What would space combat look like? How would it be conducted...

More than likely stealth would have a lot more to do with avoiding sensors. Such as preventing your ship from putting off too much of a heat signature.

And absorbing or deflecting active sensors

I always liked the lore fluff in Mass Effect of ship crews cooking themselves to death to prevent heat from escaping and being detected.

Spy satellite subterfuge almost certainly already occurs.
The astronauts are sometimes referred to in internal memos as "non-terrestrial agents", and while "agents" could just "employed people", I'll wager they're referred to as "agents" when they're also paid to keep a look out for spy satellites and/or sabotage them.

It would be very similar to modern air combat. Unlike the movies, most dogfights are not two fighters chasing each other's tails doing hair-turn spins. Or at least they haven't been for quite a while. In reality, these jets are miles away from each other and rely on radar and long range weapons.

So in space combat you would have to do something similar. If you just tried to shoot down a starfighter in front of you then even if you hit them the debris would be a death sentence. I'm guessing that for safety space warfare would have to be thousands of miles away from each other and have a lot of satellite arrays for coordination. I don't even think individual fighters would make sense at those distances and with those sensor abilities needed. It would be more likely to have larger battleships making up fleets rather than private fighters.

The idea that inspired the novel "Ender's game" was how combat could be developed in space. I really recommend reading the book. The movie is completely different and kinda shitty.

If you imagine strategic objectives in space (plants, moons, asteroids, space stations, etc.) as akin to islands in the ocean, then space warfare will probably look similar to modern surface navies. You'll need personnel/cargo/equipment transports, the ability to bombard/siege an objective from long distance, space carriers to provide smaller craft for various additional operations, etc. Maybe we'll use a ton of robots and the like, but for the next 100 years there shouldn't be much of a difference from today.

>What would space combat look like?
That would depend strongly on WHY people are fighting in space.

Obviously it would be over religion

Depends on the era. Initially it would just be missiles. Then there would be lasers for point defense against missiles along with very thick fronts of vessels to protect from debris. Then there would be much larger lasers dominating the mass of ships to overheat other ships from a great distance. Then there would be reflective coatings, heat shields, and large heat sinks.

Shooting a cone of ballistics at the enemy larger than they could maneuver out of.

this, it would be really hard to fight when debris are taking out your entire fleet before you find the enemy.

Vaporize what you can with a laser and then face the debris with a thick forward facing shield.

Yeah that sounds like the human race alright

Big ballistics

Easier to track and dodge then, else the enemy would have to be designing such huge ships to tug around so much mass that them making them is a victory for you.

I'm just pointing out the pros and cons of both takes on carpet bombing the enemy with ballistics, large or small. Maybe there is an ideal middle ground. Maybe the whole premise is stupid compared to just using missiles or lasers. We can't be sure.

There ain't no stealth in space:
projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#id--There_Ain't_No_Stealth_In_Space

>Easier to track and dodge then
Really? Track how?

>radar
Fucking ECM-equipped slugs could absolutely be a thing, hell, you could charge their capacitors (because batteries would be dumb) by using the electromagnetic force used to accelerate them. Then there's the issue of multiple warheads, self-guiding warheads, and finally utilizing the principles of air-burst munitions and shaped charges. 155mm howitzers in space with acceleration assisted using electromagnetism with their own electronic warfare suite with RCS that only need to be near a target before exploding in it's general direction? Hell yes you can bet your sweet ass that will be a thing if it's necessary.

>lidar
Yeah, sure, like light-absorbent materials don't exist. Sure it would only diminish the effectiveness of any system looking to detect the munition but really, that's all it has to do right? When your shell is within fifteen kilometers and is traveling at 1.9 km/s that leaves roughly seven seconds for the crew to recognize the threat, formulate an appropriate course of action, initiate the correct evasive maneuver, and then for the maneuver to take place itself. Remember, proximity detonation is absolutely a thing as well as things like continuous-rod warheads.

