Fighters in space

[tharkûn]

Sir Nitram: Having blown in succession:
basic physics
basic units
simple reading skills

is not up at the final test, worthless post count padding.

Thanks for playing, SirNitram, enjoy your consolation prize of +1 post count.

[Beowulf]

Ever heard of the Nuclear Saltwater Rocket?
It would have an specific impulse anywhere from 6600 seconds to 470000 seconds, depend on the enrichment of fuel. It can do this, and maintain a fairly high thrust. http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw56.html

If you want to get into science fiction, where fighters are actually useful, then drones will kick the crap performance-wise out of a manned fighter.

As to lasers, why would long range be required? A couple thousand kilometers is already going to make it difficult for ship to hit a stealth fighter, and physical restraints make it difficult to aim precisely enough. Let's assume a 10 m wide fighter, w/ a circular face. At 10 km, it's a .1 degree wide object. At 1000km, it's 0.001 degree wide object.

If you go on about how guns would be useless because missiles have a much longer range, I must ask you why ever US fighter since the F-4 has had an integral gun.

As to why a fighter would require a pressurized hull, I will point out that they would most likely require endurances counted in days, and so unlike modern-day fighters, you would have to get up, go to the bathroom, eat, go to sleep, etc.

Solid hydrogen and oxygen is not possible, and again, why are you bringing up chemical rocketry? Also, you're assuming that the LH and LOX would absorb the radiation, which won't happen, considering Gamma radiation can only be stopped by materials that are very dense, like lead and depleated uranium.

Also, controlling the ship while in an extremely bulky space suit isn't going to be easy. And direct neural interfaces makes the pilot vulnerable to EMP weapons taking out the pilot by frying his brain.

Those decoys you're talking about work just as well, if not more so against missiles. That long range weapon is going to survive by shooting down the fighters first. Point defense weaponry like the Gatling gun used by US carriers would make mince meat of an attacking missile, due to the requirement that a nuclear weapon would require getting very close to the target to be able to be useful. Also, those same short ranged weapons work as well when fired from the big ass ship as when fired from fighters.

[Hotfoot]

Damn what happened to your 60 (0r whatever) percent difference? It is now a whopping 2.9%. Thank you very much, as I noted before the drone has a few percentage points better performance at best, even using your highly flawed analysis.

The range increase is static at 40.5 km. Even assuming utterly ridiculous acceleration rates and burn times for the missiles, still gives a drone with just twice the acceleration rate of a human fighter that increase. You can even make the initial relative velocity as high as you like, the drone still has a longer effective range than the human fighter.

I have always acknowledged that drones have slightly better combat performance I have just said it is minimal and now your own bloody numbers agree with me.

It is not minimal, you idiot. How long does it take the fighters to traverse 40.5 km with a relative velocity of 400 m/s? 4,000 m/s? That's a long time. Note that I am using maximum burn to figure out what best possible performance for each could be. If you'd like, I can do the same equations where each fighter simply does a one-second reverse burn, rather than a full burn. Guess what, it will still favor the drone, perhaps even more so since you've got the human fighters lugging around so many cubic meters of lead to protect the pilots.

Repeat after me: MAGNITUDE.

The miniscule better combat performance is not worth the added cyber risks.

You mean a human fighter having to wait over a minute and a half longer before he can ensure a hit on a drone is miniscule? Even assume a ridiculously high relative velocity, a drone can reliable use an advantage of even 1/1,000 of a second while the human pilot is still fumbling for his trigger.

That's why it's BS. The fighter needs more fuel PER UNIT MASS ... this will never happen so long as you have compotent missile design crews. The only reason modern fighters stand a chance is because they attack with altitude and gravity burns againsts missiles ... this doesn't happen in space. The missile will have more fuel per unit mass and any fuel you add will eventually slow down your average acceleration.

If the missile has a longer range of deployment than the fighter, you've defeated the purpose of the fighter carrying the missile. Besides which, you're missing the fucking point. The two fighters don't start off right next to each other, they have to close to missile range first. It is on the edge of this range that the missile dance occurs, not well inside it.

Whatever, your blind devotion only goes to further discredit the role of the fighter as a viable platform in space. It has no significant advantage over a light capital ship under your logic. Any weapon a fighter could mount, a capital ship could mount many, many more.

"Strangely, it is the receiver, Bob, who makes the first move. He prepares two photons, or two spin-half particles (which exist in one of two states - spin up or spin down), jointly in an "entangled" state. He stores one particle and sends the other one to the sender, "Alice", who stores it. To ensure that the entanglement is maintained, each particle must be kept isolated from its surroundings. When it is time to send a message, Alice performs one of four special operations on her stored particle before transmitting it back to Bob. For the spin-half particles these four unitary operations, performed by the quantum gate U, are equivalent to: doing nothing (unit operation), or rotating the spin by 180 degrees about the x, y or z axes; for photons these operations correspond to polarisation rotations. The operations have to be unitary to maintain the quantum mechanical coherence of the particle."

Got a source, or are you plagerizing now too?

