SF Military Tropes

[Teleros]

What? How can missiles defeat "the defenders your orbiting warships couldn't take out due to the threat of collateral damage"? Unless ships don't have missiles.

Uhm, because I'm talking in that scenario about small precision weapons that won't blow up the city block next door when they find their target? As for the launch platform for them, that's hardly the point, and as noted previously there are plenty of reasons why you might want ground forces on the planet anyway.

And how does this deal with guerilla warfare, which bitches on occupation force logistics for prolonged periods of time? Unless these micro-missiles have awesome Culturized brain-seeking warheads that use active post-electronic post-guidance post-scanned post-arrays to seek post-rebels and post-insurgents to post-strike them with post-shock and post-awe, posthaste? Would these missiles be effective against insurgents in the jungle and/or hiding in cities, without uniforms and blending in with the populace? Do they have post-intelligent post-threat detection system that lets them post-discriminate between rice paddies full of civilians, and rice paddies full of hidden Charlies?

In my own setting, yes most types of missiles are pretty damn smart. In general terms though (and I am trying to write here more in terms of general tactics and such rather than my own stuff), that depends on how good you want your miniaturisation & AI tech to be. This whole tangent came about from me responding to Stravo talking about advances in smart missiles and the like making it so that you often won't see who you're fighting... my response was the fact that for developing a logically coherent army when faced with such things was sodding annoying from a dramatic perspective: tanks firing at visible enemy tanks is unlikely simply due to long-range missiles (by which I mean big tank killers, not micro-missiles, before anyone says anything ) and such. And then an extreme of the smart missile idea - micro-missiles smart enough to kill small groups of enemy soldiers each, or even individuals.

Because, unless your post-missiles are so post-awesome, you're still going to end up sending Vietnam War rejects there to deal with them.

Next time I'll be sure to add "and occupation troops" in big, bold, red letters . It's not like I haven't addressed the need for boots on the ground already.

They're not Culture-style if you spam with them.

I just wanted a good example of a small & very smart missile, and knife missiles were the first that came to mind. The rest I fully agree with.


Anyway, moral of the story we've gotten side-tracked on is to be careful how you use things like advanced AIs, sci-fi scanners and propulsion in your setting, because all three will have a lot to say about how ground warfare is conducted.

[sirocco]

How about the portrayal of techonology and how it would realistically look and work on the battlefield. Even now in the 21st century a lot of the battles take place sight unseen, by that I mean helicopters and planes are shooting missiles many kilometers away to kill their targets, many enemy troops don't even get to see their attackers. As missile technology gets better, smart weapons become more brilliant and add a healthy dose of really long range weapons like rail guns and orbital energy weapons and you would neve get to see who or what is shooting you.

Which was sodding annoying to deal with when I was developing the ground forces for my setting. Missile artillery* formations and occupation forces form the bulk of them as a result, especially with orbiting warships just itching to replace any large force with craters.

* This includes Culture knife missile-style micro missiles. Why send troops into a city when you can knife-missile-spam it?

You can say the same about naval engagements. I imagine that a "realistic" space battle would be taking place between two vessels millions of kiolmeters apart and would never even see each other. it would just be blips and icons on a screen and considering the destructive force of energy weapons many ships would be hulled with just a few hits instead of blasting away ay each other for hours.

The Honor Harrington setting does this pretty well IMHO, whatever one may think of the Mary Sue stuff and crazy tech races going on in it. And at least most of the major Star Wars naval engagements have other factors that force a close range confrontation, even if they are rather contrived (eg Death Star flying around the gas giant instead of right on top of the moon).

The trouble of course is when you have to put it on the big screen... there's a reason we have starship porn rather than tactical display porn. Although admittedly you can use displays to add tension & menace, big starships blowing the hell out of each other is more impressive and a lot easier for the director . It'll be interesting to see how JMS handles the Lensman movies he's working on in this regard, because they blow each other up at multi-AU ranges with FTL lasers...

I know as a writer that these tropes may be tied to simple drama but I also feel that many sci-fi authors don't even get how modern wars are fought to properly portray a future war.

I'd replace "many" with "almost all" to be honest.

Actually, you absolutely can. You'd just be WRONG

I would like to see more of those hard scifi battles.

