[ThoseDeafMutes]

Kiss my Navy ass. Seriously though, I do think that the naval structure of command would work best with large spaceships. The navy is structured around Rates(job specialties) and have been geared to moving large crewed machines around for thousands of years. I don't see much of an analog in the other services.

The Airforce moves around large crewed machines too, and needs just as many specialists to maintain it's gear. The amount of maintenance performed on aircraft is extreme. The only difference here seems to be that navy vessels cart specialists around on-board with them, while the Air force has them in hangars waiting for the Aircraft to return. What exactly about Naval ranks means that they're uniquely suited to this situation? Would a technician on-board a spacecraft operate more efficiently if he is or she refers to their superior officer as Captain rather than Commander?

The underlying assumption in your post is that spacecraft are vessels that require large crews, which has not been established. Extant spacecraft have tiny crews, the bare minimum they can get away with. The small number of crew members perform maintenance themselves with technical assistance from ground control when that becomes necessary. It's unclear why future spacecraft would drastically inflate it's crew count to anything resembling a missile cruiser. If you're thinking it's because of maintenance, then not so. We routinely send spacecraft on multi-year journeys with no crew at all and extremely limited or non-existent self-repair capabilities.

Later on, you mention that you feel SquiddyBiscuit is being too specific regarding hypothetical situations. However, with the same breath you have no problems talking about how future spacecraft will have large crews, like an ocean going vessel. This is just a different specific of the hypothetical situation. Do unmanned spacecraft exist in this non-specific future? If not, why not? Do spacecraft with crews of 1 or 2 exist in this specific future? If not, why not? I anticipate answers relating to increasingly complex spacecraft with weapons that require maintenance on their long duration missions. However, before answering, consider carefully the missions that the spacecraft in question are going on. This may seem "too specific" for your liking, but it is entirely necessary - long duration missions are ones of transit between large bodies, not long term patrols away from home base. Would a large dedicated on-board maintenance crew actually be necessary for a combat spacecraft whose primary role was that of orbital defense?

As for propulsion, ion technology requires little propellant and has been used for at least one space probe already.

Ion drives have a high specific impulse (i.e. very efficient) but utterly trivial thrust. A combat spacecraft needs to maneuver, it's not going to be using something that can only pull 0.001G accelerations. Cheap, short range spacecraft can use chemical rockets, which have high acceleration but garbage specific impulse. Larger, more expensive stuff are more likely to use something nuclear or antimatter driven.

Even so, more crew always means significantly more mass dedicated to keeping the fleshy meatbags alive and breathing. Terrestrial combat craft have the luxury of ready access to their surrounding mediums. Surface vessels can draw air in, and even submarines can make their own air using seawater intakes. Eliminating a crew member means saving on air, water, food, personal effects and body mass. If there is some desperate, pressing reason for them to be on board, then they'll be on board. But it's vastly preferable for them to not be there at all.

You got this backwards. There is no friction in space so maintaining speed cost zero energy. Whereas water greatly slows you down. And a nuclear reactor does eject material.

You've read his post wrong on account of his poor wording choices. In technical terms, he's pointing out that ΔV decreases when mass increases. In order to hold ΔV constant, you need more fuel and reaction mass, which in turn increases total mass further.

[SquiddyCracker]

Yeah, that was just a bad choice of words on my part.

[Asbel]

You've read his post wrong on account of his poor wording choices. In technical terms, he's pointing out that ΔV decreases when mass increases. In order to hold ΔV constant, you need more fuel and reaction mass, which in turn increases total mass further.

Cool but it's harder for a sub to maintain constant acceleration than a spaceship since moving through space takes less energy than moving through water.

[davepoobond]

seems like to me all forms of current military should find their use on a spaceship.

The ship proper treated more like a navy ship (since ships on the ocean have a large amount of people working). You can assume its more like a submarine than a normal ocean-faring ship. and considering the likeness of space to "being underwater" the navy is the only one that should be using submarines.

The people who would be in the fighters launched from said ship have airforce-type rankings

infantry would have an army/marines structure.


the navy is the only current force that has had command of large ships on a large scale, so it makes sense to have them in charge.

[Woorloog]

What was the term someone suggested for space-based soldier? Espatier? It was somewhere in Atomic Rocket...
Not a bad name but it ain't catchy, you know.
Any troops based on space will be similar to marines, no? Functionally that is, small force, elite force. Rapidly deployed vanguard force.

Realistic military space branch will be sprung off from air forces likely, though they will be their own entity really. Space doesn't have much in common with air or water, neither is a good analogue.

Interestingly, where as carriers have replaced battleships on the seas, in space "battleships" will rule. Until people realise it is cheaper to fire a computer controller packet of metal with an engine to destroy another's battleship... (and naturally smaller one works as an interceptor missile just fine... and soon we'll have green vs purple argument).

EDIT, did anyone link to Atomic Rocket yet? Absolutely required for a discussion like this. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php
EDIT also, http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/

[thetrin]

It would be nice if it were based on neither. Land, sea, and air are all technically different from space, and we shouldn't just extend one of those to space. Just make a new ranking system. Makes sense to me.

[Ikael]

The Airforce moves around large crewed machines too, and needs just as many specialists to maintain it's gear. The amount of maintenance performed on aircraft is extreme. The only difference here seems to be that navy vessels cart specialists around on-board with them, while the Air force has them in hangars waiting for the Aircraft to return. What exactly about Naval ranks means that they're uniquely suited to this situation? Would a technician on-board a spacecraft operate more efficiently if he is or she refers to their superior officer as Captain rather than Commander?

Then again, the paralels between submarines and spaceships are far more logical than the ones betwen plains and the former. Planes are, essentially, a force projection mechanism: you projec them from their airbase, from where the whole logistic manteinance must be done, in order to perform quick hit and run attacks.

