Warfare in Space

Warfare on earth has been mainly two-dimensional (north-south and east-west). Armies moved north, south, east, and west, but didn’t move up or down. Aviation somewhat changed this, but not by much. This is because of gravity, of course. However, warfare in space is different. There are now three dimensions in which it is possible to move, attack, or defend in. With the addition of the 3rd dimension, combat takes place in a far greater area. There are several consequences of this.

First of all, there is something I call “the depreciation of forces”. Space is a much greater area than land. Terrestrial armies advanced by miles, while space armies would advance by AUs and parsecs. While the distances and areas in space are much greater, the size of individual units and armies of space would only increase marginally. The objectives in space warfare are much larger as well. Defending a planet or star system would take far more forces than defending a continent. This is compounded with the difficulty of surrounding something in space.

In two-dimensional terrestrial warfare, forming a circle of threat range around an objective would surround it, and prevent escape or entry of supplies or forces. This is hard, as spreading your forces into a circle would spread them thin over the circumference (2πr). However, this position was feasible, as a surrounded target would have a poor ability to resupply and hence, attack. However, this cannot carry over to space warfare.

In three-dimensional terrestrial warfare, your threat range would have to form a sphere to surround a point. Spheres take a much greater dedication of forces than circles, as they have a much greater surface area (4πr²). As a result, you would have to spread your forces very thin, or have an overwhelming amount of forces to surround an objective to prevent escape or entry. Also, the surface area of a sphere expands exponentially with its radius. This means that large objectives (planets and star systems) would take an exponentially larger force to blockade or surround. Hence the traditional notion of preventing escape or entry of an objective will be much harder for small objectives, and impossible for large objectives.

This impossibility of surrounding an objective also has profound consequences on the agressor-defendor relationship. Traditionally and terrestrially, the agressor got to choose the time, place, and magnitude (amount of forces dedicated) of the battle. This advantage was offset most of the time by the fact that the defender often had fortifications (castle walls, bunkers, missile bases). However, a consequence of 3d warfare is that fortifications are now less effective. The nature of fortifications are that their threat range has to surround the objective. Since surrounding an objective in space is very hard, you would need more fortifications.

Also, another defender advantage in terrestrial warfare is that only they can use immobile assets such as missile bases and castles, because the attacker cannot move such assets into the battle due to the physics of gravity and friction. However space has no gravity, friction, or air resistance, so it would not be hard for an attacker to move massive weaponry (kilometer long rail guns) to attack. This nullifies yet another defender advantage.

However, the above points are made with present-day to near future weaponry and sensor technology in mind. This could change in the future. Now Weapons in Space to see the consequences of the nature of space on weaponry.