MAybe no more starship porn except last minute maneuvers by super-smart drones. It would probably look like a chess game with enemy ships just being targets.

Nothing like 'Damn there are people down there' but rather 'hey! that's a Berserker Class ship with what? 200- 250 guys on it. Today guys we're going to roast our 2000th son of a b***h.'

And on the other ship you will have the same mindset. People blowing mere dots out of a screen without second thought nor remorse. Until the day they have to face each other in person and realized how sick that was.

That would somewhat be like finding out that characters in video games are actually living people.

[Shroom Man 777]

Uhm, because I'm talking in that scenario about small precision weapons that won't blow up the city block next door when they find their target? As for the launch platform for them, that's hardly the point, and as noted previously there are plenty of reasons why you might want ground forces on the planet anyway.

Ships could easily dispense these miniature smart weapons from orbit! Tactical orbital bombardment! Anti-personnel orbital bombardment! Imagine killing snipers from orbit. Or, imagine, head-shotting a suicide bomber from orbit before he detonates himself in a market place in Space Gaza! If your orbital warship has sensors powerful enough to see everything, or a whole bunchload of UAVs seeing everything, man. Even a random thug taking potshots or throwing rocks at your people can be eliminated from orbit.

Hell! You can set up remote check points! From orbit! Just put a sign "CHECKPOINT!" and if a car speeds up or avoids the checkpoint, your ship fires a warning shot from the sky. If the car doesn't follow that warning shot, the ship in orbit shoots its tires out! The car must comply, its drivers must go outside of the car and open the trunk and/or the hood to let the orbiting ship see that the car doesn't have any contraband goods or weapons inside, from orbit.

Orbiting warships can perform house searches at night! It launches a smart missile that knocks on the doors, or if failing that, comes in through the windows. If the house occupants are found to have weapons, the missile explodes and kills them all. Or, blows up with a flashbang and then occupation troops can come in and detain them. If there's nothing, the missile flies to the next house and if there's weapons there, it blows them up!

We can call it the... Strategic Homogeneous Reconnaissance Orbital Occupation Munition!



An enhanced variant will be able to waterboard prisoners too. "Enhanced" variant, get it!

In my own setting, yes most types of missiles are pretty damn smart. In general terms though (and I am trying to write here more in terms of general tactics and such rather than my own stuff), that depends on how good you want your miniaturisation & AI tech to be. This whole tangent came about from me responding to Stravo talking about advances in smart missiles and the like making it so that you often won't see who you're fighting... my response was the fact that for developing a logically coherent army when faced with such things was sodding annoying from a dramatic perspective: tanks firing at visible enemy tanks is unlikely simply due to long-range missiles (by which I mean big tank killers, not micro-missiles, before anyone says anything ) and such. And then an extreme of the smart missile idea - micro-missiles smart enough to kill small groups of enemy soldiers each, or even individuals.

What if the fighting occurs in a Coruscant-type of megacity where urban warfare will occur on a simply massive scale? Visible tank warfare can easily happen if the enemy tank is hiding in the room next to you inside the giant one-thousand-story superstarskycraper you are trying to occupy. Imagine, it might take hundreds of soldiers to clear and hold a single building! Enemy snipers hiding in closets, or enemy scouts and saboteurs navigating in a miles-long labyrinth of ventilation shafts and air ducts! You'd have to deploy amphibious tanks or PT boats or diesel-electric submarines to secure the megacity's sewers to prevent enemy SSBNs from launching their SLBMs out of sewer manholes! Oh man.

Next time I'll be sure to add "and occupation troops" in big, bold, red letters . It's not like I haven't addressed the need for boots on the ground already.

Sorry. I think I misread and misunderstood what Ford was saying when he said this:

"you don't have to justify using ground troops over just flattening your opponents with a giant ray gun if your objective is to take ground"

I thought he was saying... something else.

[Shroom Man 777]

The orbital missile can also have facial-recognition software to allow it to recognize targets, and AI smart enough to detect and intervene in any commotions. Then it can be equipped with variable warheads, from tear gas dispensers to deal with riots (from orbit) to .45 ACP hollowpoints to stop shoplifters in the ensuing anarchy of post-Saddam Baghdad in Space or something, to something that can blow up a bunker or set entire homes on fire with the occupants still inside them.

