What are space battles actually going to be like? What are warships

currently we have no idea what a ground war would really look like, as we haven't had a serious peer vs peer fight for decades

And you want to talk about what a space war would look like?

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>>8345101
Its not a serious question, I just thought it could be a fun discussion.

nothing like star wars or navy battles, just tiny drone swarms ravaging the hull of opponent ship until critical failure

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"So what we'll do is get about fifteen thousand cubic meters of fusion bomb, use half of it to accelerate up to a relativistic speed then explode the other half at our target"

read one of the honor harrington books, it's a pretty good take on what space combat might be

basically, it's missile volleys at light-second ranges

>>8345101
>peer vs peer

>>8345302
what's wrong with that

All we've seen since WWII is asymmetrical warfare and localized wars between equally undeveloped actors, with the only probable exception being the Yom Kippur war.

>using one high velocity bullet to destroy an entire warship because space

>>8345092
Imagine tiny little drones messing with dark energy, causing spaceships to be destroyed because it's atoms are getting teared apart.

>>8345092
Imagine shooting kinetic homing projectiles at a craft as far away as the earth's diameter. Basically long distance battles taken to the next level. Future wars will also be space ships from the moon orbit shooting high hypersonic rods of god to an inhabited area, meaning the only way to stop it is to destroy the space weapon, but the space weapon has autonomous space craft that are designed to blow the fuck up anything that gets within 10000kms of the space weapon.

War crimes will be an ancient concept compared to the unholy devastation future wars will cause.

>>8345123
That bottom picture
>noot noot

>>8345187
>honor harrington
>good in any way

Don't read it its shit. Also doesn't have realistic space battles.

there won't be any

Considering we already have things like homing missiles, laser weapons, railguns, drones, you can imagine ships on opposite sides of the solar system lobbing high energy lasers at each other, and sending missiles that accelerate for a month strait to 1%c before impact, or railguns firing tiny ball bearings to any even greater percentage.

Really I think that laser goal keepers in space will be quite effective, so my bet is on energy weapons and high volumes of fire [a railgun that fires 1000s of projectiles at slightly different velocities so they impact at the same time to overwhelm defenses]

>>8346072
And what energy sources do we use for all that shit?

Where do they get their massive delta-v ?
Tiny cheap fusion reactors?

Extending out current tech for space conflict, when everything would involve game changing new technologies is silly.

>>8346094
NASA uses nuclear batteries, so nuclear power in space ships is the norm. In the future we can assume that some of the current experimental reactors will be in use.

Isn't Lockheed & Martin making a small reactor for space too?

>>8346094
>Extending out current tech for space conflict, when everything would involve game changing new technologies is silly.

tbf, there has been a public moratorium on space weapons for a long time now. the engineering isn't there because there was no need.

>>8346094
≥massive delta v
Make small ships, use em drives

>>8346098
NASA uses nuclear thermal reactors that produce tiny amounts of power

A huge issue is what to do with the heat produced, as you need massive amounts of surface area radiating away the heat.. Noone is working on anything for space nuclear reactors.

We have stealth coatings that make aircraft invisible to radar at less than 5 km, what makes you think you'll see ANYTHING at 10k km?

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>>8345092

>>8346123
Drone scouts?

Engagement distance will be far because you don't want you space artillery in danger, but naturally scouting will rely on mobile sensor platforms like the f-35.

This is a solved problem in modern warfare, is there any reason to believe it won't work in space?

>>8346153
>This is a solved problem in modern warfare
No it isn't, not at all

>>8345092
If anything it'll be between drones. Nobody is going to want to be in space and risk the chance of one hypervelocity bullet tearing their hull. If it is an aggressor from another planet, they'll maybe have a manned mothership a safe distance away. This is of course ignoring any relativistic kill vehicles that could wipe people out before it's physically possible to see it.

Perhaps any manned interstellar starship should always be protected by a bubble of drones a thousand kilometers or maybe lightseconds away.

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This is now a Killzone appreciation thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRNwgE4iPJg

>>8346164
Yes it is, drones and planes like the aforementioned f-35 relay targeting data to warships or artillery, boots relay data to artillery or CAS or other aircraft.

No modern army puts their firebase at risk. Its a solved problem.

>>8346189
space doesn't have horizons to hide behind

And you are talking how it works in a wildly lobsided fight, where one side has no ability to shoot down the others drones, or intercept the others missiles/artillery.

>>8346198
What are planets?

>>8346198
Wasn't this already discussed above? Using scouts is necessary because sensor range is finite especially with stealth technology.

In an equal battle both sides will attempt to gain Intel using drones so they can fire their weaponry on their ship which is far away and hidden.

Against drones you can expect the ship will have CIWS, fighter drones, etc to defend itself.

Its likely cruisers will try position themselves behind bodies to block direct fire, necessitating indirect fire from torpedoes.

