Agreed.

Further note about missiles: I should elaborate on what I meant by "invisible".  It is unnecessary for a rocket to burn constantly, and course corrections could theoretically be made using pressurized gas.  How the missiles cool after launch and how they warm up again prior to impact I will leave for any would-be engineers to figure out.  I'm not technically a rocket scientist.  As for warheads, nukes are, incidentally, quite unnecessary.  On the scale of relative velocities that you encounter in space, a good old-fashioned lead tip is more than adequate.  There is no defense against a sufficiently energetic kinetic projectile.  No conceivable armour would be sufficient, point-defense systems are useless, and evasive maneuvers can be out-maneuvered.  Don't think nuke.  Think guided railgun projectile.

Let's not.

Let me just end this. I'll put explosive warheads on the tips of my missiles that deploy lots of shrapnel over a wide area.  Or better yet, I just load the tips with nothing but steel balls and let you blow it up yourself.  Then I'll laugh manically as your ships die from thousands of tiny steel balls which you thought would somehow lose all of their momentum simply because you shot them with a laser.

You see where this is going, don't you?

-Dr. B

The way I look at it, if you wait until the enemy is landing on your planet to counter attack, then you have already lost.

You never ever allow the battle to be faught on your home ground, the collateral damage alone will make it a prohibitive victory if you manage to win.

If you cant stop their ships landing, even if you win, they will just keep coming at you until eventually they will grind you down.

The only sane strategy is to meet an enemy in deep space and prevent them even getting a sniff of your planet. They must be made to see that sending troop ships to your planet only results in a lot of spaced troops.

If you let them fight over your planet, then they can decide at the any time that conquest is not achieveable and so extermination is a better option, and even if your winning, you may not be able to prevent this.

A prime example of this was Babelon 5, the last movie I think it was, when the enemy force was defeated over the planet, but managed to release a deadly poison into the atmosphere.

Once they are over your planet, you have lost control of the battle, no matter how well if goes for you.

Not that i am agreeing with the Doomday missile theory, but i am pretty sure that when he said "terrestrial Wars are much Cleaner," he ment that in a sacarstic Sense and it more or less applied to wars today, not wars in the future.

That being said i still think the Missile theory is flawed and will never see the light of day.

Exactly. While the over usefullness of fighters may drop there will always be Some spots where fighters would be needed. Fighters, if nothing else are effective at killing other fighters so they will always have a use.

Yeah. Maneuvering like that implies a LOT of Delta-V(change in velocity), which needs a LOT of fuel and thrusters all over the place. That's why I said in a much earlier post that fighters would need fusion or antimatter drives with thrust vectoring and Bussard ramscoops to even have a remote chance of viability. But any tech that you put on fighters can also be put on larger ships.

Ok, since we are discussing real future possibilities, I have to and point out one lil' issue, so bear with me.

Sci-Fi is one thing, everyone loves a good space opera, but come on... there won't be any weapons in space, fighters included. For the simple reason that if by the time humanity has the kind of technology which would enable space warfare of the type we see in the movies, and is still unable to solve its problems peacefully, then the humanity will cease to exist or be reduced to sticks and stones pretty quick. Do you know what kind of damage you can do just by dropping a giant rock from orbit? Now image stuff like railguns. With nuclear tips. And that's a primitive concept.

Even more so when you consider the kind of energies you would need to bridge the gulf between stars. The sort of inherent power such technology has. It then becomes clear that any race which has not achieved release from its violent tendencies by the time it achieves technological prowess needed for interstellar travel, will self-annihilate. In that sense, insterstellar space acts as a sort of "filter", letting only the peaceful through. Its not wishful thinking, just cold logic.

These days, ANY human being can kill hundreds in a few seconds. A few centuries ago, that was impossible. Imagine what destructive potential will there be in a couple centuries more if the technology continues to develop at the current rate. Imagine what kind of personal responsibility will be required of every individual to handle such power.

Now try to place that sort of responsibility in a society which *still* has weapons, which still revolves around killing each other for whatever reason. And you see the sort of "bounce-back" effect technology has on irresponsible races. They either annihilate themselves or they reduce themselves to a level of civilisation more appropriate for their level of responsibility like, for example, stone age.

Current fighter planes work well enough, if we can get space fighters to work at the same level i am sure they will do fine. the fighter doesn't need to be able to literaly turn a 180 degree or come to a complete stop in seconds. aslong as a space fighter can mimic the menuvarability of current aircraft they will wtill be usable.

You do not understand. You speak of dropping pennies off of buildings and making bombs using chemical explosives. I used the railgun example just to illustrate how easy it would be to possibly sterilize a planet by using nothing but a rock from orbit, due to the inherent massive kinetic energies possible to achieve in space.

The theoretical amounts of energy needed to succesfully bend space-time in order to do FTL travel are probably sufficient to vaporize an entire planet. So you have a society which is destructive in nature and has such power contained within every spaceship? Guess what will happen the first time someone has a grudge against the rest of mankind.

