When you look at the history of war on a continuous timeline from the past into the future, you can sometimes see things you hadn’t picked up on before. These observations were inspired by recent discussions about war and warfare in space and how it might reflect the history of war and warfare even in this new environment. My thanks to the USS Pershing Officers Club page on Facebook and the related History Department at Star Fleet Academy for contributing their time, thoughts, and experience to the conversation – but any errors in this posting are strictly my own.
Historically, battlefields are defined by two factors –
1) the effective range of the most numerous projectile weapons;
2) the ability of the army commander to communicate his wishes to his troops by voice or by signaling with drums, horns, banners, field phones, radios, etc.; and,
3) the population density of a battlefield reflects the PK (percentage of kill per shots fired) of the most common projectile weapon modified by the rate of fire. The greater the chance of not being killed by enemy fire, the greater the number of combatants that will crowd the battlefield.
As technology advanced the battlefield expanded, became more complex and less densely populated. A major driver of this was the increasing range and accuracy of indirect fire weapons. The trend was further reinforced when the air space over the battlefield itself became a combat zone and technology now enabled weapons a world a way to directly impact the battlefield.
Historically, battles have been fought in extremely hostile environments. One such environment was the North African desert in World War II; others were the Alps between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I; more recently the Himalayas between India and China; the North Atlantic almost anytime; and the Murmansk convoy routes in World War II. However, none of these environments were as deadly as outer space, where everything will kill you.
Humans require a completely artificial environment such as a specially designed space suit, ship, or station just to be there. The quickest way in space to render an enemy “combat ineffective” is to destroy their supporting environment’s capability to support life. This vulnerability suggests that there is probably still a place in the space infantryman’s kit for bladed, edged weapons or even tools (the Russians traditionally use entrenching tools or shovels) which can open a suit or a soft environmental shell, or damage external life support fittings.
We have yet to see actual combat in space, but we have endless imaginings of what it might look like via books, graphic novels, television shows, and movies. I am old enough to remember watching 1950s space shows and old B&W movie serials rerun on TV – Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Commander Cody, etc., then First Men in the Moon, and Forbidden Planet. More recently, Dr. Who has offered several visions of combat in space and on the surface of numerous and varied planets. These days, favorites include Battle for Los Angeles for its depiction of the grit of infantry combat against alien invaders; the original Star Wars trilogy for its space battles (stolen liberally from the WW2 movies I grew up on); Starship Troopers, which has a good feel for the surface combat even as it flaunts its political messaging to the point of satire. The more recent “Firefly/Serenity” and “The Expanse” universes have offered some small scale combat as well. The conversations that I noted above with the USS Pershing crew and the Star Fleet Academy History Department focused primarily on weapons used by and against the Federation, usually only by ‘away teams’, landing parties, and an occasional raiding party, and rarely depicting major ground combat operations.
The most serious challenge in space is providing sufficient energy to power everything. In space, energy is the coin of the realm and governs everything you do. Everything that keeps you alive in space consumes energy, and that’s before you start traveling around at whatever speed your propulsion system can achieve. Your weaponry, whether projectile or energy beam or energy pulse, and any possible shielding against enemy weapons, consumes more of that energy. The energy sources currently available to us, or even foreseeable to us, are barely capable of letting us putt-putt around near space.
In our speculative fictional depictions of space combat, hand and/or shoulder weapons usually fire either a form of energy beam or pulse, or a physical projectile. In some cases, a projectile weapon uses a recognizable cartridge containing a propellant (such as gunpowder) and a projectile or bullet. Ignited by the striking of the hammer against the cartridge case when the trigger is pulled, that explosion sends the projectile down the barrel much as in today’s firearms. This basic system can be adapted to function in space (where it would be prudent for this explosion to consume both the propellant and its cartridge case container as some of our contemporary weapons do minimizing waste). Projectiles might also be launched by physical mechanical means (as with crossbows, for example) or by technical means such as an electromagnetic field as used for rail guns. However, while space is a vacuum, the projectile will still be subject to whatever gravity fields are present and whatever other dust, particles, or other objects might be in its path to its target or beyond. In the event of a miss though this may still result in it having a greater range than if fired in Earth’s atmosphere. There is also the matter of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction thus affecting both the projectile and the firer (suggesting an additional use for those ‘magnetic’ boots). These laws do also apply in space but with variations in gravitational fields and attractions from what we are accustomed to on Earth. There is also the question of whether the energy beam or pulse fired from a small arm has Mass thus generating an opposing reaction when that Mass is fired towards a target.
Beam weapons (laser pistols, phasers, disrupters, etc.) draw upon an internal power source to generate a beam or burst of energy which is then directed (“aimed”) at an enemy individual/target. In some variations the weapon can be adjusted to render the targeted individual unconscious or ‘stunned’ or alternatively to completely destroy that individual and leave no remains (with an as yet undiscussed impact upon casualty reporting and the activities of graves registration units, unless there is some form of electronic ‘dog tag’ or tracer link that would register the individual as wounded or killed).
