I wrote the beginnings of a book thirty years ago, two days prior to my twentieth birthday. That book, and its predecessor were finally published this summer.
Fast forward thirty years and the same principles of space battles endure today, and have even been solidified in writing by the amazing Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (as James S. A. Corey) in their Expanse series of books. One of my test readers came back to me and mentioned the similarity between The Expanse and my own literature, and as The Expanse was available on Amazon Prime Video, I decided I’d give it a shot. And oh, boy, did they get battles in space right…. I haven’t read the books, but after binge-watching, I bought all the books for my eldest son, and he said the TV show didn’t deviate much from the books.
So why is it that my book Vanir and my entire space-faring part of The Arcworld has such similarities to The Expanse? Well, that’s what this article is about. It’s a longer take on an explanation I made back in August 2022 on my blog.
What can we use as an analog in order to prognosticate how a future space-faring civilization would arm its peacekeepers? Or how nations would design their own spaceships? We look at the Navy. Any one, really. But, I’m more familiar with the US Navy, so let’s use that as an example.
Aside from the Independence Class LCS, most warships use steel for their primary material. This is not just because of cost, or combat strength, but primarily because of structural wear over time and ease of repair in any dry-dock in the world. Fewer repair facilities are experienced with aluminum, and steel will dent instead of break or tear when run against a cement dock or underwater obstacle, and this helps to maintain waterproof integrity. For a spaceship designed to spend all of its time outside of an atmosphere, it makes sense to use a heavier and more combat-proven, yet cheaper hull material because loss of air is more concerning than a small hull water leak. For any spacefaring people, spaceships would fulfill the exact same requirements as ocean-going ships do here in the present, meaning they’ll be bumping against each other often enough when docking and transferring goods and people. And, as the expense to build a space ship is exponential compared to building a land-based watercraft, a long hull-life will be paramount in any material decisions. Of course, internally, aluminum and composites would be used to save weight or for other reasons. The lighter a material is, the less fuel is required to get it to orbit (we’ll talk about mining in space in a later article).
What are the two primary classes of weapon systems that any Navy destroyer has on board? Missiles and guns. Let’s take the US Navy’s Arleigh Burke class of destroyers as a perfect example of what any destroyer-class spaceship would look like in the future. The Arleigh Burke has a 5-inch forward-deck-mounted gun capable of anti-ship, ship-to-shore, and limited anti-aircraft attacks. Although that gun has a maximum range of 20 miles, it does not have a guided shell, at least at present. (Note: The Zumwalt’s proposed 155mm Advanced Gun System (AGS) was supposed to solve that problem by adding in a steerable shell, but that was abandoned when the cost-per-shell rose to over $1-million.) So, in order to prosecute targets farther than its main gun can reach, the Burke has a range of missiles.
The Arleigh Burke carries the Tomahawk (dual role: land & ship attack), the RIM-7/162 family of Sea Sparrow missiles (anti-missile & aircraft defense), the SM series (anti-aircraft, ballistic missile, over-the-horizon defense), RUM-139 anti-submarine rocket-launched torpedoes, side-launched torpedoes, and Harpoons (some in the ship class). All of this is run by the Aegis Combat System and protects the ship (and it’s convoy) from over the horizon (by sensor sharing) to relatively close in. For threats that make it through the first missile layers (3 distinct range rings), there’s the CIWS (pronounced “sea-wiz”) system, otherwise known as Phalanx (the R2-D2-looking thing). And, on top of that, there’s that five-inch gun. All of these systems existed in one form or another thirty years ago when I was first building the Arcworld.
Railguns
Over the last twenty years, the US Navy has been trying to develop a rail gun to replace the cannons on their ships, which have been consistently downsized over time. As mentioned before, the Zumwalt class‘s AGS was supposed to bring back primary cannons to destroyers, but it was only supposed to be a temporary solution until the gun that the Zumwalt’s electrical system was developed for became available. She and her class were to be equipped with a rail gun, which would have an expected per-shot cost of $50K. The Arleigh Burke’s powerplant was also supposed to be modified to provide enough current for that gun as well.
