> At 3:10 PM +1100 11/30/01, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
I'd expect to see lots of smaller vessels and brown water navy stuff on the
edge of controlled spheres of influence. Smaller vessels up to frigate size
would be useful on some worlds for Coast Guard type duties. I'd expect that
anything larger could be handled by orbital installations firing down or
sending down Aero space fighters to support the small stuff. Most roles would
be coast guard type S&R or Police work.
I base this on the assumption that most of the worlds that have enough
population to warrant spreading out amongst multiple continents would be well
protected by space borne naval assets. You figure those would have some bulk
transport across water ways.
> Ryan Gill wrote:
> At 3:10 PM +1100 11/30/01, Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
There is always room for some wet naval ops. While I can see space travel
becoming as inexpensive as air travel, sub-orbital transport will never
compete with rail networks and merchant sea lanes for the transport of bulk
goods; unless, energy costs go to practically zero. As long as ships transport
goods, and the oceans remain mostly opaque to long rang sensors, there will be
subs. People have been saying that the ASW breakthrough was going to happen
that would render the oceans transparent to satellite sensors, but over the
years, it has become increasingly unlikely that any of
these pie-in-the-sky methods will ever pan out.
The most promising of these technologies, ocean penetrating lasers, may be
great for tracking, but are abysmally bad for searching. Neutrino detectors
will render all forms of nuclear propulsion for subs obsolete from a stealth
perspective [these are science fiction detectors that do not require many
tonnes of heavy water and can block neutrinos from directions other than where
it is pointing, more sensitive too].
Depending on sensor psb, sea denial is accomplished by steathily dropping off
subs on the enemy's watery worlds, and watch the fun as he tries to use
interstellar transports to sub-orbitally deliver bulk goods (the humor
can only be appreciated by imagining FedEx attempting to deliver all the
japanese cars sold in the US).
SOSUS style sonar networks are far too expensive; unless, you can reasonably
expect opposing subs are always going to be around. It is much cheaper to
maintain an ASW force of subhunters with suborbital transport to get them to
stricken ships. Sonar works best when it stays in the water, so the subhunters
are either ships or subs. Once shipping is convoyed, there