You fail to take in account that the freaking ginormous distances of space itself makes logistics a nightmare and hit and run attacks an impossibility, as in, physically impossible. One jet fighter can traverse Europe within hours, then hit its targets in Lybia and come back in the same flight session. That is impossible to do when talking about, say, a Mars VS Earth war, unless the pilot would turn into red goo due to acceleration, or the aircraft into pure energy, and let better not try to imagine such a thing when applied to inter - solar wars. Even applying some kind of hypothethical warp engine that allows instant teleportation, the combat maneouvers theirselves in an enviroment as open and hostile as space (1 hit instakills would seem to be the norm when fighting in the void) would require to stablish a good prudential distance within the combatants, more of a sniper duel rather than a heated dogfight. Space combats would be slow games of hide and seek that would require a crew trained to withstand long times of isolation, and that would devote theirselves mainly to the spaceship manteinance, since they would be months from the nearest military outpost. All of this sounds far more submarine - like rather than airrafty, so to speak.

The underlying assumption in your post is that spacecraft are vessels that require large crews, which has not been established.

I personally envision huge hulking spaceships with a bare minimum human tripulation (say, only a 5% or so of the spaceship itself would be devoted to human habitat), and with this tripulation mainly focused into manteinance tasks and perhaps, drone programming / manning. Steel mausoleums mostly empty of human presence, yet pregnant with weapons able to reduce a planet into ashes, traveling for months, isolated from the rest of the human race, playing a deadly tense game of hide and seek that could last for weeks against other invisible opponent while the spaceship's crew slowly looses their sanity. Good material for a Fincher movie!

I'm not sure if I'd any of these similarities are unique to the navy. Large masses of empty space sounds an awful lot like airspace, which has the added benefit of being much larger than oceans are deep (in the case of submarines) and three dimensional (unlike surface combat).

Nope, it sounds nothing like air warfare. Airship bases from where to project force can be built on almost every non - submerged tract of land (and on the high seas too thanks to carriers), that is, 1/4 of the Earth's surface. The proportion of land / mass where you can place a military space base in relation to the universe is, well, far, far smaller. There would be little to no interaction between spaceship and its base, it would have to work like an autonomous unit. Also, the aircrafts does not traverses great distance of empty space, but land littered with several potential targets.

In the case of Submarines, the focus of combat is on hide and seek, a concept which certainly does not apply in open space battlefields wherein you cannot hide your thermal emissions, and are therefore visible to your opponents when you are still days or weeks away from weapons range.

Even if space is mostly "empty", of course there are several resources at your disposal in order to cloack your ship: radiation fields, solar emissions and the such can affect your detection, while the vastness of space itself does help: you got a huge area to scan and a huge amount of information to process. So yep, it sounds like a kind of scientifical, methodical game of hide and seek to me. More brain than guts.

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Any troops based on space will be similar to marines, no?

Only insofar as they are also similar to the Rangers, or Airborne or what have you. Military marine forces are named as such because they specialize in naval operations like amphibious assaults. The word marine itself means "something to do with the sea", essentially. There is nothing unique to any terrestrial marine force that makes them better suited to close quarters fighting on-board a space station or landing on a planet in a landing craft behind enemy lines.

The former is the domain of just about every modern military force, and the latter is more akin to something you'd see from parachute / helicopter based infantry (which is also something covered by a broad array of military services). Note that conventional invasion is pretty much going to be impossible, logistically speaking, so they're going to be limited to spec-ops style mission when deployed on other people's planets.

The only way they would get called "Space Marines" is if they were literally operated by the USMC, or because of cultural inertia (so many things use space marines in fiction).


EDIT:

3am here, will pick up this thread in the morning.

[Tesseract]

Space whales and space pirates, man.

and he piled upon the whale's rainbow hump, the sum of all the rage and hate felt by his whole race. if his chest had been a cannon, he would have shot his heart upon it.
this is a neat thread, i hadn't given this much thought until now. must investigate.

[Deadbeat]

In System Shock 2 I usually go Navy with standard weapons because you destroy everything in your wake. Its the best way to build your character. The navy is the best.

[Woorloog]

Gotta sub to this thread.
Also, just how wide is this discussion? Should it be limited to its topic or is it actually wider, encompassing space warfare generally?

[jason10mm]

If we take it out of sci-fi and try to postulate an actual space war we will need to define our technology. Sloppy sci-fi has anti-gravity, ftl, endless life support, high efficiency thrusters with virtually no fuel storage, and almost omniscient computer AI to handle the "fiddly" stuff. Hard sci-fi usually has only one or two of these things at most. Are the spaceships armored leviathans or delicate flimsy cocoons? While I generally agree that space warfare will be dominated by computers, drones, and automated response systems, that stuff is kinda dull for a book. It is a hard line to track between the terrible human inefficiency of, say, Star Trek, and the cold robotic mechanics of Skynet. For fiction, you need to determine what human beats you want and then tailor the tech to match. This thread is turning more into describing the tech and then filling in the human parts, if any.

[SquiddyCracker]

If we take it out of sci-fi and try to postulate an actual space war we will need to define our technology. Sloppy sci-fi has anti-gravity, ftl, endless life support, high efficiency thrusters with virtually no fuel storage, and almost omniscient computer AI to handle the "fiddly" stuff. Hard sci-fi usually has only one or two of these things at most. Are the spaceships armored leviathans or delicate flimsy cocoons? While I generally agree that space warfare will be dominated by computers, drones, and automated response systems, that stuff is kinda dull for a book. It is a hard line to track between the terrible human inefficiency of, say, Star Trek, and the cold robotic mechanics of Skynet. For fiction, you need to determine what human beats you want and then tailor the tech to match. This thread is turning more into describing the tech and then filling in the human parts, if any.

Since sci-fi is rife of examples of sci-fi tech in spacial warfare, it'd be pretty funny if we tried to keep it as "hard" as possible in this thread.

So, we can make extrapolations of technologies that are available today, but not assume that we will somehow solve fusion in the next 50 years when it's an impossibility today.

