@krugeruwsp, on 01 November 2011 - 10:48 PM, said in Military Hierarchies:

Well, the most scary thing of all I don't think has even been brought up yet: relativistic or FTL weapons themselves. If you've got the power to accelerate a 100 kg mass to roughly .95C, you've got a recipe for planetary devastation. If your FTL concept does not require the use of a supporting subspace like dimension, it's even more frightening. A warp capable ship (manned or unmanned) that flies into a planet, space station, or fleet with the sole purpose of being a kamikaze run? If you have a fleet than can drop out of FTL on the edge of a system or even around say, the orbit of Mars or Jupiter, you'd likely hardly notice them, if you did at all. Fire off a 100 kg relativistic missile, sit back, and watch the ensuing chaos.

Well, it's hard to be stealthy in space. But yeah, a relativistic projectile would be devastating to any target.

@crow-t--robot, on 02 November 2011 - 08:21 AM, said in Military Hierarchies:

Worse yet, just target the system's star, in order to cause it to either explode or collapse on itself to create a blackhole. In terms of orbital strikes, mass drivers that can propel either localized asteroids or space junk of destructive size can also be effective in causing chaos if the point is to not save the planet for habitation or resource collection.

Targeting a star is only good if you yourself live very, very far away, and conquest is not as important as extermination. Does make for a good failsafe device though. Trigger a stellar bomb if you get overrun and your planet is about to be taken by the enemy with no hope of you someday getting it back.

The thing is still that you'd have to be looking for them. I don't know anyone who just runs a high-resolution infrared scan on the entire sky every day just for the hell of it. I'm also skeptical of the claim that the shuttle's main engines would be seen on infrared cameras as far away as Pluto. Having done infrared astronomy, I'm just not buying that kind of resolution or sensitivity, not on wide-field scan telescopes. Definitely agreed that stealth in space is not as likely as it is on Earth here, though. Also, it depends highly on your scan capabilities. If you're stuck a light-speed scans, and you do happen to be looking in the right direction, the orbit of Mars is roughly 20 light minutes away. Fleet drops out of FTL (assuming FTL flight but not scans) and launches a relativistic projectile, then departs. You see a little infrared flash for a bit, and then 10 minutes later, you go boom. A 100 kg missile traveling at .95C is not going to show up on your telescope until pretty close to smack time unless you have one super-fantastic high resolution camera.

@krugeruwsp, on 08 November 2011 - 11:34 AM, said in Military Hierarchies:

The thing is still that you'd have to be looking for them. I don't know anyone who just runs a high-resolution infrared scan on the entire sky every day just for the hell of it. I'm also skeptical of the claim that the shuttle's main engines would be seen on infrared cameras as far away as Pluto. Having done infrared astronomy, I'm just not buying that kind of resolution or sensitivity, not on wide-field scan telescopes. Definitely agreed that stealth in space is not as likely as it is on Earth here, though. Also, it depends highly on your scan capabilities. If you're stuck a light-speed scans, and you do happen to be looking in the right direction, the orbit of Mars is roughly 20 light minutes away. Fleet drops out of FTL (assuming FTL flight but not scans) and launches a relativistic projectile, then departs. You see a little infrared flash for a bit, and then 10 minutes later, you go boom. A 100 kg missile traveling at .95C is not going to show up on your telescope until pretty close to smack time unless you have one super-fantastic high resolution camera.

I would assume, if you existed in a universe where people liked to slag planets with relativistic projectiles, you'd surround your important planets with thousands or millions of redundant high resolution scanning arrays, in several nested spheres going out as far as you can afford.

Maybe so, but even if that occurred, how the hell would you stop one aimed at you?

Targeting a star is only good if you yourself live very, very far away, and conquest is not as important as extermination. Does make for a good failsafe device though. Trigger a stellar bomb if you get overrun and your planet is about to be taken by the enemy with no hope of you someday getting it back.
(/quote)

I agree that it would be very hard to survive from destroying a system's star if you pull the trigger. It would have to be done either by a guided/remote weapon or a kamikaze attack due to the energy and force that will come from either the explosion or the pull of the blackhole (if near the event horizon).

@krugeruwsp, on 08 November 2011 - 02:05 PM, said in Military Hierarchies:

Maybe so, but even if that occurred, how the hell would you stop one aimed at you?

If the tech is advanced enough to make all the complicated calculations to fire a projectile across a system, avoiding all the other moons, planets, asteroids, ships, space stations, and stars in the way, in a time span so incredibly short that the enemy fleet would have no time to prevent you from dropping out, shooting, and retreating, then surely the defenders would have time to calculate and fire their own relativistic projectiles at the relativistic projectiles (or employ other counter measures).

Though in all honesty, the amount of force needed to shatter a planet, let alone a star, would be pretty ridiculous and generating the energy to create that much force would also be pretty ridiculous. That's energy, and expense, that would likely be used for other things (such as cheaper ways to beat an opposing nation) and we haven't even gotten into how big such a projectile would need to be (a bullet the size of a large tank would be too small by far). Now if you're only shooting hard enough to simulate large meteor impacts, your energy requirements got a heck of a lot lower but your calculations just got incredibly more complex if you're actually trying to aim for anything on the planet and not just taking pot shots without caring that half of your shots may wind up in oceans. And if you happen to jump out on the wrong side of the planet? Well, there goes the surprise.

