Fun With: Sensor arms race

[rhoenix]

Actually, if built into a missile designed with a small blast radius and maneuvering thrusters, that could still work.

If you can get a nuke that close, why not give it an X-ray laser head (as featured in the Honorverse) and actually damage the enemy as opposed to maybe possibly overloading some of their sensors?

Just because those are for when the actual war starts, not the escalation up to - until then, confrontations are mainly throwing sand in the face, and not causing (too much) property damage.

That's mainly why the concept of a Cold War-style arms race amongst the two peoples is limited mainly to the ever-escalating game of hide and seek at this point in the conflict.

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There are measures to defeat active systems, they've been developed for the various stealth fighter and bomber programs so I don't see a problem with assuming that as time go on more methods are found.

That's basically the concept I'm going for, yes.

It's also possible to jam sensors but that would tell people that SOMETHING is there. Don't forget the old mrk I eyeball and it's equivalent optical sensors. Ships large enough to make the journey are going to be noticable when they occlude the stars behind them.

Ah, now we get into the fun of meta-materials, and how they do dirty, naughty things with specific wavelengths of light.

With the way the "stealth" ships will be designed, the hull will be coated with these sorts of metamaterials that essentially would fool the old Mk. 1 eyeball, as the ship wouldn't occlude stars anywhere near as much as a ship without them. (They still will; nothing is perfect - but unless someone with a good array is looking directly at the spot, they'll probably miss what occlusion there is).

Also unless the ships are on a kamikaze run then when they perform their braking manuvers they are going to light up like christmas trees.

Very true - the premise I'm working with right now is "if you see their braking thrusters, you're probably too far away for it to matter."

The game of hide & seek will have the fail-points of take-off and landing, of course, making even "stealth" ships very vulnerable during those times.

Best idea? Tunnel out a moonlet and shove it in the direction of the enemy, rogue planets might be more common than we think and they can be armed and armored in excess of realistic ship design.

That's just wonderful. I'd like to use that with your permission, at it fits one of the factions very, very well.

[Starglider]

Ah, now we get into the fun of meta-materials, and how they do dirty, naughty things with specific wavelengths of light.

With the way the "stealth" ships will be designed, the hull will be coated with these sorts of metamaterials that essentially would fool the old Mk. 1 eyeball, as the ship wouldn't occlude stars anywhere near as much as a ship without them. (They still will; nothing is perfect - but unless someone with a good array is looking directly at the spot, they'll probably miss what occlusion there is).

I don't think that will work. It's not a brightness issue, it's an angular resolution issue. The enemy telescope is so far away from the ship, it only takes a minute error for the refracted light from the occluded star to miss it, i.e. for the enemy sensor to see a patch of dark sky instead. It would be effectively impossible to manufacture a passive light bending hull to that accuracy, particularly given that the hull is flexing and bending under acceleration and thermal changes. Note also that unless the enemy sensors are operating within narrow, known windows, you have to reproduce the entire spectra of the occluded star, not just a particular wavelength. You'd probably be better off with an active system, that emits beams of light (not just monochromic lasers) calibrated to match occluded stars. That would be relatively practical with the phased array optical transceivers discussed previously.

Best idea? Tunnel out a moonlet and shove it in the direction of the enemy, rogue planets might be more common than we think and they can be armed and armored in excess of realistic ship design.

A comet might be easier; a rocky body provides you with some free armor, but it will take time to tunnel out. Making an artificial comet is as simply as dumping a load of muddy water in space around your ship and waiting for it to freeze. In both cases though the natural velocity of these bodies is usually quite low, and it will take months to get near your target (a trajectory that passes too close to a planet or military installation is also so unlikely as to be very suspiscious).

[JGregory32]

Feel free to use the moonlet idea.
I'm assuming the ships are going to be crewed mostly by humans right? If so that's going to limit your accleration and deccleration to around 9.8ms or 1g. It's possible to go a bit higher or lower for long peroids but the human body really doesn't like high G loads over long peroids of time.
Unless you add artifical gravity
Still if your going for a zero zero intercept, ie moving at the same speed as the target then your going to be spending a long time braking which lights up every sensor the other guy has.
For a first strike option you're going to need ships moving fast enough to reduce enemy reaction time, most interesting option would be to perform a attack while flying past the enemy world/installation and then braking for a long peroid of time before heading home. Don't forget that anything moving fast enough to be interesting becomes a planet cracking kinetic kill vehicle.
You could even have it as part of your story, both side arming and building up their defence forces because they know they would get only one chance to intercept the other before their homeworld is destroyed.

