Setting jam: lasers vs air power

[OgreBattle]

Been reading various articles on how hypothetical advances in lasers could make current aircraft and missiles less effective, requiring new counter measures in aircraft

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com ... ft-is-safe

https://newatlas.com/laser-weapons-futu ... are/52801/

Now I like the idea of cutting down air power in a near future to sci fantasy setting as it makes ground warfare (more relatable for most folks) more emphasized.

So then what does ground warfare look like in an envornment of reduced air power?

What kinda countermeasures do you see against lasers? perhaps shields hung further forward so heat is dissapated from more surface area, releasing clouds to dilute the laser, reflective glitterboy armor?

Finding out a way to work in mecha is always fun. A concept I've been pondering is mecha not as 'walking tanks' but an even more all terrain technical/light vehicle, or a "helicopter that can also run and jump instead of crash or spend a ton of fuel idling". The Starship Troopers concept basically.

[Ancient History]

Your hypothetical scenario is basically a tower defense game. Towers have limitations: they can only fire at what they see, and they can only focus on so many targets at a time. So beyond-the-horizon attacks (artillery, space-based, etc.) are viable, if they're big or numerous enough to survive getting lasered. Swarming the towers works, although the advantage is on the defenders. You could send out a swarm of drones to cover the infantry assault (or vice versa).

[angelfromanotherpin]

That was OGRE. Laser towers severely cut down on air and missile power, so it's all cybertanks and mobile infantry.

[Thaluikhain]

So then what does ground warfare look like in an envornment of reduced air power?

Well, small amounts of air power isn't that unusual historically. Nowdays it is, but there were plenty of ground battles where the tank was more decisive than the plane, for one reason or another.

What kinda countermeasures do you see against lasers? perhaps shields hung further forward so heat is dissapated from more surface area, releasing clouds to dilute the laser, reflective glitterboy armor?

Stealth, can't see it, can't shoot it. Though you clip something with a laser enough to ever so slightly damage it, and it's not stealthy anymore. I could imagine sweeping the sky with (relatively) low intensity lasers, and revving up the power once something in the sky starts glowing.

Finding out a way to work in mecha is always fun. A concept I've been pondering is mecha not as 'walking tanks' but an even more all terrain technical/light vehicle, or a "helicopter that can also run and jump instead of crash or spend a ton of fuel idling". The Starship Troopers concept basically.

Current thinking has some strict ideas on building tanks, you want to build something low to the ground with the gun as high up on the vehicle as possible, and with a high volume for it's surface area. Exactly what walkers don't tend to have. Need a bit of work to get beyond that problem, but not saying some strange circumstances couldn't arrive to justify them.

[jt]

Without air power there's a missing niche for very fast offensive capabilities, so I'd expect faster tanks.

Current thinking has some strict ideas on building tanks, you want to build something low to the ground with the gun as high up on the vehicle as possible, and with a high volume for it's surface area. Exactly what walkers don't tend to have. Need a bit of work to get beyond that problem, but not saying some strange circumstances couldn't arrive to justify them.

Round walkers with skinny legs meet 2/3 of those criteria, so you'd only need to find a reason why being low to the ground isn't a good idea anymore. All I've got is that people tried to get around laser defense systems by making tunneling missiles. Which are a little silly, but taking for granted that they exist, I'd readily believe that they beat tanks.

[erik]

Low-lying tanks that temporarily convert into walkers for extra sighting range when ready.

[Whipstitch]

The mecha form factor will probably never quite make sense but I think you could make a case for urban warfare power armor that doesn't feel super insulting. Maybe there's a conceit where high powered anti-vehicle laser emplacements can chew through anything so long as they have the few seconds of tracking long distances afford but the far more practical Disco Ball of Death light anti-personnel lasers can cut a swath through unarmored infantry but can't reliably overpower a squad of Master Chief expies making use of cover, regenerating personal shields and their own heavy weaponry.

[Username17]

6 meter tall mecha don't make any military sense. Power suits make all kinds of sense. Infantry remain pretty much the only way to actually meaningfully control territory or fight in cities. And if you could give your infantry 200 kilos of equipment and armor, you would do that.