General-Atomics and NSWC Dahlgren as well as BAE both failed in their attempt. Nonetheless, it shows the direction the US Navy is taking when it comes to the future of weaponry.
Let’s look at how those technologies look in space. That 5in or 155mm cannon has got to go. Spaceships have massive issues with heat dissipation already, and anything that uses an explosive charge to propel a sabot anywhere would not only transfer more heat to the ship but also produce residue that could be detrimental to the ship itself (think how the A-10’s nose looks after combat and the issues it used to have with residue ingestion). Only a railgun would make sense as a valid replacement, but why mount it on a turret when the whole ship can adjust its orientation with lightning speed? And, make the projectile steerable or even add an actively scanned or optical seeker, and that ship could do serious damage to an enemy.
Let’s look at that projectile a bit more in depth. Theoretical muzzle energies for railguns can exceed 50 megajoules, which could lead to muzzle velocities of 8,000 mph (~13,000 km/h). With these velocities, a projectile just has to be accurate, it doesn’t even have to carry an explosive.
But, how do you make that projectile even more accurate when it’s got to either actively interface (e.g., transmit 2-way in real time) with a remote guidance radar or make its targeting corrections itself all while traveling at 10 times the speed of sound at sea level on Earth?
You make the projectile exponentially bigger
Most anti-aircraft missiles use an annular blast fragmentation warhead which is akin to a circular shotgun blast. This is because most warheads are designed to fly close to an aircraft and explode within planar range. Meaning, it explodes out in a ring and hopes to bisect the aircraft and render it unflightworthy. It is not designed to intersect with an aircraft head-on.
But, that’s exactly what we could expect from a projectile that is designed to attack head-on from extreme distances and use its velocity for the kill. In that instance, a continuous-rod warhead might be more favorable (although, that in itself is only an opinion, and in my stories, there are discussions regarding the merits of both). A continuous-rod warhead is technically just another form of an angular blast fragmentation warhead, but instead of sending shrapnel flying out on a plane after detonation, it uses a series of rods welded together at opposing ends that’s designed to expand upon detonation to create a large ring. It’s this ring that impacts the target, as the explosive charge is only large enough to fully-expand that ring. Overlapping concentric rings of differing radii can add to the overall size of the impact area. Thus, when a part of a ring engages the target, the rest of the ring can be expected to at least partially wrap itself into the target and amplify the damage compared to the impact of several blast-fragmentation shrapnel fragments. A lack of atmosphere interfering with the flight path of an expanded set of rings could also theoretically ensure that the cluster of rings remains tightly consolidated.
Hence, any destroyer in a space navy would have a railgun. Whether a corvette or frigate would mostly depends on the size of the railgun. In the Arcworld, that’s really just a matter of the size of the projectile, as both the dropships as well as Mother, a dreadnaught, have railguns.
Torpedoes & CIWS
As to the missiles? Arguably, in science fiction, they’re torpedos when used against another ship (because space is kinda like water?), and missiles when used for ground attack. But, the definitions are murky as most missiles have both air and ground modes. So too do the Standard Missile SM-2MR/ER and SM-6 models, differing mostly in their seekers and usage. The Burke also carries the SM-3, which is dedicated to ballistic missile defense (e.g., interceptor of a high-speed projectile), which is akin to a missile designed to defend against other railgun rounds, if looking at how that capability would convert to space rather than surface naval use.
So, railguns for offense, various missiles for offense and defense, and then a final last-ditch Hail Mary defense layer called CIWS. The only thing that has made sense since the first CIWS system was installed on a ship was the ability to fire a wall of metal towards an incoming projectile hoping it would disintegrate and explosively disarm prior to impact. (As a side note, the Phalanx was not the first CIWS installed on a ship. I could be wrong, but I think that honor goes to the Dutch in 1979. Phalanx first went operational on the USS Coral Sea in 1980.)