Then there's the possibility of the enemy's energy weapons attacking simultaneously with kinetic munitions such as slugs, shells, and missiles. Fancy lidar and radar systems are cool but if they're being blasted with enormous lasers along with directed microwaves and who knows what the fuck else then space combat becomes a multi-spectrum affair; just like every other aspect of warfare. Blinding the enemy while you lob every fucking thing under the sun at him is a time-tested tactic that works, it's why we have electronic and cyber warfare, it's partially why anti-materiel rifles exist.

>it would just very quickly make LEO unusable by anyone
Saddam's eastward pointing supergun would have been able to launch a phone booth sized projectile filled with sand in a counter rotating orbit, sandblasting all satellites in LEO very quickly and render space inaccessible for more than 100 years. This was mentioned back when they stopped his project. It was in the press so I cannot guarantee the accuracy.

I struggle to believe it would have worked. However 1/3 of all space debris currently in orbit is the result of the chinese blowing up 1 of their own satellites

...

...

Are those fucking animals inside the spacesuits?

What would combat in space sound like?

A lot like heavy breathing if you were in a space suit

it would be extremely unsustainable. A single bolt flying through space could take down a space station through explosive decompression. The energy it takes to get those materials into space is staggering.

It doesn't matter what method. Larger objects are easier to detect than otherwise identical smaller objects. That's the only reasoning I'm using.

But yeah, stealth is an interesting point I don't think has been brought up yet.

How do you spot an object in near earth orbit if its covered in vantablack, has its engines turned off and its heat sinks pointed away from you?

there would be no need for combat if you're a spacefaring civilization

What if another spacefaring civilization wants to fight you?

why would they want to fight you

>Hurr, you have to use enormous nuclear-propelled space-dreadnaughts with zero hull insulation and magical sensors that achieve the sensitivity of the best deep-field telescopes all while performing a rapid wide-angle full-sky survey because muh computing power and there's absolutely nothing fundamentally contradictory about this at all
Christ.

Because they think you're preparing to launch a relativistic kill vehicle at their planet.

Use satellites in a higher orbit to detect it.

It will stick out like a sore thumb to the US's Space Based Infrared System(SBIR). SBIR consist of a constellation of satellites designed to detect spacecraft and missiles. You can't direct heat sinks away from the whole constellation.

Also if it's black then you can find it by watching for it transiting the earth. Vantablack is also a great blackbody emitter

The heat must go somewhere user.

why even bother?

Because you've received reports that they're preparing to launch a relativistic kill vehicle at your planet and you want to get them first.

They are religious fanatics who think all alien life must die

It would take place the same way most scientific expeditions in space are done today, with remote operated vehicles. Need to keep the enemy and battleground far away from home world as possible. The epitome of space battle with be swarm of von numan probes duking it out canalizing each other for scrap material to build bigger armies.

youtube.com/watch?v=hhPXxb-Efes

huge capital ships, drones, missiles, and rail gun spam.

first one to get hit or run low on propellent, forcing a retreat, loses.

engagement ranges in light seconds and detection ranges in light minutes.

infrared detection will be the biggest thing.

>we need to build a relativistic kill vehicle because we received reports that they are building a relativistic kill vehicle because they received reports that we are building a relativistic kill vehicle because...
Kind of stupid desu, senpai.

...

>The Cold War

Could be worse
1d4chan.org/wiki/Chakat

Then there was the threat of invasion.

"Everyone is hyper paranoid fucks that build bright as fuck weapons and use them at the drop of a hat" is a retarded premise. If they are paranoid enough to believe this shit, they shouldn't do anything because long range, relativistic weapons are going to be obvious as fuck to anyone looking and they believe everyone is looking and everyone wants to kill them.

What happens when you have MAD but communication lakes a centuries for a round trip message?

I haven't read the thread and won't because I'm sure it is filled with "MUH STEALTH" idiots.

