From: pksuk@mothra.syr.EDU (Peter K. Suk)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Weapons systems?
Summary: Stealth would be cheaper.
Keywords: stealth space combat
Date: 15 Nov 92 18:20:33 GMT
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.science
Organization: Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

----- mhorning@zeus.calpoly.edu (Mark E. Horning (Captain Neutrino)) writes:
>----- (Peter K. Suk) wrote:
>
>[Stuff was here]
>
>>...challenging, even if they're miles wide, and reflect sunlight.  What
>>about something a few-dozen feet wide that doesn't reflect or emit
>>hardly anything at all?  (At least in your direction.)  
>>
>>If such a device spent its time accelerating toward you, by the time
>>it could be easily detected by starlight occlusion, it might be too
>>late to stop the thing.  (A fraction of a percent of c should do the 
>>trick.)  How would you protect, say, a permanent orbital installation 
>>from such a missle?  (Assume it has homing capability.) 
>>
>>Any takers?
>>
>Same way you keep an F-15 from being shot down. Massive ECM.  With those
>90 degree tailfins an F-15 has the radar signiture of most bombers, but
>has enough Electronic countermeasures to knock out most incomming
>missiles.
>	Normal guns would be better for use against a permenent orbital
>station. ( It can't doge) ;-)

To keep the station from dodging, you'd have to:

	o Get close enough to the station so that it wouldn't have time
		to dodge.  Since a huge, trillion-dollar ultra-
		sophisticated orbital installation would also lack
		any weapons with higher velocities, you could EASILY
		get within 1000km with, say a .44 Smith and Wesson  ;-)

		[& on a more serious note]

	o Stealth your bullets and fire them from really far away.  

Also, since the missle I mentioned is a _Stealth_ weapon, it wouldn't have
ANY kind of active detection systems.  It would home in on IR and visual.  
Obviously, the installation (which we're calling 'base' from now on) 
would produce enormous amounts of heat.  The personnel, the computers, 
and especially, the power production facilities would stick out like a 
sore thumb in the IR.  

Now, let's say that we're going to rely solely on 'ECM.'  Let's, for now,
just tackle the IR end and leave the visual alone.  You'd have to build
a lot of decoys which have the same IR signature as the base.  We'd
have to duplicate the blackbody curve as well as the amount of energy,
so these things would have to be about as big as the base.  So far, so
good.  We could do this by surrounding the base and the decoys with
thin shells, like 'Echo' ballons with holes in them and a small amount
of structural support.  We'd have to have a lot of these, too.  When one
builds a Trillion-dollar base, even a 1% chance of the base being 
utterly destroyed by any one missile is unacceptable.  

However, you'd also have to modify the traffic patterns of ships going
to and from the base, otherwise the base would be given away by the ships
which supplied it and shuttled its personnel back and forth.  (If you don't
like the idea of AI this sopisticated, then have the missle launched from 
a fighter, which veers off and depends on its huge velocity for defense.  
The fighter would be stealthed too, of course.)  The upshot of all this, 
then, is that you'd have to visit the decoys with the same amount of 
traffic as your base.  

The situation is much improved if you use stealth.  Stealth everything.
(True, you can't stealth the supply shuttles, but you CAN stealth orbital
transfer shuttles.  Have the supplies go via a depot.  Manuver the depot
often for its defense.)  To achieve the same level of defense, you would
still need decoys.  But these decoys would have to produce a lot less IR,
and wouldn't have to be visited quite as often.  Of course, you still
have to play these obfusticated shell games, but Stealth offers a vast 
improvement.  

Of course, the example of an orbital base is a really bad one.  They 
turn out to be too expensive to protect.  (Any takers?)  I would place
only expendable / replaceable objects in earth orbit, and put my
headquarters in a roving, stealthed ship, or buried miles inside a 
large planetary body.  

	--Peter Kwangjun Suk

(P.S.  If a base were hidden in low orbit around a gas giant, say Jupiter,
it's IR signature could be hidden INDEFINITELY by reflecting all of its
radiated heat downward towards the planet.)

(P.P.S.  Attempts, successful or not, to poke holes in my theories always
welcome.  Especially the decisively successful ones.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science