I've given it a bit more thought, and I don't think that spacecrafts will ever encounter eachother in deep-space - like ever, unless they decide to meet up in XYZ point for a duel.
There is just so much space in-between Mars and Earth for an example, and even if you are on similar trajectories I much doubt you would ever accidentally come within sight of the enemy space craft in deep space.

Instead, most battles would probably take place around planets/moons/etc - around populated and non-populated objects in space. That opens up a lot of possibilities, such as the ship being nothing but command ships with drone pilots, but not carrying any fighter drones themselves. Instead the friendly planet/moon could launch the drones into space, and the pilots on the command ship remotely control these drones.

Why not have pilots on earth control these drones one might wonder?
Well, the command ship would most likely be closer to the actual battle, and thus there'd be a reduced lag as the pilots on the ship control the drones. In a fast-paced battles, especially when you're up against automated missiles, a lag of seconds might be the difference between life and death.

[yamo]

I love these kind of threads, it's like someone is putting words to all these thoughts I had in my mind for so many years.

Nerd group hug!

[Ducarmel]

Since sci-fi is rife of examples of sci-fi tech in spacial warfare, it'd be pretty funny if we tried to keep it as "hard" as possible in this thread. So, we can make extrapolations of technologies that are available today, but not assume that we will somehow solve fusion in the next 50 years when it's an impossibility today. I've given it a bit more thought, and I don't think that spacecrafts will ever encounter eachother in deep-space - like ever, unless they decide to meet up in XYZ point for a duel. There is just so much space in-between Mars and Earth for an example, and even if you are on similar trajectories I much doubt you would ever accidentally come within sight of the enemy space craft in deep space. Instead, most battles would probably take place around planets/moons/etc - around populated and non-populated objects in space. That opens up a lot of possibilities, such as the ship being nothing but command ships with drone pilots, but not carrying any fighter drones themselves. Instead the friendly planet/moon could launch the drones into space, and the pilots on the command ship remotely control these drones. Why not have pilots on earth control these drones one might wonder? Well, the command ship would most likely be closer to the actual battle, and thus there'd be a reduced lag as the pilots on the ship control the drones. In a fast-paced battles, especially when you're up against automated missiles, a lag of seconds might be the difference between life and death.

While its still true even if we travel space with enough efficiency that its worth it to do so encounters in open space might be rare depending one what your doing out in space. But I do think the chances for contact grows a lot if you decide to traverse space when you take in the account traveling on the fastest and least dangerous route from point a to b, it could mean a difference of just a couple of days to years. Of course the trade/travel routes wont be static, but we already have the means to extrapolate the quickest way to get from point a to point b at any given time with today's tech.

If trading/traveling is involved, you can argue there might be legitimate concerns of keeping trade routes safe. You probably can even predict that most people would be advised and most likely wait to travel from point a to point b when a certain window to travel there the fastest is available. I could imagine that fastest/safest/popular routes form point a to point b might be protected/monitored. Assuming if its profitable for interested parties to keep them open and safe. Essentially what the U.S. Navy does for trade routes in the open ocean. So maybe automated systems spread out as trade routes changes and maybe manned/ai patrols/escorts between them might be something that could possible become a reality.

[Zaphod]

The Airforce moves around large crewed machines too, and needs just as many specialists to maintain it's gear. The amount of maintenance performed on aircraft is extreme. The only difference here seems to be that navy vessels cart specialists around on-board with them, while the Air force has them in hangars waiting for the Aircraft to return. What exactly about Naval ranks means that they're uniquely suited to this situation? Would a technician on-board a spacecraft operate more efficiently if he is or she refers to their superior officer as Captain rather than Commander? The underlying assumption in your post is that spacecraft are vessels that require large crews, which has not been established. Extant spacecraft have tiny crews, the bare minimum they can get away with. The small number of crew members perform maintenance themselves with technical assistance from ground control when that becomes necessary. It's unclear why future spacecraft would drastically inflate it's crew count to anything resembling a missile cruiser. If you're thinking it's because of maintenance, then not so. We routinely send spacecraft on multi-year journeys with no crew at all and extremely limited or non-existent self-repair capabilities. Later on, you mention that you feel SquiddyBiscuit is being too specific regarding hypothetical situations. However, with the same breath you have no problems talking about how future spacecraft will have large crews, like an ocean going vessel. This is just a different specific of the hypothetical situation. Do unmanned spacecraft exist in this non-specific future? If not, why not? Do spacecraft with crews of 1 or 2 exist in this specific future? If not, why not? I anticipate answers relating to increasingly complex spacecraft with weapons that require maintenance on their long duration missions. However, before answering, consider carefully the missions that the spacecraft in question are going on. This may seem "too specific" for your liking, but it is entirely necessary - long duration missions are ones of transit between large bodies, not long term patrols away from home base. Would a large dedicated on-board maintenance crew actually be necessary for a combat spacecraft whose primary role was that of orbital defense? Ion drives have a high specific impulse (i.e. very efficient) but utterly trivial thrust. A combat spacecraft needs to maneuver, it's not going to be using something that can only pull 0.001G accelerations. Cheap, short range spacecraft can use chemical rockets, which have high acceleration but garbage specific impulse. Larger, more expensive stuff are more likely to use something nuclear or antimatter driven. Even so, more crew always means significantly more mass dedicated to keeping the fleshy meatbags alive and breathing. Terrestrial combat craft have the luxury of ready access to their surrounding mediums. Surface vessels can draw air in, and even submarines can make their own air using seawater intakes. Eliminating a crew member means saving on air, water, food, personal effects and body mass. If there is some desperate, pressing reason for them to be on board, then they'll be on board. But it's vastly preferable for them to not be there at all. You've read his post wrong on account of his poor wording choices. In technical terms, he's pointing out that ΔV decreases when mass increases. In order to hold ΔV constant, you need more fuel and reaction mass, which in turn increases total mass further.

I can tell this means a lot to you but I don't understand why you have to dismiss the Navy outright as if the services are purely interchangeable. Yes the Air Force maintains their own planes. They are used to doing this from well stocked bases with lots of room and a readily available supply chain.

