Battlefleets

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In the future, fleets of unimaginable scope may battle over light years, in conflicts that might last milliseconds or entire centuries.

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Credits:
Battlefleets
Episode 461; August 22, 2024
Produced, Written & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur
Editor: Thomas Owens
Graphics:
Darth Biomech
Jeremy Jozwik
Legiontech Studios
Sergio Botero
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator
Stellardrone, “Red Giant”, “Ultra Deep Field”
Sergey Cheremisinov, “Labyrinth”, “Forgotten Stars”
Taras Harkavyi, “Alpha and …”
Miguel Johnson, “So Many Stars”

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24 thoughts on “Battlefleets”

  1. Another video that keeps getting better with the n-th glance, somehow.

    shopping cart of random thoughts:
    – rotating armor adds angular momentum, inhibiting angular acceleration and decreasing the possibility space of a travelling vessel non-negligibly, potentially decreasing survivability against penetrating weapons.
    – intelligence can go a long way in increasing weapon accuracy past the base physical assumptions, be it intercepting commands, assessing technical capabilities, or getting a sneak peek into someone's random number generator; computational sophistication and network integrity can be significant barriers to achieving theoretical uncertainty via acceleration, especially if said drone is limited in its capacity to deal damage.
    – Nesting parts in a command or technical hierarchy offers more points of observation and potentially less leeway to deviate from them within a given level, potentially disadvantageous when facing an opponent with good intelligence.
    – Proximity gives observation wealth, which compounded by time and computing enhances accuracy; this relation might, for a given amount of information, vary the size dependence of effective engagement range depending on available equipment. (e.g. the point where smaller ships' ability to dodge converges with larger ships' ability to detect/predict)
    – uncertainty at distance, combined with the rapid fuel expenditure of smaller ships engaging at short range (bogged-down casualties until death or refuelling), could significantly exacerbate 'fleet in being'-style shenanigans, where the 'port' in question could be analogous to a strategically mobile carrier vessel; this could increase the usage, if not necessarily the investment, of longer-range and/or lower-commitment weapons operating at absurd ranges.
    – low-commitment beam and information weapons could have a significant advantage not necessarily in their ability to directly damage high-mobility targets, but force them to move continuously in a way that leaves them open for a more damaging strike, potentially one from an interceptor of similar make. This might be diminished by enemy intelligence on your targeting procedures.
    – space 'terrain' might be heavily constrained by various treaties, in order to avoid things like kessler syndrome, stray shots peppering lunar colonies, toxic dust rains, etc. in addition to border agreements and other things; high-autonomy microdrones and proximity-fuzed nuclear shells, for example, could see their use be declared a war crime if orbitals are rendered uninhabitable by their excessive use.

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  11. Smart drones would be heavily used in space battles as they could cover many options, including dispersal cloud creation to block laser and blow missiles early. I can easily think up several smart drone options just based on normal science, add in things such as shields and beamed power and the usage just grows. Different ships would also have their different usage in a space battle as big slow ships would hold an area, faster ships would hunt or scout and so on. The main issue with space is how empty and huge it is and what matters will be raw materials and where people live, with how 3D space is, it wouldn't be all that hard to sneak through something that would ruin what you were trying to protect as space is just too big to fully block off. If people can't handle thinking in 3D patterns, which will be hard for us who is used to a planet, doing well in space would be an issue and they would be no good in a space battle either.

    But anyone knowing a bit of space would also know that there is only a few points that makes attacking a plantet important as most things can be found out there in space, so aliens coming here for our raw materials feels just wrong, but they might find value in something like Gold and wants all our Gold or something really rare that a planet has…meat. Which means wars in space makes little points except for taking over a planet or an area. Out there there might be asteroids made out of gold or diamonds so such things has no value, or something else weird, which makes it nearly impossible to know why someone would fight in space at all, except for hate, taking over an eare, or worse a more basic human thing like religion and how people see themselves.

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