Open space warfare will be an exceedingly boring and extremely fast affair. Enemies can be detected instantly, anywhere in space, there's literally 0% chance of hiding from line of sight using any type of technology. Once found, the enemy is instantly destroyed via lasers. You don't see anything happening. No light show. Just the enemy losing control of their vessel. It probably won't even explode (hopefully not). It will just become inert.

Projectiles won't be used and will probably be banned by all sides.
Diplomacy, drone tech, and laser tech will reign supreme.
Anti-laser coating/reflective shields will be the order of the day.

It would involve lots of chaff technology for defense against most attacks.

There'd be dust chaff for energy weapons, larger chaff for explosive weapons and mine chaff for everything else.

Most battles would be won by ramming technology or forcibly welding both ships together and trying to board and take over the enemy ship.

There'd be saboteurs on jetpacks trying to plant bombs on enemy ships while the fighting rages.

I'd always imagined that there wouldn't be any lazers, instead, object accelerators would accelerate really heavy and strong objects; perhaps graphene at near light speeds and launch them to the enemy ship.

>blowing shit up
>using particles and shit as a screen

It is like you want space to be completely unusable to anyone at all.

>Enemies can be detected instantly, anywhere in space, there's literally 0% chance of hiding from line of sight using any type of technology
Automatically you've proven you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

We have trouble detecting simple rocks made mostly out of iron or nickel, materials that return radar signals with amazing clarity, what the fuck makes you think this paradigm will just up and change when space combat becomes a thing?
>waahh stealth doesn't exist in space, shut up!!!
Your only other option is visual detection and, again, we have trouble with rocks and they're not coated in superblack enamel. Of course anything that dark is going to get heated up, so then it becomes an issue of IR detection and if you're guessing "rocks in space" is going to be my answer to that then yes, you would be correct.

"Stealth" is just a mitigation of detection, nothing is ever invisible, but saying this doesn't exist when the detection methods are spotty at best is pretty dumb of you.

Some more points that I want you to explain so you don't look like you're clueless to even basic military theorem:
>Projectiles won't be used
Why?
>will probably be banned
Why?
>by all sides.
Who?
>Diplomacy, drone tech,
Don't necessarily disagree these will be important, but
>and laser tech will reign supreme.
Why, when:
>Anti-laser coating
exists?

>reflective shields will be the order of the day.
Science fiction is not reality, there is no such thing as shields. Even our most powerful lasers are extremely easy to defeat anyway, but I'd like to see your reasoning for this.

Guided missiles over extremely long distances. Possibly energy weapons in the very distant future if they ever become practical and the heat is manageable.

No gravity means missile payload would probably be as high as missile engines could permit, meaning the first to strike would probably be the first to win.

Fighters and small spacecraft would be next to useless, as would electronic warfare unless some way to get it to work over long distances is figured out.

Spaceship are not rocks; rocks don't produce heat. You don't blow up shit in space because you have to use space too; one exploding space ship can mean the end of all space travel for millennia. Reflective shielding as in mirrors.

>as would electronic warfare
Electronic warfare would be even more significant in space combat than it already is.

For now I'm ignoring the rest of your post, I want you to explain your reasoning here; be detailed.

>Spaceship are not rocks; rocks don't produce heat
No, the sun does, and if you think bodies in the solar system aren't detected using infrared radiation then boy, do I have news for you.

>You don't blow up shit in space because you have to use space too
Who said anything about "blowing shit up" anyway? Even so, space combat will absolutely include armored spaceships to deal with the inevitable, especially since the debris cloud of existing wrecks are full of objects simply too small to track and have the same kinetic energy as a 5.56x45mm M193 at the muzzle. Obviously larger projectiles carry more kinetic energy at the same velocity.

>one exploding space ship can mean the end of all space travel for millennia
lmao so this is all taking place in Earth's gravity well? Congratulations, everything you've said is pointless because none of it will happen, and even if it did see above regarding the point about armor.

