Starfighter combat inside an atmosphere

[Darksider]

SW fighters are commonly accepted (barring Dorktard's site and a few morons on SB.com) to have kiloton and megaton range weaponry for use against other fighters (not hard to believe, given that SW has KT-range hand grenades) and gigaton and teraton range weaponry for use against heavy capital ships.
What is the common method of rationalizing this with the use of starfighters in atmospheric combat? I know they can dial down their weapon's power for direct use against ground targets, but what about shooting down enemy starfighters? Should an x-wing pilot be terrified that him missing a shot at a Tie will cause massive collateral damage?

[Illuminatus Primus]

I doubt starfighter-range torpedoes go into the teraton range, or even the high gigaton. There's a terrific mass penalty to pay for that yield.

[Darksider]

I doubt starfighter-range torpedoes go into the teraton range, or even the high gigaton. There's a terrific mass penalty to pay for that yield.

I'm talking about the heavy anti-ship torpedos. They would probably only be mounted on bombers like b-wings, k-wings, or maybe y-wings. I seriously doubt they would deploy them inside an atmosphere, i'm more concerned with the fact that the laser cannons on starfighters that are used in atmospheric combat (numerous examples in the games and the books, and it looks like the new CW series will show it too.) are single-digit kiloton. I know they dial them down when attacking ground targets, but anything less than a full power shot won't reliably bring down another starfighter. are the weapons designed to limit collateral damage, or do pilots just have to be really really careful when dogfighting in an atmosphere?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

IIRC, the only scene in the movies where this situation takes place is during the Order 66 scene. You might be able to find the answer there if we can see where any stray shots hit.

[FOG3]

IIRC, the only scene in the movies where this situation takes place is during the Order 66 scene. You might be able to find the answer there if we can see where any stray shots hit.

Well to do a quick check it starts at 3:20 on this youtube clip for those not wanting to pull out the disk. Right around 3:30 looks like we have a hit on structures before it hits the Jedi Master. Would need to actual disk to confirm, but they definitely have stuff behind their target so aren't acting overly concerned about missing.

Star Wars fans however generally have advocated the high energy yields based on what was being destroyed, not an actual explosion. So it would be relatively safe to say the presumption is that they tend to be highly focused, and only create explosions as a after effect of dumping so much energy into a target. It's kind of like the difference between a volcano and a nuke, you can have the same sort of energy but how its used differs.

Naturally that works progressively less as an excuse the higher the numbers go. You might want to look up Wong's defense of his analysis in relation to the Battle of Geonosis where several were somewhat quick to point out, where's the massive explosions?

[Count Chocula]

Kiloton-range blaster bolts would definitely be a factor in atmosphere if/as shots miss their intended targets. Imagine 10 thousand-pound bombs per second hitting a, say, 100-meter square portion of a building. Lots of damage, but not city-wrecking levels.

Ion drives are another matter. Any propulsion technique that uses accelerated ions to generate thousands of g acceleration will most likely have higher energy content, in the form of a continuous plasma stream, than the fighter weapons. Presumably, Wars ion drives put out a lot of heat and charged particles; high up, their use would not really affect anything, but I can easily imagine a scenario where a starfighter pulling up at full accel from a bomb run could burn a trench in the ground miles below it. One way to mitigate it, and get in-atmosphere maneuvers consistent with the PT at least, would be to limit acceleration from ion drives in atmosphere to, oh, 20-30g. That would make the WEG speed stats make more sense too.

Concussion missiles, proton torpedoes? Ouch and double ouch. Nuke-o-rama! High kiloton and low megaton yields are more easily survivable in space than in atmosphere. The real killers from nuke explosions in atmosphere are heat and overpressure - Jango Fett's seismic mines, for example, would be simply devastating if used on an Earth-type planet. Logic would seem to dictate that starfighters don't use missiles at all in atmosphere, or use missiles with much much lower yields than their standard armament.

[Ender]

WRT lasers, there is a difference between energy and power, and that is the difference between a massive explosion and just a lot of melting. We don't know the power that SW weapons are rated for, just estimates on the energy.

Mike at one point wrote a page about this, no idea what ever happened with it. Point is that if the power is low, I can need to dump teratons of energy at something to get a KT level explosion. It will still melt/vape the target in accordance with the energy applied, but without the rapid thermal bloom accompanying the high power you won't get an overpressure wave. I haven't run the numbers on it, but I'm not even sure what the melted/vaped part should look like. I'd imagine it will be releasing a lot of gamma and X-ray range photons, but I don't know the specs on what we should see.