I did not say that it would require a large about of crew just that the Navy already designs around the smallest crew possible and that I don't see a crew of one as practical.

The small probes we send out now do encounter problems and have to be repaired on the fly from the ground. I don't see this as practical once the ship is light years from the nearest base. Having a qualified crew that can fix problems on the fly is something that would be beneficial and something the Navy has experience with. Once again I am not arguing a crew of 1000s would be practical but that a small crew with varied specialties could be ideal and the Navy is used to being 1000 miles from the nearest port and having to manufacture their own solutions to problems.

The technology around ion drives is advancing and in the future I see it as a possible practical source of thrust. Nuclear propulsion was explored in the orion project which is another option. I was just trying to point out that fuel mass may not be as big of an issue.

I have no problem discussing these things, it's fun and the kiss my Navy ass thing was obviously in jest but I'm not sure your tone is exactly friendly here. If you're only interested in the semantics of rank names then no it does not matter I'm just trying to explain why the Navy has the experience in operations that could apply to spacecraft more than the other branches.

[Zaphod]

Instead the friendly planet/moon could launch the drones into space, and the pilots on the command ship remotely control these drones. Why not have pilots on earth control these drones one might wonder? Well, the command ship would most likely be closer to the actual battle, and thus there'd be a reduced lag as the pilots on the ship control the drones. In a fast-paced battles, especially when you're up against automated missiles, a lag of seconds might be the difference between life and death.

I did not multi quote since I am on my phone but I think that future battles might be fought more like a RTS game where the on board AI of the drone is doing a lot of the fighting and some commander is moving groups of units around on a screen far away from the action.

[spootime]

"Look out boyz! I see mahself a Spoice Murhreen!"

[SquiddyCracker]

I did not multi quote since I am on my phone but I think that future battles might be fought more like a RTS game where the on board AI of the drone is doing a lot of the fighting and some commander is moving groups of units around on a screen far away from the action.

That would be better if the AI was good enough. Is an AI controlled jetplane capable of beating a human controlled jetplane today?
If this isn't the case a couple of hundred years from now, or if the human combined with an AI are better than just an AI, you might need to supply pilots to the action.

Then again, if the pilots are remotely controlling the drones, any advantage they have might be negated by the increased lag versus an on-board computer making all the decisions.

You probably still need a control ship in the vicinity of the drones in order to reduce lag though, as having sending the signals from a planetoid will add possibly seconds of lag. So that's at least one use of spacecrafts in combat. I don't think I've ever read about this sort of space warfare, so we're doing alright as a think tank :D

[ThoseDeafMutes]

EDIT, did anyone link to Atomic Rocket yet? Absolutely required for a discussion like this. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php EDIT also, http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/

Yes, post #30 on the first page.

Then again, the paralels between submarines and spaceships are far more logical than the ones betwen plains and the former. Planes are, essentially, a force projection mechanism: you projec them from their airbase, from where the whole logistic manteinance must be done, in order to perform quick hit and run attacks.

A submarine is also a force projection mechanism, and so is a carrier, and a cruiser. We already know that the main difference is that aircraft stop in at their home base more often because they can only pack enough fuel and munitions for a relatively short mission duration.

That said, a typical spacecraft mission isn't going to be a long term patrol either, because there isn't any need for it to do so. Combat isn't going to take place in the middle of nowhere, it's going to take place along the optimal paths between bodies, and the space relatively close to said celestial bodies. The incredible ease with which one can detect other spacecraft approaching from gargantuan distances means that interception missions (what you might call a "hit and run") are not only practical, but commonplace. This infers that, for a huge number of spacecraft, they're going to be in "dock" most of the time anyway. An additional consideration is that the majority of the personnel in a Space Force is going to be people living on the ground at Earth in mission control type situations, or aboard space-stations (either weaponized space stations, or docks for other spacecraft, or construction facilities for new spacecraft, or military outposts on celestial bodies).

Even if space is mostly "empty", of course there are several resources at your disposal in order to cloack your ship: radiation fields, solar emissions and the such can affect your detection, while the vastness of space itself does help: you got a huge area to scan and a huge amount of information to process. So yep, it sounds like a kind of scientifical, methodical game of hide and seek to me. More brain than guts.

I've already linked this earlier in the thread, and now somebody else has on this page too, so I'll point you to the relevant page on the Atomic Rockets resource website; "There Ain't No Stealth In Space". Specifically, moderate investments in sensor networks (telescopes with some simple software, basically) can scan the entire sky in a matter of hours. If you're talking space military, then you're also talking huge budgets, so deploying 30-40 early warning satellites in high earth orbits pointing outwards, scanning the entire sky every 15 minutes, is practical. Flying towards a body in front of the sun will reduce detection time, but not by enough for what you're hoping for. They'll still get days of warning time. If you're drifting silently with no engine burn, then not only do you increase your mission time dramatically, but you're still detectible up to 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon, by passive sensors. There is also the problem that you need to slow down when you get to your target - unless you're going at mere orbital speeds, in which case your trip to the target between Earth and mars is going to take years. When you fire up your wimpy engines, you're visible out past pluto.

[SquiddyCracker]

I mentioned this before in the alien civilization thread, but if your goal is total annihilation (or just destroying vital military targets on moons/planets) then you could for example put on a number of powerful means of propulsion on one of the asteroids in the asteroid belt and set it on a trajectory towards a military base on Mars.

Do this for a dozen or so asteroids at once to make them more likely to hit the target.

I don't know how destructive such a weapon would be, but if you even at relatively low speeds it will probably be potent.

[Mondriaan]

I think the Navy would do a better job operating a space station style base than the Air Force would because they're already handling logistics that are more similar.

[SquiddyCracker]

When it comes to stations it doesn't matter whether it's navy or airforce personnel imho.
On the other hand, to get people up there you need G-force training and whatnot, so I'm guessing it'll be an airforce sorta thing (especially the protection of the manned space crafts to the space stations).

