orbital bombardment

Imre responded to my post, and I to him:

Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 17:50:56 -0500
From: "Imre A. Szabo" 
<ias@sprintmail.com>
Subject: Re: Bombardment and Beams

Does my minor in Mathematics count???

[Tomb] Dunno, if it was anything like the 
time I spent in Pure Math, maybe not. ;)

The point isn't to cover a ten km box of 
space.	The point is that if the enemy is 
position is off by a 0.000001 degrees from 
where you predict he will be when you fire, 
you still have a chance to hit him. assuming 
10,000 km per MU, range of 36 MU; this 
gives us 10000km * 1000 m/km * 36 
*tan(0.000001) = 6.28 m.  Area of a circle 
of this radius is 124 sq.m.  This is much 
less then a 10 km box which is
100,000,000 sq. m...

[Tomb] Okay, take that 0.000001 and 
change it to 0.00001 or 0.0001. The 
numbers go up a lot. A lot has to do with 
your expectations and assumptions about 
the technology. 

However, if you take 124 sq. m and assume 
one pulse per 4 sq. m, then you are only 
talking 8 pulses times the power required.  
A fighter will slip through, but then fighters 
are supposed to.

[Tomb] And let us assume for a moment 
materials have advanced apace with your 
fire control and focusing abilities. I think 
the amount of energy required will be 
substantial. I'm thinking that a weapon 
that wants to actually damage an FT ship 
decently has really two or three factors to 
deal with: Getting a hit of any kind and 
having that hit do enough damage to be 
meaningful and doing that within a finite 
budget of available offensive energy. The 
first of those is aided by rapid fire (across 
an area) or a scattergun effect. The second 
of those is aided by having more powerful 
individual shots. The third of those is 
impeded by both of the former two. It 
seems to me FT weapons must be a 
compromise, but there is *no* point in 
getting a hit if you don't do meaningful 
damage, so the second objective is actually 
the important one. Thus the emphasis is on 
having a shot do some damage when it 
hits. So, I guess it boils down to how much 
fire you figure can be put out to achieve 
that. I'm assuming batteries that fire 
slowly (for temperature and energy build 
up reasons) and make great attempts to 
hit what they aim at. There could be (and 
probably are) multiple pulses. But I don't 
think of them as high rate area sweepers. I 
just don't think they could pack meaningful 
power levels in without having a ridiculous 
power demand. 

Yes, 0.000001 degree is a very small error 
when you consider two ships each moving 
3 dimensionally realtive to each other
at that range.

[Tomb] Quite. But you're the one who 
commented on area sweeping effects, 
IIRC. If you're going to say the area you 
meant was incredibly small, then why say 
that? If it is a sizeable area, then that 
implies either individually weak shots or a 
whopping input energy. 

> Which brings us to bombardments. I 
suspect a
> ships beam is powerful and focused. But 
it may

<snip> and

> to obliterate cities, etc). Otherwise we'd 
see a
> vastly different style of ground combat in 
DS2
> and vastly different vehicle designs. And 
fighters
> designed for vacuum operation (starfury
> anyone?) probably suck rocks in an
> atmosphere.

PLEASE CHECK MY ORIGINAL 
SUGGESTIONS.  BEAMS AREN'T VERY
EFFECTIVE ON EARTH TYPE PLANETS, 
YOU NEED CLASS 4 OR LARGER
TO DO ANYTHING.

[Tomb] My comments on how *I* view 
orbital bombardment made no particular 
direct reference to your suggestions. I read 
them (at least skimmed) and wasn't 
interested in commenting directly on your 
mechanics. Therefore your emphasis 
addresses a point I had not taken up. Nor 
will I. Your rules didn't seem totally 
unreasonable, to the extent I paid attention 
to them. Some of your philosophy I'm not in 
total agreement with. I was merely 
advancing my opinion of what I think things 
must be like in the canonical universe.

Imre:
As for the fighters, Thunderbolts exist in B5 
specifically
to fix that defficency in Earth Force.

[Tomb] Yep, but down below you argue 
against ground attack fighters. 
Interesting....

I don't like the Ortillary system because 
they are NOT ammo dependent. 

[Tomb] In what sense? Limited ammo? 
(Ever heard of a fleet collier? also notice 
GMS systems don't have ammo constraints)
Or that they don't have ammunition choice? 
DS2 and SG2 present only a very simplified 
picture of actual artillery capability and 
variety. 