Offensive drones may also be used, as well as mobile weapons platforms which can flank and attack ships without risking an entire ship of you own.

I imagine future spaceships as discs, like a dinner plate. Except instead of going sideways flat like ayylium UFO's it goes with the broad side forward lined with thrusters all around and weapons. This way it can turn to face any direction with ease while being able to fire a huge number of weapons at once. So just imagine a dinner plate face forward floating around firing lasers from all over its surface. There's not enough gases in the areas it'd be safe to travel through for aerodynamics to matter and if it ever did it could just reorient sideways and carry on like a frisbee.

>>8346153

A drone scout for every 1000 cubic kilometers of the solar system? Won't work.

>>8346213

What is angular size and the square cube law?


Jupiter is not that far from Earth, yet you can't even make out that it is a disk with the naked eye. Unless all your space warfare is happening in low orbit, the only thing you can hide behind is stealth technology.

massive gamma ray burst cannons that vaporize entire planets is the future mis amigos

>>8345092

Shoot each other until you run out of ammo/fuel in which case the guy who didn't wins.

Properly extremely boring

And all done with robots

It'll be like watch two AIs fight in a strategy game. Purely whoever has a smarter and better optimised AI and more rescourses will win.

As I said, boring.

>>8346188
Classic game, in my top ten.

all ships blinged out in pimpin' retroreflective coating against laser weapons

the gates will all be down

>>8346239
sensor range isn't really "finite" its related to size and power and computing, etc

All things drones will inevitably have less of.

What power source is this drone going to have? Where does it get its delta-v?

>>8346103
That was more a moratorium on nuclear weapons and KKVs in space because then one side could potentially think "I can win this nuclear war with a first strike because my missiles can hit their missile sites before they realize I've launched". Not because, "Oh god the russians are shooting our astronauts with space lasers"

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>>8345092
Here is something I made a while ago.

It will revolve around detecting the enemy over massive distances at the very periphery of their detection capabilities. Lots of different vehicles sparring, firing weapons then immediately evading because firing a weapon reveals your position.

Missiles to destroy motherships, smaller vessels whose job it is to intercept missiles, other vessels who hunt these vessels and so forth. Some kind of arrangement like this. Almost an entire ecosystem.

Some weapons will be fired in deep space and aim to intercept objects.

Others will be fired from home, reach huge velocities and be directed by vessels that detect enemies into other vessels.

Production is also important, it is about wearing down your enemy.

Distance is important, you need less fuel to defend your solar system closers to home. Though distance operates on a kind of logarithmic scale. If you imagine a journey where you accelerate.

Once the front nears the enemy solar system, occasional nukes and relativistic warheads will get through the enemy's defenses by chance leading to reduced production and a sudden end to the war.

Could be something along these lines.

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>>8345092
We had a thread about it on here last year (174 replies):

https://warosu.org/sci/thread/7256415

>>8347130
>NotStarWars.jpg

>>8348376
What are you even trying to say? It is a Star Wars pic.

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One regular armor piercing bullet will fuck a space craft up ( hull breach ). Why develop new weapons when the simplest ones already work .

>>8346123
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954

Nuclear reactors have been used in space before. Not really needed now because no one needs that much power or wants that much risk, but a future military may use something like that.

The heat and stealth are actually related. The heat generated by both reactors and ship operation will need to be radiated away from the ship in order to keep from cooking the crew alive. That heat will be radiated away as Infra red radiation. IR radiation will be detectable by enemies so stealth, detection and power usage will all be taken into consideration by military ships.

>>8345101
lol shut the fuck up, thought police

I don't know about convential weapons, but WMDs... We'll slap massive reactors on asteroids and lob them at each other.
Einstein was right, we'll fight with stones. Big fucking stones.

>>8346072
>and sending missiles that accelerate for a month strait to 1%c before impact
that would never work.

even deviating your orbital path by a slight amount would cause it to miss.

people would gladly spend fuel to change their trajectory by small amounts every couple of days or so.

Chinks and united statesians will blow a few of eachother's satellites up before making an impenetrable field of random shit surrounding he Earth.

>>8346239
The fuck are you talking about? Stealth doesn't work in space. If your outputting heat (as every space ship will always be doing) then they can see you from millions of KM away.

>>8347113
This is good.

>>8345092

Create a warp bubble around your opponent that expands space on all sides. They become far away from anything. Then wait until they run out of energy.

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>>8345092
It will be glorious and honorable combat.

>>8349836
OR... force your opponent to run at near light speed. Their time rate goes to shit and you can out advance them by the time they stop.

>>8349161
Pretty much this. Back to the stone age. Lobbed on vast orbits to hit home bases from weird directions and at odd times.

>>8349167
>people would gladly spend fuel to change their trajectory by small amounts every couple of days or so.

As would the guidance system of the missile, with the difference being you probably have a couple of km/s of delta v while the missile has around three thousand.