First off, you've got it wrong. I'll admit to being a little rusty on the details of how it works, but you don't even have the basic concept down. Quantum encryption uses polarized light to transmit a random string of ones and zeros. The simpliest way to do so is to have a rectilinear (+) and a diagonal (x) filter, which are used to transmit the ones and zeros as follows:

| = 1
- = 0
\ = 1
/ = 0

So a string of ones and zeros sent could look something like this:

\-/||-\---\\\-|||-\////-/-/\-\/-

The binary number used is randomly generated, as is the order of which filter is used to transmit each bit. Once Alice sends the number to Bob, Bob sends Alice the pattern in which his filters recieved the number. If Bob used a rectilinear filter to catch one of the bits, when Alice used a diagonal filter to send it, then that number is discarded. You will discard roughly 50% of the data this way, but that's not a problem, as you can easily generate random numbers large enough for the purpose at hand. After that, Alice and Bob take a certain percent of the valid remaining bits to compare (and discard) them for the purpose of error checking. Should there be an error, chances are it's because Eve was listening and disrupted the polarizations of the bits, making a 1 into a 0 and a 0 into a 1. However, in a closed system (determining the key before leaving the ship, for example), interference from Eve is unlikely, so we'll ignore her for now. Once the error-checking is complete, the remain bits become the key. Once the key has been generated, you can use it to encrypt data through any method of communication you like, and it will be equally secure. You can establish the key by transmitting over a fiber-optic cable or over a laser beam, either way there is no possible way you can intercept the key, thanks to the error-checking mechanism. The best you can do is denial of service, which, as I have stated before, is impossible when the key is established proir to launch.

Now how in hell do you intend to accelerate at high g, subject the particle to who knows how many induced feilds thanks to Lenz's law and still maintain quantum entanglement?

It is one thing to do do biphoton experiments ... it is another to do it in a combat fighter. Have they even managed it with any but photons?

See above for an explaination of what quantum crypto is.

I'm sorry I'm not an expert in third generation nuclear weapons, are you?

You make the claim, you back it up. If you can't, you shouldn't make the claim in the first place. I'm not asking for a detailed dissertation, but basic concepts would be nice. Can't you even provide those, or are you just spewing out yet another appeal to authority?

Appeal to authority is the ONLY thing that justifies definitions, especially techinical definitions.

So you're saying that Turing couldn't possibly be wrong when he defines chess as an algorithm? Right.

How many strawmen is that SN? Can you even debate real positions or do you just tilt against strawmen anyone with basic reading comprehension can understand?

Optics, by that definition, excludes a whole lot of the EM spectrum. In that case, X-Ray Lasers and Gamma Ray Lasers will have greater range than optics. Whoops, just contradicted yourself again.

[tharkûn]

Ever heard of the Nuclear Saltwater Rocket?
It would have an specific impulse anywhere from 6600 seconds to 470000 seconds, depend on the enrichment of fuel. It can do this, and maintain a fairly high thrust. http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw56.html
That still is operating at 4 g's. As far as I know the only way to get above 5g's of acceleration is chemical propulsion, everything else requires too much from the system.

If you want to get into science fiction, where fighters are actually useful, then drones will kick the crap performance-wise out of a manned fighter.

Fighter serve only as launching platforms for missiles. This is not dog fighting, the only reason to use fighters is because they are the best platform from which to launch short range missiles.

As to lasers, why would long range be required? A couple thousand kilometers is already going to make it difficult for ship to hit a stealth fighter, and physical restraints make it difficult to aim precisely enough. Let's assume a 10 m wide fighter, w/ a circular face. At 10 km, it's a .1 degree wide object. At 1000km, it's 0.001 degree wide object.
Because some moron seems to think that a combat laser with a range of 300,000 km is perfectly reasonable ... I disagree that is even remotely feasable.

If you go on about how guns would be useless because missiles have a much longer range, I must ask you why ever US fighter since the F-4 has had an integral gun.
Short range combat. The problem is if you attack with altitude you can evade missiles still, gavity hurts them more than you. So it is still remotely possible to engage at close range. Everything though is trending toward longer and longer ranges of engagements, at which the only use for guns is in point defense.

As to why a fighter would require a pressurized hull, I will point out that they would most likely require endurances counted in days, and so unlike modern-day fighters, you would have to get up, go to the bathroom, eat, go to sleep, etc.
If you are looking at putting sleeping facilities on a fighter then go with missile boats. You have your choice: enough carrier groups with fighters to bring weapons to bare or enough missile boats to bring weapons to bare.

Solid hydrogen and oxygen is not possible, and again, why are you bringing up chemical rocketry? Also, you're assuming that the LH and LOX would absorb the radiation, which won't happen, considering Gamma radiation can only be stopped by materials that are very dense, like lead and depleated uranium.
Actually everything stops gamma rays, some are just better than others at it. Dense materials do more with less. Given your propellant requirements you are going to be surrounded by propellant which will be metres thick. There is no way to survive a close proximity blast without your operational and strategic radii going to hell.


Also, controlling the ship while in an extremely bulky space suit isn't going to be easy. And direct neural interfaces makes the pilot vulnerable to EMP weapons taking out the pilot by frying his brain.
Why is the space suit going to be bulky? The only thing that requires any substantial mass is pressure and it is really an issue you can pressurize the pilot area for minimal mass.


Those decoys you're talking about work just as well, if not more so against missiles. That long range weapon is going to survive by shooting down the fighters first. Point defense weaponry like the Gatling gun used by US carriers would make mince meat of an attacking missile, due to the requirement that a nuclear weapon would require getting very close to the target to be able to be useful. Also, those same short ranged weapons work as well when fired from the big ass ship as when fired from fighters.
Which is why you have to SWARM it. Point defense can kill anything given enough lead time. In space optics gives you that lead time. Your only shot is saturation, hence the idea of a fighter SWARM.

Let's say your big ship is as effective as a fighter swarm (even though firepower is normally calced with the number of craft squared), fine most militaries don't commit unless they can win. Which can you afford to lose? Some fighters which can be replaced fairly quickly or capships that cannot?

Tell me why hasn't the US navy swapped away from the carriers to modified Iowas with the cruise missiles? Why haven't they swapped over to SSGN's like the russians and relied on those for supremacy? The carrier group exists for a reason, its presents the most expendable target to the enemy. It has the optimal tradeoff between logistical, strategic, and tactical radii.

The idea is to present something expendandle to the enemy to launch from. At optimal range you will receive fire in response, you will not be able to snipe cold and hope for the best. Against an equally advanced opponent there is no way to hit him without presenting something as a target ... keep the target expendable (and not a cap ship). Submarine style forces cannot project force, they can attack, but they cannot control.