[Mondriaan]

When it comes to stations it doesn't matter whether it's navy or airforce personnel imho. On the other hand, to get people up there you need G-force training and whatnot, so I'm guessing it'll be an airforce sorta thing (especially the protection of the manned space crafts to the space stations).

The best US military pilots are in the Navy. I know this from Top Gun.

[Zaphod]

That would be better if the AI was good enough. Is an AI controlled jetplane capable of beating a human controlled jetplane today? If this isn't the case a couple of hundred years from now, or if the human combined with an AI are better than just an AI, you might need to supply pilots to the action. Then again, if the pilots are remotely controlling the drones, any advantage they have might be negated by the increased lag versus an on-board computer making all the decisions. You probably still need a control ship in the vicinity of the drones in order to reduce lag though, as having sending the signals from a planetoid will add possibly seconds of lag. So that's at least one use of spacecrafts in combat. I don't think I've ever read about this sort of space warfare, so we're doing alright as a think tank :D

Good points. I'm not sure AI would be better on a one to one basis but with swarms of drones the AI could be deadly. One thing I would like to see covered more in Sci-Fi is the hacking that will go on along side the conventional conflict. I could see an equally intricate and strategic fight occurring in cyberspace at the same time missiles are destroying enemy vessels.

[dojokun]

The time from takeoff to landing of an aircraft is significantly shorter than the time from embarkment to docking for a naval vessel. Thus, aircraft are designed for very specific purposes and are given very specific tasks. Naval vessels are designed for more versatility compared to that of an aircraft, and are given a wider range of missions. Also, the more occupationally diverse crew of a spacecraft would be more similar to the occupationally diverse crew of a naval vessel than the specialized crew of an aircraft.

[Gotchaye]

Most of the disagreement seems to be about what spaceships would look like. If they have substantial crew requirements and are out in the field for long periods of time then the Age of Sail or submarine analogies make a whole lot of sense, regardless of what battle tactics are relevant. If they're almost entirely AI-controlled and have one or two people in them, then I don't see that there's any good historical example of similar logistics. If they're entirely AI-controlled then we really don't need most ranks. If spaceships are small and based on planets or space stations and only go out for short-term duty, then the Air Force is a good model.

I think the OP is way too concerned about what space combat would look like and not nearly concerned enough about what daily life on a ship would look like. A point made in a lot of science fiction is that discipline on a spaceship is important in much the way that discipline on a sailing ship is important. The point of ranks just is to set up a command structure to maintain discipline in a particular way. So that's the similarity that matters.

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I did not say that it would require a large about of crew just that the Navy already designs around the smallest crew possible and that I don't see a crew of one as practical.

The navy certainly does field vessels with tiny crews, but then again, the Air Force also fields aircraft with crews greater than 2.

The small probes we send out now do encounter problems and have to be repaired on the fly from the ground. I don't see this as practical once the ship is light years from the nearest base. Having a qualified crew that can fix problems on the fly is something that would be beneficial and something the Navy has experience with. Once again I am not arguing a crew of 1000s would be practical but that a small crew with varied specialties could be ideal and the Navy is used to being 1000 miles from the nearest port and having to manufacture their own solutions to problems.

Light years from the nearest base? Shit son, I don't think this discussion has moved beyond Sol before. Even if we do end up, in 100 years, with an interstellar military force, which requires a significant crew (I mean, it would just be robots doing it then anyway, but for arguments sake), that wouldn't have any impact on the intervening period, in which these craft did not exist, and everything was operating far closer to home, on far shorter missions, with far smaller craft, with minimal crews.

I have no problem discussing these things, it's fun and the kiss my Navy ass thing was obviously in jest but I'm not sure your tone is exactly friendly here. If you're only interested in the semantics of rank names then no it does not matter I'm just trying to explain why the Navy has the experience in operations that could apply to spacecraft more than the other branches.

Well we need to be careful here when discussing this. Obviously, we're not going to just lift a bunch of random technicians from any branch of service and say "Yo, you've gotta repair this spaceship now dawg!" We'd be training personnel to do on-the-fly repair and maintenance (when possible), regardless of whether we call this a Space Navy or Space Force or some other random term, and irrespective of where we have drawn the inspiration for their ranks from. These people could easily come from any service where qualified, in the same way that Space shuttle crews come from wherever the people have aviation experience (Air Force pilot vs Navy Pilot, etc).

I don't even know if I'd call this an argument about semantics. I think we all know that what we call it is ultimately irrelevant because it will operate identically regardless. Personally, I'm bothered on a fundamental level by referring to it as a "Navy" on account of space obviously not being an Ocean. Like, if somebody wanted to call it the Space Army or the Space Coast Guard or something, everybody would be up in arms about how ridiculous that was. The question of RANK rather than just branch name is purely aesthetic. I don't like Admirals being in charge of space fleets because of its naval connotations.

[Zaphod]

The navy certainly does field vessels with tiny crews, but then again, the Air Force also fields aircraft with crews greater than 2. Light years from the nearest base? Shit son, I don't think this discussion has moved beyond Sol before. Even if we do end up, in 100 years, with an interstellar military force, which requires a significant crew (I mean, it would just be robots doing it then anyway, but for arguments sake), that wouldn't have any impact on the intervening period, in which these craft did not exist, and everything was operating far closer to home, on far shorter missions, with far smaller craft, with minimal crews. Well we need to be careful here when discussing this. Obviously, we're not going to just lift a bunch of random technicians from any branch of service and say "Yo, you've gotta repair this spaceship now dawg!" We'd be training personnel to do on-the-fly repair and maintenance (when possible), regardless of whether we call this a Space Navy or Space Force or some other random term, and irrespective of where we have drawn the inspiration for their ranks from. These people could easily come from any service where qualified, in the same way that Space shuttle crews come from wherever the people have aviation experience (Air Force pilot vs Navy Pilot, etc). I don't even know if I'd call this an argument about semantics. I think we all know that what we call it is ultimately irrelevant because it will operate identically regardless. Personally, I'm bothered on a fundamental level by referring to it as a "Navy" on account of space obviously not being an Ocean. Like, if somebody wanted to call it the Space Army or the Space Coast Guard or something, everybody would be up in arms about how ridiculous that was. The question of RANK rather than just branch name is purely aesthetic. I don't like Admirals being in charge of space fleets because of its naval connotations.

