10-01-2017, 07:21 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
Let's not forget the role of materiel transport (modern-day Military Sealift Command). Some things will be too heavy to transport by air, and require transport across oceans. Ships designed for anti-piracy/anti-insurgent actions will also be needed (and pirates are a danger even today; see: Somali pirates in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean).
I don't think everything will go full-on submarine. The physical and psychological standards for submariners are much higher than those of the surface ships, so what you gain in stealth you'd lose in overall eligible manpower. At some point someone will say "our Navy is under-manned because our standards are too high", at which point the reason those standards are in place will surface when people not suited for sub service gets assigned to one and flip out for some reason or other, which will raise some (probably very public) questions as to why the standards were lowered in the first place(!).
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10-01-2017, 07:34 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
At TL 10, who knows what will be transportable by air, but you are right, there may still be a role for transporting very heavy material. Another role I forgot is operations like the US Coast Guard---basically waterborne law enforcement.
And I agree, everything probably won't be full submersible, there will always be a role for things like Coast Guard cutters. At TL 10, there are just so many options and possibilities, it is hard to make any firm statements at all. I see at TL 10 spacecraft making a lot of wet naval craft obsolete. |
10-01-2017, 08:14 PM | #23 |
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
With the submarine vs. surface ship question, another possibility is that everyone is visible, but the water provides decent protection, so everyone hides beneath it. Its like having a bunch of armor.
I suspect that with TL10 technology, all wars are either nuclear doomsdays where only truly stealthy forces survive, asymmetric conflicts where navies provide support roles, or limited engagements where the naval forces are used for bluster rather than starting anything that could trigger nukes. We don't know what the winning strategy for TL8 is, let alone TL10. The poster who suggests a number of strategies without knowing which one is right has a solid scenario.
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10-01-2017, 09:09 PM | #24 | |
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
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Criminal use of semi-subs at least is well proven, and going to full minisubs is extremely plausible. Frequent legal civilian use of subs is less likely, but not impossible.
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10-01-2017, 09:14 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Ontario, Canada
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
Heheh haven't posted here in years but dropped in for a browse and happen to have been looking at a lot of naval stuff recently.
What is a naval task force going to look like? Different. Just off hand, TL10 gives you cheap and very stealthy 1kt 64mm mini nuke drone mines and million ton orbital weapons platforms with lots of great big lasers. You get the full spectrum of TL10 sensor technology and clouds of microbots. Chances are you'll be able to detect and track anything you could reasonably describe as a warship on, over, or beneath the surface and direct overwhelming firepower at it one way or another. In this scenario, you're probably dealing with swarms and networks of small or tiny platforms fighting it out. More like ant colonies fighting rather than naval task forces battling it out.
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10-01-2017, 09:17 PM | #26 | |||
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
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There might well be ways to stop massive KE bombardment projectiles or at least render them mission-ineffective, but they won't look like an SM-3. |
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10-02-2017, 02:01 AM | #27 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
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My impression is that the atmosphere gives small, fast-moving things a reasonable defence against THOR and similar projects. The faster they go, the more they overheat and damage their control services and surround themselves in a sheath of plasma which blocks signals from the controller.
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10-02-2017, 02:23 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
In a fight between roughly equal parties, orbital assets are extremely vulnerable, so rather early in the fight one or both parties won't have any. It's quite possible that one of the jobs of naval forces is the removal of orbital assets (this is dependent somewhat on your tech assumptions. Firing missiles up a gravity well is not that effective, but a beam duel likely favors the ground forces by a large margin). This will generally make things like Thor strikes moot, if your enemy is in a position to attempt that you're already in a bad place. The forces you'd use for that purpose will likely be submersible to make it hard to take them out with a first strike.
Naval forces against a superior foe are just a big 'blow this up first' sign, so you don't use them at all (just imagine if ISIS got hold of an aircraft carrier. It would die so very fast). Naval forces against an inferior foe means you can assume the foe doesn't have orbital forces. Last edited by Anthony; 10-02-2017 at 02:28 AM. |
10-02-2017, 05:22 AM | #29 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
At TL11 you just remove the water and put it back when you are finished :)
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10-02-2017, 07:06 AM | #30 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: [Ultra-Tech] What would naval warfare at TL10 look like?
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Water also complicates the PD for the sub, because the sub's blue-green lasers are only effective out to 150 yards. Versus a supercavitating torpedo approaching at 100 yds/s, that only gives the sub 1.5 seconds to destroy it. It's not impossible, but it's a lot tighter than the 10+ seconds PD gets on the surface against Mach 10 missiles. Quote:
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