Spoilers Beyond: The Swarm VS USS Vengeance

[Timo]

To be sure, it would have taken Krall a similar amount of time to destroy three dozen Constitution class starships

Nope. The numbers are different: the Swarm is immensely larger in the attack against the station, but the station is not that much bigger than the ship. It's just pumping out a bit more firepower that is doing a much better job than it should.

No they don't. They have SIZE.

Which is a qualitative and decisive difference that stops lions from attacking them. It's a complex quality that no zebra could achieve without becoming an elephant, because size doesn't scale well in biology.

Similarly, all Yorktown may have working for it is more guns - but that transcends the swarm-fighting concept somehow, making the station disproportionately good at it, and establishing that Starfleet indeed can cope with swarms.

That it can't cope with the Swarm is merely a function of it being a big swarm, not of it being a swarm.

Of course he is. He's been intercepting Starfleet traffic for years, analyzing their computers, their ships, their tactics, their systems.

This just means he might have ideas of how he should fight. He cannot translate those into reality, though, because he cannot tailor the Swarm. All the Swarm can do is be the Swarm. And some Starfleet assets deal better with swarm attacks than others; the one Krall studied the most is the one that resists him the best, out of our small sample.

because Krall specifically directed attacks at its weapons and then shields

We didn't hear of reduced weapons capacity; we just heard of an inability of the weapons to cope with "this type" of attack. The Swarm would have triumphed in both cases anyway, but in the Enterprise case it really didn't need any tactics to do so. (The "cutting their escape" thing only became a necessary refinement when it became evident that finding the superweapon was more difficult than expected.)

Everything Kirk tried to do, Krall quickly and precisely countered; he had planned the takedown of the Enterprise WEEKS in advance, and probably even had time to rehearse it.

I'm sure Krall planned and rehearsed. It's just that his plans didn't survive contact with the enemy, as is standard fare. He was improvising and reacting, at times only triumphing through sheer personal effort in "bottleneck" situations where his assets were incorrectly deployed to be of help. Hence personal combat with Kirk!

Apart from the fact that he has control of the MACHINERY that makes those drones in the first place, we know for a fact that he's been attacking other ships for decades to maintain his livestock.

We know of no such control. And we see from the Enterprise fight that ships don't pose a threat of attrition to his strength. Yorktown did; it was an irrelevant threat that would not have saved the station, but if Starfleet at large has Yorktown-style fighting systems, then the threat accumulates and may eventually stop Krall.

The movie is very EXPLICIT in the fact that Starfleet was not qualitatively able to cope with swarm attacks using conventional weapons.

Again, not. The heroes said the ship was not, and we can believe them. There was nothing to indicate the station was not.

The proof, then, is in the pudding: Starfleet's qualitative advantage IS NOT in its weapons, but in its capacity to exploit its enemies weaknesses.

That's a nonsensical argument: that Starfleet can exploit weaknesses in no way establishes that its weapons would lack qualitative advantages, much less be unable to cope with swarms (which as such are a common threat already encountered in the 2009 movie and neatly handled by the Kelvin to the loss of no shuttlecraft).

You might just as well argue that Starfleet doesn't know how to build a shuttlecraft because transporters always save the day (or vice versa). The "because A, then not B" argument is fundamentally inane.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dilandu]

This implies that YOU understand anything about space warfare. Nothing in your posts suggests you do. In particular you seem unaware of the existence of REAL WORLD space-based weaponry and the fact that all practical examples of it currently involve the use of both kinetic-kill vehicles AND swarm tactics as a countermeasure. IOW, it's considerably more realistic than anything we've actually seen BEFORE.

I knew a lot more about space tactics and weaponry that probably all "Beyond" crew together.

The kinetic kill systems are used against targets with predictable trajectory and no means of self-defense: i.e. modern sattelites. They are used generally because the current targeting systems are capable of scoring direct hit against such target, and because shrapnel warheads eventually proved to be not very effective.