You seem really hung up on this. Since you don't seem to believe in the value of institutional experience maybe you should not have started the title of the thread with 'Discussion'.

All I am saying is the Navy has way more experience operating vessels far from home for an extended period of time compared to the other branches. Long and often isolated deployments of 6 months or more are standard while an air force jet wont be out for more than a day. The Navy is used to supplying ships with the food, materials and parts to make a long term mission work with limited space and weight requirements. Why ignore that just because space is not a ocean?

[Tawpgun]

Stargates universe uses the airforce.

[SquiddyCracker]

Most of the disagreement seems to be about what spaceships would look like. If they have substantial crew requirements and are out in the field for long periods of time then the Age of Sail or submarine analogies make a whole lot of sense, regardless of what battle tactics are relevant. If they're almost entirely AI-controlled and have one or two people in them, then I don't see that there's any good historical example of similar logistics. If they're entirely AI-controlled then we really don't need most ranks. If spaceships are small and based on planets or space stations and only go out for short-term duty, then the Air Force is a good model. I think the OP is way too concerned about what space combat would look like and not nearly concerned enough about what daily life on a ship would look like. A point made in a lot of science fiction is that discipline on a spaceship is important in much the way that discipline on a sailing ship is important. The point of ranks just is to set up a command structure to maintain discipline in a particular way. So that's the similarity that matters.

I think the small crew+AI model will end up describing the space corps pretty well. With so many variables needing to be calculated and so many things that can go wrong, you want the craft to be as automated and self-sufficient as possible. I don't think it's at all like on a submarine, where a disastrous failure can in any way be repaired (say a breach in the hull) with plain old human handymaking. As they will be travelling between objects, let's say between Mars and Earth, then any non-disastrous failures can be repaired at a space station and the disastrous failures simply becomes an acceptable risk.

This sort of structure would be unlike anything before as you've pointed out, and while initially taking on personell from currently existing branches, end up with vastly different personell requirements and a completely different military culture. With a minimal crew onboard ships, and much lying outside of the control of people, individualistic and intelligent people will be pilots of this military branch. The spacestations might still follow a conventional rigid social structure though.

[ThoseDeafMutes]

You seem really hung up on this. Since you don't seem to believe in the value of institutional experience maybe you should not have started the title of the thread with 'Discussion'.

If you want to talk about "institutional experience", we can certainly discuss the relative experience that the Air Force and Navy have with designing, launching and operating real space-craft. I disagree, however, that such vague things as "experience operating large crewed ships" or "experience supplying remote vessels for extended periods of time" in any way translates to increased capability in operating space-craft. If it did, then why isn't the ISS filled with sailors and naval technicians? Or any space programme, generally? These are problems that can be rationally solved by members of any branch of military service, not just the navy.

Why ignore that just because space is not a ocean?

Because the definition of a navy is a military branch that conducts operations primarily at sea? I should think this is quite straight forward. In fact, go back and re-read the OP again, because it concisely covers in about three paragraphs the entire discussion that has taken place in this thread.

[Zaphod]

In fact, go back and re-read the OP again, because it concisely covers in about three paragraphs the entire discussion that has taken place in this thread.

Well we can at least agree on one thing. You definitely titled the thread incorrectly.

[cutmeamango]

Earth exploration.

First ships to the unknown, then planes to the known.

[kame-sennin]

Great thread. I think it's hard for people to debate this without first understanding what type of combat these craft will be engaging in. As far as I can see, the question is whether spacecraft will be analogous to infantry, artillery, or cavalry. Fighter jets and bombers are analogous to cavalry. They strike at the enemy at high speeds for a short duration. I don't think space combat will be anything like this.

If a spacecraft carrying a payload of missiles is sent on a mission to attack another planet, the spacecraft would spend the duration of the journey in solitude. The craft would not be likely to encounter any enemy craft until it was in sensor range of its target due to the vast expanse of space. A "search and destroy" mission launched by the enemy would be futile as they would be unlikely to ever find anyone. Most offensive combat missions would be long, uneventful voyages culminating in the launch of a payload upon reaching the target. Most defensive missions would involve watching for the enemy and then deploying counter missiles. If sensor ranges were long enough, defensive ships would likely meet offensive ships in the "middle" of their journey, resulting in a very conventional pitched battle. Because of this, I think spacecraft would actually most resemble mobile artillery, not cavalry.

That said, a typical spacecraft mission isn't going to be a long term patrol either, because there isn't any need for it to do so. Combat isn't going to take place in the middle of nowhere, it's going to take place along the optimal paths between bodies, and the space relatively close to said celestial bodies. The incredible ease with which one can detect other spacecraft approaching from gargantuan distances means that interception missions (what you might call a "hit and run") are not only practical, but commonplace.

I don't follow. I agree with your other statements, but if you can detect an enemy at massive distances, that means travel time will also be long. Further, if you can see the enemy coming a long way off, they can see you too. A hit and run mission is based on attacking the enemy before they realize you are there. It seems like long range detection and the extreme distances between important targets (planetary bodies) would lead to long travel times culminating in pitched battles at predictable locations. In a sense, it would be like marching an army into Russia. The enemy knows you're coming as soon as your campaign begins and can plan an attack at a specific location well in advance.

[SpectreFire]

This doesn't seem so much like a discussion and more like an opinion the OP has and is dead set on explaining to everyone else why it's right.

Marines were originally meant to do ship to ship fighting. Which would be fitting for spaceships if they had to board enemy vessels.

Air Force doesn't crew anything that's nearly the size of the ships the Navy has. Talk to me when the Air force has a plane that requires a crew of over 6000.