Furthermore, our technolgical level is insufficient to place tools of mass destruction within the control of individuals at this time. In order to produce weapons which could threaten the survival of mankind, you need technology and funding which are beyond the grasp of any single person, or even most organizations.

This will inevitably change. Take a look at computers. Just a few decades ago, only government could afford them. Now everyone has them, it's just the nature of technological progress.

As I said, several centuries ago, the personal and immediate (read physical) power of an individual was measured by their physical strength. Then along came gunpowder and all that changed. A peasant could suddenly be more lethal than the best fighter alive, simply by pressing a small lever. Today, an individual so minded can potentially kill hundreds by pressing a button. And yet, this is still far, far from a mankind-threatening situation.

But imagine that this state of affairs continues. Technology continues to evolve, but mankind stays where it is now. You get more powerful weapons, again and again, placing more and more power in the hands of an individual. You get guns which can punch holes through tanks. Then level houses. Hand grenades which can destroy entire city blocks. And it continues. Pistols which can release energies comparable to that of a star. Maybe not technology which is weaponized - power plants which can fit into a car and yet contain energies sufficient to boil a large lake. And you STILL have guys which think that it would be a good idea to overload the said power plant, or maybe get a gun on the black market and melt a few city blocks down.

And we go further. You reach interstellar age. Mankind has the sort of technology which can manipulate the very laws of the universe. Combine that with a society which thinks problems can be solved by dropping bombs on people. I say its impossible - mankind would annihilate itself through the destructive whims of a flawed society long ago.

Space warfare will not happen. Or better said, pray that it does not happen, because if it does then it won't end up like in the movies - most of the scientific community agrees on this. Its simple logic.

Nobody else gets to speak in this thread until they've read this.

Altho that article was interesting, i do not beleive it was terrible valid. The author runs through the entire history of naval warfare specificaly commenting on how there are periods of little change followed by periods of intesne rapid change that redefines the whole concept. The auther even points out that weapons advanced in such a way that people from the old era wouldn't know what they were, and that the new advances completly outclass the old. If anything that article implies that an entrily new type of weapon will be developed that is so radicaly we really haven't conceved of it yet and that will be the main form that war takes.

i am not sure if any this has been mentioned but

A.) Fighters aren't for attacking caps their for defending against other strike cfraft such as dropships, and no you cant use a cap for that because they wouldn't be in the atmosphere.Fighter would essentialy be able to cover a larger area from smaller craft than Caps.

B.)there is a thing called solar wind which does create drag on sattelites, so it would be reasonable to assume that any space ship would have to be able to counter this force, the solar wind also creates a bubble if you will around the solar system meaning you would have to be able to penatrate that in order to even get into the system. While it wouldn't be to hard i don't think that it would be a good idea at FTL.

C.) DR. B  the british already have a working prototype of an elctromagnetic field that disintgrates anti-tank grenades, and with out science fiction or even threorizing about space travel eventually leads to discorvery, if wasn't for imgination and ingenuity we would not have the level of tech we have today 

And now that i have Responded to Dr. B I am going to make a list of reasons that Space fighters would still be used.

1. They are cheap.

Strike craft are going to cost a fraction of the cost of even the smallest frigates. While a frigate may be overall more cost effective it doesn't actualy mean anything if you can't afford the entire frigate. Small groups such as coprate security forces and police forces can afford to field more fighters than they could frigates and their fighters can cover a greater areas.

Along with the low cost is the fact that you can have large amounts of fighters. Small fighters are a sufficent force to defend things like small mining facilities and when a group has numerous things to defend its impractical to have capital ships at all of them. This point is even more important in times of peace when a full fledge attack is not going to happen, but you want to defend against minor pirates and such.

2. Fighters are good at killing other small craft.

Fighters make for an excelent counter agaisnt other fighters. As stated in Point 1 small groups are likely to almost exclusivly use fighters making having more fighters a simple counter. Fighters are also good at attacking dropships, merchant ships, and other reletivly unarmed targets.

Outside of large battles fighters and move around and pick off enemy ships as they go about their buisness (think Subs in WW2). You wouldn't want to send a cruiser to attack an enemy transport thats close to their defensive lines, Renforce ments might arive and destroy your more valuable cruiser. Even if they don't you still moved a much more usefull ship out of formation and weakend your lines, annd the cruiser would be over kill for an unarmed transport. However moving a squad of fighters wont really weaken your lines and if your fighters are destroyed their lost cost makes that mostly unimportant. And you can always add more fighters until there is enough to destroy the target without overkilling it.

Inside of Battle fighters can move around and attack the enemies troop transports and other soft targets without reducing the strenght of your main fleet. if the enemy wants to keep those ships alive he will need to move other ships to defend them or move them closer to the actual battle. Assuming the enemy does the same thing then you will need to have fighters on hand to help counter his fighters.