The idea of using orbitally-launched missiles/drones for the bulk of occupation and COIN work is an awesome idea. As Skimmer (or was it Shep) posted in the HAB, they're already developing sniper-missiles. All we need is an advanced AI, and systems integration, and soon we can have AIs getting lost in Balakakadaka street when their TERCOM systems are interfered with insurgent radar reflectors, and the AI will use its programming to ask bystanders for direction as it makes its way to terminate its insurgents. We can integrate the capability to read road signs in Farsi to the drone AI's TERCOM to allow it better pathfinding capabilities. Hell, stick in olfactory/auditory sensors so it can smell its targets or listen to them from afar! Like a bloodhound! An orbital bloodhound bombardment!

[Teleros]

We can call it the... Strategic Homogeneous Reconnaissance Orbital Occupation Munition!

Sometimes, I really don't know whether to laugh or cry at you Shroom ...

In my own setting, yes most types of missiles are pretty damn smart. In general terms though (and I am trying to write here more in terms of general tactics and such rather than my own stuff), that depends on how good you want your miniaturisation & AI tech to be. This whole tangent came about from me responding to Stravo talking about advances in smart missiles and the like making it so that you often won't see who you're fighting... my response was the fact that for developing a logically coherent army when faced with such things was sodding annoying from a dramatic perspective: tanks firing at visible enemy tanks is unlikely simply due to long-range missiles (by which I mean big tank killers, not micro-missiles, before anyone says anything ) and such. And then an extreme of the smart missile idea - micro-missiles smart enough to kill small groups of enemy soldiers each, or even individuals.

What if the fighting occurs in a Coruscant-type of megacity where urban warfare will occur on a simply massive scale? Visible tank warfare can easily happen if the enemy tank is hiding in the room next to you inside the giant one-thousand-story superstarskycraper you are trying to occupy. Imagine, it might take hundreds of soldiers to clear and hold a single building! Enemy snipers hiding in closets, or enemy scouts and saboteurs navigating in a miles-long labyrinth of ventilation shafts and air ducts! You'd have to deploy amphibious tanks or PT boats or diesel-electric submarines to secure the megacity's sewers to prevent enemy SSBNs from launching their SLBMs out of sewer manholes! Oh man.

Again, it would depend on the technology available. If you can scan a one-thousand-story superstarskyscraper ( ) from a distance you can eliminate a lot of the need for massive ground forces, because you can either concentrate what you have against the enemy's strongpoints or just reduce that heavily defended building to a glassy crater. Or perhaps just spam SHROOMs at it . Urban combat is definitely the best candidate for close-range combat in war though, almost regardless of tech level. Unless of course you're in the Lensman setting or something, because multi-GJ handheld rayguns vs real-life building materials will remove all that cover pretty damn quick - we never see them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Doc Smith had multi-megaton beam weapons mounted on his tanks to be honest...

The idea of using orbitally-launched missiles/drones for the bulk of occupation and COIN work is an awesome idea. As Skimmer (or was it Shep) posted in the HAB, they're already developing sniper-missiles. All we need is an advanced AI, and systems integration, and soon we can have AIs getting lost in Balakakadaka street when their TERCOM systems are interfered with insurgent radar reflectors, and the AI will use its programming to ask bystanders for direction as it makes its way to terminate its insurgents.

I've got this image of this tiny missile knocking on your door now to ask if it can use your PC to use Google Maps now.

[Shroom Man 777]

We can call it the... Strategic Homogeneous Reconnaissance Orbital Occupation Munition!

Sometimes, I really don't know whether to laugh or cry at you Shroom ...

It can be deployed from orbit by a space warship, and the SHROOMIRV bus will have submunitions that are capable of independent targeting and re-entry. The SHROOMIRV bus itself will glide in low-orbit, occasionally skimming the upper atmosphere before dispensing its munitions - just like a Dyna-Soar. But the SHROOM submunitions themselves will be equipped with hyper-efficient variable-cycle turboscramramfanjets that allow them to supercruise quickly to their destination, before its variable-geometry swing wings and VTOL systems and 5-dimensional thrust vectoring allow it to decelerate and make terminal corrections as it reaches its target. Then TERCOM sets in as it hugs the surface, using either radar or lidar as it closes in. Then when it's that close, it can use its TV cameras to read the road signs in Farsi or use its AN/SPRQ-55 audio/olfactory sensor systems to sniff the target out. When it comes in range of the targets, it can have a rotary munitions dispenser to choose between incapacitating agents like mustard gas or sonic-electronic ball breakers, or more permanent systems like fuel-air-explosives or tungsten-tipped armor piercers or something, to neutralize the enemy.

