Text 11537, 58 rader
Skriven 2007-02-04 23:36:44 av Jeffrey MacHott (14976.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Military tactics in sci-fi?
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So, this is more about sci-fi in general, but B5 definitely fits along 
with it.  It occured to me, when I had too much time on my hands, that 
you see combat tactics in sci-fi settings that just wouldn't work in a 
conventional battlefield, or at least, not the way they do in sci-fi.

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.

This kind of thing does happen, in a way, but more often than not, with 
fighter planes, especially in the pre-radar days when the Mark I eyeball 
was the preferred target acquisition system.  You'd come at an enemy 
with the sun at your back, or from behind a cloud, or whatever blind 
spot you had, and then you'd put metal on him before he had a chance to 
know you were there.

The other big thing is how FTL capability changes carrier tactics.  The 
mothership now has the distinct ability to outrun her fighter 
compliment, and is on occasion faced with the choice of taking an added 
beating from an enemy while recovering fighters before withdrawing, or 
withdrawing and leaving the fighters behind (or, best of both worlds, 
taking a beating while your protective screen of fighters makes for your 
jump-point,  hoping that you can jump clear before you're destroyed).

We see variations of this on Babylon 5, BattleStar Galactica, and Wing 
Commander, with the latter two presenting the ever dramatically 
impressive scene of fighters racing after their mothership, trying to 
get into the hangar bays just before the ship jumps to hyperspace, all 
while being fired upon by their persuers if they haven't managed to 
neutralize the enemy fighters first.  Wing Commander IV features a shot 
of a fighter still "in the air", having entered the carrier's hangar bay 
as the ship was transiting the jump point, presumably having to finish 
the landing once they emerged on the other side.

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.

Anyhow, just felt like sharing that bit of fanwank.  Any thoughts, 
input, anything like that?

-- 
--Jeffrey MacHott

"Sola bona lingua est mortua lingua"
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