If you cannot play defense with at least some marginal success, you can't project force effectively.

[SirNitram]

Of course, Tharkun continues to provide no evidence why a laser of extreme ranges can't be employed, by humans are better by any margin, why chemical engines are the only way, or why, ridiculously, losing some of a fighter swarm is equal to losing the entire capship. But we all know he's just trolling, so I'm just pointing out the obvious.

[Hotfoot]

Of course, Tharkun continues to provide no evidence why a laser of extreme ranges can't be employed, by humans are better by any margin, why chemical engines are the only way, or why, ridiculously, losing some of a fighter swarm is equal to losing the entire capship. But we all know he's just trolling, so I'm just pointing out the obvious.

Let's also not forget that he seems to think that a capital ship launching fighters is somehow less consipicious than a capital ship launching missiles.

Also notice his strange silence when I mentioned that drones do not need the level of radiation shielding that human-piloted fighters do, and can thus be made out of less dense materials, resulting in a huge reduction in mass for drones. He's also not thought of where he's going to get these massive amounts of Uranium which he is going to use not only for nukes, but as armor for his missiles. He's also deathly quiet about much more inefficient a uranium-armored missile is in regards to fuel consumption.

[Xon]

Well at least he isnt making stupid claims about how reliable the drones would be any more. That took what 4-5 pages to convince him that it wasnt an issue?

[SirNitram]

Well at least he isnt making stupid claims about how reliable the drones would be any more. That took what 4-5 pages to convince him that it wasnt an issue?

I daresay he deserves a VI title for this. It's like a mini-DarkStar.

[SWPIGWANG]

Short range missiles are going to be nowhere as fast tharkûn claims thanks to the rocket equation.

Short range missiles = UTTER CRAP

And ships have far longer burn time due to more efficient drives, and thus faster in the end and outrun missiles AND fighters on a regular basis.

Mutistage missiles would own carrier and fighter combo anyday. Missile swarm > fighter swarm.

Lasers might suck, but when I get a million shots on your fighters before you hit me.....

[tharkûn]

The range increase is static at 40.5 km. Even assuming utterly ridiculous acceleration rates and burn times for the missiles, still gives a drone with just twice the acceleration rate of a human fighter that increase. You can even make the initial relative velocity as high as you like, the drone still has a longer effective range than the human fighter.
And you still end with a lower PERCENT difference in the ranges. Which is what matters ... TIME.

It is not minimal, you idiot. How long does it take the fighters to traverse 40.5 km with a relative velocity of 400 m/s? 4,000 m/s? That's a long time. Note that I am using maximum burn to figure out what best possible performance for each could be. If you'd like, I can do the same equations where each fighter simply does a one-second reverse burn, rather than a full burn. Guess what, it will still favor the drone, perhaps even more so since you've got the human fighters lugging around so many cubic meters of lead to protect the pilots.
At 400 m/s? Are you nuts? Modern planes kick the crap out of that and they don't have all of bloody space to play in. Even 4,000 is slow, hell that is not much beyond the X-plane project. With the simple chemical rockets you guys have been dogging (ones from the 60's to boot) we can get a fighter up to 11,000 m/s. How far do you intend your space force to feild? Here to the moon?

You mean a human fighter having to wait over a minute and a half longer before he can ensure a hit on a drone is miniscule? Even assume a ridiculously high relative velocity, a drone can reliable use an advantage of even 1/1,000 of a second while the human pilot is still fumbling for his trigger.
At those velocities don't even bother going out to combat, you will not make a significant dent in space. Using a 1960's rocket a fighter will take a whopping 3.681 seconds to cover the distance.


You mean a human fighter having to wait over a minute and a half longer before he can ensure a hit on a drone is miniscule? Even assume a ridiculously high relative velocity, a drone can reliable use an advantage of even 1/1,000 of a second while the human pilot is still fumbling for his trigger.
You are forgetting about ToF delay. You have to wait for your shot to actually come in range of the target, by that time optics will tell him everything he could possibly want to know.

If the missile has a longer range of deployment than the fighter, you've defeated the purpose of the fighter carrying the missile. Besides which, you're missing the fucking point. The two fighters don't start off right next to each other, they have to close to missile range first. It is on the edge of this range that the missile dance occurs, not well inside it.
You are missing the point. You start off with a velocity Vx (along some x axis). The ONLY way to stop moving in the x direction is to accelerate in the minus x-direction. You will be carrying enough propellant to do a complete accel/decel MAYBE 3 times at high acceleration burns. There is no way to quickly and cheaply burn velocity in space.

Whatever, your blind devotion only goes to further discredit the role of the fighter as a viable platform in space. It has no significant advantage over a light capital ship under your logic. Any weapon a fighter could mount, a capital ship could mount many, many more.
Right that's why the USN continued the retrofitting of IOWAs and discontinued building CVN's.

Bigger ship = bigger target.


Got a source, or are you plagerizing now too?
Gee plagiarizing with direct quotes, grow a brain.


First off, you've got it wrong. I'll admit to being a little rusty on the details of how it works, but you don't even have the basic concept down. Quantum encryption uses polarized light to transmit a random string of ones and zeros. The simpliest way to do so is to have a rectilinear (+) and a diagonal (x) filter, which are used to transmit the ones and zeros as follows
Quantum encryption utilizes entangled particles, the most readily availible of which are entangled photons from biphoton transitions. Conceptually it is just EPR. Take a pion, let it decay into an electron and a positron. Positron goes left, electron right. 6 lightyears later measure the spin of the electron. If it is "up" then the positron must be "down". Why? conservation of spin. Pion has spin zero so its decay products must have a net spin of zero. What happens if you let the rest of the universe interfere with your entangled particles (be they photons or electrons/positrons)? The entanglement goes, the spin (or whatever you plan to measure) can be swapped among many particles and you can't measure them all. You need this to get the spooky-at-a-distance (Einstein's name) interaction that allows Bob and Alice to say where their bits came from.