Variants can allow increased loiter time via conformal fuel tanks and improved programming can allow it to ask for directions, or engage in road check-point operations or house-to-house searching or hearts and minds missions or even hostage rescue operations!

Again, it would depend on the technology available. If you can scan a one-thousand-story superstarskyscraper ( ) from a distance you can eliminate a lot of the need for massive ground forces, because you can either concentrate what you have against the enemy's strongpoints or just reduce that heavily defended building to a glassy crater. Or perhaps just spam SHROOMs at it . Urban combat is definitely the best candidate for close-range combat in war though, almost regardless of tech level.

Yeah, the tech. The enemy might end up sporting jammers and so you'd have to end up going in and doing the job hard and dirty-like! Or there can be goddamn hippies, or liberal media reporter journos that might make big-bombardments all politically inconvenient. Damn.

When your scanners screw up and after scanning a one-thousand-story superstarskyscraper, you detect a tank and blow it up - but then it turns out that you were mistaken and instead of a tank you instead blew up a mega-repulsor stationwagon full of childrens, imagine the ramifications! Oh man. Post-war post-crimes tribunals! The media! The hippies! Goddamn! The Space Iraqi Minister of Information will have all sorts of material to smear you with! Ugh.

Unless of course you're in the Lensman setting or something, because multi-GJ handheld rayguns vs real-life building materials will remove all that cover pretty damn quick - we never see them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Doc Smith had multi-megaton beam weapons mounted on his tanks to be honest...

But the enemy's mudhuts are ingrained with neutronium!

I've got this image of this tiny missile knocking on your door now to ask if it can use your PC to use Google Maps now.

No! Modular upgrades can allow it to hack into your computers with spyware, malware, badware, trojans and whatnot! But yeah, the tiny missile can have USB ports and blue-tooth and wi-fi functionality, and its AN/SPQR-52 radar systems can be modified to act as a jammer. Its data bus is also expandable and can download the entire planet's internet, if needed be, for superior electronic warfare purposes! For shock and awe, as the missile comes in on terminal approach, its MP30 player can start blaring Beethoven's Ride of the Shroomkyries to scare the Charlies who don't surf!

The future is a beautiful thing.

[Simon_Jester]

You know, this whole discussion gives me a new idea for a military SF trope: the improbably miniaturized electronic device. Yes, I know, Moore's Law... but Moore's Law doesn't do anything about heat dissipation or the minimum dimensions for a viable data bus.

We can call it the... Strategic Homogeneous Reconnaissance Orbital Occupation Munition!

Sometimes, I really don't know whether to laugh or cry at you Shroom ...

Laugh.

It's a rare art form; no one but Shroomy can do it, possibly because no one but Shroomy would want to.

Unless of course you're in the Lensman setting or something, because multi-GJ handheld rayguns vs real-life building materials will remove all that cover pretty damn quick - we never see them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Doc Smith had multi-megaton beam weapons mounted on his tanks to be honest...

Of course he did; remember those caterpillars in Gray Lensman? Those were more like SP artillery than tanks, but they give you an idea of the scales involved.

But the SHROOM submunitions themselves will be equipped with hyper-efficient variable-cycle turboscramramfanjets that allow them to supercruise quickly to their destination, before its variable-geometry swing wings and VTOL systems and 5-dimensional thrust vectoring allow it to decelerate and make terminal corrections as it reaches its target.

As the wise man said, "anyone who has been to the higher dimensions will know that they're a pretty nasty heathen lot up there who should just be smashed and done in, and would be, too, if anyone could work out a way of firing missiles at right-angles to reality."

And now, with the SHROOMIRV, we can.