Intially, the anti-satellite weapons was, of course, nuclear. If you knew anything about anti-sattelite warfare, you must knew about early "Bold Orion" tests, and then working systems like "Nike-Zeus"-based, and latter "Thor"-based ASM. The problem with nuclear warheads against sattelites was:

- Such weapon mean automatic escalation, which wasn't the good idea for every possible situation.
- The high-altitude blasts have "blanketing" effects against land-based radars, i.e. they threatened the ability of land-based missile detection systems
- The artifical radiation belts, created by such explosions, could easily damage the other sattelites on low orbits.

And because no space-based weaponry was deployed by either sides, the anti-space warfare simply haven't got large priority.

The current ASAT's are generally the results of "brilliant pebbles" attempt to produce non-nuclear kinetic weaponry that could be used in strategic BMD system (SDI, actually). The "pebbles" project (ram sattelites, basically) was never deployed, but the data and systems developed were used to develope land-based kinetic interceptors. They aren't much more effective than ABM nukes. In fact, the ABM nukes are much more effective. But the kinetic-based systems aren't such "escalation threatening", and they did not hamper the other sattelites and land based radars.

I.e. the idea of kinetic ASAT's was born not because they are more effective, but just because in PLANETARY conditions they are easier to use without political consequences.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Seriously?

The ECM were known since Russo-Japanese war.

... where engineers took several MONTHS to analyze their enemy's communication systems and device countermeasures to disrupt them.

Modern ECM systems are designed the same way: a jamming pod carried by an aircraft can jam S-band, Millimeter-wave and J-band radars because that's what alot of their enemies are probably using. If you run into an enemy that uses a frequency-agile or rotating polarity radar system, or even a sufficiently advanced phased array, you're fucked: your system isn't designed to cope with that, no matter how many buttons you push.

Starfleet can't afford to have this problem. They encounter things they've never even SEEN before, and come up with a tailor-made countermeasure in 5 minutes or less.

The utility of this in warfare is kind of obvious: you might surprise Starfleet at your first engagement, but the very next time you fight them you find all your weapons fail to achieve target lock, your communications are disrupted, your sensors stop resolving their ships, your navigation systems start screwing up, and your power systems start fluctuating randomly so that your weapons only fire half the time. That's Starfleet's entire strength: they analyze you, they find your weaknesses, and they exploit them.

It takes then a few minutes to do this, obviously. But a conventional military would have to outsource that task to an R&D department at a government-funded laboratory and then wait for the prototype to get certified and tested. Starfleet ships ARE laboratories; they prototype everything on that battlefield.

Another stupid plothole: the futuristic sensors and computers which are unable to analyse the signal, determine the acoustic modulation and implement jamming. I.e. they are worse than average late-XX century ECM system)

How is that a plothole? Star Trek sensors could NEVER do this. That's the whole reason the ship has a science officer.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

No. It could be neutralized by dispersion - but dispersion means no saturation.

Dispersion of the TARGET means no saturation. You can launch a saturation attack from a SINGLE source if you fire enough projectiles at it, but a dispersed target cannot be saturated by a single launcher.

FYI: this is why "machineguns" are a thing. I can saturate a single target with sustained fire from just two guns; I cannot saturate 12 dispersed targets that way.

And now please describe me: how many drones would fit into the space around "Enterprise" if they would mantain 2 km dispersion?

In "The space around the Enterprise"? literally AS MANY AS YOU WANT. Space is big like that.

Mathematically, though: a sphere 100km in diameter would have a volume of 524,000,000 cubic meters; with 1000m between each ship, that space would be able to enclose about 500,000 drone ships.

I chose 100km because a single drone ship moving at a speed of 10km per second (approximately orbital velocity) would have the kinetic energy equivalent to its mass in dynamite and would take less than 5 seconds to cross from the outside of the sphere to strike the ship.