Good frikken luck maintaining quantum entanglement onboard a drone fighter.

You make the claim, you back it up. If you can't, you shouldn't make the claim in the first place. I'm not asking for a detailed dissertation, but basic concepts would be nice. Can't you even provide those, or are you just spewing out yet another appeal to authority?
I'm sorry given that data is classified up the wazoo I only know the claimed effects, to wit:
The energy from a thermonuclear blast is directed onto kinetic projectiles over a wide area causing them to become effective KE weapons and penatrators. The details, for BLOODY OBVIOUS REASONS, were never publically released ... just like they don't publish the protocols for making bioweapons.

So you're saying that Turing couldn't possibly be wrong when he defines chess as an algorithm? Right.
No I assume a bunch of guys on an internet board are more likely to be wrong than Turing.

Optics, by that definition, excludes a whole lot of the EM spectrum. In that case, X-Ray Lasers and Gamma Ray Lasers will have greater range than optics. Whoops, just contradicted yourself again.
Notice where I explicitly stated I mean optics to be all EM?
"Sir natrum is now gloating because I say "optics" instead of EM radiation. "

How many times do you people intend IGNORE WHAT I SAY so you can attack strawmen?

I merely posted a direct quote from dictionary.com as further evidence that SirNatrim lacks basic reading abilities.

Also notice his strange silence when I mentioned that drones do not need the level of radiation shielding that human-piloted fighters do
Notice bigfoots inability to read. That the radiation needed to kill the pilot in centre of the ship will have already killed ship.

also not thought of where he's going to get these massive amounts of Uranium which he is going to use not only for nukes, but as armor for his missiles.
Dumbass. It isn't armor. ALL nukes have a heavy metal jacket on them (excepting certain radiation enhanced modles), this is the final nuclear reaction which provides 2/3rds of the blast energy. If you DON'T jacket your nukes in Uranium they do explode with as much "pow per pound", it SAVES MASS to jacket the nukes in Uranium.

He's also deathly quiet about much more inefficient a uranium-armored missile is in regards to fuel consumption.
Because I thought you knew that your standard "unarmored" thermonuclear warhead comes jacketed in uranium. With the uranium you get a neutron bomb (more or less) and MUCH LOWER EXPLOSIVE YEILDS. To get the same yeild without the Uranium jacket requires A NET INCREASE IN MASS. Optimally the jacket is going to be enriched Uranium or Plutonium. Everything else is inferior bang for the mass. DUH.


Tharkun continues to provide no evidence why a laser of extreme ranges can't be employed
Because it is YOUR BURDEN OF PROOF to show they CAN. Or at least mike's board rules go.


why chemical engines are the only way
Because nothing else I know of (or is listed by NASA) gets much over 5 g's max acceleration. If your rocket doesn't accelerate beyond 5 g's then drones have NO ADVANTAGE THERE.

losing some of a fighter swarm is equal to losing the entire capship.
Because fighters are cheaper to MASS PRODUCE. The IJN lost its entire compliment of intial fighters throughout the war ... they MADE MORE. They lost most of their cap ships ... they didn't make more. Hell do it by pricing: 200 F-22's - about 20 billion dollars, 1 Aegis - 42.7 billion.


But we all know he's just trolling, so I'm just pointing out the obvious.

Whatever troll. Try doing something besides pulling generalities out of your ass.

[Beowulf]

Ever heard of the Nuclear Saltwater Rocket?
It would have an specific impulse anywhere from 6600 seconds to 470000 seconds, depend on the enrichment of fuel. It can do this, and maintain a fairly high thrust. http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw56.html
That still is operating at 4 g's. As far as I know the only way to get above 5g's of acceleration is chemical propulsion, everything else requires too much from the system.

http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/ssa/docs/Sp ... ines.shtml

Oh look, the shuttle only accelerates at 3 Gs...

If you go on about how guns would be useless because missiles have a much longer range, I must ask you why ever US fighter since the F-4 has had an integral gun.
Short range combat. The problem is if you attack with altitude you can evade missiles still, gavity hurts them more than you. So it is still remotely possible to engage at close range. Everything though is trending toward longer and longer ranges of engagements, at which the only use for guns is in point defense.

Fighters dodge missiles by causing them to run out of delta-v.

As to why a fighter would require a pressurized hull, I will point out that they would most likely require endurances counted in days, and so unlike modern-day fighters, you would have to get up, go to the bathroom, eat, go to sleep, etc.
If you are looking at putting sleeping facilities on a fighter then go with missile boats. You have your choice: enough carrier groups with fighters to bring weapons to bare or enough missile boats to bring weapons to bare.

Learn how to spell bear.

And aren't you advocating manned missile boats? I mean, you are saying that they would have an all missile armament.

Solid hydrogen and oxygen is not possible, and again, why are you bringing up chemical rocketry? Also, you're assuming that the LH and LOX would absorb the radiation, which won't happen, considering Gamma radiation can only be stopped by materials that are very dense, like lead and depleated uranium.
Actually everything stops gamma rays, some are just better than others at it. Dense materials do more with less. Given your propellant requirements you are going to be surrounded by propellant which will be metres thick. There is no way to survive a close proximity blast without your operational and strategic radii going to hell.

You're still going to be having a thick heavy rad shield, because what happens when you burn off that fuel? No rad shielding is what, which will kill your pilot even if there aren't any missiles going off nearby. Also, you're going to be needing alot more than a couple of meters of LH and LOX to stop the gamma radiation.

Also, controlling the ship while in an extremely bulky space suit isn't going to be easy. And direct neural interfaces makes the pilot vulnerable to EMP weapons taking out the pilot by frying his brain.
Why is the space suit going to be bulky? The only thing that requires any substantial mass is pressure and it is really an issue you can pressurize the pilot area for minimal mass.

Ignored the bit about neural interfaces. Concession accepted.
The space suit is going to be bulky because the pressure will cause the suit to balloon out. The suit will be stiff, and the gloves will be extremely bulky, because they also have to have air inside of them, which will balloon them out, and require quite a bit of room.

If you pressurize the pilot area, you're going to add quite a bit of mass.

[tharkûn]

Short range missiles are going to be nowhere as fast tharkûn claims thanks to the rocket equation.
No I just assume that compotent optics can pick out the missile at 20,000 km (more likely more). In which case the short range missile has far more than enough to to reach as close to burnout as I like to take it. Remember the encounter is head on.


Short range missiles = UTTER CRAP

And ships have far longer burn time due to more efficient drives, and thus faster in the end and outrun missiles AND fighters on a regular basis.
So? You are shooting AT me, not along side me. Speed is relative. You going 30,000 m/s and me 0 is the same as me going -30,000 m/s and you going zero.

Mutistage missiles would own carrier and fighter combo anyday. Missile swarm > fighter swarm.
And they are going to be launched from where and not be tracked to their death by optics why?


Lasers might suck, but when I get a million shots on your fighters before you hit me.....
A million shots with a high energy laser ... where can I get me one of them terawatt generators (you know that produces more energy than the entire planet earth currently)?

[Beowulf]

The differnce between a multi-stage missile and a fighter/missile combo is what exactly? The fighter is basically a very vulnerable first stage, which must have enough delta-v to be able to get back as well as get to the target. Any reason why the fighter can't be tracked to their death by sensors?

As to power, fusion is supposedly within the next 50 years (which they have been saying for the past 50 years).

As to drone fighters vs. human fighters, the drone fighters would be able to generate a higher kick impulse to take them out of the path of the missile than a human fighter would.

[tharkûn]

Oh look, the shuttle only accelerates at 3 Gs...
Yes, you can still get higher g values out of conventional rocketry, i.e. the Saturn V.

Fighters dodge missiles by causing them to run out of delta-v.
Fighters dodge CRAP missiles by doing that, and by banking off the fact that fighters get free propellant mass (oxygen), air friction for quick turns (which missiles have to do the hard way). Do you honestly want to tray that against the top flight Russian SAM's?

Learn how to spell bear.
I do. Bear is the animal. Bare is the verb (adjective).

And aren't you advocating manned missile boats? I mean, you are saying that they would have an all missile armament
Missile boats have "creature comforts" (and I use the term MOST lously), something like the SSGN. Fighters are engines, sights, missiles, and a pilot.

You're still going to be having a thick heavy rad shield, because what happens when you burn off that fuel? No rad shielding is what, which will kill your pilot even if there aren't any missiles going off nearby. Also, you're going to be needing alot more than a couple of meters of LH and LOX to stop the gamma radiation.
If you burn off that fuel you are already not going to make it home. You need your last fuel to accel back to the carrier (for a controlled crash there) If you don't have the fuel to get home ... then you are dead anways.

Also, you're going to be needing alot more than a couple of meters of LH and LOX to stop the gamma radiation.
I don't think you can. I think the level of sheilding needed to protect the ship is too heavy for high yeild nukes. The first missile to make it through your point defense is the time your bites it buhbye.

Ignored the bit about neural interfaces. Concession accepted.
Right. Emp can be avoided by just hardening the circuitry and keeping wire lengths low. Emp ranges are not going to be uber long like high altitude air bursts.

The space suit is going to be bulky because the pressure will cause the suit to balloon out. The suit will be stiff, and the gloves will be extremely bulky, because they also have to have air inside of them, which will balloon them out, and require quite a bit of room.
I see, and highly jointed rigid gloves won't work?

If you pressurize the pilot area, you're going to add quite a bit of mass/i]
How many kg? 20, 30, 60?

[Xon]

Also notice his strange silence when I mentioned that drones do not need the level of radiation shielding that human-piloted fighters do
Notice bigfoots inability to read. That the radiation needed to kill the pilot in centre of the ship will have already killed ship.

The lethal dose for an adult human is ~600 rads, thats a fully body dose. The same dose directly to your head would kill fast. The biggest problem is the pilot is sitting in an atmosphere. These means, Gama radiation will ionize the air, creating Beta & Alpha radiation. Alpha radiation would be generated in the lungs of the pilot, not very nice.

For radiation to damage the pilot it has to :
Penetrate the armour, hull, & the shell around the pilot. Once radiation starts to effect the pilot, the effects are accumulative. Worse because of the atmosphere, ionizing radation is create, inside & around the pilot. Once the pilot experiances accute radiation sickness, the entire fighter is rendered useless.

Since the drone isnt going to have any atmosphere aboard, the problem of EMP is removed/vastly reduced.

For radiation to damage the electronics it has to :
Penetrate the armour, hull, & the individual harded computer systems(since a distributed parrallel processing computer system is being used, we might as well shield each one independantly). With multipule systems, there is a level of redundacy that the fighter cant hope to achieve. The control systems are not in the one place.

Also if you have so much armour around the pilot that the radiation needed to kill the pilot in centre of the ship will have already killed ship, you have waay too much mass dedicated to pilot. The drone will be much lighter, and thus have a much greater Delta-V and the ability to use it. So for your 1 expensive over massed fighter, I could use 10-50 drones against them for the same cost. All working together with a level of team work human cant hope to achieve.

Result: 1 dead fighter & 1 dead pilot.

