Space War: Weapons Intro

Artwork by Russ Mannings for "Captain Johner and the Aliens", 1963
Based on "First Contact" by Murray Leinster, 1945


Introduction

When it comes to weapons, it looks like three main types: beam weapons, kinetic weapons, and missiles. Beam weapons are lasers and particle beams. Kinetic weapons are coilguns, railguns, and shrapnel weapons. Missiles are, well, missiles. Ken Burnside compared it to a policeperson armed with a service revolver, a shotgun, and a police dog. The revolver (beam weapon) cannot be dodged or outrun, but can miss. The shotgun (kinetic weapon) is more likely to hit, but with reduced lethality. The dog (missile) can be dodged or outrun (or shot, that would correspond to point defense), but the blasted thing will chase you, and will always hit unless you actively prevent it.

(Holger Bjerre begs to differ. He points out that kinetic weapons are less likely to hit since it can be dodged, beam weapons lose lethality with range just like shotguns, and kinetic weapons do not lose lethality with range just like revolvers. Well, no analogy is perfect...)

Dave Bryant has his own analysis of spacecraft weaponry here. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, so do your own research.

Artwork by Malcolm Smith, Imagination Magazine, October 1953

From Space Dreadnoughts edited by David Drake.

One of the problems with figuring out how ships are going to fight in space (assuming that we have ships in space, which isn't as likely as I wish; and, that we're still fighting when we get there, which is unfortunately more probable) is that there are a lot of maritime models to choose from.

It's also true that some of the maritime models came from very specialized sets of circumstances; and a few of them weren't particularly good ideas even in their own time.

And it's also true that some of the writers applying the models have a better grasp of the essentials than others. For example, I recall two essays which were originally published about fifty years ago in Astounding.

In the first of the essays ("Space War", Astounding Science-Fiction, Aug 1939), Willy Ley, a very knowledgeable man who had been involved with the German rocket program, proved to my satisfaction that warships in space would carry guns, not missiles, because, over a certain small number of rounds, the weight of a gun and its ammunition was less than the weight of the same number of complete missiles. The essay was illustrated with graphs of pressure curves, and was based on the actual performance of nineteenth-century British rocket artillery ("the rockets' red glare" of Francis Scott Key).

As I say, the essay was perfectly convincing ... until I read the paired piece by Malcolm Jameson ("Space War Tactics", Astounding Science-Fiction, Nov 1939).

Jameson's qualifications were relatively meager. Before throat cancer force him to retire, he'd been a United States naval officer -- but he was a mustang, risen from the rank, rather than an officer with the benefit of an Annapolis education. For that matter, Jameson had been a submariner rather than a surface-ship sailor during much of his career. That was a dangerous specialty -- certainly as dangerous a career track as any in the peacetime navy -- but it had limited obvious bearing on war in vacuum.

Jameson's advantage was common sense. He pointed out (very gently) that at interplanetary velocities, a target would move something on the order of three miles between the time a gun was fired and the time the projectile reached the end of the barrel.

The rest of Jameson's essay discussed tactics for missile-launching spaceships -- which were possible, as the laws of physics proved gun-laying spaceships were not. Ley could have done that math just as easily. It simply hadn't occurred to him to ask the necessary questions.

(Ed note: Malcolm Jameson wrote another essay with the intriguing name "Space-War Strategy" in Super Science Novels Magazine, March 1941. If you have a copy of this, please get in touch with me.)


From Manna by Lee Correy (G. Harry Stine) 1983:

"This is a training flight to trans-lunar space with landing at Dianaport. Request permission to pass within five kilometers of you."

"Training flight? Hah!" Omer exclaimed. "Chung has give us an escort!"

"Yes, but why?" I wanted to know. "What's going on dirtside that we should know about?"

Omer shrugged. "Let Chinese escort us. It will discourage more hassle."

If the Chinese cosmolorcha wanted to escort us, there was nothing we could do about it. It was armed. Cis-lunar space is no place to get whanged; it's a long time to anywhere.

"Permission granted, Heavenly Lighting," I replied. "Be advised you are within our zone of damage if we should have a catastrophic failure." The last was pure bluff, but nobody wanted to be near a space vehicle if it catoed, regardless whether it was due to an internal or external cause.


Artwork by Kelly Freas

Weapon Classifications

These are preliminary classification schemas offered "as-is". Tinker with them to suit your taste.


This scheme was created by Erik Max Francis, and contains some modifications by Isaac Kuo:


The all-powerful "disruptor", which destroys the very fabric of space.

This scheme was created by Timothy Miller (Cerebus), and contains some modifications by Erik Max Francis: