Alizon wrote:Yes, I'm sure you can target Kinetic Weapons very precisely but essentially all you're doing is substituting kinetic energy from chemical or nuclear energy and how much energy you need to use is still going to be governed by the target you are trying to destroy. If the target is well defended and strengthened to resist such attacks, the amount of energy needed to reduce it could be very substantial and lead to considerable collateral damage.
Essentially, if you have a structure designed to resist a nuclear explosion, then you're going to need an energy release equivalent to a nuclear explosion to engage that target effectively. While a KEW probably would be a cleaner weapon in comparison to a Nuke, that energy release is still going to damage a lot of things and kill a lot of people, probably people you'd rather not kill.
A structure hardened to deal with a nuclear blast (in our universe) is one that's capable of dealing with with a certain amount of over-pressure for a comparative brief period of time over a large area. It doesn't necessarily mean it'll surviving having something like a 5000lb GBU-28 scoring a direct hit.
Alizon wrote:How do you deal with enemy forces in the field or dispersed throughout major urban areas without devastating the areas surrounding them? Does "precisely target" mean a hypervelocity pebble for every soldier? Do RMN ships carry dedicated mass drivers for just such an event? What would you have to do to defeat a planet which has made substantial preparations to defend against such an attack? If you are using KEW's, what would be the difference between using a weapon of mass destruction and using KEW's to subdue a planet?
If you're plinking individual tanks and groups of troops, then a full-on alpha-strike style KEW is probably overkill. I strongly suspect the RMN (and other navies) have weapons to deal with this sort of situation - "rods from god" or something like a CBU-97.
Alizon wrote:KEW's have the same problem as nukes. If you really need to depend on them to force a planet to surrender, you really need the planet to either cooperate with you or you need to be prepared to devastate it's surface otherwise the threat that goes along with it's use is relatively minor, sort of like lobbing the occasional cruise missile at people you don't like. People need to believe you will use them as WMD's in order for them to be cowed into submission.
That only holds if KEWs are only available in sizes equivalent to nukes. If I drop a KEW equivalent to a GBU-28 I doubt it's going to cause catastrophic damage to the entire planetary surface.