[Beowulf]

Oh look, the shuttle only accelerates at 3 Gs...
Yes, you can still get higher g values out of conventional rocketry, i.e. the Saturn V.

Accelerations which would cause the pilot to pass out rather soon. Someone can't really take more than 3Gs for a sustained period of time. The S-V was able to use that high accel because it was only for a little bit.

Fighters dodge missiles by causing them to run out of delta-v.
Fighters dodge CRAP missiles by doing that, and by banking off the fact that fighters get free propellant mass (oxygen), air friction for quick turns (which missiles have to do the hard way). Do you honestly want to tray that against the top flight Russian SAM's?

Um... most missiles have aero-dynamic maneuvering surfaces. And if my ECM isn't doing enough to throw off the missile, that's exactly what I'm going to try to do.

Learn how to spell bear.
I do. Bear is the animal. Bare is the verb (adjective).

Bear is the right verb. Bare is something uncovered, (bare skin, bare feet). Bear is to carry (bring to bear)

And aren't you advocating manned missile boats? I mean, you are saying that they would have an all missile armament
Missile boats have "creature comforts" (and I use the term MOST lously), something like the SSGN. Fighters are engines, sights, missiles, and a pilot.

You're still going to be having a thick heavy rad shield, because what happens when you burn off that fuel? No rad shielding is what, which will kill your pilot even if there aren't any missiles going off nearby. Also, you're going to be needing alot more than a couple of meters of LH and LOX to stop the gamma radiation.
If you burn off that fuel you are already not going to make it home. You need your last fuel to accel back to the carrier (for a controlled crash there) If you don't have the fuel to get home ... then you are dead anways.

As you use fuel, you reduce the rad protection. You're going to need dedicated rad protection.

Also, you're going to be needing alot more than a couple of meters of LH and LOX to stop the gamma radiation.
I don't think you can. I think the level of sheilding needed to protect the ship is too heavy for high yeild nukes. The first missile to make it through your point defense is the time your bites it buhbye.

You think.

Ignored the bit about neural interfaces. Concession accepted.
Right. Emp can be avoided by just hardening the circuitry and keeping wire lengths low. Emp ranges are not going to be uber long like high altitude air bursts.

Ignores the possiblity of dedicated EMP missiles specifically designed to produce heavy EMP. And there is a limit to how hard you can make the fighter, because you don't have a ground.

The space suit is going to be bulky because the pressure will cause the suit to balloon out. The suit will be stiff, and the gloves will be extremely bulky, because they also have to have air inside of them, which will balloon them out, and require quite a bit of room.
I see, and highly jointed rigid gloves won't work?

Nope. You see, you're going to have to provide a piece of material inbetween the joints to provide a place to flex, and that's going to be stiff from pressure. Also your going to have to make it about as thick as the flexible stuff to make it rigid, and be able to avoid breaking.

If you pressurize the pilot area, you're going to add quite a bit of mass/i]
How many kg? 20, 30, 60?

I dont know, but it will have to include many necessities. Example, reserve pressurization gas, heaters, coolers, etc.

[SWPIGWANG]

So? You are shooting AT me, not along side me. Speed is relative. You going 30,000 m/s and me 0 is the same as me going -30,000 m/s and you going zero.

Meaning you can't hurt me if I don't want to fight you.

Lasers might suck, but when I get a million shots on your fighters before you hit me.....
A million shots with a high energy laser ... where can I get me one of them terawatt generators (you know that produces more energy than the entire planet earth currently)?

As if your tin foil with 90% fuel can take a few watts....

Or are you going to build a brick that will never go anywhere?


My sealth cruiser waits. I see your carrier launch fighters with my sensor drones. I fire my missiles. My missiles have higher v due to no need to return to carrier thus giving me magnitudes more net acceleration and burn time. I kill your figthers and carrier before you get into short range missile range. The END.

[Beowulf]

I see he also hasn't responded to the fact that a short ranged missile is almost certainly going to have to be solid fuel powered, due to storage constraints and lack of maintaince available. This limits their range even more severly, and means that the fighters will have a shorter optimal range than the missile cruiser. This will tend to mean a dead fighter squadron, as the cruiser is able to start shooting from farther away.

[Hotfoot]

And you still end with a lower PERCENT difference in the ranges. Which is what matters ... TIME.

And yet the drones are still better suited than humans to taking advantage of the time difference no matter how small it is. Gee, and you were saying that far superior reaction times are worthless?

At 400 m/s? Are you nuts? Modern planes kick the crap out of that and they don't have all of bloody space to play in. Even 4,000 is slow, hell that is not much beyond the X-plane project. With the simple chemical rockets you guys have been dogging (ones from the 60's to boot) we can get a fighter up to 11,000 m/s. How far do you intend your space force to feild? Here to the moon?

Again, as I said, the numbers I supplied were arbitrary. Plug in whatever numbers you like, the result will be the same. In fact, increasing the initial relative velocity only serves to increase the drone's advantage in range.

At those velocities don't even bother going out to combat, you will not make a significant dent in space. Using a 1960's rocket a fighter will take a whopping 3.681 seconds to cover the distance.

The higher the relative velocity, the larger the gap.

You are forgetting about ToF delay. You have to wait for your shot to actually come in range of the target, by that time optics will tell him everything he could possibly want to know.

By the time the human sees the drone fire the missile, the drone will have already fired the missile. By the time the human has returned fire, the drone can already be decreasing the relative velocity and thus the effective range of the human's missile. You lose.

You are missing the point. You start off with a velocity Vx (along some x axis). The ONLY way to stop moving in the x direction is to accelerate in the minus x-direction. You will be carrying enough propellant to do a complete accel/decel MAYBE 3 times at high acceleration burns. There is no way to quickly and cheaply burn velocity in space.