Remember Metal Storm? Yeah, neither does anyone else. But they tried to create the technological background for an electrically-stimulated CIWS system that used electrical impulses to ignite a propellant wedged between stacks of projectiles. But, in space, as mentioned before, igniting a propellant would transfer heat and residue to the rest of the ship. But if you have no other choice? If you can’t design a miniature railgun that can fire 3000 rounds in a minute and it’s a matter of life and death? Then it doesn’t really matter, does it, as long as the residue remains off any important sensor? And if podded and connected to the rest of the hull only with thin-ish arms, the heat transfer could be minimized compared to that of a much-larger railgun. A gun pod might overheat itself to catastrophic damage, but it wouldn’t affect the ship.
Electronic Warfare
For electronic warfare, just look at the Navy’s AN/SLQ-32(V)7 Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program Block III.
Any offensive system must have a defensive counterpart, and most defenses also have an alternative secondary offensive capability. Electronic warfare was first designed to be a layer of defense that was not kinetically challenged, meaning it didn’t have to reach out and touch someone. If an incoming missile’s sensor could be confused as to where a target was located, that target could be spared.
For radar seekers, that could be by confusing it by intercepting the active-radar’s emissions and projecting a believable, and much stronger radar return that’s hundreds of meters to the left or right of the actual target. Optically that’s harder, as only smokescreens or other obfuscation methods can confuse those seekers, but in space, the engagement distances are much farther out than on land or sea where gravity plays a role. In effect, in space, if you can see it, you can shoot at it. An atmospheric missile, or submarine torpedo, has to use propulsion at all times in order to close the distance to target. A missile in space can just get started in the right direction, get up to a reasonable velocity, and then shut down its motor and glide to target before it starts back up again for final target prosecution. Therefore, in the blackness of space, with hulls painted as dark as possible — damn the heat absorption to favor the stealth — active radar seekers would be more prevalent. Of course, multi-mode would also be a requirement for the final phase of flight, but if that active-radar seeker was fooled long enough or enough times for it to expend its fuel load, that torpedo could be rendered combat ineffective.
Gravity
So, for both book series — The Arcworld and The Expanse, the authors used the most appropriate and believable method to defend (and attack) a ship, a method that we will also most likely see in action whenever we actually have space battles in the future.
Another similarity is the burn hard, flip, burn hard approach to spaceflight. That’s also just a natural consequence of having an engine that has theoretically unlimited fuel. Why glide when you can burn?
The authors of The Expanse simply claim that the Epstein Drive is “super efficient”, and I also claim that the “Entropic Engine” is theoretically unlimited, as long as it can be fed a constant supply of liquid, such as water, ethane, or methane, most of which can be found all over in any solar system.
That would mean that not only is it easier to film a series when there’s gravity — just look at how horrible those “weightlessness in gravity” shots looked over the last 50 years of cinema — , but it’s also more habitable for the travelers if they are constantly under gravity. Therefore, a ship would simply burn to a 1G constant acceleration for half the trip, flip over halfway during a short period of weightlessness, and then decelerate at 1G for the second half of the trip.
Besides, artificial gravity is the stupidest thing I ever heard of…. So, acceleration/deceleration is the only way to provide something similar to gravity (even Einstein recognized an observer wouldn’t know the difference between gravity and acceleration).
Conclusion
So yes, to answer not only my reader’s — and critic’s — questions regarding the similarity between the two methods of space travel and warfare, I’ll make one final statement:
There is no other believable method for space warfare than to use some combination of CIWS, torpedoes, and railguns; and spaceflight with near-unlimited-fuel engines would never leave those engines dormant.
This is the first of my articles describing the technologies behind the worlds I build. There will be others. There will also be articles on other topics I am passionate about.
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Text Copyright 2022 GJ Herman
