Poll: Lasers weapons or Kinetic Weapons

[Squilookle]

I prefer a musket. No, well actually a gun for lasers. A Laser Sword. With guns on it. And shoots other swords.

 

[Laughing Man]

No reason why all scifi railguns must be like the oes in Expanse.

Their isn't but since I was referencing The Expanse why would I describe them any other way?

 

[Asita]

In atmosphere? Kinetic. Much better benefit to cost ratio. In space? Lasers, for reasons summed up here:


With a laser, you have an effective danger range because it is a Gaussian beam. After a certain distance, it becomes too diffuse to really be dangerous. That slug you fired in space though? It is going to keep going and going and going until it hits something.

 

[maninahat]

Guns are cool, but I think that's only because people often do lasers badly by making them the naff "pew pew" kind. Give them enough power and an awesome sound effect, and they are as good as any shotgun.

 

[ArcaneGamer]

Bullet would carry a high energy directed payload to the target. Impacts. Energy explodes out from the bullet, optimally disrupting and making a small hole in any energy shielding and then the bullet goes through.

Exactly, as I'm of the mind that it depends on the situation, as Kinetic is good when you want to use larger items than a bullet to get the job done; (Look up orbital rail gun when you can, it's possible that the US Feds could get this up and going, and not go against the Geneva Convention.) whereas with Lasers, they not only look cool, they are precise, and good for vaporizing things. =D

 

[Saulkar]

Bullet would carry a high energy directed payload to the target. Impacts. Energy explodes out from the bullet, optimally disrupting and making a small hole in any energy shielding and then the bullet goes through.

Damn, ninja'ed.

I would also like to suggest hybrid plasma weaponry that carry the best of both payloads at once. The only downside being the limited ammunition.

 

[rcs619]

Kinetic i guess since my favorite fictional weapons are the 40K Bolters. more specifically the Astarte pattern ones

As silly and impractical as bolters are, gyrobolt weapons actually hold a lot of promise. They accelerate over long distances instead of losing velocity from right out of the muzzle, and they're potentially ideal for zero-gravity fighting since they shouldn't have much recoil. You only need a small burst of compressed air, or a small explosive thump to get them moving, then the rockets kick in.

Unless you have an explosive warhead on the gyrobolt itself though, the things would be awful at close range. Since they have to build up speed over distance.

Why not fuse the two and create plasma weapons?

Plasma weapons are finicky. You'd need a strong magnetic field to contain the plasma, and it's going to start to diffuse as soon as it leaves the barrel (and the effect of said field). So, you'd get more of a cone of expanding white-hot gas than any sort of pellet. Probably only good over relatively short distances (you're still talking dozens, to maybe a hundred or more meters considering how fast the gas is moving), but anything within that area of effect is basically going to be slagged instantly, and there should be a significant area outside of the slag-zone where you'd get major heat burns and secondary fires. Probably not great against heavy armor, but against light armor and soft targets it'd be devastating.

Not really, a railgun round would be travelling at or near as fast as a laser weapon.

Not even close, really. Accelerating a kinetic round up to even a couple percent of lightspeed is a gigantic endeavor. Even if you get it up to 20% of lightspeed, that's still only 1/5 as fast as a laser. If you can accelerate a railgun round close to lightspeed, you've got the kind of bonkers energy generation tech to where creating gigantic gamma-ray laser emitters shouldn't be an issue, and grasers would obsolete any kinetic weapon we could ever slap onto a spacecraft.

Honestly though, even grasers aren't really the best possible spaceship weapon, since in the grand scheme of things, the speed of light is actually quite slow. The other issue is that if you're in energy weapons range, so is the other guy and both ships are just going to get mauled regardless of who wins.

The ideal solution is missiles. Specifically, missiles with long-range standoff warheads.

Take the casaba howitzer, for example, a theoretical nuclear weapon thought up back in the 70's I believe. It's basically a nuclear shaped charge. A nuke is placed inside of a radiation-proof box with only one opening. That opening is plugged up with a filler, and capped off with a block of metal. The nuke goes off, is channeled into the filler which converts nearly all of the energy into thermal energy, which them hits the block of metal, which then converts into plasma. The end result is a jet of white-hot plasma, traveling at a significant fraction of lightspeed, with an effective range of a few thousand kilometers (actual standoff range will vary based on the power of your casaba howitzer, and the sophistication of your missile's onboard targeting.

But yeah, your ship never even has to get close to the badguy, and your missiles only actually have to get within a few thousand kilometers (which gives the badguys less time to try and shoot them down). At that short of a range, the actual plasma bolt will hit basically instantly.