>Reflective shielding as in mirrors.
Pointless bullshit, better off with choosing lighter, cheaper, and more sturdy armor over clunky mirrors that only enhance visual detection chances.

Thanks for playing.

> What would space combat look like?
Impossible to say. At the moment, the situation favours offence over defence so heavily that there's no contest (a missile that can take down a spaceship is far easier to build than a spaceship that can avoid or withstand a missile). And that's not likely to change within our lifetimes. Beyond that, the calculation will involve technologies that haven't even been considered yet.

As for stealth: the distances involved (assuming deep space rather than planetary orbit) mean that active detection is a non-starter. Radar (and similar) techniques scale to the inverse-fourth power of distance: the total amount of radiation received and thus reflected by the target follows an inverse-square law, as does the fraction of that reflection received by the detector. So radar tells your opponent where you are but doesn't tell you where your opponent is.

You'd have to hope that either the target is emitting significant amounts of power or they're being "painted" by a nearby star or large planet. Even then, you're still dealing with an inverse-square law, which means that you need a big receiver to detect anything that's a significant distance away.

yeah, also in a scenario where theres space war every nation is bound to have sensors all over the solar system

also, a ship would have to be built launched and maneuvered totally in secret in order to be kept from the other side. Just one instance of the ship being spotted it would leave to a predictability of its path, and any effort to hcange it will make it extra detectable

but really, even if it ran at the bare minimum to keep an astronaut alive it would be spottable from pluto

IMO, it would likely be people boarding ships instead of actually attacking the ships themselves, and fighting for control like they used to do in naval warfare because debris would be a serious problem.

Something like this

WE cant know exactly how it will be but we can have some certainties>

1)no space fighters

2) no combat will be done at close distance

3) there will be nothing dramatic about it and will mostly be fought by computers, humans will be there to take political decisions alone

4)there will be no such thing as armor

5)electronic warfare will be super important as it already is on land theaters

6)probably weapons will be rail guns, lasers and kinetic kill missiles .

7(no reason to use nukes all spaceships will be so fragile that even the slightest damage will be a complete win

8)large parts of it will be decided upon who gets forced to spend more propellant

9( if it happens it will be VERY far ahead into the future once theres something really valuable in space and its so unpractical because of basic physics that theres a good chance that it will never happen at all

10(also, no stealth that shit is just impossible

Here's my reasoning.

A quick correction first--I was thinking of offensive electronic warfare at the time. Interfering with guided missiles and the like would be incredibly useful.

In space combat, the range between crafts would likely be thousands of kilometers or more. In fact, if you're fighting in orbit, your target may be on the other side of the planet.

Due to the inverse square law, such large distances would make it impossible to disable the enemy's systems with EMP or some other kind of offensive EM weapon.

how would this even work?

As far as I know all the astronauts are going to ISS and they sure as shit aren't taking pot shots at satellites zipping by at speed

>I was thinking of offensive electronic warfare at the time
Even with the inverse square law in the way it's not going to hold anything back, pointing a dish at a drone and blasting it with white noise on the same frequency the control signal is on would be extremely effective. That's actually the type of shit done to strike at drones and every modern military force is putting a lot of focus into that. Then there's the issue of communications and active radar jamming, these things would be more difficult at range but nowhere near impossible.

Expect to see planets/moons/stations (depending on the nature and maturity of space combat, of course) surrounded by clouds of interference, right along with lasers to blind the enemy while their radar is jammed so the missiles (and possibly ballistic projectiles) can close the distance without being detected.

source?

And this is from what now?

youtube.com/watch?v=xXQXpEldaek

How exactly would we carry out the warfare in space, like weapons and technology wise. Space is a whole different ball park really, ranging from distances to the fact that there is low gravity. How would we go about this?