There is also the fact that TLs, lasers, and blasters don't interact with the atmosphere like we would expect either. The SPHA-T is the best example, we should have expected more atmospheric effects. But it isn't just them - there are no reports of troops being bathed in betas when they fire a blaster. But a charged particle weapon like that (as some source claim) should strip the surrounding air molecules of their electrons, showering beta contamination all over the place.

In other words, what we see in atmosphere doesn't match properties of known weapons (duh) and we don't have enough info to make estimates from observed and known properties. So given that, we may as well assume low or variable power settings (in addition to energy and intensity settings) to explain the difference.


And fighters aren't carting around TT torpedoes. At 100% conversion efficiency the warhead explosive alone would mass 47 tons. Add in detonation mechanism, casing, sensor, engine, fuel etc... the thing will out mass the starfighter easily. Plus there is the density issue, even if you compress that down to 10,000 kg/m^3 the thing is 4 cubic meters. A few gigatons MIGHT be feasible for a starfighter torp, but only on the really dedicated platforms like the K-wing and TIE Bomber. Keep in mind that starfighters aren't supposed to engage capital ships (as in star frigate and up) - they are supposed to go after targets of opportunity (capital ships who already had their shields taken out), escorts (like Carracks, Nebulon-Bs, etc that made up most of the rebel fleet), minor craft (freighters, yachts), and other starfighters. Beyond that their role is air support for ground troops, expanding the capital ships sensor range, and in some cases maybe anti-capital ship-missile missions. Starfighters play an important role, but don't stretch it.

[Teleros]

This page perhaps Ender? In particular:

Power: Power is the rate at which energy is expended. A knowledge of both power and energy output is required to determine the destructive power of a weapon, because a small amount of energy can be released at a very high rate, thus resulting in a large power output, or a large amount of energy can be released at a very low rate, thus resulting in a low power output. In either case, the destructive capabilities of the weapon would be far lower than a high-power, high-energy weapon. A high-power, low-energy weapon will simply not be able to do a lot of work on its target, so the power level is only impressive from a mathematical standpoint. A low-power high-energy weapon may be able to perform a lot of work on its target, but if the power level is extremely low then various energy-dissipation mechanisms will come into play, preventing the energy from concentrating in a single location to the point where it can be dangerous.

In other words, what we see in atmosphere doesn't match properties of known weapons (duh) and we don't have enough info to make estimates from observed and known properties. So given that, we may as well assume low or variable power settings (in addition to energy and intensity settings) to explain the difference.

I doubt this'd work on most blasters, TLs etc, but could the SPHA-T weapons project some sort of forcefield to create a vacuum around the beam? Assuming they have the power to do so it'd both improve weapon efficiency and avoid too much collateral damage. Otherwise you'd expect to see superheated air (even plasma?) around the beams every time a SPHA-T fired. Not sure how you could get this to work with normal TL or blaster bolts though.

[Ender]

This page perhaps Ender? In particular:
*snip*

No, this is it. It is complete and up, just not linked off the science page.

In other words, what we see in atmosphere doesn't match properties of known weapons (duh) and we don't have enough info to make estimates from observed and known properties. So given that, we may as well assume low or variable power settings (in addition to energy and intensity settings) to explain the difference.

I doubt this'd work on most blasters, TLs etc, but could the SPHA-T weapons project some sort of forcefield to create a vacuum around the beam? Assuming they have the power to do so it'd both improve weapon efficiency and avoid too much collateral damage. Otherwise you'd expect to see superheated air (even plasma?) around the beams every time a SPHA-T fired. Not sure how you could get this to work with normal TL or blaster bolts though.

Seems overly complicated when you could instead just posit that whatever they fire has a low cross section for absorption in the light elements that make up the atmosphere.

[Darth Yoshi]

Ion drives are another matter. Any propulsion technique that uses accelerated ions to generate thousands of g acceleration will most likely have higher energy content, in the form of a continuous plasma stream, than the fighter weapons. Presumably, Wars ion drives put out a lot of heat and charged particles; high up, their use would not really affect anything, but I can easily imagine a scenario where a starfighter pulling up at full accel from a bomb run could burn a trench in the ground miles below it. One way to mitigate it, and get in-atmosphere maneuvers consistent with the PT at least, would be to limit acceleration from ion drives in atmosphere to, oh, 20-30g. That would make the WEG speed stats make more sense too.

IIRC, fighters use repulsors in low atmosphere instead of ion drives, so trench-digging shouldn't be a problem.

[Kartr_Kana]

IIRC in the tech journal/manual (haven't seen it in years so I don't remember the exact name) or one of the old Essential Guides it says that fighters don't use ion drives till the get to the upper atmosphere because of the "environmental damage".

SPHA-T force field lasers? Um why would they do something like that when we see other turbolaser/laser/blaster weapons discharge in the atmosphere without such properties. You're making it more complicated then it needs to be.