MILITARY TECHNOLOGY AND STRATEGY IN THE STARFIRE ERA

TYPES OF UNITS

INFANTRY

Despite the great technological advances of the day, infantry still provide the front-line ground troops on many planets. However, unlike the infantry of past ages, modern troops can no longer rely on mass levies of barely trained militia; simple area of effect weapons (gas, explosives, automated targeting machine guns, etc) will simply slaughter a simple soldier with a gun, no matter how many of them there may be. Modern soldiers must be trained for years to handle highly sophisticated military gear, being able to operate and repair a number of devices under extreme conditions.

The standard infantry weapon is the variable-rifle, a complex but light-weight device which can fire either flechettes (tiny slivers of metal propelled at speeds just under Mach 1) or a laser beam. In either mode fire can be either single pulse, automatic, or a wide-variety of computer-controlled options. The laser also offers a variety of intensities, pulse lengths, and frequency settings. Variable rifles are powered by micro-battery packs which can be replaced in a matter of seconds; larger battery packs can be worn as backpacks, though these can be bulky.

Tactical coordination is provided by a helmet/visor sensor, communication, and computer system, which is usually directly connected to the rifle and any other equipment. Sensors in the helmet and rifle detect infrared through UV, magnetic fields, and radio, and the computer provides instantaneous targeting and tactical information through multiple visual and audio channels. The computer can be controlled by voice, subvocalization, eye movement, or hand movement on the rifle. Communication is handled by coded, low energy, directional radio pulses or by monofilament wires laid behind the troops. All electronics are hardened and insulated to minimize detection.

Infantry armor can vary tremendously, depending on the type of unit. Typical armor is completely self-contained, with internal temperature and pressure control, to protect from vacuum, gas or extreme temperatures. A self-repairing organic underlayer seals breaks within microseconds. Armor is usually coated with special polymers controlled by the computer which can change color to provide either camouflage or a reflective surface. Other layers control the surface temperature of the armor to prevent infrared leakage.

Light armor is composed of woven monofilament cloth through which wires run--if a specific charge (under computer control) is applied to a portion of the cloth it will stiffen to protect from impact. Heavy armor uses plates of high-density crystallized metals, with servos at the joints to allow normal movement. Computer-controlled maneuvering jets are normally provided for zero or micro-gravity movement; these can also be used in short bursts to provide extra speed or lift when climbing, jumping or running in a normal gravity field.

In addition to variable rifles, a number of secondary weapons can be used. Grenades, launched from shoulder mounts, come in a wide variety of types, including chemical explosives, shrapnel, magnetic burst (to scramble electronics), smoke, entangling filaments, paint (to coat the enemy's armor and counteract camouflage and reflectivity), incendiary, and micro-fusion explosive (the latter quite large and bulky). Grenades may also have small maneuvering jets and simple guidance computers, allowing anything from extra accuracy to full target-seeking capability, though these are quite expensive and rarely used.

DRONES

While the first independent combat robots were built centuries ago, they are rarely used by actual military units; most such robots are unable to match the flexibility and imagination of a human warrior, while those that can are far too expensive to actually risk in combat. However, semi-independent combat drones have many uses and are employed by most forces. Drones normally employ legs for locomotion, though small jet packs or even wings are sometimes used. Drones tend to be most effective in zero-g where they are most mobile.

Spy drones are the most common, small robots packed with sensors that infiltrate enemy positions and either return with recorded information or transmit it back. Spy drones range in size from a beetle to a small cat.

Guard drones are non- or semi-mobile sensor drones stationed at strategic points to detect incoming attackers or spies. They can be designed to detect visual forms, infrared, gravitics, vibration, or magnetic fields. Most simply transmit detection information back to a central command, but they may also be programmed to trigger traps or fire weapons, usually to destroy incoming spy drones.

Communication drones are small, fast drones designed to carry messages between troops when radio or monofilament communication is not feasible.

Decoy drones are cheap drones designed to simulate various aspects of an armed warrior, such as infrared signature, vibration patterns, weapon fire, radio signals, magnetic leakage, etc. Decoy drones confuse the tactical situation and draw fire from the real targets. While many decoys have simple weapons, these are meant mostly to simulate an actual opponent or provide covering fire.

Weapon drones are basically mobile weapon platforms, usually slaved to a master control computer or an actual field soldier. They provide additional fire support for the soldiers. While excellent marksmen, weapon drones tend to be fairly slow; the power sources needed to move one quickly are too easily detectable by modern sensors, limiting their tactical options.