By your logic, calling a spaceship an aircraft would be just as stupid, because there is no air in space. Also, craft usually refers to a smaller vessel, ship refer to larger vessels.

Air Force has no experience operating large vessels or commanding fleets. They have zero business being in charge of a space fleet.

The reason scifi writers use these terms so often, is because it's they're the most logical ones to use. Of all our military branches, a space branch WOULD be the most similar to the navy.

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I don't follow. I agree with your other statements, but if you can detect an enemy at massive distances, that means travel time will also be long. Further, if you can see the enemy coming a long way off, they can see you too. A hit and run mission is based on attacking the enemy before they realize you are there. It seems like long range detection and the extreme distances between important targets (planetary bodies) would lead to long travel times culminating in pitched battles at predictable locations. In a sense, it would be like marching an army into Russia. The enemy knows you're coming as soon as your campaign begins and can plan an attack at a specific location well in advance.

The post I was responding to there was making a comparison to the role of an aircraft, wherein it launches, performs a mission and returns to base quickly. He referred to these as "quick hit and run" missions. I was trying to say the spacecraft may well be doing exactly the same thing, but stretched over far longer timescales - spotting an enemy on approach, launching from orbit to intercept, delivering a payload, returning to base.

Depending on the spacecraft in question, it may or may not have the ability to abandon an approach to a hostile body. If you launch an intercept early, they will spot your intercept and possibly abort if they don't feel confident. Waiting until they start their deceleration phase before launching an interception means that they may well be unable to do anything about it, because they are at their peak velocity, heading towards you, and have to cancel out their entire acceleration, then start going back the other way. If it took them 5 days to accelerate, then it will take them 5 days to decelerate, then 5 days to accelerate an equivalent amount the other way.

The defending planetary body will have an overwhelming advantage.

[SquiddyCracker]

I don't think boarding will ever become a reality in space, so I'm starting to wonder if people manning the space crafts will even have man-to-man combat training. Docking a ship is already tough biscuit to break, and I don't think you'd be able to do so without the cooperation of your enemy.
Space stations, sure, there are feasible ways of smuggling on-board enemy troops.

But yeah, everything depends on what size the ships turn out to be. I don't think a space ship of a thousand, or even a hundred, crew members will confer any particular advantages over a larger number of smaller space crafts. The larger the crew, the more you have to "spend" to ensure that the habitable area of the ship is well protected, and re-design the whole thing so that one hull breach would not kill everyone (divide the ship up in multiple compartments that are in a battle at all time locked down, making yourself a bigger target, and even then not necessarily offering weapon superiority as a 5-man vessel can be of equal size but with a smaller habitable area wield so much more weaponry and thicker hull plating.

In addition to the control ships outlined previously in this thread, I think these sort of missile boats will only come into play in battles outside non-defended/badly-defended objects. If a martian force of missile boats came all the way to earth for an example, they would never be able to match the defensive arsenal of an entire planet.

So we've kinda identified two different types of Space force/navy military vessels for use in combat:

Missile boats

Whether fast/slow, packed with a great number of missiles which will primarily target planets/objects with bad ground-to-space defensive abilities - basically non-established outposts. They will carry a percentage of missiles for defensive purposes, in case they come into combat with another missile boat.

Drone command ships

Either carrying with them drone pilots (if pilots confer an advantage over un-assisted AI steering of drones) or a smaller number of commanders controlling the overall scope of the battle if it confers an advantage. If the AI is superior in both ways, it could just be nothing more than a cargo ships for these drones. In battles at well-defended planets which can supply the drones, these ships can strip down to become even smaller targets and just control the drones sent up into orbit from the planet.

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Marines were originally meant to do ship to ship fighting. Which would be fitting for spaceships if they had to board enemy vessels.

Ship to ship infantry fighting doesn't even happen on earth, unless you're referring to border patrol boarding unarmed cargo vessels and the like. Spacecraft in orbit zip around in different directions at speeds of several kilometers per second, and go substantially faster than this between celestial bodies.

Air Force doesn't crew anything that's nearly the size of the ships the Navy has. Talk to me when the Air force has a plane that requires a crew of over 6000.

Did you even read this thread? Why would a spacecraft have a crew of 6000?

By your logic, calling a spaceship an aircraft would be just as stupid, because there is no air in space. Also, craft usually refers to a smaller vessel, ship refer to larger vessels.

Yep, calling it an aircraft would indeed be stupid, unless it actually was an aircraft (like a spaceplane, which is both). Good thing nobody in this thread has argued that, then.

Air Force has no experience operating large vessels or commanding fleets. They have zero business being in charge of a space fleet.

Nobody is discussing the Air Force being in charge of future space fleets. They're discussing a Space Force being in charge of it, which presumably had its origins in the Air Force since the real life US Air Force actually has military spacecraft and satellites.

The reason scifi writers use these terms so often, is because it's they're the most logical ones to use. Of all our military branches, a space branch WOULD be the most similar to the navy.

In lots of SciFi, the naval analogy is appropriate because they literally are exactly like naval vessels. If your idea of what real life space combat would be like comes from watching Star Wars or Star Trek, then it's no-wonder you think that's the most logical comparison.

[TacticalFox88]

I'm lol'ing at people who think Space Combat as portrayed in Sci-Fi wil be anything close to like it would in Real life.

When a lot of science fiction authors attempt to portray fighters in space, they tend to rely too much on the nature of terrestrial aircraft as a model—which as we all know gain their particular flying characteristics from the millions of tons of air they fly through. An airplane's wings are designed to get lift from the atmosphere, and they're always having to fight the friction of the atmosphere and Earth's gravity to keep aloft.

Rudders, elevators, and ailerons allow airplanes to yaw, pitch, and roll through the air. Banking (rolling to one side until you reach a particular angle) puts an airplane into a turn that slowly, or quickly, changes its direction of flight. Kill the engine on most airplanes, and their wings will generate enough lift that they can still glide for a bit (hopefully to a controlled landing).

Since space is a near-perfect vacuum, there's hardly any pressure; starfighters can't rely on rudders, elevators, or ailerons to maneuver, though they don't have to worry about lift or (significant) friction either. Spaceships maneuver in space purely through use of thrust (or some equivalent) to accelerate in a given direction; with no air resistance, they can cut their thrusters and coast until a change in speed and direction is needed.

There's also the issue of gravity. Fighter aircraft in the Earth's atmosphere utilize gravity-assisted turning maneuvers like the High-Speed Yoyo, Low-Speed Yoyo, Barrel Roll Turn, Split S, and the Immelmann turn. There's also a whole school of thought in fighter combat called the "energy fight," where fighter pilots utilize the Earth's gravity to assist in outmaneuvering their opponents. In space, where gravitational pull is much more subtle, these tactics are of decidedly less utility.

Let me stop, before I go into too much detail.

[Woorloog]

The only similarity there is beetween naval warships and space warcraft is that the crew has the spend long time stuck on the same boat. Though in space the missions will be longer.
A submarine is a better comparison actually (but not functionally, no stealth in space).

Everything else is completly different. Everything.

Any future space military forces will (likely) evolve from currently existing space agencies, military or civilian. Ranks will be likely similar to any other branch, actual rank names are irrelevant (that said, i'm inclined to think a space general will be called admiral due to pop culture). Just as all currently existing military branches have been formed over the centuries.
Other branches experience is irrelevant.

[soundscream]

I await our battlestar galactica futurepast

[SquiddyCracker]

I'm lol'ing at people who think Space Combat as portrayed in Sci-Fi wil be anything close to like it would in Real life. When a lot of science fiction authors attempt to portray fighters in space, they tend to rely too much on the nature of terrestrial aircraft as a model—which as we all know gain their particular flying characteristics from the millions of tons of air they fly through. An airplane's wings are designed to get lift from the atmosphere, and they're always having to fight the friction of the atmosphere and Earth's gravity to keep aloft. Rudders, elevators, and ailerons allow airplanes to yaw, pitch, and roll through the air. Banking (rolling to one side until you reach a particular angle) puts an airplane into a turn that slowly, or quickly, changes its direction of flight. Kill the engine on most airplanes, and their wings will generate enough lift that they can still glide for a bit (hopefully to a controlled landing). Since space is a near-perfect vacuum, there's hardly any pressure; starfighters can't rely on rudders, elevators, or ailerons to maneuver, though they don't have to worry about lift or (significant) friction either. Spaceships maneuver in space purely through use of thrust (or some equivalent) to accelerate in a given direction; with no air resistance, they can cut their thrusters and coast until a change in speed and direction is needed. There's also the issue of gravity. Fighter aircraft in the Earth's atmosphere utilize gravity-assisted turning maneuvers like the High-Speed Yoyo, Low-Speed Yoyo, Barrel Roll Turn, Split S, and the Immelmann turn. There's also a whole school of thought in fighter combat called the "energy fight," where fighter pilots utilize the Earth's gravity to assist in outmaneuvering their opponents. In space, where gravitational pull is much more subtle, these tactics are of decidedly less utility. Let me stop, before I go into too much detail.

No, do go into detail.
Though I do not think that purely-space based fighters probably won't be very useful (in space, why not just use missiles with the same agility as a space fighter?), so instead we might get airplane-esque space fighter that fight in the upper atmosphere as well as space (or if they are launched from earth to space).

[Woorloog]

No, do go into detail. Though I do not think that purely-space based fighters probably won't be very useful (in space, why not just use missiles with the same agility as a space fighter?), so instead we might get airplane-esque space fighter that fight in the upper atmosphere as well as space (or if they are launched from earth to space).

Spaceplane-fighter? Planning to include them in a scifi world i'm working on (homebrew PnP RPG).
Realistically, not much point in them.
Those would have to be tailored for each planet invidually. Air pressure etc... EDIT as far as i know anyway. Of course not sure how things work in upper atmoshphere...
Missiles would be cheaper and more practical really. Or a ground based laser.

[Log4Girlz]

Interesting analorgies. I think since space is kinda different, its kinda a combination of Aeronautical and Naval nomenclature.

[Woorloog]

Interesting analorgies. I think since space is kinda different, its kinda a combination of Aeronautical and Naval nomenclature.

And its own stuff. I hate when people in SF say "Combat Air Patrol" in space...

[Log4Girlz]

And its own stuff. I hate when people in SF say "Combat Air Patrol" in space...

I want to be apart of the Combat Vacuum Patrol.

[SquiddyCracker]

I reckon that space soldiers will be the nerds of the military, which I welcome.
With the computers taking part of most of their work, they can't really act too arrogant about their importance.

[Woorloog]

I want to be apart of the Combat Vacuum Patrol.

Eh, Combat Vacuum... This is photoshop material.

Seriously, the whole concept of Combat Air Patrol is not applicable to space. You see everything, you don't need patrols as such.
Orbital space with a lot of space stations, asteroids and other traffic might warrant a patrol of somesort, but mostly for inspection purposes.

I reckon that space soldiers will be the nerds of the military, which I welcome. With the computers taking part of most of their work, they can't really act too arrogant about their importance.

Any military spacecraft will need to have well hardened electronics. NNeEMP weapons, if they can be delivered close enough, may be very dangerous to spacecraft. Reliance to computers is kinda worrying...
EDIT also, militaries need to be careful about who programs their software. Backdoors, flaws, bugs...

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Any military spacecraft will need to have well hardened electronics. NNeEMP weapons, if they can be delivered close enough, may be very dangerous to spacecraft. Reliance to computers is kinda worrying...

Generally speaking, if a device is close enough (within a few hundred meters) to do this sort of damage, then the device detonating may as well not have a warhead. Realistically speaking, these missiles are going a several km/second minimum, possibly 20-30 km/s or greater. The difference between warhead detonation range for an effective EMP blast or nuclear blast or what have you vs just crashing into the target is like 1/10th of a second flight time max.