When your scanners screw up and after scanning a one-thousand-story superstarskyscraper, you detect a tank and blow it up - but then it turns out that you were mistaken and instead of a tank you instead blew up a mega-repulsor stationwagon full of childrens, imagine the ramifications! Oh man. Post-war post-crimes tribunals! The media! The hippies! Goddamn! The Space Iraqi Minister of Information will have all sorts of material to smear you with! Ugh.

In our defense, a modern mega-repulsor SUVoid stationwagon is pretty much identical to a tank...

But the enemy's mudhuts are ingrained with neutronium!

Not in Doc Smith it's not. He gave his characters Star Wars-level or higher hand weapons... with no materials beyond what's available today on Earth. When these guys get into a firefight, everything in the vicinity tends to vaporize, catch fire, catch fire and then vaporize, or vaporize and then catch fire.

[Teleros]

You know, this whole discussion gives me a new idea for a military SF trope: the improbably miniaturized electronic device. Yes, I know, Moore's Law... but Moore's Law doesn't do anything about heat dissipation or the minimum dimensions for a viable data bus.

I think at least a part of that falls more under the general SF trope of ridiculous efficiencies. When you get 99.999...% efficient equipment it's a hell of a lot easier to miniaturise in the first place. Although as far as computers go there must surely be other physical limits (for those not cheating & keeping their hardware in hyperspace or something like Culture Minds do) - I'm hardly familiar with the science involved but is the Planck-second or something not the smallest useful unit of time or somesuch?

Of course he did; remember those caterpillars in Gray Lensman? Those were more like SP artillery than tanks, but they give you an idea of the scales involved.

Yeah, I remember them but they seemed more like anti-starship artillery and starship shield generators on tracks than M1 Abrams-equivalents.

Not in Doc Smith it's not. He gave his characters Star Wars-level or higher hand weapons... with no materials beyond what's available today on Earth. When these guys get into a firefight, everything in the vicinity tends to vaporize, catch fire, catch fire and then vaporize, or vaporize and then catch fire.

Or disappear instantly in coruscating displays of scintillating pyrotechnics .

[Shroom Man 777]

You know, this whole discussion gives me a new idea for a military SF trope: the improbably miniaturized electronic device. Yes, I know, Moore's Law... but Moore's Law doesn't do anything about heat dissipation or the minimum dimensions for a viable data bus.

Meta-materials! Or is your hard sci-fi actually not hard enough? Is your hard sci-fi actually limp and flaccid?

To be fair, no one's going to know what the hell war's gonna look like a century from now. Something like the SHROOM(IRV)'s practically tame by the standards of "hard" sci-fi! Lots of stuff in hard sci-fi are not only harder, but are much bigger and longer too!

I feel so envious!

As the wise man said, "anyone who has been to the higher dimensions will know that they're a pretty nasty heathen lot up there who should just be smashed and done in, and would be, too, if anyone could work out a way of firing missiles at right-angles to reality."

And now, with the SHROOMIRV, we can.

Then we can bring freedom and democracy to Cthulhu and convert him to Christianity and nuke him till he glows in the dark, shoot him in the dark, and steal all his oil! *posts graph* Fuck yeah!

When your scanners screw up and after scanning a one-thousand-story superstarskyscraper, you detect a tank and blow it up - but then it turns out that you were mistaken and instead of a tank you instead blew up a mega-repulsor stationwagon full of childrens, imagine the ramifications! Oh man. Post-war post-crimes tribunals! The media! The hippies! Goddamn! The Space Iraqi Minister of Information will have all sorts of material to smear you with! Ugh.

In our defense, a modern mega-repulsor SUVoid stationwagon is pretty much identical to a tank...

And they should be blown up too! With the soccer moms inside of them!

Not in Doc Smith it's not. He gave his characters Star Wars-level or higher hand weapons... with no materials beyond what's available today on Earth. When these guys get into a firefight, everything in the vicinity tends to vaporize, catch fire, catch fire and then vaporize, or vaporize and then catch fire.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, I remember them but they seemed more like anti-starship artillery and starship shield generators on tracks than M1 Abrams-equivalents.

They were, but they demonstrate that the hardware exists. Scale down and you get a tank... but it needs to be armed and shielded to have a snowball's chance in the smoldering ruins of Bronseca against those caterpillars.