TANKS

It should be noted that, given the firepower, armor, and mobility available to an individual soldier, the line between infantry and armored vehicles has become quite blurred; a warrior in a heavy battle-suit is almost equivalent in firepower and mobility to a small tank.

The chief modern difference between infantry and armor is the method of defense. Infantry rely on speed, mobility, camouflage, and cover to elude enemy fire; tank units, however, are large enough to contain gravitic generators and can make use of deflector shields and electronic warfare.

The modern tank is usually quite small, from three to six meters in length, though they can weigh many hundreds of tons. Manned tanks usually have only one or two crew members, except for troop carriers, much larger tanks which carry a few dozen men. Fully automated tanks are also quite common.

The typical tank is fully enclosed, able to operate in vacuum, high pressure, or water. Powered by fusion reactors, they move by the use of so-called "gravitic drives": gravitic fields reduce the effective gravity around the tank, allowing it to hover on simple jets; distortions in the fields provide momentum in any direction, assisted by maneuvering jets. Tanks have no maximum speeds, but their acceleration (with full jet assist) is limited to only slightly above that of the planet's gravity field; they thus rarely travel in excess of 200 kph in combat. Tanks are heavily armored with any of a number of super-dense artificial materials, often up to a half meter in thickness. In addition, they make use of gravitic deflector fields which deflect incoming projectiles and diffract and scatter laser fire. These same fields are manipulated to scramble electromagnetic and gravitic emissions from the tank, confusing enemy targeting sensors. Computer links between the defense systems and the sensors cancel out the fields' effect on the tank's own sensors, and also open temporary "holes" in the shields for outgoing weapon fire.

Tank weaponry varies enormously, depending on the specific design and purpose. The most common weapon is a heavy laser, capable of firing up to a gigawatt in a single burst (though this would drain the capacitors for some time). Secondary lasers (for shooting down incoming missiles) are also common, as are rocket launchers which shoot a variety of ordinance, most commonly micro-fusion bombs. The very largest tanks may actually carry anti-matter rocket launchers, but explosions of this magnitude are rarely necessary on planetary surfaces.

AIRCRAFT

Aircraft are similar in many ways to tanks, but rather than moving via gravitic fields aircraft utilize true flight, with wings and jet engines. Aircraft are thus, by necessity, much lighter and less heavily armored, but make up for this with speed and maneuverability. With fusion jet engines and adaptable wing designs, most military aircraft are capable of accelerations up to 10g (usable only without passengers), snap-rolls and other stunt maneuvers, suborbital travel, and speeds anywhere between 5 and 5000 kph.

Combat aircraft carry gravitic deflectors but little armor. Their weaponry is usually far less than that of a tank, but they have the advantage of height and range. Weaponry ranges from bombs and guided missiles for ground support craft to small laser arrays and projectile guns for air to air fighters.

SPACECRAFT

Space combat takes many of the concepts of land and air combat and transfers them to a vastly higher scale. Even the smallest frigates mass in excess of 20,000 metric tons, can withstand multiple hits by nuclear bombs, and have enough firepower to tear apart a kilometer-wide asteroid in a matter of minutes. The largest military ship currently in service, the MPF Battleship Ares, is over a kilometer in length, masses 315,000 metric tons, has a crew of 1500, and carries lasers which have successfully destroyed armored targets from 470,000 kilometers distance.

Military spacecraft are constructed of hyper-dense alloys strengthened by internal gravitic support fields. Exterior hull plating is often many meters thick. Propulsion is provided by antimatter engines capable of cruising at accelerations of 5g, battle speeds of 15g, and short bursts of up to 30g. Internal gravitic dampeners protect the ship and crew from acceleration affects. Most ships have enough fuel capacity to travel for a month at 1g before requiring antimatter refueling.

Defense is provided by gravitic deflector and distortion fields. Electromagnetic dispersal is of extreme importance in space warfare. Given the distances involved (missile exchanges may take place at distances measured in millions of kilometers), weapon targeting and even detection of enemy ships can often be difficult. Small craft have been known to slip into close laser range by drifting in without powered movement and adeptly using their deflector screens.

The two chief weapons of space combat are the laser and the antimatter missile or torpedo. While antimatter torpedoes have no equal in sheer destructive power, they are susceptible to defensive laser and projectile fire. A single direct hit, however, is enough to destroy any small ship and seriously cripple even the largest battleship. Lasers come in a wide variety of sizes, from small pinpoint lasers designed to take out incoming missiles and drones, to the heavy ship-to-ship weapons capable of cutting another ship in two with a single sweep at close range.

