Text 11546, 63 rader
Skriven 2007-02-04 22:04:41 av Jeffrey Kaplan (14985.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 11537 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (14976.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Military tactics in sci-fi?
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It is alleged that Jeffrey MacHott claimed:

> One that came up quite a bit on B5 was the Jump-and-Hit attacks, where a 
> warship would come out of hyperspace and immediately open fire on a 
> target (this of course only worked if they had prior knowledge of where 
> the target would be before they exited hyperspace, but it could be 
> managed in a number of ways, including having a spotter already in 
> realspace sending target info back into hyperspace.  Notable examples 
> included the Centauri hit on G'Kar's ship in In The Beginning, and the 
> G'Tok launching a similar attack on a Shadow Battlecrab, defeating 
> superior technology with surprise and raw overwhelming firepower.

Well, in B5, they apparently can scan from hyperspace to realspace as
needed.  There have been at least two distinct times when this is
obvious.  First, in "Walkabout" when G'Kar finally shows up with a
mini-fleet to help Sheridan in his test against a Shadow Battlecrab,
and again in "Endgame" when Lefcourt specifically says "We've been
monitoring the situation"... when he was in hyperspace.

In both cases, it would require the ability to scan the realspace area
in order to target your jump in to be in position to come out firing at
the right place.

It's also strongly implied in "In The Beginning" when reference is made
to the Minbari's superior navigation abilities to come out of
hyperspace where they can do the most damage.

> And of course, the style of combat on B5, with opposing forces often 
> jumping out of hyperspace in close proximity to eachother, makes a 
> dedicated space carrier highly vulnerable, while a dedicated cruiser, 
> having no capability to launch it's own fighters, finds itself at a 
> disadvantage as swarms of enemy fighters attack it's weapons placements 
> while it's distracted with fighting the enemy warships.  Thus, we have 
> heavily armed warships with expansive hangar bays, such as the Omega 
> Destroyer and Narn Starcruiser.

For single ship combats, yes.  But if you fight as a fleet, then you
can use single-purpose ships as we do now in the modern wet-navy.  The
US Navy is, I believe, currently built around the carrier.  The carrier
has the bulk of the aircraft, certainly all of the fixed-wing aircraft,
and moves with the cruisers, battleships, and their several and various
escort vessels.

Strategically, it makes more sense to do it that way.  The group as a
whole would be prepared for essentially any type of mission needed
whereas a single JOAT vessel will always be deficient in something.
That the Omegas in B5 were never shown to be would be due to the fact
that everyone else was using the same behavior model.

The same can be said too about the Battlestars in BSG, though since
those ships are just so fracking huge, they can carry internally a
wider assortment of specialized troops, smaller ships, and other
equipment (forex, we've actually seen them dock other ships in their
refugee fleet inside the hanger pod - Colonial One is small only in
comparison).

-- 
Jeffrey Kaplan                                         www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled             Send personal mail to gordol

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