Not in Doc Smith it's not. He gave his characters Star Wars-level or higher hand weapons... with no materials beyond what's available today on Earth. When these guys get into a firefight, everything in the vicinity tends to vaporize, catch fire, catch fire and then vaporize, or vaporize and then catch fire.

Or disappear instantly in coruscating displays of scintillating pyrotechnics .

Exactly. "Vaporize and then catch fire," I said.

Not in Doc Smith it's not. He gave his characters Star Wars-level or higher hand weapons... with no materials beyond what's available today on Earth. When these guys get into a firefight, everything in the vicinity tends to vaporize, catch fire, catch fire and then vaporize, or vaporize and then catch fire.

I don't know if you've read the Lensman series. It's actually pretty awesome. And Doc Smith is one of the few authors in the world that might be able to teach you a thing or two about overwrought prose...

[Simon_Jester]

Ghetto edit: No, wait, you must have; I could swear I remember you doing a Lensman-based joke at some point.

[Shroom Man 777]

Actually, I think I have one of his books on a shelf, I found it and bought it from some cheap place. But I haven't gotten off my ass and read it at all, since I haven't read anything for the past... how many months.

[Coalition]

Actually, I think I have one of his books on a shelf, I found it and bought it from some cheap place. But I haven't gotten off my ass and read it at all, since I haven't read anything for the past... how many months.

Here is Project Gutenberg's copy of 'Triplanetary':
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/20782

You can download and read it at your convenience.

[MKSheppard]

And yes Shep, missile spam (be it micro-missiles or ICBMs) is expensive and pisses off your logistics personnel no end.

So how do you expect it to work when the other side has widely deployed, cheap, effective laser based air defense platforms? You'd literally be throwing away billions in dollars of missiles; while all your opponent would be doing is burning gasoline or hydrogen in their portable Futuristic Laser Avenger Humvees.

This is a serious problem that will begin to affect artillerymen in the not-too distant future -- laser defenses have already in tests stopped smallish salvoes of artillery shells. Mike last time we mentioned that on the board; posited that in the future, artillerymen would begin to behave more like air forces, with a large portion of any artillery fire actually being directed at laser defense sites to ensure that the remaining 5% of the shells do get through and hit their targets.

[MKSheppard]

You know, this whole discussion gives me a new idea for a military SF trope: the improbably miniaturized electronic device. Yes, I know, Moore's Law... but Moore's Law doesn't do anything about heat dissipation or the minimum dimensions for a viable data bus.

I recall reading a paper in the 1980s that posited that soon the technology would be available for a individually guided, fire and forget 20mm caliber round.

EDIT: Found it:

GNAT—An Infrared Homing Antipersonnel Micromissile; written March 1985, by Los Alamos National Laboratories.

New technological discoveries make possible the development of a very small, terminally guided missile that could greatly increase the lethality of hand-held antipersonnel battlefield weapons. This missile could have a body diameter of only 20 mm (0.8 in.), a length of 100 mm (4 in.), and a weight of 90 g (~3 Oz). It could be launched from a hand-held weapon similar to a rifle with -100 m/s initial velocity or dropped from aircraft to seek out and attack human targets on the battlefield.

Much of the paper deals with the sensor and tracking system, and concludes that if you can get a cheap enough computer that can handle 600,000 FLOPs at 300 Hz; then it's feasible. Right now, the Intel Atom N270 can deliver 2,400,000,000 FLOPs on something this big.



By comparison that Euro 1 cent is about 16.25mm in diameter.

So yes, the technology for something with advanced signal processing that can fit into a 20mm round and hunt humans is feasible now. It's just that nobody's seen a use for it...yet.

[open_sketchbook]

Wouldn't some kind of two-stage artillery round or rocket be perfect for defeating such point defense lasers? Round goes up until the apex of flight, it orients itself to face the laser emplacement, then boosts itself towards the target before breaking up into dozens of little bombs and decoy targets.

[Ryan Thunder]

Wouldn't some kind of two-stage artillery round or rocket be perfect for defeating such point defense lasers? Round goes up until the apex of flight, it orients itself to face the laser emplacement, then boosts itself towards the target before breaking up into dozens of little bombs and decoy targets.

That sounds like a good idea on paper, but that's alot of systems to fail there. The less complex the solution, the fewer things can go wrong with it and, consequently, the less likely it is that something (regardless of what it is) will fail.