You can't possibly predict fuel paylod that using that sort of algorithm, since you ignore what the average relative velocity is likely going to be. Besides which, if you can dive in, burn out, and not even run the risk of being shot down by enemy missiles, while making it impossible for them to avoid the risk, it's worth the cost in reaction mass.

Right that's why the USN continued the retrofitting of IOWAs and discontinued building CVN's.

Bigger ship = bigger target.

Limitations appling to a planet-bound navy do not directly apply to a space-based navy. You keep mentioning this yourself, yet you seem to conveniently forget it when it could damage your argument. In space you have capital ships capable of the same velocities as fighters. If, as you're arguing, acceleration rates don't matter for squat, then fighters are useless anyway, since capital ships can mount the same munitions and more of them.

A fighter carrier has to make room for the fighters, their ammunition, their fuel (and they have to have a lot of fuel and extra munitions, because they expect their fighters to keep coming back), spare parts, pilots, and so on. If we're talking about a supercarrier, it also carries no significant weaponry of its own. It has to rely on fighters as its offensive and defensive strength.

A dedicated warship can carry many more missiles than the entire complement of fighters that a supercarrier with roughly equal dimensions. On top of that, it has its own array of offensive and defensive weaponry, all of which massively outguns anything the fighters can bring to the field. It can also house better computer and tracking systems than the fighters, and as such can easily track multiple targets.

One such warship should be able to easily destroy one carrier worth of fighters, plus have enough ammunition/weaponry left over to cripple/destroy the carrier.

Gee plagiarizing with direct quotes, grow a brain.

You did not site your source, dumbass. Thus, you have taken someone else's writing without referencing it. That qualifies as plagiarism.

Quantum encryption utilizes entangled particles, the most readily availible of which are entangled photons from biphoton transitions. Conceptually it is just EPR. Take a pion, let it decay into an electron and a positron. Positron goes left, electron right. 6 lightyears later measure the spin of the electron. If it is "up" then the positron must be "down". Why? conservation of spin. Pion has spin zero so its decay products must have a net spin of zero. What happens if you let the rest of the universe interfere with your entangled particles (be they photons or electrons/positrons)? The entanglement goes, the spin (or whatever you plan to measure) can be swapped among many particles and you can't measure them all. You need this to get the spooky-at-a-distance (Einstein's name) interaction that allows Bob and Alice to say where their bits came from.

Sigh...one form of quantum encryption can use entangled particles, but it is not required unless you want the key to remain secure even in storage. That is not necessary for the use I have intended.

Good frikken luck maintaining quantum entanglement onboard a drone fighter.

For the last time, you don't need entangled pairs for quantum encryption, just the ability to polarize light. Is this so difficult to understand?

I'm sorry given that data is classified up the wazoo I only know the claimed effects, to wit:
The energy from a thermonuclear blast is directed onto kinetic projectiles over a wide area causing them to become effective KE weapons and penatrators. The details, for BLOODY OBVIOUS REASONS, were never publically released ... just like they don't publish the protocols for making bioweapons.

Was this in atmosphere, or in space? Makes a huge difference, you know. Also, the effective ranges of such a weapon would be rather small in space, regardless, and unfocused weapons waste much of their total energy trying to hit just one target.

No I assume a bunch of guys on an internet board are more likely to be wrong than Turing.

Okay, so now you're professing an ad hominem. How about looking at the validity of my arguments before you dismiss them as worthless? The only counter-argument you've given is screaming "Turing is right, you're wrong" over and over again without giving any reasons why Turing is right and I am wrong.

Notice where I explicitly stated I mean optics to be all EM?
"Sir natrum is now gloating because I say "optics" instead of EM radiation. "

So pick a different word, if you're going to be contrary. Doesn't change the fact that X-Ray and Gamma lasers will have much longer effective ranges than Optical lasers.

How many times do you people intend IGNORE WHAT I SAY so you can attack strawmen?

Jesus, how many of your own strawmen must we point out to you? Hell, you even said that you don't even bother considering our arguments!

I merely posted a direct quote from dictionary.com as further evidence that SirNatrim lacks basic reading abilities.

Given the fact that you seem to be unable to look up the word "algorithm", and that you yourself seem to be using the wrong definition of optical in the first place, I don't think you've got much room to criticize anyone.

Notice bigfoots inability to read. That the radiation needed to kill the pilot in centre of the ship will have already killed ship.

Proven by what, exactly? I fail to see any evidence concerning such a claim.

Dumbass. It isn't armor. ALL nukes have a heavy metal jacket on them (excepting certain radiation enhanced modles), this is the final nuclear reaction which provides 2/3rds of the blast energy. If you DON'T jacket your nukes in Uranium they do explode with as much "pow per pound", it SAVES MASS to jacket the nukes in Uranium.

Fine, then you don't cover the whole missile in Uranium like you claimed? Then it's vulnerable to a point-defense laser. Let's see, what's not covered in uranium? Oh yeah, the fuel supply, the engine, the manuevering thrusters, the guidance system, all sorts of stuff! And if any of it is destroyed or damaged, evading the missile becomes mundane.

Because I thought you knew that your standard "unarmored" thermonuclear warhead comes jacketed in uranium. With the uranium you get a neutron bomb (more or less) and MUCH LOWER EXPLOSIVE YEILDS. To get the same yeild without the Uranium jacket requires A NET INCREASE IN MASS. Optimally the jacket is going to be enriched Uranium or Plutonium. Everything else is inferior bang for the mass. DUH.

Your claim that the missiles will be amazingly resistant to point defense lasers is then discredited. Either the whole thing is covered in the stuff, or it's vulnerable. It's a pretty simple concept.

Because it is YOUR BURDEN OF PROOF to show they CAN. Or at least mike's board rules go.