In other words, the the swarm could maintain a minimum standoff distance of 1000 meters and still be able to hit the Enterprise at least 1000 times a second -- anywhere they want to -- with the force of a truckload of TNT and sustain this attack for up to 6 minutes. Which is, in simpler terms, a "saturation attack."

The problem is, that for such tactic to work, quite a lot of factors must be perfectly aligned. And "no area weapon" is most important, That's why the bombers stopped to use tight "battlebox" formations after Korean War: the anti-air nukes made such tactic the expensive suicide.

Actually, bombers stopped using those formations because surface to air missile technology made conventional bomber-group-with-escort techniques useless. Escort fighters provided no defense against SAMs and the larger formations were also that much easier to spot on radar. The new tactic involved sending attack aircraft in ahead of time to neutralize ground to air defenses before the bombers ever got there... and even then, it didn't always work.

FYI: saturation bombing was still a thing as late as the Persian Gulf War, even when bombing formations were dispersed. Saturation has to do with the amount of firepower placed on the target, not the dispersal of the attackers themselves.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I knew a lot more about space tactics and weaponry that probably all "Beyond" crew together.

The kinetic kill systems are used against targets with predictable trajectory and no means of self-defense: i.e. modern sattelites.

No, they're designed to take out ICBM reentry vehicles, whose countermeasures include the use of decoys, random evasive maneuvers and, yes, swarm tactics. Also, I don't think "I read about it on the internet" really qualifies you to claim knowledge that the film crew doesn't have, seeing how you don't actually know who any of them are and don't know anything about their educational backgrounds.

Intially, the anti-satellite weapons was, of course, nuclear...

And were never used in war, or tested under live fire conditions. It's debatable how effective they would have been.

I.e. the idea of kinetic ASAT's was born not because they are more effective, but just because in PLANETARY conditions they are easier to use without political consequences.

Which changes what, exactly? NO ONE has ever tested a nuclear weapon in a co-orbital detonation and we have no real data on how structures react in the presence of one, only theories. Even the upper-atmosphere tests don't reveal that, and we have NEVER tested such a device in hard vacuum outside of Earth's magnetic field.

None of which changes the fact that the energies involved in a nuclear detonation are miniscule compared to the energies involved in faster-than-light travel. A starship could probably shrug off a point-blank nuclear detonation without taking meaningful damage (as the TOS Enterprise basically did in "Balance of Terror") and hardened systems like mining drones would probably LAUGH at nuclear weapons. Area effect devices in Star Trek have only ever been used against soft targets like, say, cloud creatures and space ameobas with no defenses to speak of; against anything more advanced than a shuttlepod, they're a waste of time.

 

[Skipper]

This is the swarm that was attacking Yorktown

Yes, the station was lasting a little longer than the Enterprise, but undoubtedly it was doomed to fail.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

but the station is not that much bigger than the ship

Why do I even bother to take you seriously these days?

We know of no such control.

Three different times he commands the swarm to hit specific targets through voice commands. The most explicit is when Kirk almost manages to escape on impulse and Krall says simply "cut its throat." The swarm responds by maneuvering VERY precisely, sawing through the neck of the ship just above the secondary hull. Either the entire swarm knew what he meant by this and responded accordingly, or someone coordinating the attack did. Snipping the nacelles was also timed in such a way to prevent the ship's escape at warp and required a good deal of coordination as well.

Yorktown did

Did you actually SEE a huge amount of weapons fire coming from the station after the defense sat went down? I for one did not.

Again, not. The heroes said the ship was not, and we can believe them. There was nothing to indicate the station was not.

That is the ENTIRE POINT OF THE MOVIE, Timo. If Yorktown was capable of defending itself against that kind of attack, then resurrecting the Franklin would have been entirely pointless.

Also, I'm recalling that Kirk actually SAID that Yorktown wouldn't be able to defend itself against an attack like Krall's, the only thing I can't remember is his exact wording.

