Military Tactics

Thanks for your service! That's pretty funny.

I had a friend who was in the ASA back in the early 70s. He picked that so he could let his hair grow a bit and not have to wear a uniform most of the time.

Anyway, he told me that they (the ASA) normally stayed out of 'war games', but one year they were included. They then did as they were trained, and the opposing force got (false) orders to prepare to return to their bases as the exercise was cancelled due to a crisis in the middle east...

Did 23 years in the US Navy and some of the tactical manuvers the Aurora is doing during combat are very sound tactics. Though I do admit that ramming is frowned upon these days. The long range missle and torpedo attacks are current. The idea is to hit your enemy as far from you as you can and get him to expend his close in defensive weapons and then hammer him. Suffice to say I do relate to the tactics employed by the Aurora and her crew.

Long Distance: The next best thing to being there! 🙂

Yep, the series is close enough to reality (or at least my perception of it) that I enjoy it. I tend to think reality might have sicked more for Nathan that int he book, but a little escapism is good fun to read.

Is the ship having a "Top" and a "Bottom" a sound idea for a spaceship? Or is it just surface warfare ideas directly translated?

On first thought I thought it was kind of silly, but then I realized for this kind of warfare it might make sense to have a tougher skin on one side. That would naturally be called the bottom hull, it seems.

What do you think?

Having a 'top' and 'bottom' would depend on tactics and technology. It was stated in the books that the 'bottom' side was officially for aerobraking in an atmosphere. This seems rather excessive considering that the thrusters she'd need to prepare for that maneuver could just as well slow the ship down by themselves. The fact that the point defense clusters aren't on the lower side of the hull indicate it wasn't designed to be a shield, but it has turned out to be one.

From the drawings of the Aurora, it would appear that the weapons themselves are small compared to the size of the hull. This would allow the weapons to be concentrated, which is generally a good thing when you can keep your opponent far enough away so you can use them. Aurora was able to take advantage of that against the Takaran (sp) ships by jumping in close so all her weapons could bear and few of the opponents could. The missile and torpedo launchers, I would think, would not have to be 'exposed' to the enemy for them to work.

At least we know that the Aurora's energy weapons were going to be lasers. I would think those would have been great for point defense...

Sure, I would bet they (lasers for point defense) might be better than physical rounds that get used up pretty fast. In fact, the rebels identified that energy weapons gave away their position, but in almost all other categories it seems that energy weapons would make more sense. Faster, more flexible, easier to replenish...

The problem I have with the idea of using rail guns in space is that the rounds are ballistic and once they're fired if they miss the target they will travel on forever.

What if some poor ship one day gets hit by an errant round that was fired during these battles 10,000 years later half way across the galaxy? It's a lot of space junk to be throwing out at high velocities.

Also, if the aurora knew the position of the enemy ships they could speed up to near FTL speeds, jump right in close fire their rail guns at the enemy which would have inscribe velocities as they zip on by (basically like a super fast strafing run) and jump away before the enemy even knew what hit em. The velocity of the ship moving and then the added velocity of the rounds would tear the enemy's ship to shreds.

David's Debris Factor sounds like the current state of Earth orbit. We need to clean up our act in order to protect the environment... wait, I have heard this song before...

Pretty soon Richard Benjamin will be scooping it all up. 🙂

You have a fair point David, but there is the bit of probability to consider. Strictly speaking, space is vast expanses of emptiness dotted by extremely rare bits of matter. The chances of an object the size of even a planet hitting anything larger than an asteroid (1 km or so) as it passes through a system is extremely low. There is also the matter that even if you hit a ship, the some of the fragment that come off from the impact are going to be going at a fraction of the speed of the original projectile should the projectile pass through the ship. Those fragments would likewise impact with a fraction of the kinetic energy as the original projectile. However, a fraction of a kiloton of TNT is still likely to be around a ton of TNT in some cases and can cause a good amount of local damage.

The moral of the story is that space warfare is inherently a bad thing for anything living in the universe extremely unlucky enough to be at the wrong place in space and time.

I was looking for numbers on how bad earth orbit is cluttered with debris, and I found some cool websites run by NASA http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/. Check it out. Very scientific.