Laser dispersion in space is determined by the wavelength used. Now, I'm no expert at this, but I believe that using the largest wavelength for an X-Ray (1 x 10-8 m) with a projector with a radius of 2 cm at one light-second will give you a roughly 30.5 m radius. With the largest wavelength Gamma Ray (1 x 10-11 m), it should give you a radius of roughly 0.0305 m, or 3.05 cm, given the same distance.

This being the case, Gamma Ray lasers lose virtually nothing at one light second out.

Because fighters are cheaper to MASS PRODUCE. The IJN lost its entire compliment of intial fighters throughout the war ... they MADE MORE. They lost most of their cap ships ... they didn't make more. Hell do it by pricing: 200 F-22's - about 20 billion dollars, 1 Aegis - 42.7 billion.

Now, what if the F-22's were just as fast as that 1 Aegis?

Whatever troll. Try doing something besides pulling generalities out of your ass.

I guess you don't want the competetition?

[Hotfoot]

My apologies, I used the wrong distance for one light second. Lowest grade X-Ray laser should have a radius of roughly 91.5 m at one light second from an initial radius of 0.02 m. Lowest grade Gamma laser would have a radius of 0.0915 m, or 9.15 cm with the same aperature at that range.

[HRogge]

Can you tell me about a sensor system with MORE range than passive optical ? Active sensor systems are dangerous, you can detect them at double range. And in space there is no other passive detection system than "optical" ( just call it passive EM detector/camera ).

If you expand 'optical' to 'passive detection', then you are, in fact, right. However, Tharkun thinks it'll be limited to what the Mark I Eyeball can see.

I can see other galaxies with the "naked eye"... okay, a good telescope is better, but I think passive EM detectors will be the best way to detect a spacecraft on long range...

[HRogge]

Short range missiles are going to be nowhere as fast tharkûn claims thanks to the rocket equation.

Short range missiles = UTTER CRAP

And ships have far longer burn time due to more efficient drives, and thus faster in the end and outrun missiles AND fighters on a regular basis.

more efficient drives are useless, in spacecombat against missiles the acceleration is important, nothing else. Short range missiles will have a much higher acceleration than a drone, so they will just hit you if you don't shoot them down. As soon as you are inside the range of a missile you cannot outrun it because it has the higher acceleration.

What's the use of being faster within 10 minutes if the missile will hit you in three minutes ?

Mutistage missiles would own carrier and fighter combo anyday. Missile swarm > fighter swarm.

Lasers might suck, but when I get a million shots on your fighters before you hit me.....

The quality of missile sensors will be much worse than the sensors of a drone or fighter. In addition to this missiles have the disadvantage that they don't come back.

An interesting "combo" idea would be to throw a few human manned fighters into a swarm of drone fighters so you have an operator that add human level intelligence to your swarm in real time communication range.

[Neko_Oni]

The quality of missile sensors will be much worse than the sensors of a drone or fighter. In addition to this missiles have the disadvantage that they don't come back.

Why would missile sensors be worse? There's no technical reason they would be so. Missiles have the advantage they don't have to come back. Fighters have to burn once out to the target, once to stop, once to head back, once to stop. Missile burn once, out to target. (Ignoring mid-flight manoeuvres.

[ClaysGhost]

<general "lasers are useless" arguments>

Range depends on the exit aperture in the optical train. "Multi-kilometre fresnel lenses" would be necessary only if you intend using LASERS that are almost MASERS because the frequency of operation is so low.

For visible wavelength lasers exit apertures on the order of metres would be required to cover a 10 m fighter at 1 light-second. For UV lasers apertures could be rather smaller, and X-ray lasers would of course make the required aperture smaller still. Apparently, nuclear excitation is not the only way to build X-ray lasers, but UV is anyway more accessible.

As for power requirements, I will look further into it later, but whoever claimed that "1 TW is greater than the power output of Earth" figure should know that this is not true. As far as I'm aware the UK electricity network alone has a generating capacity of about 78TW. Of course this is maximum available capacity, and would not be 100% utilised unless there was a major problem.

The problem with lasers is more to do with getting rid of the waste heat, assuming that no massive improvements in efficiency occur over today. A large ship is rather better placed to field a laser than a small ship, both from the point of view of power generation and waste heat removal, and would also be able to carry a sensor system capable of maximising the advantage of rapidly tracking laser technology (the exit aperture, not the laser, needs to move) against fighters/missiles approaching from multiple directions.

Regarding drones, I'm puzzled why most of the talk is of some sort of chess computer flying them. Although progress has been variable and slow, AI as a field has produced a few more algorithms than the "search". It's ridiculous to suppose that people would rely on coding every possible scenario, in any event. A decent AI programmer would have thrown that option out at the beginning, unless he or she found this sort of thing desirable:

if(RandomSpaceMonkeyHasAppeared()) {
drone_print(Everyone, "Colleagues! A random space monkey has appeared! Take it alive!\n");
}

etc, etc. Something like that is thicker than the AI that appears in some computer games nowadays. Please note that I'm not really a drone fan. However, I'm even less fond of fighters. Humans are flexible, but a square jaw and a short haircut will get you only so far in space combat when you're sitting in a fighter.

[SirNitram]

Can you tell me about a sensor system with MORE range than passive optical ? Active sensor systems are dangerous, you can detect them at double range. And in space there is no other passive detection system than "optical" ( just call it passive EM detector/camera ).

If you expand 'optical' to 'passive detection', then you are, in fact, right. However, Tharkun thinks it'll be limited to what the Mark I Eyeball can see.

I can see other galaxies with the "naked eye"... okay, a good telescope is better, but I think passive EM detectors will be the best way to detect a spacecraft on long range...

Probably right. And the 'Can see galaxies' is actually the reason we won't be staying within visible range. Consider how far away the moon is, and how small it is. Now, try to imagine a carrier next to it. Keep in mind we can peg things with lasers at that range, at least for communications.