A Side Affect of Planetary Bombardment

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:BTW, why are KEWS deployed instead of energy weapons? An energy weapon would save the cost of a KEW with the same result, and possibly less collateral damage.

Remember, ships have grasers. The atmosphere will be basically opaque to them. A graser shot at a planet is going to make a big sky boom and little else--think Chelyabinsk.

I was originally thinking about our own SDI program. But I think that uses microwaves.

cthia wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Remember, ships have grasers. The atmosphere will be basically opaque to them. A graser shot at a planet is going to make a big sky boom and little else--think Chelyabinsk.

I was originally thinking about our own SDI program. But I think that uses microwaves.

Also, IIRC, the SDI satellites were planned to engage the ICMCs as they exited the Earth's atmosphere; so no need to worry about the massive atmospheric attenuation that certain types of energy weapons experience.

Though SDI also toyed with lots of different concepts (this list from wiki): bomb pumped X-ray lasers, chemical lasers, neutral particle beams, railguns, and then later (when that all those techs proved too immature) the "brilliant pebbles" kinetic kill rockets.
So it's a little hard to keep track of what where along an incoming ICBM's trajectory each weapon concept would have first engaged it.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Remember, ships have grasers. The atmosphere will be basically opaque to them. A graser shot at a planet is going to make a big sky boom and little else--think Chelyabinsk.

cthia wrote:I was originally thinking about our own SDI program. But I think that uses microwaves.

Jonathan_S wrote:Also, IIRC, the SDI satellites were planned to engage the ICMCs as they exited the Earth's atmosphere; so no need to worry about the massive atmospheric attenuation that certain types of energy weapons experience.

Though SDI also toyed with lots of different concepts (this list from wiki): bomb pumped X-ray lasers, chemical lasers, neutral particle beams, railguns, and then later (when that all those techs proved too immature) the "brilliant pebbles" kinetic kill rockets.
So it's a little hard to keep track of what where along an incoming ICBM's trajectory each weapon concept would have first engaged it.

I suppose our own plans, originally, to use lasers influenced my notion. Although I did not know before now the plan was to wait for the missile to exit the atmosphere. Thanks for that info as well.

Also responsible for my notion was Russia's fear the weapon would be used for ground based targets. I suppose it could be utilized instead of missiles as sort of a plausible deniability type of scenario.

I suppose in the early days of the HV, or even now in some backwoods systems, beam weapons are used. Even if only because those weapons won't leave fragments of evidence that could be analyzed to determine who is responsible. Beam weapons also seem to supply a cruel weapon to use for those belligerents who would value cruelty beyond all else. Like pirates, who also may have a short supply of KEWS, if any at all at their disposal.

cthia wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:Remember, ships have grasers. The atmosphere will be basically opaque to them. A graser shot at a planet is going to make a big sky boom and little else--think Chelyabinsk.

cthia wrote:I was originally thinking about our own SDI program. But I think that uses microwaves.

Jonathan_S wrote:Also, IIRC, the SDI satellites were planned to engage the ICMCs as they exited the Earth's atmosphere; so no need to worry about the massive atmospheric attenuation that certain types of energy weapons experience.

Though SDI also toyed with lots of different concepts (this list from wiki): bomb pumped X-ray lasers, chemical lasers, neutral particle beams, railguns, and then later (when that all those techs proved too immature) the "brilliant pebbles" kinetic kill rockets.
So it's a little hard to keep track of what where along an incoming ICBM's trajectory each weapon concept would have first engaged it.

I suppose our own plans, originally, to use lasers influenced my notion. Although I did not know before now the plan was to wait for the missile to exit the atmosphere. Thanks for that info as well.

Also responsible for my notion was Russia's fear the weapon would be used for ground based targets. I suppose it could be utilized instead of missiles as sort of a plausible deniability type of scenario.

I suppose in the early days of the HV, or even now in some backwoods systems, beam weapons are used. Even if only because those weapons won't leave fragments of evidence that could be analyzed to determine who is responsible. Beam weapons also seem to supply a cruel weapon to use for those belligerents who would value cruelty beyond all else. Like pirates, who also may have a short supply of KEWS, if any at all at their disposal.

This raises a question. Does the Eridani Edict encompass beam weapons? I can't believe that beam weapons were never fired at a planet. And if the Edict does not encompass beam weapons as well, then for that reason alone why not use them?

Again, I always wondered why pirates wouldn't steal directly from cheap backwater systems that do not have any warships. If you are a pirate and you have a warship, why not rob an entire planet? You can hold them at gunpoint with the beam weapons, because pirates may not have an inventory of KEWS. And they wouldn't want to use KEWs anyway. KEWs would leave evidentiary evidence.

cthia wrote:Does the Eridani Edict cover beam weapons? I can't believe that beam weapons were never fired at a planet. And if the Edict does not also encompass beam weapons then for that reason alone why not use them?