Imre:
 As for orbital bombardment satelites, 
make a small space station with 1 hull, and 
a couple submunition packs loaded with 
orbital bombardment submunitions. Carry in
a freighter (or cargo hold of a military ship, 
or fighter bay of carrier) and deploy when 
needed. 

[Tomb] That kind of design (although I'd 
claim you require something big enough to 
hold an ortillery module) is probably what 
I'm talking about.

> And it seems to me their ought to be a 
Ground-
> Attack type fighter, specialized for in-
> atmosphere assaults and surface and
> atmospheric envelope target 
engagements.

Why bother.  Use standard fighter types.  
Can have a very
rough time going into the atmosphere...

[Tomb] You mentioned the thunderbolt 
from the B5 Universe, and you mention the 
rough time in atmosphere. I add to that the 
possibilities of interception inside the 
atmospheric envelope by highly specialized 
interceptors who should be able to outfight 
your "standard space fighter". Plus I'm not 
sure the Thunderbolt of Starfury are even 
aerodynamic enough to be viable (okay, I 
guess the B2 proves a brick can fly with 
enough power.....). My point was that a 
fighter designed for space combat is a poor 
choice for in-atmosphere ordinance 
deployment against ground targets, 
especially in the close support role. It 
seems that it would be overly vulnerable. 

That's in my original idea.

[Tomb] Except it seems to me that a ship 
with a single class 4 beam could freely 
roam around and roast formations, cities, 
etc with no reply from the defenders 
assuming it had orbital superiority. (Or did 
I read that wrong?) Something tells me 
that considering the value of planets, some 
serious effort would be put into planetary 
defenses sufficient to prevent that. (Class 
10 ground mount beams? Ground launched 
salvo missiles? I don't know, whatever). 

> domination of the campaign worlds to 
navy, navy, navy. If you want to play SG or 
DS without constantly applying the "hostile 
atmosphere" or other artificial constraints, 
then there had better be a way to prevent 
a single corvette (or even a small fleet) 
from threatening any surface combat action 
without specialized assets.

If it's a planet similar to Earth, corvettes 
won't be effective, unless they have one 
shot weapons, ideally loaded
with orbital bombardment munitions. Note 
that this will make
them one shot wonders.

[Tomb] Okay, how about a B4 armed DD? I 
ask because this design is fairly viable as a 
vector combatant (not so in cinematic) and 
could also, by your rules if I read them 
right, make for a nasty bombardier. And 
squadrons of them would be just nasty. 
Frankly, I'd just rather that atmospheres of 
any significant level just plain stopped 
beams dead. I think ground assault 
requires specialized assets which are nigh 
on useless in space. Period. So if your navy 
decides to show up without them or loses 
them, you're done for planetary attack until 
you fetch replacements. 

Yep, they're mop up opperation like the 
Central Pacific campaign if your fleet can't 
threaten the enemy.  But if the fleets are 
comparable, you wind up fighting a serries 
of Guadalcannals...  Both sides darting in to 
land reinforcement and do a quick barrage 
of the enemy position, and then dash off...

[Tomb] Which is fine, if the analogy 
worked. It breaks down because in 1945, it 
was very hard to know where the other 
fleet was and all the islands were 
effectively different places (as in fact were 
different parts of the same island) due to 
the technology of the time. Now, an entire 
world is effectively one place, as far as 
interdicting traffic to it probably goes. So I 
don't think you'll ever get this situation 
unless you have terrible luck. If you don't 
go into an invasion with enough force to 
sweep space, you deserve to lose. If you 
do sweep space, you'd better darn well 
hold it or the troops you've landed are in 
bad situations. Allowing his ships to enter 
the atmospheric envelope for any purpose 
is likely to see to it that he plants a nuke 
on some of your boys (more worrisome 
than the "supplies" he might bring in or 
even the "reinforcements"). A true 
planetary invasion had better involve one 
side taking and holding the planet and the 
space around it for a fair distance. And if 
they do that, any "landers" will be blown 
sky high. So at that point, it behoves the 
invaded party to not waste such efforts 
trying to sneak in, but to build up and come 
in with a true relief force, again oriented to 
taking out whatever is there and winning 
space superiority. 

I think if you really have not truly 
established local space superiority, you 
have no real business landing troops. And if 
you can't hold it, the troops you have 
landed are in a lot of trouble. 

And that, my friend, is not exactly the 
Pacific War all over again. 

----------------------------------------------------
Mr. Thomas Barclay
Software Developer & Systems Analyst
thomas.barclay@stargrunt.ca
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