The Honor Harrington books did a higher-tech version of the same basic premise, with anti-ship missiles that used the energy of a fusion bomb to energize multiple X-ray laser emitters deployed by the missile. They get hit by the blast and send out a x-ray laser right before they're disintegrated in the explosion. I believe each missile carried 6 to 8 of the emitters. That's really the endgame ideal though. Long-range missiles that can deploy high-powered standoff weapons.

Well the endgame ideal of relatively conventional technology. That's not getting into like, Culture-level super technology. Once you get into that, all kinds of weird shit becomes possible.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Plasma weapons are finicky. You'd need a strong magnetic field to contain the plasma, and it's going to start to diffuse as soon as it leaves the barrel (and the effect of said field). So, you'd get more of a cone of expanding white-hot gas than any sort of pellet. Probably only good over relatively short distances (you're still talking dozens, to maybe a hundred or more meters considering how fast the gas is moving), but anything within that area of effect is basically going to be slagged instantly, and there should be a significant area outside of the slag-zone where you'd get major heat burns and secondary fires. Probably not great against heavy armor, but against light armor and soft targets it'd be devastating.

Minor drawback in that the firer is going to get cooked almost as much as the target. Not such a problem if the firer is in something designed to take that, and the target is not, though.

The ideal solution is missiles. Specifically, missiles with long-range standoff warheads.

Ideal solution to what problem, though? Certainly, the idea seems to have merit, but that's not to say it's always the right tool for the job.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Lasers look cool.

 

[rcs619]

Minor drawback in that the firer is going to get cooked almost as much as the target. Not such a problem if the firer is in something designed to take that, and the target is not, though.

That is a potential issue, yes. Since the shooter is on the backside of the blast, and between the length of the barrel and the fact that the blast is being directed away, maybe they could get away with just some extra armor or a blast-shield on the gun itself (if it's a heavy weapon on a mount or bipod). Eye protection would be a must for sure.

The ideal solution is missiles. Specifically, missiles with long-range standoff warheads.

Ideal solution to what problem, though? Certainly, the idea seems to have merit, but that's not to say it's always the right tool for the job.

The ideal solution to most ship-to-ship combat. You definitely don't want to get within a light-second of them, because then their mounted guns (be they lasers, grasers or railguns) actually become effective. Outside of a light-second or two, the light-lag would be too severe for them to be able to hit you.

So you keep off at missile range and hammer them from there. You want your missiles to have standoff warheads (missiles that deploy their own sub-munitions that can hit from hundreds or thousands of kilometers away) because then the badguy's point-defense guns have less time to shoot them down. Nukes are bad in space, you basically have to score a direct hit, which is not only difficult but also gives you plenty of time to hit them with counter-missiles, or point defense lasers, or point-defense railguns before they get close. Nukes are really (theoretically) good at powering standoff weapons like casaba howitzers and bomb-pumped lasers though.

Obviously if they somehow get the jump on you and close into gun range, a missile-focused ship is at a disadvantage. More missiles means less volume for guns and ammunition/power sources/capacitor banks, etc (not to mention less extra mass to devote to armor). But in pretty much every other engagement you're basically untouchable versus a gunboat. Eventually they'd go to missiles too, assuming they have a similar tech-base, and then you've got long-ranged missile duels where it's all about countermeasures and point-defense. Either way, mounted guns are relegated to pure backup weapons.

This is barring any sort of truly out-there things like forcefields, hyperspace weapons, blink-guns and such. Those would obviously change the dynamics a bit.

 

[Thaluikhain]

That is a potential issue, yes. Since the shooter is on the backside of the blast, and between the length of the barrel and the fact that the blast is being directed away, maybe they could get away with just some extra armor or a blast-shield on the gun itself (if it's a heavy weapon on a mount or bipod). Eye protection would be a must for sure.

I doubt it'd be sufficient, at least in atmosphere. You'd not be safe pumping high pressure superheated steam at people, plasma has to be much worse. And if it doesn't effect armoured things, not seeing the point, really, we've got conventional weapons that are good at unarmoured targets, and many of them are cheap and reliable and don't tend to cook the user.

The ideal solution to most ship-to-ship combat.

Ah, but that's getting into the realms of the hypothetical, we can't really say what "most" ship to ship combat would be like.

Outside of a light-second or two, the light-lag would be too severe for them to be able to hit you.

Dunno, there's plenty of precedent for hitting moving targets at more than 2 seconds travel time. Sure, you miss an awful lot to get a few hits, though, so rate of fire is important. That could mean a ship with lasers is untouchable against something armed with missiles.

Now, of course, have to go build the things and see, the devil is in the details. I'm not saying that the lasers would always be better, but I will say that we don't know that the missiles always would be.

But, in any case, lets say that the lasers are effective at 1 light second, which is 300,000km. And the missiles can hit at "hundreds or thousands of kilometers away". That's a few orders of magnitude less than the range of the weapons the missiles have to survive in order for the missiles to be effective.

 

[rcs619]

I doubt it'd be sufficient, at least in atmosphere. You'd not be safe pumping high pressure superheated steam at people, plasma has to be much worse. And if it doesn't effect armoured things, not seeing the point, really, we've got conventional weapons that are good at unarmoured targets, and many of them are cheap and reliable and don't tend to cook the user.

Oh yeah. By and large, plasma weapons are probably too impractical to actually work. Even if we had the tech. That's why a lot of sci-fi cops out and just have them shoot neat little pellets.

I should point out that it wouldn't be good against heavy armor. You can use heat-resistant materials and ablative coatings to defend against energy weapons. Soft targets though, medium and light-armored vehicles, infantry and such, it'd be a devastating aoe sort of weapon if you could make it work. Most military targets tend to be medium to light armor too. Actual, full-on main battle tanks and such aren't super common in comparison (and also very likely would be obsolete by that far in the future, being so big and obvious}.

Ah, but that's getting into the realms of the hypothetical, we can't really say what "most" ship to ship combat would be like.

This whole thread is hypothetical. But we've seen the progression from gunboats to missile boats, and it's not unreasonable to hypothesize that space combat would follow a similar progression. Lasers and electromagnetic weapons would rule the roost at the beginning, since ranges would be short, and then gradually lose out to missiles as distances open up.

I doubt starfighters would ever be a thing though. If you can shoot down missiles, you'd rip fighters to pieces.

Dunno, there's plenty of precedent for hitting moving targets at more than 2 seconds travel time. Sure, you miss an awful lot to get a few hits, though, so rate of fire is important. That could mean a ship with lasers is untouchable against something armed with missiles.

It's not so much about travel time, although that is a factor. It's more that you don't actually know where your target is. Just where they were, say, 2 and a half seconds ago. In a space battle, moving dozens or hundreds of kilometers per second, even minor course deviations can move you huge distances in a couple seconds. You basically have a region of space a few hundred kilometers wide where they might be. There's a lot of uncertainty in that. Lasers are pinpoint weapons by nature, and even if your railguns are shooting rounds that fragment mid-flight, that's still a lot of space to try and cover (and each fragment is going to do considerably less damage than the whole would have).

But, in any case, lets say that the lasers are effective at 1 light second, which is 300,000km. And the missiles can hit at "hundreds or thousands of kilometers away". That's a few orders of magnitude less than the range of the weapons the missiles have to survive in order for the missiles to be effective.

Using the bomb-pumped lasers from Honor Harrington, they've got a standoff range of 25,000km. Casaba howitzers are lower tech, so maybe 10,000-15,000km standoff there.

You're going to, ideally, launch the missiles from much further away and they're going to be accelerating like a bat out of hell (since unlike starships, they can pull insane accelerations without having to worry about squishing a crew). If we're fighting at multi-light second ranges, I'm assuming our ships can maintain multiple G's of continuous thrust. If you can accelerate a ship at multiple gravities of thrust, you can accelerate a missile a while lot faster.

Really it comes down to how fast you can accelerate your missiles and for how long. You'd want to give them as much time as possible to get their speed up, while still having fuel for maneuvers once they were inside the range of your point-defense lasers.

Keep in mind that the missiles are going to be small, fast, actively juking to try and avoid point defense fire and maybe deploying their own built-in countermeasures like chaff, flares, decoys or whatever (similar to modern ICBM's) to try and throw your guns and counter-missiles off. And you're going to have multiple missiles to try and get a targeting solution on, and hit.

Not to mention them pulling dirty tricks like cycling their engines off and on to disappear off your sensors and/or conserve fuel. Or, in the case of the casaba howitzer, just deploy its sub-munitions early, since they can individually aim and fire on their own. There's more of a chance your ship could dodge out of their path without realizing it, but if you have an expanding cluster of sub-munitions that can each hit anything within a 10,000km radius, then there's a good chance at least one will drift close enough to take a shot at you. All while the ship that launched them continues to kite outside of your guns, trying to figure out what the critical mass of missiles is that your ship's point defense can cope with at once.