3. Fighters are still ships and still need to be shot.

While fighters are nowhere near as powerful as larger ships, they still have weapons and must be dealt with. The enemy can't just ignore them or they will get severly damaged. Point defense weapons, while small will still damage larger ships, even capital ships. Wile the enemies point defense are keeping your fighters at bay, they wont be shooting at your ships. While the fighters are occupying the point defense they will also still be cuasing some damage on the enemy.

4. Fighters are the only ships that can effectivly enter a planet's atmosphere.

Fighters will be the only things that can escort dropships onto a planet. without fighters to protect them the dropships will get destroyed by anti-air fire and enemy ground bassed fighters. After they escort the dropships in they can even aid the ground forces with air cover.

And since we can't discount the possibilty of planet bassed weapons that can shoot ships in orbit, fighters are the only things that can take this weapons out with out taking heavy casualties, and without bombarding the surfase of the planet and causing massive collateral damage.

5. Fighters (and other small ships) are the only things that will be able to move effectivly inside of a plenets gravity well. (probably)

Bringing capital ships right next to a planet is probably not going to work. Unless some kind of tech reduces the affects of gravity large ships are going to have a really hard time moveing around next to a planet.

6. Fighters (and other small ships) are the only thing that you would want anywhere near a planet.

When a fighter gets shot, assuming it isn't completly destroyed, its going to drift into the plenet's gravity and get pulled in. it probably wont make it past the atmosphere but if it does it will amount to nothing more than a small meteorite hitting the planet. When the Super battleship (think a Kol) gets shot its going to do the same thing. Except its not going to burn up in the atmosphere, its going to land and take out a continent atleast. Then its engines and any war heads are going to go off and thats going to make matters worse. If your defending a planet your not going to want your ships or the enemies anywhere near it. IF your trying to conqure the planet the point will be lost if you accidentaly make a crator the size of australia on it.

Not only are falling dead ships a problem but you also have to deal with missed shots. when a fighter misses and the shot goes wild nothing is going to happen. even if it does hit the planet it wont have any greater effect than if the fighter itself was on the planet when it shot the attack. When a batteship shoots a slug from a mass driver thats the size of my house its going to mimic the same effect that a planatary bombardment would have had. If your goal isn't to destroy the planet your going to want to avoid accidentaly firing huge missile, energy weapons or kinetic weapons at it, or accidentaly crashing a ship on it

7. Fighters can be built easily, quickly, and in huge numbers.

First Speed. Fighters manialy due to their size can be build very quickly. In times of war when your manufacturing capacity is maxed out it isn't unreasonable to assume that a medium grade fighter could be built in a few hours. A empire that makes use of fighter craft could drasticaly increase the size of its fighter forces in very short amounts of time. as the war wears on it can easily recover its losses of its fighter squads where as the building of frigate, crusiers, and battle ships will take much longer.

The ease of which they can be build and the amount kind of go hand in hand. The needed facilites to make a fighter could proabably fit inside of a small autobody shop. New Jersey alone pobably has enough facilities that could be converted to fighter production with in a week that within another day it could produce 10,000 fighters.

Your frigates and crusiers are going to need orbital facilities to atleast ground based ones with some form of transportation aid to help them get of planet. technicaly the frigates and smaller crusiers, if properly prepared, could be built on planet and transported into space in large numbers and releativly fast, but not even coming close to comparing to the rates fighters could. The facilities to build the frigates and cruisers are also going to be more costly and harder to make and the parts are going to be more costly and harder to find.

While the frigates and crusiers can still be made relitvly quickly and with some degree of ease and in decent numbers the massive capital shis can not. Capital ships are going to take years to build in times of peace and in times of war could be rushed into service in a matter of months, a far cry from the few hours fighters can be built in. Capital ships will require an orbital shipyard to be built; the shipyard is going to be just as costly and difficult to build, if not more, than the ships it builds. Most shipyards are only going to be able to build a few ships at once and not all planets will have a shipyard at all. Not only that but becuase of their stratagic value shipyards will be a prime target for enemies. and even more so if there is a ship in construction inside of it.

8. Fighters are less demanding on personel resources.

A fighter is probably not going to have more than 2 people in it. That paired with their low tactical value they will be veiwed as almost disposable. new pilots can be trained and combat ready in as little as 1-2 weeks. You could easily have an entire division of fighters trained with in a month. In comparision the Cobalt light frigate has a crew of 350, that includes technicians, communications officers, damage control teams, weapons control teams, navigators, and the bridge crew. The Kol Class carries 2500 people. Not only do these ships need various experts in different fields but it also needs a good bridge crew to command the entire crew. Captians who are skilled enough to command entire ships are usaly pretty rare and a valuable resources.

So thats all i have for now, however those 8 points are pretty solid.