This website is all about how to destroy the Earth in a fashion that it is no longer a planet. Relativistic projectiles are covered in #9. The smallest object he gives some numbers for is a 5 trillion ton asteroid fired at 90% light speed. I don't see your typical military spacecraft being capable of transporting, loading, and firing a projectile of that size at that speed (especially undetected). You would likely need a very large, specialized spacecraft. And 90% light speed, while fast, is more than slow enough for a reaction time, especially if fired from the system's edge (for reference, light from the Sun takes over a hour to reach us).

For reference, EVN's Raven, the largest military ship in the game, has a mass of 1.2k tons. The largest ship, the Leviathan, has a mass of 10k tons. From EVO, the Voinian Dreadnought has a mass of 4k tons, the UE Cruiser at 1k, the Freighter at 250, and the Igazra at 150. In EVC, the Bulk Freighter comes in at 800, the Confed Cruiser at 1k and the Rebel Cruiser at 850. Yeah... we're going to need bigger ships.

At any rate, blowing up planets or ruining their ecosystems is a perfectly good waste of planets and resources. There's plenty of planets out there, sure, but not many that support life.

This post has been edited by JoshTigerheart : 09 November 2011 - 01:36 PM

Agreed on pretty much all accounts, except for that if things land in the ocean, they're likely to do more damage, not less. Relativistic weapons are not likely to do much good in destroying a planet or star. There was recently a speculation that a comet plunging into the sun set off a CME, but was quickly dismissed as coincidence. The only reason I can think of for blowing a planet up entirely would be to bash it into tiny pieces and harvest the metals. There is a reason for a space-faring only society to do that, in terms of raw materials.

On the whole, however, it depends on if you plan to occupy the planet or simply wipe out the inhabitants and render the place unusable by anyone. There are far better ways to destroy a civilization, however. I don't think biological warfare has been brought up.

Probably more effective than relativistic weapons is an engineered virus with a long incubation period in which the virus is contagious but not symptomatic, and then a short period to death after the onset of symptoms. The long incubation period allows the virus to spread over the civilization quickly without being noticeable, then striking. A nanotechnology or hybrid organic/inorganic virus that can be "turned on" would be even better, allow the virus to disperse before activating with a signal of some sort and attacking its host.

Reducing a society to nothing with the gray goo scenario is also equally frightening, now that I'm thinking of things. In fact, most of these sorts of interstellar warfare aspects are probably things we should take a look back at the last mrxak massive debate topic on The End of the World As We Know It, or something to that effect. It was a few years ago, if I recall correctly.

@crow-t--robot, on 08 November 2011 - 05:12 PM, said in Military Hierarchies:

I agree that it would be very hard to survive from destroying a system's star if you pull the trigger. It would have to be done either by a guided/remote weapon or a kamikaze attack due to the energy and force that will come from either the explosion or the pull of the blackhole (if near the event horizon).

That's not really what I meant. I meant, presumably, that you have your own planets and populations to worry about, and if any of them are within a certain number of lightyears (and they probably are, otherwise why are you at war?) those planets and systems are going to be affected by a nearby star blowing up. Not instantly, but a few years down the line, you may wish you hadn't done that.

@joshtigerheart, on 09 November 2011 - 01:30 PM, said in Military Hierarchies:

Though in all honesty, the amount of force needed to shatter a planet, let alone a star, would be pretty ridiculous and generating the energy to create that much force would also be pretty ridiculous. That's energy, and expense, that would likely be used for other things (such as cheaper ways to beat an opposing nation) and we haven't even gotten into how big such a projectile would need to be (a bullet the size of a large tank would be too small by far). Now if you're only shooting hard enough to simulate large meteor impacts, your energy requirements got a heck of a lot lower but your calculations just got incredibly more complex if you're actually trying to aim for anything on the planet and not just taking pot shots without caring that half of your shots may wind up in oceans. And if you happen to jump out on the wrong side of the planet? Well, there goes the surprise.

Well, I don't think we're talking about destroying a planet, just wiping out all intelligent life, or at least enough of it to prevent serious resistance. Or possibly just destroy the planet's capital, or major command and control centers. Really depends on your needs for the planet and population afterward.

@krugeruwsp, on 09 November 2011 - 05:35 PM, said in Military Hierarchies:

Agreed on pretty much all accounts, except for that if things land in the ocean, they're likely to do more damage, not less. Relativistic weapons are not likely to do much good in destroying a planet or star. There was recently a speculation that a comet plunging into the sun set off a CME, but was quickly dismissed as coincidence. The only reason I can think of for blowing a planet up entirely would be to bash it into tiny pieces and harvest the metals. There is a reason for a space-faring only society to do that, in terms of raw materials.

Even then, that's sort of the thing you only need to do once in a very long time. The amount of iron at the center of our planet (and probably plenty of others out there) should last your civilization a very long time if you could extract all of it.