That's a nonsensical argument: that Starfleet can exploit weaknesses in no way establishes that its weapons would lack qualitative advantages

It lacks a qualitative advantage against swarm tactics, but that goes without saying.

Broadly: it lacks a qualitative advantage against unconventional threats, but THAT was firmly established as early as "The Cage." You can transmit enough power to "blast half a continent" but you that doesn't help you when your enemy is using something other than normal weaponry.

Starfleet's weapon systems are a specific adaptation against against a specific class of threat, particularly low-tech, non-exotic opponents whose attacks are neither exotic nor overly creative. Krall is unusual in that the only unconventional thing about him is HOW he attacks; he's using a low-tech system in a very unconventional way. So it's not really surprising that the countermeasure turned out to not be all that complicated either.

You might just as well argue that Starfleet doesn't know how to build a shuttlecraft because transporters always save the day (or vice versa).

Funny, I'm pretty sure I've said this to YOU more than a dozen times when you tried to argue that shuttlecraft are superfluous because Starfleet prefers to use transporters.

I'm also pretty sure my point then is the same as it is now: shuttlecraft are useful in some times, transporters in others, but Starfleet keeps the shuttles around anyway because transporters aren't always the best way to get things done.

 

[Skipper]

^to fall! I can't wait to have the possibilty to edit my posts!

 

[Timo]

Three different times he commands the swarm to hit specific targets through voice commands.

You misunderstood the question. Contrary to what you claimed, Krall has no control over the machinery that produces the drones/craft. All he can is fiddle with what the products themselves do. And it doesn't amount to much.

The most explicit is when Kirk almost manages to escape on impulse and Krall says simply "cut its throat."

A typical example of Krall seeing his initial plans dissipate. The "almost managing", later on in the fight, was due to a chance victory in desperate hand-to-hand in a quest to separate the stub of the secondary hull; if impulse escape really were something Krall had planned on preventing, he should have done something about it earlier in the game already. But "cut his throat" failed to be decisive in that respect, requiring the roll-of-dice struggle in the corridors.

So Krall's advantage in tactics was far from decisive, and played no known role at Yorktown. His real advantage was in his vastly superior numbers - but a much less significant advantage, that of utilizing swarm tactics in the first place, already guaranteed him victory over the specifically anti-swarm-deficient Enterprise.

The whole gist of this argument is in there being layers to Krall's advantage, and indeed some disadvantages thrown into the mix. That he is set up to ultimately triumph overall is of galactic unimportance to the basic issue of whether the Vengeance would do better than the Enterprise. So pretty please stop fixating on that point at the cost of the issue at hand.

That is the ENTIRE POINT OF THE MOVIE, Timo.

Who cares? This thread is not about "the point of the movie". It is about whether the Vengeance might fare differently from the Enterprise against the Swarm. And it would seem that yes, she would - differently, namely better. That she would still ultimately die if Krall utilized all his military might is again fantastically beside the point and doesn't change the answer.

Also, I'm recalling that Kirk actually SAID that Yorktown wouldn't be able to defend itself against an attack like Krall's, the only thing I can't remember is his exact wording.

I'm also highly interested in getting a transcript eventually. From what I recall, though, the vulnerability of Yorktown was not said to be due to the type of the threat, which is the relevant thing.

It lacks a qualitative advantage against swarm tactics

Not really. Even the Kelvin could shoot down a swarm of missiles with total precision once the missiles were headed somewhere else than the starship herself. 100% precision in gunnery has always been a Starfleet forte in space combat, setting her apart from many other enemies including Klingons and the Dominion (but not the modern Romulans, say). And it's exactly what would make a difference in a swarm fight.

Starfleet's (various) weapon systems (all) are a specific adaptation against a specific class of threat (respectively)

Probably so. And those of the Enterprise are adapted for use against Klingon battle cruisers, probably. Those of Yorktown were different, coping with swarm attacks, no doubt in addition to coping with Klingon battle cruisers and giant Space Amoebae to lesser or (probably) greater degree.