Yes, but not quite the same way. Radar is only the preferred means of detection and tracking up to LEO. Beyond that, passive electro-optical detection using telescopes - some optical detecting reflected sunlight, some thermal detecting radiated heat - is the most successful method for detecting objects. Therefore "stealth" spacecraft would be oriented more towards mitigating these signatures than for radar. Some of the same principles still apply - for instance, an exterior shape that minimizes specular scattering is still desirable - but radar-absorbent materials would be largely pointless and the surface would most likely have a mirror finish to minimize absorptivity and emissivity.

Masking propulsion signature would be especially problematic. Propulsion involves very large amounts of power and heat, which is dramatically more visible than a non-maneuvering spacecraft or other object following a ballistic trajectory. To illustrate this, consider that finding an ordinary geostationary satellite is nigh-impossible with radar and requires thorough searching with a high-power telescope (or previous knowledge of where to look). By contrast, a DSP or SBIRS satellite in geostationary or even high orbit can detect and pinpoint a rocket launch (anything from a humble Scud missile on up) instantly with a wide-angle infrared sensor. Given the fact that likely maneuvering regions (on/near planets, Lagrange points, etc.) will be under close scrutiny, and the fact that once an adversary has your orbital parameters, they will be able to extrapolate your position until you maneuver (and will also know where to look for you using super-sensitive high-magnification tracking sensors that are unsuitable for broad search), having the ability to mask propulsion is every bit as important as masking your cold signature. I suspect active jamming and deception techniques will be necessary to achieve this.

Well, here's a start...
youtube.com/watch?v=LC97wdQOmfI
youtube.com/watch?v=W1HCFM9yoKo

Well one thing is for sure, space wars will not involve any manned spacecraft. Sorry sci-fi.

thats bullshit, there will be manned spacecraft

huamns are necesary to take political decisions without light lag, yes, even solar system level lags can be critical.

Also there are some capabilities will be out of machines reach for a long millions of times

but yes, they are gonna be severely understaffed and ai will do most

maybe like 3/4 people for whole flotilla

semi-autonomous drones. Most drones would be single-use in that they would not be recovered and reused. Humans and their life support equipment and supplies are wasted mass that reduce delta v and max acceleration. Manned ships won't go any closer to combat than they must.

In that case its an insurgency and piracy and is pretty much localized within the same habitat and its immediate vicinity.

You've ended up firing more mass of ballistics than the ship you're targeting.

Except that astronomers can't find the suspected ninth planet in the Oort cloud. Astronomers lose track of asteroids and comets all the time.

>literally can't find a planet
>but we could find every thing else
kill yourself.

have you ever talked with an astronomer? there is no mistery in the solar system ninth planet is flatearth tier conspiracy theory

mines everywehre

there will be no other combat

anything you do in space gives off radiation and radiation travel at the speed of light, any have decent computer can parse out background radiation from machine sources. the only thing yo ucan do is power down and lie in ambush, hence mines

You sir are an ignorant idiot. It isn't my responsibility to educate you. 99% of what you have assumed is actually incorrect. Good day, sir.

>creating a new asteroid belt/dyson swarm that takes the same mass of planets to be effective

>arxiv.org/abs/1602.06116v3

>space faring civilization cant move some mass

hurr durr

Kind of like the battles between battleships and carriers in WW2.

...no

Except yes.

Can a device actually emit enough EM-waves which could kill people +10KM away on a singular direction.

>space battles will basically be mariners swiveling guns on the deck, running around and pointing out space Kamikazees

ya its a called a star

Anything a human can do an AI can do better (including politics).

negative nope, you dont understand what politics is

politics isnt something that can be done good or wrong

it is the expression of political will

the politician is someone whos trying to exhert HIS power, what HE wants, he can only trust that to a man not to a machine.

besides, an above human AI is probably millions of years into the future no matter what singularity fags say, you can read into any of the facts and itt will confirm it

>he can only trust that to a man not to a machine
Why?

>AI is probably millions of years into the future
How can you be that delusional?

>644 ▶
> (You)
haha
delusional
me
not
you
the one that is wrong
who is you

prey to your singufaggod