How does space warfare work?
What are the best tactics and strategies?
This is a subject I have found difficult to approach without first acknowledging that
the answers to these kinds of questions will depend pretty heavily on which alternate reality
in which you find yourself.
A captain in the Martian Congressional Republic is probably going to be using very different
tactics compared to those pirates trying to find treasure planet after all.
And with space warfare in this reality still woefully underdeveloped, there’s really
no way to determine what is the most realistic or practical.
But with all that said, I do think there are some space warfare tactics that in most alternate
realities, just don’t make sense.
And on this episode of incoming, I’ll break down five of them.
Now because I possess a deep reservoir of courage, I’m going to start with what I
suspect might be a controversial choice and immediately turn much of my audience against
me.
First on my list of terrible tactics is boarding actions.
Now, let me be clear; there is obviously a tremendous advantage to being able to capture
an enemy starship intact; especially if it happens to be full of valuable intelligence.
The problem is, the conditions in which a successful boarding action might be carried
out, are likely to be non-existent during an interstellar war.
These kinds of attacks made a lot of sense when opposing vessels were just a literal
hop skip and a jump away, but as the engagement range of ships increased, they became harder
and harder to accomplish.
By the Second World War, boarding actions were extraordinarily rare, and only possible
due in very unusual circumstances.
And it wasn’t like you had sailors swinging on ropes onto a U-boat, swords in their teeth,
it was more just climbing onto a ship that had been prematurely evacuated.
In an interstellar war, in which ships might be engaging each other from tens, if not hundreds
of thousands of kilometers away, the idea you’d want to shoot some marines at an enemy
warship, have them cut through the hull and commandeer it, seems insane.
Boarding actions would likely only be effective during policing or anti-piracy operations
in which vessels that have already surrendered could be searched for contraband or whatever.
Against an enemy starship still capable of defending itself, the chances of success are
just too low.
If you want to capture an enemy starship, try while its docked in port somewhere.
Next up is the close relative to the boarding action.
At number two, we have ramming.
My rationale here is pretty much the same.
This was something that made sense when Athens and Sparta were fighting on the Aegean sea,
but has become less reliable as we enter into the modern era and will likely be pretty much
extinct in an interstellar setting.
It is an act of desperation, not something you would specifically want to design a starship
to do.
This is probably because, even with an armored hull, the attacking ship is likely to suffer
just as much damage.
And I am no expert in physics, but at the speeds at which any starship is likely to
be traveling, a ramming attack is probably just going to distingrate both ships, assuming
they even come into contact in the first place.
Space is big, and it's a lot harder than you’d think to hit a small target, especially if
it's trying to evade you.
Third on our list is what I am going to call “gimmick weapons”.
This is rather broad, but I’m referring to a situation in which you have access to
conventional weapons, lasers, phasers, torpedoes, missiles, whatever it might be, but you instead
use some new prototype weapon of dubious effectiveness.
By way of an example, let’s look at the New Republic Starhawk Class.
It was armed with the usual turbolasers and ion cannons, but these were secondary to a
“Magnite Crystal Tractor Beam Array” mounted on the ship’s bow.
The idea here was that a Starhawk could pull an enemy ship towards it, or nudge it into
an asteroid or something.
This is such a situational weapon and completely reliant on external factors for it to be successful.
I just fail to see how this is a better choice than an extra 20 turbolaser batteries.
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples.
At number four we have “using the environment”.
Now I do need to expand on this a bit.
Using natural terrain to your advantage whether on a terrestrial battlefield or in space is
always a good idea.
What I object to though, is when you start relying on the terrain not just as a force-multiplier,
but as something that will do all your work for you.
The classic example of this tactic usually plays out in this way; you’ve spotted a
large enemy fleet, ah, but look, they have foolishly positioned themselves in orbit of
a star, or nebula, or some sort of interstellar object that is dangerously unstable.
We can use this unstable whatever to trigger a massive explosion and wipe out the fleet
in one go.
This to me is a tactic that can really only succeed if a dizzying array of factors all
go your way.
You need to find a star or whatever you can explode, you need to lure an enemy force to
precisely where it needs to be, and you have to make sure that the enemy isn’t aware
of the dangerous situation they’re in.
This is a tactic Admiral Preston Cole of the UNSC used in the battle of Psi Serpentis against
the Covenant.
He fought a fleet action near an unstable gas giant, and ignited the hydrogen in its
atmosphere which briefly created a brown dwarf.
Even though this succeeded in destroying the Covenant fleet, it's easy to see how it might
have gone wrong.
Reconnaissance is a critical part of any military operation and Cole had no guarantee that the
Covenant weren’t also aware of that unstable gas giant.
They might have just as easily turned Cole’s own tactic against him.
A tactic that relies on your enemy being completely ignorant of basic military practices, usually
doesn’t play out this well.
Last on our list at #5 We have a tactic that I really don’t know how to name.
Let’s just call it “spinning the enemy”.
I have seen it employed only once during an engagement between the Alliance and the Reavers.
It played out like this:
Whatever this was, it combines a few of our previous entries into one absurd tactic.
It requires closing with the enemy until they are within grappling distance, and then rapidly
swinging them around until what exactly?
The G-forces kill the crew?
Again, how is this preferable to just shooting the enemy, you know, with guns and stuff.
The Reavers are supposedly insane, self-mutilating, weirdos and I think this proves it.
So if you’re not an insane, self-mutilating, weirdo these are the 5 tactics I think you
should avoid using when fighting your next interstellar war.
Or at the very least, don’t base your entire strategy on them.
But this is of course just my opinion, and even though I have a perfect record in my
space battles so far, I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Are boarding actions a reliable tactic?
Are gimmick weapons the way to victory?
Are you planning on spinning me around until I surrender?
Let me know in the comments below, and until next time, this has been incoming.