Having identified a suitable new energy source (we will magic away the details for now), we still need to find efficient and effective ways to use it in multiple applications. For much of the history of firearms, soldiers have carried a load of 100-200 additional rounds in order to be able to quickly reload while remaining on the battlefield. Thus, for hand held weapons, we need a rechargeable portable power pack to act as a ‘magazine’ or ‘clip’.
· How many powerpacks would be needed to enable the user of these handheld weapons to do likewise?
· Can these power packs be safely and successfully stored fully charged or should they be held empty and only charged soon before issue to personnel?
· How long would it take to charge these energy packs simultaneously or sequentially?
· Given this energy source – is it better for space ships to have an armory in which these weapons can be stored and transported versus the energy expenditure and time required for Star Fleet style replicators to produce weapons as needed?
· Would the replicated weapons need to then be charged or can the system handle the burden of replicating fully charged weapons?
· Then there is the matter of replicating additional power packs.
In most depictions of such weapons the beam effectively identifies the shooter’s position every time the weapon is fired (as Sergeant Murphy said, “Tracers work both ways”). The effective range of energy beam weapons is rarely discussed though:
Star Fleet Academy Historians note that “the M2265 [phaser pistol] was limited in range precisely because it was a perfect direct fire system. The beam could maintain coherence for thousands of meters at perfectly straight trajectory with absolutely no deviation due to gravity or wind resistance. This meant the curvature of planetoids would start to become a significant problem [for targeting]. However, in practice, the weapon was rarely used at those power levels, especially because there was no way the average humanoid could fire a handgun accurately even with optical targeting assistance at ranges beyond 150 meters.”
By comparison, according to The Star Fleet History Department, there are two weapons beyond the hand held lasers/phasers used by Star Fleet:
“The TR-116 projectile rifle is a prototype weapon developed by the Federation for situations where conventional energy weapons might be rendered useless by damping fields or other countermeasures. It is essentially a conventional rifle, but with a rather futuristic visual style. It is introduced in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Field of Fire", where it is used in conjunction with a micro-transporter and a visual scanner headpiece to create an extremely potent sniper rifle. With the scanner, the shooter can precisely target people hundreds of meters away and through solid matter with no difficulty. Using the transporter attached to the barrel, the slug can then be transported during motion at full velocity, thus capable of traveling through walls and materializing within point-blank range of the target.”
It would be interesting to test the TR-116 to measure what velocity the projectile in fact had as it materialized close to the target. I would also interpret the use of a micro-transporter to in fact mean that the projectile does not actually ‘fly through’ any obstacle since it presumably enters the transport process on the near side of any obstacle(s) and is then transported from that point to a point on the far side of those obstacle(s).
Unless the beam or energy burst is completely dissipated in the process of destroying a target, these weapons appear to risk inflicting blue on blue casualties if not carefully placed and used on the battlefield (possibly affecting even friendly atmospheric or space craft in the line of fire?). Is there a special need to avoid friendly fire from weapons that in space have essentially infinite range? Finally, I have to believe that any useful model of such an energy based weapon would have some form of indicator to tell the person carrying the weapon how many potential shots are left in it, something that is not clear with regard to various depicted beam weapons.
In Earth history, from the first introduction of firearms until the First World War, an entire infantry unit usually all carried the same weapon. As technology improved during the 20th Century, infantry units down to the squad level were given increased firepower in the form of semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons – light machine guns, supporting heavy machine guns as well as a standard rifle. Further support was provided by heavier and frequently indirect fire weapons such as grenades, mortars, and rocket launchers for use against armored vehicles or fortified enemy positions. Extremely accurate long range projectile weapons in the hands of trained snipers were also used against high value enemy individuals such as officers and radiomen.
The History Department also identified plasma mortars used as
far back as the early 23rd Century but these have been rarely seen since:
The weapon presumably has a system for launching the projectile from the tube independently of the round itself so that the bomb flies in a parabolic arc to impact on the intended target. Given the probably variations in gravity, etc., in which the weapon might be deployed, it would be sensible for the weapon to incorporate sensors that would measure all important parameters so that the firer of the mortar has simply to indicate the target.
In fact, give that reserves of manpower, munitions, weaponry, etc. are likely to either be minimal or quite distantly remote from the battlefield, all deployed weapons need to be enhanced to the achieve the highest levels of accuracy, performance, and PK (percentage of kill per rounds expended). During the “Desert Storm” war with Iraq that liberated Kuwait, the accuracy of precision guided munitions launched from aircraft marked a dramatic change in PK from World War II or even Vietnam. That technology is now reaching down to the infantry’s weapons and is likely to continue to be applied to weapons deployed in space where logistical limits will place further demands on not wasting a single shot. The battlefield commander is unlikely to have the luxury even of George Armstrong Custer whose last message read, “Benteen. Come On. Big Village. Be quick. Bring Packs. P.S. Bring packs. W.W. Cooke.”
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