The real question is what the practical limits to the size and mass of a power suit. Obviously if your "suit" is 6 meters tall it's not infantry anymore and can't get into buildings and can't really do much of anything in terms of accomplishing missions. If your suit is 2 meters tall and can fight inside apartment buildings while being essentially immune to small arms fire and having a massive sensor suit, you have given a permanent erection to several generals. Where exactly the line between indispensable and worthless with a humanoid vehicle / powered infantry armor suit goes I am not sure. I can imagine conflicts where I'd want a 4 meter tall power armor soldier, and I can easily imagine tactical scenarios where I'd desperately want a 3 meter tall power armor soldier.

-Username17

[erik]

Dune style forcefields which are susceptible to slow massive crushing force and immune to fast bullets and bad targets for lasers would make giant robos an acceptable choice.

[nockermensch]

Dune style forcefields which are susceptible to slow massive crushing force and immune to fast bullets and bad targets for lasers would make giant robos an acceptable choice.

Dune shields vs lasers is one of the weak points of the series: If shields react to lasers like that, then the proper in-world response is lasers on a timer or trap, and not a return to swords.

[erik]

Yeah. Having it just refract/deflect laser pulses would be way superior to having it be a really easy way to deliver nukes.

[Mord]

I'm struggling to imagine a conflict that would be meaningfully shaped by laser countermeasures. When the USA comes to teach one of those "shithole countries" a lesson about FREEDOM, the bad guys might be able to knock out a few satellites or protect a few key sites, but they won't have the economic power to deploy laser countermeasures on a theater scale.

When the USA attempts to teach China a lesson about FREEDOM, then the nukes fly and there is one lesson about all interceptor systems that you should engrave on your brain: no system is 100%. With enough ICBMs - including warheads, dummies, chaff-equipped cluster missiles, and other ingenious counter-countermeasure weapons - D.C. ends up the setting for Fallout 3 no matter how many laser defense stations and aircraft you ring it with.

A conflict where lasers could be relevant to the outcome would be one where opposing major economic and technological powers are each providing their proxies with broad access to the latest high-tech equipment, without triggering the end of the world. I don't think that has described any armed conflict since the Korean War, since most of these neo-colonialist misadventures were initiated by the USA, USSR, or a proxy against hill folk with Kalashnikovs. Maybe the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan would be the closest parallel, since American deployment of state-of-the-art Stinger missiles to the mujahideen forced the Soviets to adopt countermeasures and change their air tactics.

That's kind of the problem with all of these speculative future war kind of questions - coming up with a set of parameters that precludes total nuclear annihilation requires you to spool out a situation with enough specific details that you've basically already answered whatever question you were asking.

Imagining a US invasion of "Politically And Geographically Isolated Mid-Size Nation On Technical Par With The US But No Nukes," which is the simplest and most generic scenario I can come up with where the laser thing might matter... Both sides would lose satellite visuals immediately and attempt to re-establish operational awareness by whatever means available, including fixed lookout posts, UAVs, and special forces detachments. Probably you would see less use of helicopters and high-altitude spy planes due to the reluctance of command to take casualties, but if some general feels ballsy you might get air crews also participating in the process. Anyway, losses of UAVs and other air assets will show each side the blind spots in the other's laser defense grid. This would naturally be expected to change rapidly, so you would get opportunistic surprise missile/air attacks in different places at different times as the situation changes.

In areas covered by both sides' laser defense grid, you would have battles where mobility and speed reign and look remarkably like WWII. You would not end up with the Panzer Maus or other megatanks rumbling around the battlefield, because even if you don't have to worry about smart missiles, plain old artillery will still do the job. A sufficient volume of incoming fire will overwhelm any interdiction system, so even under the defense grid, a sufficiently high-value target might find itself Macrossed.


When you have superior mobility, you dictate where and when the engagement takes place; if you can bring sufficient firepower to bear to penetrate the enemy's defenses at the time and place of your choosing, you probably win the battle. Tanks would have value due to the mobility with which they deliver their offensive and defensive capacity, and would certainly become no larger or slower than they are today. Supposing that both sides' laser defense grid covers the entire theater of war, tank battles would probably be decisive because mechanized vehicles' mobility would define the tempo of the entire conflict and tanks are naturally the meanest and toughest of these. Lighter, faster vehicles would play a role as well, and this could be a conceivable use for mecha-type vehicles. When you can't use air transport to move assets around and you still want to get serious firepower positioned behind the enemy by going through bad terrain unsuitable for wheeled or even tracked vehicles (hilly terrain?), legs just might be the only means of transport available to you.

