failure: an engineering maxim that too many people don't know about.

[Hotfoot]

Confused? I don't see how a drone could be confused. They can make snap decisions much better than humans, and are unhindered by any sense of morality or ethics.

Which is also the problem. A soldier is obligated to disobey illegal orders, because he must defend his nation even from his own superiors or his own government if necessary.

If an illegal order is given, assuming it is obviously illegal, it would be a simple matter for the drone to respond "illegal order, cannot comply". All of the proper alliegences can be put into a heirarchical order in the drone's programming.

An army of drones, on the other hand, could be programmed for a national takeover in seconds. Indeed, a drone-based military would allow a sufficiently proficient hacker to conquer its entire parent civilization.

Note that the entire military would not be drone based, simply the fighters. Capital ships would, as usual, be manned by humans. The point here being that drones would be much better than manned fighters in space combat. After all, if you're going to have small, fast strike craft in space, you're better off using drones than one/two man fighters.

Also, that would have to be one hell of a hacker, almost impossibly so, given the correct design of the hardware and software of the drone AI. Would have to have access to the original drone AI and somehow be able to simultaneously alter the programming of millions, if not billions of drones in order to accomplish such a feat, and that's assuming that such remote re-programming would even be possible given the design of the drone.

Avoid single points of failure: an engineering maxim that too many people don't know about.

Agreed. The points you have raised would have to be addressed before drones could be made a viable alternative. However, it seems like saying that you'll have to find a way to reach escape velocity before space exploration will become a viable endeavor.

[The Dark]

Confused? I don't see how a drone could be confused. They can make snap decisions much better than humans, and are unhindered by any sense of morality or ethics.

Which is also the problem. A soldier is obligated to disobey illegal orders, because he must defend his nation even from his own superiors or his own government if necessary.

If an illegal order is given, assuming it is obviously illegal, it would be a simple matter for the drone to respond "illegal order, cannot comply". All of the proper alliegences can be put into a heirarchical order in the drone's programming.

The problem lies in the "unobvious" orders. Say an enemy cruiser is being used as a refugee ship. Some xenophobic officer orders the drones to attack the ship, despite all the humans knowing it's carrying refugees (the shuttles were visible). The drones, being amoral, attack and destroy the cruiser, killing innocent civilians. Fighter pilots, OTOH, see the refugee shuttles returning to the planet and refuse to fire on the cruiser. Yes, it's a specific example, but to code in the necessary requirements would lead to an AI of insanely large size and quite possibly contradictory commands.

[Hotfoot]

The problem lies in the "unobvious" orders. Say an enemy cruiser is being used as a refugee ship. Some xenophobic officer orders the drones to attack the ship, despite all the humans knowing it's carrying refugees (the shuttles were visible). The drones, being amoral, attack and destroy the cruiser, killing innocent civilians. Fighter pilots, OTOH, see the refugee shuttles returning to the planet and refuse to fire on the cruiser. Yes, it's a specific example, but to code in the necessary requirements would lead to an AI of insanely large size and quite possibly contradictory commands.

Yes, but unobvious illegal orders run the risk of being obeyed by human troops as well. If the captain tells his fighter pilots that the cruiser is filled with war criminals/baby eaters/experimental weapon X or some other BS story to make them think that the refugee ship is in fact a viable threat, they might destroy the ship anyway. Meanwhile, you could allow for other officers to effectively veto such questionable commands given to the drones, thus reducing, if not eliminating the problem of unobvious illegal orders.

Think of it this way, the ship has multiple drone operators actually giving the orders to the various groups of drones. The captain gives orders from on high to all the officers. If the captain's orders to destroy the ship are illegal, the drone operators could easily stop the order from ever reaching the drones in the first place. Should the operator initiate the illegal order, and the captain or the other drone operators don't stop him, relieve him of duty, destroy his drones with their own, etc., then you've got a problem anyway.

What's the difference between a drone and a gun? Should we not use guns because they are completely amoral and will kill a child just as easily as they will a grown man?

As for the code required to create an AI in the first place are very large, especially if it's designed to be controlling an autonomous space vehicle with guns. As for contradictory commands, there are two simple solutions. Either pick one using a specific algorithm, or pick neither and fall back to a standby state.

[Xon]

Indeed, a drone-based military would allow a sufficiently proficient hacker to conquer its entire parent civilization.

To fix this problem, have it so only phsycial access can change the programming of a drone. By physical access I mean, having to open the drone up, & plug in the future equivalent of a serial port. Then have complex validation protocals, (private & public keys, with really big keys) as well as a physical key to activate the external communications port.

[Xon]

The problem lies in the "unobvious" orders. Say an enemy cruiser is being used as a refugee ship. Some xenophobic officer orders the drones to attack the ship, despite all the humans knowing it's carrying refugees (the shuttles were visible). The drones, being amoral, attack and destroy the cruiser, killing innocent civilians. Fighter pilots, OTOH, see the refugee shuttles returning to the planet and refuse to fire on the cruiser. Yes, it's a specific example, but to code in the necessary requirements would lead to an AI of insanely large size and quite possibly contradictory commands.

Your case is invalid, as the AI arent told that enemy is carring refugees, but the humans fighters are.

That type of general knowlage would have to be entired into the computers, so the Ai can know about it. Once the AI knows about it it can react to it.

So what about the actuall size, data storgae & processing power are cheap. As for contradictory commands, sort them by priority if there is a comflect after that; the AI should fall back on a steady state (dont fire) , or make a choice.