@krugeruwsp, on 09 November 2011 - 05:35 PM, said in Military Hierarchies:

On the whole, however, it depends on if you plan to occupy the planet or simply wipe out the inhabitants and render the place unusable by anyone. There are far better ways to destroy a civilization, however. I don't think biological warfare has been brought up.

Probably more effective than relativistic weapons is an engineered virus with a long incubation period in which the virus is contagious but not symptomatic, and then a short period to death after the onset of symptoms. The long incubation period allows the virus to spread over the civilization quickly without being noticeable, then striking. A nanotechnology or hybrid organic/inorganic virus that can be "turned on" would be even better, allow the virus to disperse before activating with a signal of some sort and attacking its host.

Reducing a society to nothing with the gray goo scenario is also equally frightening, now that I'm thinking of things. In fact, most of these sorts of interstellar warfare aspects are probably things we should take a look back at the last mrxak massive debate topic on The End of the World As We Know It, or something to that effect. It was a few years ago, if I recall correctly.

Biological warfare on a planetary scale, and really, that's the only scale such things can be done on, in a modern society, has a lot of risks. You're going to have lots and lots of mutation potential, potential for it to spread to other things and then spread back to your own troops, etc. If you want to render a planet uninhabitable for a very long time, I guess it could work, but it's not as effective as neutron bombs or even chemical warfare if you want to move in after you've killed the natives.

The last big mrxak topic was linked to in the first post of this one.

@joshtigerheart, on 09 November 2011 - 01:30 PM, said in Military Hierarchies:

light from the Sun takes over a hour to reach us).

No dude, it takes about 8 minutes.

1 AU (distance from Earth to Sun) = 149,598,000 kilometers
C (speed of light) = 300,000 km/s
149,598,000 km/300,000 km/s = 498.66 seconds

498.66 s * (1 min/60s) = 8.3 min

(8 minutes since I only have 1 significant figure)

Also, on the subject of EMPs, EMP protection for electronics is passive, not active; you will not up the power requirements of an electrical system simply by giving it protection against EMPs.

Also, electronic components for military use have had shields from the EMPs produced by nuclear explosions and other means since about the late 40s/early 50s, when scientists realized that nuclear EMPs reap havoc on power grids and unshielded electronic devices. To a space faring civilization in the distant future EMP shielding should be no problem. (Especially when you consider electronics are vital even for the existence of our present, 21st century civilization.)

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 09 November 2011 - 07:53 PM

(quote name='mrxak' timestamp='1320884770' post='2090908')
That's not really what I meant. I meant, presumably, that you have your own planets and populations to worry about, and if any of them are within a certain number of lightyears (and they probably are, otherwise why are you at war?) those planets and systems are going to be affected by a nearby star blowing up. Not instantly, but a few years down the line, you may wish you hadn't done that.

I see your point on the aftereffects causing more havok to the surronding star systems. I was more coming from a "scorched earth" or the Roman "poison the well" mentality in terms of why you would destroy the star if you don't need the system (or the systems around it) and want nobody to have it and spite your foes. I really have liked how this discussion has gone.

@mrxak, on 09 November 2011 - 07:26 PM, said in Military Hierarchies:

Biological warfare on a planetary scale, and really, that's the only scale such things can be done on, in a modern society, has a lot of risks. You're going to have lots and lots of mutation potential, potential for it to spread to other things and then spread back to your own troops, etc. If you want to render a planet uninhabitable for a very long time, I guess it could work, but it's not as effective as neutron bombs or even chemical warfare if you want to move in after you've killed the natives.

The last big mrxak topic was linked to in the first post of this one.

Ah, yeah. Here it is. The Downfall of Civilization.

I agree that blowing up a planet for the materials should last a civilization, even a large one, quite a while, especially considering the amount of metals available in metal-rich asteroids that would be easier to mine.

Biological warfare depends on a few things. If it's a hybrid organic/inorganic nanite sort of virus that can be programmed to attack a specific target on signal, then the risks go down significantly. An engineered virus is a little harder to figure with. Mutations are funny things. Some viruses are very stable and do not change very much. That's why the polio vaccine has remained essentially unchanged for around three quarters of a century. Membrane-bound viruses like the rhinovirus and influenza virus mutate much more often, which is why you need a new flu shot every year, and even then you still might get sick because the vaccine can only protect against the most common strains going around that have been checked against.

In terms of how it might affect your landing troops, it depends if you're fighting the same species as you. Viruses, especially tailored viruses, are not prone to species-jumping. That's why things like the swine flu and avian flu were so frightening in the last few years. Either they had the potential to jump species or actually did. Those viruses are far and few in between, though. Worst comes to worst, make sure you have the vaccine and that your troops get inoculated before heading down.

The problem with neutron bombs or chemical dispersants is that they require significantly more resources to deploy, and they're not exactly subtle. Tailored biological agents, if perfected, would be slower and potentially riskier, but simpler to deploy. In fact, if you wanted to eliminate a civilization without them knowing it was you, that would be the way to go. All you need is one person who can start the epidemic sent to one of the major travel hubs.