Funny, I'm pretty sure I've said this to YOU more than a dozen times when you tried to argue that shuttlecraft are superfluous because Starfleet prefers to use transporters.

Seems you keep misunderstanding. It's a Trek fact that Starfleet prefers to use transporters, and it's a Trek fact that shuttlecraft are usually superfluous. But there's no "because" there.

And there's no "because" here, either: having CIWS doesn't mean not having 16in guns, or vice versa. Starfleet is not hobbled by its ability to tech out all threats within 45 minutes, like you postulate: it can still deploy specific in addition to generic weapons that do make a difference in a fight. It's not either-or, and it's not because. It just is.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dilandu]

No, they're designed to take out ICBM reentry vehicles, whose countermeasures include the use of decoys, random evasive maneuvers and, yes, swarm tactics. .

And basically you are completely wrong. The current kinetic kill ABM systems are completely unable to deal with such kind of targets. They weren't even designed to counter such. Cuttenly, there are three such system in USA inventory, and they are:

- SM-3 - designed as boost-phase weapon, i.e. to hit rocket during acceleration.
- THAAD - designed as terminal-phase weapon, i.e. to hit wareahd after in came into atmosphere and de-chaffed.
- GBMD - the only system, designed to took out warheads on the ballistic stage. Coinsidently, the most problematic.

And we talk about ASAT use of such system, not ballistic defense.

Also, I don't think "I read about it on the internet" really qualifies you to claim knowledge that the film crew doesn't have, seeing how you don't actually know who any of them are and don't know anything about their educational backgrounds .

Well, at least I read) Could anyone of STB crew claim such? Dubious.

Which changes what, exactly? NO ONE has ever tested a nuclear weapon in a co-orbital detonation and we have no real data on how structures react in the presence of one, only theories. Even the upper-atmosphere tests don't reveal that, and we have NEVER tested such a device in hard vacuum outside of Earth's magnetic field.

You argument make no sence. We knew perfectly how the nuclear weapon worked in Earth magnetic fields. What could happen above them? The bomb started to create purple flying unicorns instead of X-ray?

The deep space conditions are actually SIMPLER than near-planetary. No magnetic fields to trap particles, no atmosphere to pdoruce EMP. We don't need to actually explode nuke on the orbit of Mars to knew, how it would work here.

I chose 100km because a single drone ship moving at a speed of 10km per second (approximately orbital velocity) would have the kinetic energy equivalent to its mass in dynamite and would take less than 5 seconds to cross from the outside of the sphere to strike the ship.

Your calculations are flawed. Oh. they are completely right - if the drone ships have ranged weapon. But the problem is, they havent.

I.e. they need to actually close to "Enterprise" to hit it. And the ammount of space to fit aroud would decrease rapidly. In 10 km radius sphere around the ship only about 126 ships could possibly fit, if they mantain the proper dispersion. And only if they try omnidirectional approach.

In other words, the the swarm could maintain a minimum standoff distance of 1000 meters and still be able to hit the Enterprise at least 1000 times a second -- anywhere they want to -- with the force of a truckload of TNT and sustain this attack for up to 6 minutes. Which is, in simpler terms, a "saturation attack."

Truckload?

Let's assume that swarm drone have a mass about 100 tons. This make sence, they are about 20-25 meters in lenght and about 8-10 in widh.

100 tons on the velocity of 10 kilometers per second would be equivalent of 5.0000e+12 joules - i.e. roughly 1,2 KILOTONS of TNT). Asuuming that about a dozen drones hit...

Congratulations: you just blow up "Enterprise" with everything onboard to small pieces (assuming that the antimatter core did not explode, in which case you would have only tremendous radiation flux instead of any pieces).