Still, mecha can't possibly be as tough as an MBT, so they would see special strategic use, not broad deployment as the principal type of fighting vehicle. Imagine them as really slow helicopters on legs and you probably understand their uses and limitations. And again, if you're not under the enemy's laser defense grid, you would still rather use aircraft.

[Omegonthesane]

When the USA attempts to teach China a lesson about FREEDOM, then the nukes fly and there is one lesson about all interceptor systems that you should engrave on your brain: no system is 100%. With enough ICBMs - including warheads, dummies, chaff-equipped cluster missiles, and other ingenious counter-countermeasure weapons - D.C. ends up the setting for Fallout 3 no matter how many laser defense stations and aircraft you ring it with.

Bolded a very relevant word there. Pretty sure even with current tech, if both sides of a nuclear war shoot their entire wad and countermeasures stop all but sufficiently few from getting through, you have a few no-go zones but a largely recognisable setting - or at least, a setting clearly descended from something recognisable.

Or, y'know, the people somewhere down the supply chain think "oh my god no we can't end the world even if we're being ordered to" and the nukes just... don't fly. Though that probably sounds better as an excuse for there to still be any left after the initial exchange than as a reason for why countermeasures simply were not overwhelmed.

[Orca]

Suppose conflict breaks out over the moon, or minable asteroids or whatever. A bit on from today - you'll need the excuse to beef up the amount anyone can send into high orbit. Still, sending 50+ tonne tanks or space fighters there isn't an option, it's not just unimaginably expensive it's actually impossible. Break them up into 2 tonne chunks and you risk having components 1-20 and 22-25 on site but not essential component #21 due to enemy countermeasures. A few hundred kilos of pressurised suit and someone to drive it is much more doable and if you lose the captain en route then the lieutenant gets a battlefield promotion.

Sure space war can look like an impossible fantasy, but since when has that stopped anyone here gaming in a setting?

[kzt]

Do not assume the reluctance of the West to accept military casualties over the last 30 years is true of all nations and will hold true for all combatants in a future war.

Something upwards of 13% of the population of the USSR (21% of the male population) died during WW2. Not all from the Germans, Stalin killed a bunch too. But they still won decisively.

17% of the population of Germany was killed during WW2 too, again not all due to the Allies.

Hell, the US had ~1500 soldiers killed on June 6th, 1944. There were 17,300 killed in battle on September 17th, 1862 at Antietam, out of the total population of 31 million.

There are reasons to believe that China today will not be nearly as willing to accept mass casualties as it was in 1950-53, when an estimated 400,000 PLA troops died. But who knows?


And you can see how ground vehicles interact with basically invulnerable air defenses if you look at the IDF counteroffensive across the Suez in 1972. The air defense network was largely destroyed by IDF armored forces (or the threat of the tanks), which allowed the IDF aircraft to attack the Egyptian rear areas, which helped the ground forces advance further.

[maglag]

The best excuse for big mechas is "They started as giant mobile workers for heavy labour but then war suddenly broke out and things were getting ugly so we attached some weapons and maybe some extra armor and sent them to the frontline". Desperate times call for desperate measures.

That's kinda how they did in Gundam at start, and the reason they kept doing it for the next wars is because the main company building the mechas saw a big business opportunity and played all the sides supplying them with new fancier mechas to keep the demand up. Heck, in the Crossbone manga they literally say the classic Gundam "face" is added to the final product because that way the federation will pay more!

[Dogbert]

There's also the thing where China boasts already having the technology for portable lasers, and their plans to build a death star totally harmless artificial satellite.

Having lasers doesn't mean you have lasers with an effective unlimited range, your laser pointer can't annoy martians, and barring Robotech-scale gigantic weapons, they won't be super effective against targets in high orbit.

I frankly can't conceive a scenario that really renders air power moot.

[Omegonthesane]

There's also the thing where China boasts already having the technology for portable lasers, and their plans to build a death star totally harmless artificial satellite.

Having lasers doesn't mean you have lasers with an effective unlimited range, your laser pointer can't annoy martians, and barring Robotech-scale gigantic weapons, they won't be super effective against targets in high orbit.

I frankly can't conceive a scenario that really renders air power moot.

"there literally isn't any more aeroplane fuel in the entire world" seems a realistic one at the current rate. Battery powered drones really don't compare to bombing craft or ICBMs.