[rhoenix]

I don't think that will work. It's not a brightness issue, it's an angular resolution issue. The enemy telescope is so far away from the ship, it only takes a minute error for the refracted light from the occluded star to miss it, i.e. for the enemy sensor to see a patch of dark sky instead. It would be effectively impossible to manufacture a passive light bending hull to that accuracy, particularly given that the hull is flexing and bending under acceleration and thermal changes. Note also that unless the enemy sensors are operating within narrow, known windows, you have to reproduce the entire spectra of the occluded star, not just a particular wavelength. You'd probably be better off with an active system, that emits beams of light (not just monochromic lasers) calibrated to match occluded stars. That would be relatively practical with the phased array optical transceivers discussed previously.

That's an excellent refinement of the concept, and will work nicely, as well as limit when and how it can be used.

It also allows the burgeoning machine race to be appropriately intimidating, which is a plus.

Best idea? Tunnel out a moonlet and shove it in the direction of the enemy, rogue planets might be more common than we think and they can be armed and armored in excess of realistic ship design.

A comet might be easier; a rocky body provides you with some free armor, but it will take time to tunnel out. Making an artificial comet is as simply as dumping a load of muddy water in space around your ship and waiting for it to freeze. In both cases though the natural velocity of these bodies is usually quite low, and it will take months to get near your target (a trajectory that passes too close to a planet or military installation is also so unlikely as to be very suspiscious).

Good point; a comet would be more unassuming and more fitting for being sneaky, as long as one is careful about trajectories.

However, there is a sort of cheerful bluntness that comes from strapping a whole bunch of engines onto a moonlet, and pointing it at someone you don't like. This will be saved for the more overt warfare phase, but I predict an appearance in some fashion.

EDIT: Added quoted reply to JGregory32.

Feel free to use the moonlet idea.

Thank you!

I'm assuming the ships are going to be crewed mostly by humans right? If so that's going to limit your accleration and deccleration to around 9.8ms or 1g. It's possible to go a bit higher or lower for long peroids but the human body really doesn't like high G loads over long peroids of time.
Unless you add artifical gravity

This is a tricky one. These will effectively be modified humans, both factions of which are able to stand more G-strain than their ancestral species.

As for artificial gravity...honestly, I'm on the fence with this one. I can make arguments both ways, and I haven't decided whether or not to use it, as it really does open a door to a whole mess of twisted fun.

Still if your going for a zero zero intercept, ie moving at the same speed as the target then your going to be spending a long time braking which lights up every sensor the other guy has.
For a first strike option you're going to need ships moving fast enough to reduce enemy reaction time, most interesting option would be to perform a attack while flying past the enemy world/installation and then braking for a long peroid of time before heading home. Don't forget that anything moving fast enough to be interesting becomes a planet cracking kinetic kill vehicle.
You could even have it as part of your story, both side arming and building up their defence forces because they know they would get only one chance to intercept the other before their homeworld is destroyed.

This is an interesting point of view. I don't have a ready response to the tactical nature of this just yet, but I certainly open to more input.

However, some of the ships will be of the one-way variety, basically out of the paranoia of the latter paragraph you mentioned; protecting their homeworlds at all costs would rank pretty high on the agenda.

[Batman]

There are measures to defeat active systems, they've been developed for the various stealth fighter and bomber programs so I don't see a problem with assuming that as time go on more methods are found.

Within the refrains of real world physics there is only so much you can do. You can ABSORB or REDIRECT active sensor emissions. And real world stealth vehicles have the advantage of working in-atmosphere which means they have signal degredation due to a bloody good amount of atmosphere being in the way AND tons of background noise.

It's also possible to jam sensors but that would tell people that SOMETHING is there. Don't forget the old mrk I eyeball and it's equivalent optical sensors. Ships large enough to make the journey are going to be noticable when they occlude the stars behind them.

Not at any ranges where you wouldn't already be shooting at them, at least not around here. Empty space is LOUSY with, well, empty space, and a ship at any NOT preposterously short distance actually obscuring a star would be random chance.

Also unless the ships are on a kamikaze run then when they perform their braking manuvers they are going to light up like christmas trees.
Best idea? Tunnel out a moonlet and shove it in the direction of the enemy, rogue planets might be more common than we think and they can be armed and armored in excess of realistic ship design.

Um-any civilization that CAN use moonlets as weapons can likely roll all over the people in question ANYWAY. Last I checked we were talking fusion power.