What would interstellar war really look like? Part 3 - Tactics with nearly-instant transit systems

Having looked at why an interstellar war might happen, and what the strategic goals for winning might look like, the next question is how the warring parties might go about achieving those goals. In other words, tactics.

In considering strategy, I introduced the terms NITS (Nearly Instantaneous Transit System) and NSF (Natural Space Flight) to refer to two different types of potential technology that would produce interstellar economies, and therefore, the potential for interstellar war. I discussed how the different approaches would lead to different strategic considerations in conducting a war. Since the strategic considerations are different, the tactical approaches would most likely be different as well.

NITS is much simpler in terms of getting to a new arena of war. As discussed in Part 2, a NITS system, while probably having as its usual form both a sending and a receiving station, would also need to be operable remotely, without the need for a receiving station in order to send people and goods. That means that in a NITS economy, it would be possible to send soldiers and armaments to any desired location on a target world, from some other world. While capturing the enemy's NITS bases would still be strategically important, it would also not prevent the enemy from also sending soldiers and armaments into the battle, and it would not prevent the target world from receiving assistance in the form of food and medical supplies (the usual point of a siege tactic). To cut off the target world, one would first have to destroy the NITS stations on all the neighbouring worlds, requiring one to attack those worlds first. This quickly would become impractical, and with each new world the assault would face the same questions as the initial assault on the target world. NITS economies would almost entirely remove the possibility of siege.

The strategic purposes of capturing the NITS stations on a target world would be

To prevent the enemy from sending goods and equipment from the world

To enable one's own side to attack deeper into enemy territory

To make it easier to bring in one's own troops and equipment to the target world

In order to claim control of a world, it would be necessary to capture or destroy all the enemy's NITS stations within range of that world. Otherwise, the enemy can continue to send arms and soldiers through its own wormholes or teleportation devices, and it will be constantly necessary to defend against these attacks. Alternatively, the armed forces one commits to holding the world need to be sufficiently numerous as to deter any thought of assaulting it.

A key element in what approaches would be practical in a NITS war would be the size of the NITS system in terms of the practical and technological limits for how much can be sent through it at a time. If the teleporter or wormhole can only accommodate one or two people at a time, then it is different from a system that can accommodate large goods wagons or even things the size of an aircraft carrier or bigger. We might assume that for a functional economy to be based on the NITS model, that a certain size of system would be necessary. Some products cannot be broken down into smaller pieces to be reassembled at the other end, and the NITS would need to be able to accommodate those otherwise the economy will be very inefficient. We may imagine, then, that for practical commercial purposes the NITS would need to be able at the very least to be able to accommodate a loaded rail wagon or a rigid vehicle truck such as this one.

That might still be a little smaller than the requirements to transmit, say, an armoured tank. We can therefore suggest that smaller NITS technology will require the main approach to be based on smaller numbers and lighter armaments, but if it is a bigger system then the ability to send armour and larger numbers of troops through at a time makes the option of larger deployments more attractive.

A small NITS therefore will most likely lead to a "special forces" style of deployment and warfare, based on the techniques developed by such regiments as the British SAS, the US Navy SEALS and Delta Force, and so on. Because the smaller groups will need to be relatively self-sufficient, and not reliant on the link from their own NITS station, the insertion location will need to be relatively close to the objective, but not so close as to make detection likely. The stealth tactics of the special forces will be the key element in achieving the objective of capturing the enemy's NITS station. Once the NITS station is captured, and the link established to one's own sending station, then heavier weapons and lager troop numbers can be sent through to take control of the world.

It seems reasonable to posit that the longer the insertion NITS bridge is open, and the more people are sent in, the greater the chances of detection. Once the enemy knows that your forces are on the planet, they will seek to locate the insertion point and cover it. They will also seek to locate and destroy any forces already inserted. Finally, they will use heavy or numerous forces to defend the objective. The special forces troops will need to evade detection and then in some way defeat the heavy defences to secure a bridgehead at the NITS base.

The nature of a NITS situation means that typically, the worlds most at risk of invasion will be easy to identify, and therefore deploying large numbers of defensive forces to those worlds will be practical. The detection of and search for enemy insertion, therefore, can afford to use large numbers of troops while still leaving the objective well-defended. This could make it impractical to use the tactic of sending through troops to defend the insertion point to enable a gradual build-up of numbers before the assault. The larger numbers building up will make detection easier, and the larger numbers of defending troops could be sufficient to overrun the defending troops before significant numbers of attackers can come through the NITS bridge.