[Enlightenment]

If an illegal order is given, assuming it is obviously illegal, it would be a simple matter for the drone to respond "illegal order, cannot comply". All of the proper alliegences can be put into a heirarchical order in the drone's programming.

Yeah. Simple. Simple like sentient AI. A 'drone' with sufficient intelligence to recognize illegal orders isn't a just drone; it's going to have to be damn near sentient. There's not much of a functional difference between sentient AI drones, small craft run by sentient pilots except that using human pilots puts their lives at risk.

[Hotfoot]

If an illegal order is given, assuming it is obviously illegal, it would be a simple matter for the drone to respond "illegal order, cannot comply". All of the proper alliegences can be put into a heirarchical order in the drone's programming.

Yeah. Simple. Simple like sentient AI. A 'drone' with sufficient intelligence to recognize illegal orders isn't a just drone; it's going to have to be damn near sentient.

Not at all. You just have to define what constitutes and illegal order. That doesn't require sentience.

There's not much of a functional difference between sentient AI drones, small craft run by sentient pilots except that using human pilots puts their lives at risk.

You don't need sentient drones in the first place. Why would you need a sentient drone to make such a simple decision in the first place? Is it really that hard to tell the difference between an illegal order and a legal one? If so, what makes the order illegal in the first place?

AI drones are just that, Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Sentience has not entered the discussion in the slightest. Deep Blue did not need Artificial Sentience to determine what was an illegal move in chess, did it?

[NecronLord]

The big advantage of the manned fighter is its' flexibility. You can do a lot with them, from scouting to interdiction (basically bombing). A decent fighter pilot can handle a wide range of missions and a decent fighter can be modified for a wide range of missions (just look at the flexibilty of the F-16 Falcon series).

An AI drone has several limits, including the need to alter the software for different mission types. Also, an AI can be confused by contradictory and unexpected sensory input, while a human pilot would say "blow this for a day's work" and shoot at the nearest available target until they are clear of the melée.

Say you have a Drone with 5,000,000 possible tactics, of which only one percent are relevent to any given situation, thats still 50,000 choices, I'd say thats flexible. As stated above part of the core programming would be if all else fails choose an enemy and attack.

p.s. I did mention the intertial compensators above.

AS for hacking it the answer is simple. Have loyalty to the state hardwired into the processor.

[Enlightenment]

Not at all. You just have to define what constitutes and illegal order. That doesn't require sentience.

Being able to translate the definition of an illegal order into practical terms will, however, require both a vast knowledge base and a sense of judgement. Judgement is very much a property of sentience.

For example, an order deliberately targetting civilians is illegal and is a war crime. In order for this simple concept to make sense to a machine it must understand both the difference between deliberate targetting and incidental damage, and the difference between civilian population and military personnel. Simplistic definitions will not suffice. Code-ruling that spacecraft which aren't broadcasting civil IFF are valid targets won't help if a malevolent commander orders the drone to attack a single military ship in a civilian shipyard with a weapon large enough to destroy the shipyard and the civilian colony it's sitting on. The drone must be able to understand the use of proportionate force and judge if the weapons provided for the mission assigned are justified given what might be near the target.

Note that shooting civilians is an incredibly cut-and-dried case compared to abstract concepts like constitutionality. Attacking the seat of government or killing the head of state is a no-go unless the government or leader has broken the constitution and must be removed by force. It's simply not possible to define a sufficiently detailed machine readable ruleset for these kind of cases. The only surefire solution is to use a sentient AI with enough judgement to make its own decisions.

[NecronLord]

Not at all. You just have to define what constitutes and illegal order. That doesn't require sentience.

Being able to translate the definition of an illegal order into practical terms will, however, require both a vast knowledge base and a sense of judgement. Judgement is very much a property of sentience.

For example, an order deliberately targetting civilians is illegal and is a war crime. In order for this simple concept to make sense to a machine it must understand both the difference between deliberate targetting and incidental damage, and the difference between civilian population and military personnel. Simplistic definitions will not suffice. Code-ruling that spacecraft which aren't broadcasting civil IFF are valid targets won't help if a malevolent commander orders the drone to attack a single military ship in a civilian shipyard with a weapon large enough to destroy the shipyard and the civilian colony it's sitting on. The drone must be able to understand the use of proportionate force and judge if the weapons provided for the mission assigned are justified given what might be near the target.

Note that shooting civilians is an incredibly cut-and-dried case compared to abstract concepts like constitutionality. Attacking the seat of government or killing the head of state is a no-go unless the government or leader has broken the constitution and must be removed by force. It's simply not possible to define a sufficiently detailed machine readable ruleset for these kind of cases. The only surefire solution is to use a sentient AI with enough judgement to make its own decisions.

Actually it is. Also you forget, the responsibility is still the officers the fact that he himself is not actually in a fighter doing it is irrelevenat. In esscence all millitary tech boils down to progressively bigger and more powerful sticks.

[Enlightenment]

Also you forget, the responsibility is still the officers the fact that he himself is not actually in a fighter doing it is irrelevenat. In esscence all millitary tech boils down to progressively bigger and more powerful sticks.

Read the thread. I'm responding this:

If an illegal order is given, assuming it is obviously illegal, it would be a simple matter for the drone to respond "illegal order, cannot comply". All of the proper alliegences can be put into a heirarchical order in the drone's programming.