The Eridant Edict doesn't care what type of weapons you used; it's designed to prevent mass civilian casualties and/or planet-searing. If you use your beam weapons on military targets with reasonable care to avoid spillover, it's not an Eridani violation. If you use your beam weapons to strafe cities for the lulz.... it probably is.

(Leaving aside technical questions of "how effective grasers would be in atmosphere?" for the moment; the same analysis would apply to, say, randomly blowing up orbital habitats.)

cthia wrote:they wouldn't want to use KEWs anyway. KEWs would leave evidentiary evidence.

What evidence do you think a KEW leaves, besides a big hole (of doubtful evidentiary value)? An energy weapon would also leave signs of destruction, but neither yields "fingerprints". I guess you could work out the metallic composition of the KEW, but how useful would that really be?

Anyway; if an evil group wanted to bombard a planet, they could throw small asteroids at it.

tonyz wrote:The Eridant Edict doesn't care what type of weapons you used; it's designed to prevent mass civilian casualties and/or planet-searing. If you use your beam weapons on military targets with reasonable care to avoid spillover, it's not an Eridani violation. If you use your beam weapons to strafe cities for the lulz.... it probably is.

(Leaving aside technical questions of "how effective grasers would be in atmosphere?" for the moment; the same analysis would apply to, say, randomly blowing up orbital habitats.)

Or simply using your ship's tractors to accelerate a large asteroid at the planet. The Edicit bans the use of WMDs against non-military / non-command & control targets -- and, in effect, under the Edict it's a WMD if it causes widespread damage to illegitimate targets.

Someone could invent some entirely new WMD tomorrow and the Edict would still ban it's use against significant civilian populations.

There's no list of proscribed weapons -- it's a statement of proscribed behavior. (And a promise/threat to punish both whoever violates it, and whoever had authority over them)

Jonathan_S wrote:There's no list of proscribed weapons -- it's a statement of proscribed behavior. (And a promise/threat to punish both whoever violates it, and whoever had authority over them)

A note and caveat:
First, RFC has stated in this forum that the Green Pines explosion did not rise to the level of an Eridant Edict violation (which surprised some of us).

Second, there has been widespread discussion of who (if anyone) would enforce that edict now. It is mainly being used at the current point in the books to punish officials of the defeated Solarian League and maybe as justification for the pacification of Galton.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:they wouldn't want to use KEWs anyway. KEWs would leave evidentiary evidence.

What evidence do you think a KEW leaves, besides a big hole (of doubtful evidentiary value)? An energy weapon would also leave signs of destruction, but neither yields "fingerprints". I guess you could work out the metallic composition of the KEW, but how useful would that really be?

Anyway; if an evil group wanted to bombard a planet, they could throw small asteroids at it.

Weapons can be traced back to the country of origin. Nuclear weapons can usually be identified by their weapons grade.

The quality of steel and even iron differs from country to country. I would imagine the quality of metals is different in the HV as well.

Manufacturing methods and materials simply vary.

.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:There's no list of proscribed weapons -- it's a statement of proscribed behavior. (And a promise/threat to punish both whoever violates it, and whoever had authority over them)

A note and caveat:
First, RFC has stated in this forum that the Green Pines explosion did not rise to the level of an Eridant Edict violation (which surprised some of us).

Second, there has been widespread discussion of who (if anyone) would enforce that edict now. It is mainly being used at the current point in the books to punish officials of the defeated Solarian League and maybe as justification for the pacification of Galton.

The first arguably means that the construction nukes didn't inflict significant enough casualties to be considered WMDs in this context. (Since it treats accidents or idiotic subordinates as prima fascia evidence of wanton disregard -- still leaving you liable)

Which just gets back to the Edict not prohibiting specific weapons, rather it prohibits specific outcomes.

And yes, the second is an interesting discussion. Still, the Edict only formalized the idea that humanity doesn't want people going around killing planets, or planetary populations, so I suspect that bad thing will happen to people, militaries, or governments that embrace that tactic. And I wouldn't be surprised if the GA adopts some form of the Edict for their own -- or there might simply be a multilateral treaty obligating the signers to enforce such a thing. (Though that's less binding that the SLN's constitutional amendment; something their government theoretically couldn't override even if they'd wanted to. Though, in practice, given that non-trivial fractions of the SLN were willing to commit violations the Mandarins probably could, if they wanted to, have found a way to get the SLN to simply ignore a violation)