A note should be made on a ship's final but most destructive weapon: its own mass. Given a few minutes of emergency acceleration any war ship becomes a deadly, antimatter-loaded missile. Though possible to evade, there is at least one historical case in which a kamikaze Habber frigate annihilated a Martian battleship. A ramming ship is also the ultimate attack against a planet; with a few days acceleration a large ship is capable of generating enough momentum that its impact would rip away a terrestrial world's atmosphere. This has only been attempted once in human history, in 2671, when terrorists captured a Lunar cruiser and attempted to smash it into Mars. Concentrated fire from defense stations and other ships was able to destroy the ship only 1 AU from the planet, and tractor beams deflected most of the debris (though eight ships were destroyed in the process); the pieces that did hit Mars were still sufficient to cause major damage, killing many thousands of inhabitants and wreaking havoc with the global climate for decades.

Larger ships often make use of fighter craft to project and spread their firepower. Fighters are usually heavily armed and armored, but have extremely limited ranges due to fuel supplies.

Defense stations are usually quite small, using dispersal to make up for lack of mobility. They usually consist of large numbers of automated weapon platforms, including lasers, missile launchers, and gravitic mines, relying on sheer numbers to overwhelm any ship which enters their range.

THE MILITARY FORCES AND STRATEGIES OF THE HUMAN WORLDS

Just as the human cultures of the 29th century are a diverse lot, so are the military tactics used by those cultures. Each system has its own military traditions, strengths, and weaknesses.

SOL

The home system of humanity, Sol is also the acknowledged military leader of humanity. The only system with a long history of interplanetary military conflict, the fleet of any of the three major solar nations outguns that of all extra-solar colonies combined, and Sol's ships are qualitatively better than those of any other system. Commanders and crews have centuries of cultural experience to draw upon.

Sol is also the acknowledged leader in space marine tactics. All troops are extensively trained in zero-g and vacuum, and are expert at fighting in enclosed areas such as the corridors of a ship or habitat, or the underground communities of Luna and the Belt. "Urban" fighting, often within hand-to-hand ranges, is the norm for Sol's infantry forces. Most units also make extensive use of sappers, demolitions teams, and computer intrusion tactics. Lockheed's forces, born and raised in zero-g, are the acknowledged leaders in marine combat.

Sol is also the only system (with the suspected exception of Benevolence) to possess strategic weaponry, weapons specifically designed to destroy cities or entire planetary populations. Interplanetary antimatter missiles are owned by most nations, and "asteroid busters" are carried by many ships, antimatter torpedoes with a powerful laser on the nose, capable of digging their way to the core of an asteroid or small moon and exploding, splitting the planetoid into fragments.

AURORA

The only systems to possess any appreciable space forces outside of Sol are the Auroran colonies. Aurora's ships, however, are of distinctly inferior design and are more on the level of Sol's police ships.

Auroran military tradition is based very heavily on the "Rules of War" established centuries ago by the first Auroran colonists. Battles, both in space and on the ground, are fought at specific times and places, with scheduled breaks to care for the wounded. Pre-battle negotiations between the enemy commanders establish strict limits on the size and armament of each party. Battles are fought for limited objectives, and conditions of victory and surrender are determined before any battle. Small and highly trained, Auroran armies and navy crews are consummate professional warriors, the equal of any other world's in quality. Still, the Auroran leadership is aware that their ground troops and ship's crews lack a certain blood-thirsty savagery which could prove to be a disadvantage in conflicts with other cultures.

KALAHARI

Kalahari's military history has been dominated by centuries of on and off guerilla warfare. Outlander forces are masters of concealment, both through training and technological expertise; a thousand Outland regulars can disappear into the Kalahari jungle in seconds. Corporate forces rely heavily on sensor technology to even see their enemy; guard drones and handheld detection equipment are common. They also use spy drones liberally. A few military aircraft are used by both sides, and the Corporates have a small tank force, but on Kalahari the individual infantryman dominates all military activities.

CIMMER

Cimmer's military tactics and forces are unique among humanity, for they are not designed to fight each other but to fight the deadly creatures of their planet. Every Cimmerian is trained in battle from a young age, taught to wear armor, shoot a rifle, and utilize other advanced equipment. Cimmerian towns and cities are surrounded by strong defenses, steep walls, weapon emplacements, motion and vibration detectors, and sharp-eyed guards; some of the older cities are even built underground. Armed and armored vehicles (not true tanks, just beefed-up personal vehicles) are used when travelling across the rugged terrain.