[Thaluikhain]

A conflict where lasers could be relevant to the outcome would be one where opposing major economic and technological powers are each providing their proxies with broad access to the latest high-tech equipment, without triggering the end of the world. I don't think that has described any armed conflict since the Korean War, since most of these neo-colonialist misadventures were initiated by the USA, USSR, or a proxy against hill folk with Kalashnikovs. Maybe the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan would be the closest parallel, since American deployment of state-of-the-art Stinger missiles to the mujahideen forced the Soviets to adopt countermeasures and change their air tactics.

Not a proxy war, but the Falklands might sorta work for that. Both sides had access to the latest(ish) gear and the conflict wasn't allowed to escalate.

Bolded a very relevant word there. Pretty sure even with current tech, if both sides of a nuclear war shoot their entire wad and countermeasures stop all but sufficiently few from getting through, you have a few no-go zones but a largely recognisable setting - or at least, a setting clearly descended from something recognisable.

Depends on how you define "recognisable", you'd not kill the country, but you'd kill the nation.

[Stahlseele]

Giant Robots only make sense if you have to regularly traverse terrain where all other vehicles can not go. Swampts. Through Rivers. Submerged for some time. mountainous regions with cliffs and no real roads in between. Forrests. That sort of thing. Everywher else? Conventional Vehicles are just gonna rip and tear apart anything that is the size of a house and basically impossible to miss for any kind of modern weapon. If you can not make your Mech impervious to normal tank and anti tank weapons and things like smart bombs and cruise missles and even smart projectiles from artillery, then it becomes a giant target and not much more.

Power-Suits lose their advantage as soon as infantry can not do what infantry is supposed to do anymore. Get into buildings. So anything up to and including a very flexible 2.5m that can just hunch down to get through doors and move inside buildings is viable. Everything above that is simply a small vehicle meant for outside combat again. It could probably still be superior to normal vehicles due to being able to climb and burrow and go prone and whatever and carry a surprisingly big punch for its size, but it will still be squishy enough that once it has been spotted, modern anti infantry weapons are just going to do the same to them as they do to regular infantry.

swiss cheese and red mist. MBTs, APCs and AFVs come with all kinds of weaponry, starting at 5.7mm rotary miniguns up to and including automatic 40mm grenade launchers with 20 and 30 millimeter autocannons in between. And then they STILL have the large bore Cannon or guided Missles for anything that can not be taken care of by the "small" calibre firepower.


The not anymore plane fuel in the world could open up the playing field for Airships. Lifting Body, solar panels on top, electric engines. Basically, climb to the stratosphere, then slowly amble over to where something needs being made gone and drop a train load worth of smart bombs on it.

[kzt]

To run out of liquid fuel you'd have to have run out of all the water and carbon. That seems kind of unlikely, and with those you can build liquid fuels. The nazis built synthetic fuel plants in WW2 that worked. And if it comes to that you can run a turbine or IC engine on hydrogen cracked out of water directly. Not an ideal fuel, it's apparently more effective running a fuel cell, but it will work.

Ground pressure kills walkers. Tracks have really low ground pressure, even a very big tank like the M1 has a ground pressure of just 15 PSI. They can occasionally drive across snow or sand surfaces that won't reliably support infantry walking. (Note that the ground pressure tables usually is for a standing human, not an infantryman walking with a typical 100+ lb combat load.)

[DrPraetor]

This is eerily similar to a Slashdot thread I wish I could find.

The frightening thing about strategic missile defense is that a first strike would include sufficient missiles to overwhelm it, almost certainly. BUT, a retaliatory strike might be blocked. So missile defense would be useful as a first strike weapon, if we were going to bring FREEDOM to the smouldering remnants of East Asia, for example. That is, if China->US, we're still a smoldering crater, but if US->China->US, and the US takes out much of China's capacity with the first strike, the strategic defense might matter.

APCs, at least, are thought to offer limited protection against bombs - there's a story (which I can't at the moment find) about soldiers in Vietnam riding outside their vehicles for protection. I understand that even "up-armored" humvees were not thought to provide good proection in Iraq.
I admit that I don't understand the physics of this, and while I've read it in several places in multiple conflicts I've often wondered if this wasn't an irrational fear of entrapment as for example people fear seatbelts.

ANYWAY, if it's true that power armor protects you from small arms fire but not from IEDs, then it would be of limited use in the neo-neo-colonial war you've set up in your early 22nd century high tech war story.

I suspect that the episode of Black Mirror with the dogs may reflect a more realistic substitute for human infantry in the wars of the future.

[Thaluikhain]

The frightening thing about strategic missile defense is that a first strike would include sufficient missiles to overwhelm it, almost certainly. BUT, a retaliatory strike might be blocked. So missile defense would be useful as a first strike weapon, if we were going to bring FREEDOM to the smouldering remnants of East Asia, for example. That is, if China->US, we're still a smoldering crater, but if US->China->US, and the US takes out much of China's capacity with the first strike, the strategic defense might matter.

That's assuming that the ICBMs can't get off the ground fast enough, though, which may not be the case. Presumably it's not the case for your anti-missile missiles.

Anyway, "overwhelmed" can mean more than one thing. You aren't going to stop all the enemy missiles, no, but you can stop the enemy from being guaranteed to get all the targets they want. If you can stop half of their missiles (at random), then everywhere they fire two missiles at has a 1/4 chance of not being hit, anywhere they shoot 3 at has a 1/8 chance and so on. They'd end up hitting lots of place multiple times to ensure they get all the important targets, there's lots of targets, and a finite supply of missiles. Eventually it ends up looking like a proxy war in Asia is a better bet, and your 50% effective missile defences have become 100% effective.

APCs, at least, are thought to offer limited protection against bombs - there's a story (which I can't at the moment find) about soldiers in Vietnam riding outside their vehicles for protection. I understand that even "up-armored" humvees were not thought to provide good proection in Iraq.
I admit that I don't understand the physics of this, and while I've read it in several places in multiple conflicts I've often wondered if this wasn't an irrational fear of entrapment as for example people fear seatbelts.

I think the idea was that the mine would go off directly under the vehicle, so you want as much metal between you and the ground. The VC didn't just target the underside of vehicles, of course, so limited usefulness.

ANYWAY, if it's true that power armor protects you from small arms fire but not from IEDs, then it would be of limited use in the neo-neo-colonial war you've set up in your early 22nd century high tech war story.

Limited, but still important use. People would use small arms fire against you if small arms fire works against you. For that matter, it'd still protect you from IEDs to an extent. Not perfectly, but it'd save lives sometimes, and force the enemy to make bigger devices out of their limited resources some other times.

[kzt]

APCs, at least, are thought to offer limited protection against bombs - there's a story (which I can't at the moment find) about soldiers in Vietnam riding outside their vehicles for protection. I understand that even "up-armored" humvees were not thought to provide good proection in Iraq.
I admit that I don't understand the physics of this, and while I've read it in several places in multiple conflicts I've often wondered if this wasn't an irrational fear of entrapment as for example people fear seatbelts.

To some extent it had to do with the characteristics of AFVs in Vienam. Sheridan gun rounds had a bad habit of leaking propellant grains, so the bottom of the turret often was covered in essentially gunpowder. So the turret crew often rode more out of the tank than in the tank to void the flash fires. M113s were made of aluminum and early ones had gasoline engines.

Sheridan's and M113s were very vulnerable to AT weapons, and if you rode on top you would generally be unhurt when an RPG2 punched a hole through both sides of the vehicle, spraying small metal particles throughout the hull and often setting it on fire. If someone started shooting with small arms you'd jump into the vehicle. But if you get hit with an AT rocket or a mine you had better chances if you were outside the hull.

Though IIRC, it took an average of 7 RPG2 hits on an M113 to destroy one, so they were tougher than this makes them sound.

Both were flat bottomed AFVs with thin bottom plating and an AT mine or other large charge going off under it was bad. To some extent this was countered by lining the bottom of the hull with sandbags or other stuff, but it had limited effectiveness against mines.

Humvee's have less armor than they did and were more vulnerable to under-body explosives. Even Bradley's, which are like 5 times heavier, were pretty vulnerable.

Strykers and MRAPs had a V shaped hull that was pretty effective in keeping the crew alive and appear to be better at resisting large IEDs than 60 ton M1 tanks. V shaped hull vehicles would have the running gear blown off if it hit a mine or IED, but the hull was intact. I've seen videos of 40,000some pound Cougars running over multi-hundred pound IEDs and being blown a good distance through the air without any fatalities to the crew.

[Blade]

Besides overwhelming the defenses with too many missiles, there are other options like hacking the defenses or sabotaging them (directly or by cutting their power supply). And stealth is still an option: if the defenses can't detect your aircraft, they can't shoot them down.