If this approach is going to be used, then opening multiple NITS bridges into the enemy world would be the best option, forcing the enemy to divide their troops while also enabling larger numbers of one's own troops to arrive on the world in the same amount of time.

It seems likely that a combination of small special forces insertions and larger bridgehead insertions would be used in the course of a war. One of the most effective defences against a NITS incursion by an enemy would be to disrupt them at the sending end. To do that, one would need to know where the NITS sending base was, and then attack it. The best way to do that would be to have special forces in place on several nearby enemy worlds who could carry out surveillance and attack the enemy army's NITS base if necessary to slow down the transit of enemy troops through it.

One question arises about the special forces approach especially, which is whether the sending station can also pick up people from the receiving end, without having a matching sending station. Typically in science fiction, the technology is presented as being able to do so (for example, Star Trek's transporter beam; an opened wormhole is also usually portrayed as being transited in either direction). If it can, then a likely part of standard operating procedure for a surveillance team at least, would be to have a fixed time and location at which reports could be sent back, or the team could be extracted. This would also make resupply of the teams possible. If it can't, then every assault or insertion would be a one-way deal with no possibility of retreat if the assault should be foiled by the enemy. Surrender would be the only option for the defeated invading troops.

It can certainly be said that that the small-NITS tactics would lead to a very fluid military situation, with no clear way to see whether a battle is being won until either the invaders successfully take the defenders' NITS base and bring through their own troops, or the defenders manage to capture or kill everyone who came through the attackers' NITS bridge.

With a large-NITS situation, the same question about transit-direction arises, and when one is contemplating sending large amounts troops and equipment through the bridge, it becomes a much more significant one. If it is a case of "either they win outright, or we lose the lot", then sending troops through becomes a much bigger gamble for a general when the numbers are approaching thousands rather than hundreds or a few tens.

The question about resupply and enemy detection of the insertion is much less significant. With a large-NITS assault, it could be practical to send through an entire battalion, brigade or even division. Supplies for several days' fighting and/or travel could also be sent through, meaning that the insertion point can be much farther away from the enemy's NITS base(s) than with the special-forces insertions. With armour including artillery and tanks as an option with large-NITS, defending the insertion point is also much easier.

With the much larger troop numbers, and necessarily longer times that the NITS bridge is open, then detection of the insertion becomes much more likely. If it is given that the enemy will learn of your presence before long, then there is no point in limiting the duration for which it is open, and that means that there can be constant resupply to the base of operations at the insertion point. If this bridgehead is established a few days away from the enemy's centres of population and their NITS stations, then this also represents a period of time that can be used to establish defences around the insertion point from the attacking army's NITS. While air strikes can be used by the defenders to disrupt and weaken the attackers during this period, the potential is for large-scale military deployments and manoeuvres. That means that the tactics will in essence be those familiar to military commanders throughout the ages, albeit with whatever adjustments that technology and weaponry of the future dictate.

It is quite likely that a battle would be very large in scale, because both the attackers and the defenders would be able to send considerable reinforcements and supplies of weapons, ammunition and food to their respective troops on the target world. As with the small-NITS situation already discussed, one possible way to gain an advantage for the attackers would be to open bridgeheads in multiple locations on the target world to force the defenders to split their forces. Such a large-scale assault would have the disadvantage for the attackers that there are more likely to be neighbouring worlds held by the defenders than by the attackers, meaning that defenders might be able to resupply and escalate troop numbers faster than the attackers can.

This means that the "bleed-dry" tactic of forcing the enemy to commit large numbers of his troops to a single arena (the tactic attempted by the German forces in World War 1's Battle of Verdun) would be especially effective in a large-NITS situation, and on a larger scale it might be that several large deployments on different neighbouring worlds at once would be used to force a breakthrough.

***

Overall, it seems that a NITS-based economy is likely to produce tactics and battles that are broadly similar to various types that are familiar to present-day commanders, either in large-scale formations or the use of guerilla or special-forces deployments to achieve the key objectives. Because of the nearly-instant transmission of troops and equipment into a war zone, war in a NITS situation is likely to be very fluid, but confined to worlds close to the borders between the warring empires. The borders could move quite quickly if one side or the other gains the upper hand in the war zones, but it is more likely that the area affected by the war will increase quickly than that either side's area of control will do so, because of the likely prevalence of deployments "behind enemy lines" in the form of surveillance and sabotage missions.

In my next piece, I will look at the implications for tactics of the Natural Space Flight form of transit.