Re: [GZG] Re: Mines

["john tailby" <John_Tailby@xxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Oerjan Ariander" <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>
> > I could also imagine a stealthy hunter killer robotic vessel that sits 
> > plugged into a widespread sensor net, possibly even in hyper space and 
> > when an intruder is detected it powers up and attacks. This kind of thing 
> > would be much more cost effective than millions of mines.
>
> It would - but it would be a robotic combat vessel rather than a space 
> mine. Heck, if you have this kind of sensor net there's no reason why you 
> couldn't plug your crewed warships into it as well!
You could plug your crewed vessels into the sensor net and it then becomes 
like a SOSUS line. This has already been done with the Hirogen in Star Trek 
that use a sensor net to locate their prey. For this to work you need your 
sensors to be able to signal to other sensors via hyperspace and hence to 
the ships without the enemy detecting the signals so your ships know where 
to go. Alternatively for this to work you have to have a fleet of crewed 
ships on standby. The crew get bored and performance drops off on garrison 
duties. Plus life support for the crew becomes more of a problem unless you 
have recycling to a very high efficiency level. A computer controlled vessel 
could wait patiently for years without a drop off in efficiency.

One of the worst things about automated weapon systems is they can persist 
for years after they were meant to. In space, decay rates would be much 
lower and such things could be in existence for 100k years.

If you built your defences with say a factory on a nearby asteroid then it 
could keep on making more mines to replenish losses.

John 


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