Fleet tactics & strategies in a hard sci-fi setting with near light speed weapons, ultra hypervelocity kinetics, realistic sensors, and torch ships
I am trying to figure out tactics and strategies for ships that move in a Newtonian regime and use weapons at or near the speed of light. Signals are also at light speed, being lidar and radar; ECM and ECCM are also present.
Total delta-v is at least in the hundreds of km/s, peak acceleration is multiple gees; brachistochrone burns like what can be seen in The Expanse, or perhaps with fractions of a gee to save fuel, are absolutely possible.
Where things get murky is how the weapons I've researched while looking up plausible or current systems on ToughSF and Project Rho change things. Lasers, Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beams, and Macrons travel at c, TeV electrons very close to c (Lorentz factor is 2 million or so), and 10,000 km/s respectively. This means that you would fight at ranges where the speed of light allows for the ability to dodge UREBs and weaponized lasers. Macron wielding vessels might close to greater distances in some circumstances. A spray of macrons (or very dispersed pulse lasers) over a wide cone could create a burndown effect, since the damage would be light but continuous and effectively impossible to dodge.
Besides the speed of light affecting aiming and dodging, effects of jitter (how granular your ability to aim at tiny fractions of an arc second) become significant, as too does the effects of enemy ECM and your counter ECCM. 898
In my research I've found that you would potentially need tremendous computing power for signal processing just to pick out a target and resolve it enough to figure out where it was!
Specifically, I am trying to determine what tactics, strategies, and even formations one would use one on one, small group on small group, and fleet on fleet. I would imagine this would make Admirals want a combined arms fleet structure, and divisions of particularly maneuverable vessels for flanking might be desired, too.
My present guess is as follows:
* Missiles make up the outermost envelope for obvious reasons. Perhaps some drones and remote control (RC) sub-capitals are fielded too.
* UREB/Laser ships drunk dodge, with drones and RC, sub-capital vessels in the middle having an AI on AI furball.
* Sub-capitals that lack the size and energy availability for UREB weapons would use Macrons and missiles & drones.
* UREBs are either extremely expensive and heavy to armor against (60cm of Tungsten at least) or better dodged. Drones that field powerful magnets could help screen since you only need to deflect tiny fractions of a degree to create a miss over distances measured in large fractions or even entire light seconds.
* Battle Cruisers might have a place if flanking will really help.
* My guess is that you would want to present a plane to the enemy, perhaps a slightly concave one, and space your vessels out rather far apart - hundreds of km to tens of thousands of km apart, and not just because of neutrons from your torch drives. I also guess that flanking would help, but I'm not sure.
To emphasize the distances here, fleets would themselves present as planes or discs at least the size of the diameter of the moon, and the separation between them and enemy fleets would be at least the radius of the moon's orbit around the earth! Macron and missile/drone engagements would potentially be far closer, but still farther than the moon's diameter.
Where I got stuck and realized I am out of my depth is evaluating my own guesswork, figuring out how formations and focus fire effect time to kill in a gamut where jitter and relativistic dodging is significant, and how ECM/ECCM would further shrink the limits of the inner envelope.
Given that one has to saturate the area that the enemy can potentially drunk walk until a lucky hit finally happens while avoiding them doing the same to you, I'm guessing individual targets would be focus-fired one at a time. How much would this lower the time to kill?
Would flanking really help? Does enfilade and defilade make sense with electron beams cm across raking across formations where individual vessels are as far apart as the antipodes of the moon?
Also, is there anything I've missed? 898