[MKSheppard]

Lasers are line of sight, remember?

We might see the artillery world shift away from the current howitzers, which lob slow, high trajectory shells to targets; to guns, which lob high velocity, flat trajectory shells against the target.

This illustrates trajectories nicely:

[Vehrec]

And yes Shep, missile spam (be it micro-missiles or ICBMs) is expensive and pisses off your logistics personnel no end.

So how do you expect it to work when the other side has widely deployed, cheap, effective laser based air defense platforms? You'd literally be throwing away billions in dollars of missiles; while all your opponent would be doing is burning gasoline or hydrogen in their portable Futuristic Laser Avenger Humvees.

This is a serious problem that will begin to affect artillerymen in the not-too distant future -- laser defenses have already in tests stopped smallish salvoes of artillery shells. Mike last time we mentioned that on the board; posited that in the future, artillerymen would begin to behave more like air forces, with a large portion of any artillery fire actually being directed at laser defense sites to ensure that the remaining 5% of the shells do get through and hit their targets.

Best solution, if you're using 'brilliant' missiles, is to hug the ground, get lost in the clutter, and generally offer as few chances to be hit by the AMS as possible. At least, that's how I would do it. There are problems with this, admittedly, but in a built up area they'd be minimized by short engagement ranges and lots of things that block LOS.

Alternatively, loft a few one-shot chemical lasers in the second wave that point at the enemy lasers and try to burn them down. Yes, that's going to be a relatively hard target, but it might be worth attacking in this manner, especially its sensors and firing optics. Use them in the second wave because you need to know where the first wave got shot down from.

[Darth Wong]

Lasers are line of sight, remember?

We might see the artillery world shift away from the current howitzers, which lob slow, high trajectory shells to targets; to guns, which lob high velocity, flat trajectory shells against the target.

Except that part of the whole point of artillery is to be able to shoot beyond line of sight or over obstacles. Perhaps in a sci-fi world where anti-artillery lasers are cheap, portable, and effective, armies would have to be more tightly integrated with air forces and they would rely on high-altitude or space-based lasers to perform the job of artillery.

[PeZook]

And/or use some sort of hi-tech high velocity hybrid artillery/cruise missile shell that is fired on a really flat, elongated trajectory to be used against laser emplacements and vehicles. Kind of like a SHROOM missile

[Darth Wong]

Well, in a sci-fi universe where lasers are particularly cheap and compact, they might even have pseudo-artillery lasers: you launch a one-shot drone from the ground which flies up until it has a line of sight to the target and then it fires, hopefully before defensive ground-based lasers can pick it off in flight.

[Knife]

Lasers are line of sight, remember?

We might see the artillery world shift away from the current howitzers, which lob slow, high trajectory shells to targets; to guns, which lob high velocity, flat trajectory shells against the target.

Except that part of the whole point of artillery is to be able to shoot beyond line of sight or over obstacles. Perhaps in a sci-fi world where anti-artillery lasers are cheap, portable, and effective, armies would have to be more tightly integrated with air forces and they would rely on high-altitude or space-based lasers to perform the job of artillery.

Indeed. If you are talking Sci-Fi where one planet attacks another planet, then using orbital assets to hit ground targets instead of 'traditional' arty makes more sense. It would still be LOS, though you could make an argument that if the ship isn't in geo-stationary orbit, you'll still have a defilade.

[MKSheppard]

Except that part of the whole point of artillery is to be able to shoot beyond line of sight or over obstacles.

That's why I specified Guns. They lob shells in high velocity flat trajectories.

Instead howitzers firing a shell at a high trajectory that passes well over obstacles; with a long time of flight and dwell time for lasers; a gun would fire a shell that passes just above any obstacles that would be encountered on the way -- it would be much less efficient than an howitzer; you'd be firing a 30 pound shell to like 20-25 miles with the same propellant a howitzer uses to lob a 30 pound shell to 40-50 miles; but the shell would remain below the horizon for as long as possible.

[Ford Prefect]

It's not like there aren't other options for defending against lasers, even projectile geometry can conceivably be used to make it harder to laser them out of the air. However, the best response is probably not to attack targets with a slight variation of the weapon which laser defnce made totally obsolete.