In individual combat, Cimmerians are probably the best ground troops in known space. In addition to superb training and conditioned reflexes, Cimmer produces some of mankind's best personal armor and hand weapons. Each citizen normally owns a personally customized set of armor and weapons which he continuously maintains and upgrades with loving care.

TYRELL

Despite having had a single government for centuries, Tyrell actually has a long and rich military history, based on the need to put down periodic uprisings and the increasingly frequent clashes between factions within the corporate forces. While all troops are officially employed by the Tyrell Corporation, their loyalties are divided between a number of top executives and internal factions.

Tyrell's forces are masters of high-tech automated warfare. Drones, all quite advanced in design, commonly outnumber troops by a factor of at least ten. The troops themselves rarely need to wear armor as they are almost completely cyborgs inhabiting war machine bodies which may have little connection to human form. Even relatively human warriors have computer leads and training to directly interface with combat vehicles. Warriors are also enhanced with state of the art combat programs which direct their actions, running in tandem with the brain. The typical battle armor or vehicle is simply bristling with weapons, most under control of subprocessors, only indirectly supervised by a human mind.

Tyrell's very few space vehicles display a similar bent toward automation, each ship containing large numbers of fighter-craft. While each fighter has a semi-autonomous human or computer pilot, they are all coordinated with frightful efficiency from the mother ship's central computer. The Tyrellians vast experience with computer systems and AI always enables them to find the most effective balance between independent action and central coordination.

KUISTI

Kuisti's military history ended centuries ago, after the Kaliss were fully integrated into Kuisti society. Modern Kuisti has no current military forces.

ATHENE

Nothing is known of Athene's military abilities or history, if any.

BENEVOLENCE

Almost nothing is known of Benevolence's military capabilities. At the height of the Benevolent Civil War, two centuries ago, the forces of each nation were formidable, far outstripping anything seen in Sol today. Any estimate of their current forces is purely conjectural: some say it must be minimal, given the levels of past destruction in the system, while others believe it may be staggering, based on decades of production by societies totally devoted to war. At the very least it can be assumed that the Benevolent military forces have far more experience than those of any other system. Given the present nature of the war, it is also believed that Benevolent ships must rely heavily on stealth technology, and may have made breakthroughs in this area unknown to other worlds.

COMBAT IN THE FTL ERA

All of the information in the previous paragraphs was written in 2849 and refers to sub-light combat only. Your scientists can tell you the following about faster-than-light (ftl) combat.

Given current technology, ftl combat is simply impossible. There is no way to target a ship moving at ftl speed; though visible, the ship is already gone by the time you see it. It is also impossible for a ship to fire while under ftl drive. The stutterwarp effect causes a ship to pass through a series of mini-wormholes. Basically, the ship travels a few meters in normal space and then "jumps" forward a few hundred meters through a wormhole. This cycle occurs thousands of times each second. A laser (or tractor beam, etc.) fired under such conditions would thus immediately go off target, since the ship is continuously appearing in new places. A missile or other projectile would almost certainly get caught in the fringes of the wormhole field as it departed the ship, instantly getting split into two or more pieces. This is not a good thing to do when dealing with antimatter.

Your scientists, engineers, and military strategists are, of course, trying to think of ways to get around these limitations. All of these would require further research, however. Some possibilities are:

1) Recalibrate lasers and firing computers to handle the sudden jumps. While fairly easy to implement, this would weaken the effect of the laser as you couldn't fire at full burst length and would essentially be firing a sequence of tiny bursts from different angles, rather than a continuous burst on one spot. In fact, it would probably weaken the main laser of a battleship to the point where it would have trouble making toast.

2) Put stutterwarp drives on the missiles. Unfortunately, even the smallest current drives are the size of houses.

3) The ship can turn off its ftl drive, fire, then go back into ftl drive. This, of course, exposes the ship to enemy fire while it is firing. Also, the way the stutterwarp drives work, once turned off it needs to cool down for a few hours before you can turn it back on. So once you go to sub-light you're stuck there for a while.

As you might guess, option number 3 is the only one that really works at this point. You either have a choice of flying by things at 12 times the speed of light, unable to affect it much at all and unable to gather any effective data, or you can slow down to normal sub-light speeds and be vulnerable to whatever they throw at you.

Also, remember that ships traveling at ftl are visible. They show up as a series of blips on scanners, tracing where they have been.

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