As to debris, this quote from Wikipedia was interesting:

Currently, about 19,000 pieces of debris larger than 5 cm (2.0 in) are tracked,[1] with another 300,000 pieces smaller than 1 cm below 2000 km altitude.[1] For comparison, the International Space Station orbits in the 300–400 km range and both the 2009 collision and 2007 antisat test events occurred at between 800 and 900 km.[1]

So...

Was just re-reading the interview between Na-Tan and Lt. Telles. It is clear the Marines were responsible for at least part of the Ghatazhak character.

At USMC boot camp, we were told this is the order we should expect.

1) Mission Accomplishment.
2) Troop Welfare.

At first glance, this sounds rough. Upon further reflection, however, it makes some sense. If you reverse the order, then you'd never go anywhere near combat, and you would eventually be overrun. If you follow the order above, you accomplish the mission as quickly as possible, hopefully shortening the overall time spent at risk. Plus, there have been studies that show the maximum numbers of losses occur at the end of a battle, as one side is running away. They tend to drop their defenses and take massive casualties at that time. Don't surrender and you may take other damage, but not on that scale.

Plus, be unrelenting a few times like that and you develop a reputation. Reputation often wins a battle before it even starts. Ask the Germans after the battle of Belleau Woods, when they called the Marines "Hounds of Hell" (aka Devil Dogs) due to their unrelenting nature.

One question: Why does the Aurora stand and shot at incoming missiles? Why not let them get close, then jump a few thousand meters past them? Let the missiles try and come about, burning their fuel and making wide turns. Pretty soon the missiles are out of fuel.

Or even jump to the far side of the target. Turn around, and shoot. You don't have to have much conventional speed, since you are using Jump Engines to leap about. stay at 1m/s tops, so you can turn and head in a different direction easily...

Or am I missing something?

One question: Why does the Aurora stand and shot at incoming missiles? Why not let them get close, then jump a few thousand meters past them? Let the missiles try and come about, burning their fuel and making wide turns. Pretty soon the missiles are out of fuel.

Or even jump to the far side of the target. Turn around, and shoot. You don’t have to have much conventional speed, since you are using Jump Engines to leap about. stay at 1m/s tops, so you can turn and head in a different direction easily…

Or am I missing something?

My guess is that it's a bit too defensive in nature, which causes a few problems. It trades offensive capability for defensive, in that it requires a "jump, fire from one direction, jump fire from another direction". Since the enemy ships tend to have good missile defenses, and jumping close enough to use other weapons would subject you to getting hit by their weapons. Although, light-speed lag does provides an advantage to the jump ship based on distance. Those additional jumps also require energy, which although I'm thinking the Aurora is good for hundreds of such jumps, they could start to really add up if the enemy starts making the aurora jump at least once for every missile fired. It also requires additional time, since each jump avoiding missiles is likely to allow for more missiles to be fired, which requires more jumping to avoid those. It also might be that the author (and his advisors) hadn't thought of the tactic.

Reguardless of why it hasn't been used. It seems like it would make for a good delaying tactic for a single ship. However, it does seem like it would be rather effective for a number of jump fighters, which are much less able to simply take the hits.

The Aurora actually has used that tactic, or one similar to it to some extent, however, it is not as easy to apply as you might think.

One of the things you have to consider as well are the relative speeds between objects. Just because the Aurora might be traveling slowly doesn't mean that the enemy target is doing so. And at the speeds we're talking about, you'd basically have a second or two (if that) to fire.

One other factor you're not considering is that the Aurora cannot jump through something. To do so would be the same as trying to plow your way through the object in normal spaceflight. (Doesn't usually work well.) So, jumping to just the other side of a target requires a course change (so that you're not colliding with the target during your jump), a short jump, then another course change and jump. Of course, you could always just change your course a few degrees, and jump just beyond the aft end of the target and fire. However, since that target may be traveling at considerable speed, and you're traveling in the opposite direction, whatever you fire has to make up that difference, which may not be possible.

One other factor to keep in mind is that as the story progresses, their ability to make extremely accurate jumps (both long and short) improves, and as a result, so do their tactics. For example, now they can program a series of jumps to take place automatically. This has been used by the jump shuttles and the Falcon, but not yet by the Aurora.

Ryk