To have tolerable energy of impact - the kind of energy which would not vaporise the ship - the drones must attack on the relative velocity of no more than 0,5 kilometer per second, so the energy of impact would be less than 1.2500e+10 - i.e. lower than 3 tons of TNT)

Simply speaking: this owuld not work. All "Enterprise" need is to fire its impulse engines to completely threw off the intricated maneuvering that droneships need to close velocities with her.

 

[Dilandu]

Hm, I found the problem in your calculation. You assumed that the Swarm front around "Enterprise" is the volume of sphere. But it's actually not the volume, but the SURFACE of continuously shrinking sphere with the ship in center.

I.e. the maximum number of drones that could attack the ship smutaneously is the number of drones that could be placed on the surface of the sphere of given radius - if we assumed that the drones are rationally dispersed. Of course, behind them would come more, but in any given moment the ship is under attack only by the drones that are "in first line".

So... the total surface of 100 km radius sphere around "Enterprise" is 125663 square kilometers. Each drone, separated from each other by the 2 km range, would took about 12,5663 square kilometers. I.e. on such surface could be placed only about 10000 drones.

The drones are closing. Let's try to calculate 10 km radius sphere. It would be about 1256 square kilometers - i.e. only about 100 drones could from a 10-km radius spherical front around the ship.

And finally let's test 1 km sphere - i.e. directly before impact.

12,566 square kilometers. I.e. only SINGLE drone could hit the ship in any given time, if we assume that drones mantained 2 km dispersion from each other.

And this single drone would be picked up by phasers without any troubles.

Conclusion: this simply wouldn't work. Even pretty small 2-km dispersion

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The whole gist of this argument is in there being layers to Krall's advantage, and indeed some disadvantages thrown into the mix. That he is set up to ultimately triumph overall is of galactic unimportance to the basic issue of whether the Vengeance would do better than the Enterprise.

Nobody's talking about galactic importance, it's just an issue of the two Federation assets he DID attack. He had plenty of time to research his opponent and devised strategies specifically intended to defeat them. Under the circumstances, the same would have been true of Vengeance; IF that ship was capable of navigating through the nebula, Krall would have sliced it to pieces just like he did Enterprise and just like he was narrowly prevented from doing to Yorktown. It might have taken him five minutes longer to overwhelm the Vengeance, but the result would have been exactly the same.

The very simple reason for this is that Starfleet's weapons did not stop Krall's swarm and were proven ineffective in both engagements. Starfleet weapons simply aren't optimized for that kind of swarm attack and their shields won't hold it off for long.

Why would you even bother to dispute that? NO military or paramilitary force in existence has EVER been optimized for swarm attacks, mainly because swarm attacks are VERY difficult to coordinate and most conventional militaries don't bother. Swarm tactics are a feature of asymmetric warfare where conventional weapon systems are too costly or too complicated to build to a high quality and so the fighting force invests instead on learning to coordinate larger groups of less powerful combatants. U.S. Navy defense systems have the exact same weakness, much to the chagrin of Pentagon officials, and much to the bemusement of everyone who ever realized that the old Soviet weapon systems they were designed to fight depend on missile swarms as their primary defense doctrine.

The only thing Vengeance would have had going for it is the virtue of being a larger target. That wouldn't actually make victory possible; it would, if anything, buy the crew a little bit more time to abandon ship (and then be captured by Krall's drones anyway).

Who cares? This thread is not about "the point of the movie". It is about whether the Vengeance might fare differently from the Enterprise against the Swarm.

It wouldn't. That's the point you're missing about Yorktown: Krall's victory over that station was a CERTAINTY, which the movie makes explicitly clear, and is a fact in the absence of which the entire second half of the movie becomes completely nonsensical.

The only thing that would have stopped the swarm was the presence of a really good science officer and a really good communications specialist to work out its weakness and exploit it to maximum effect. Yorktown, which had no prior experience with the swarm, wouldn't have been able to do that quickly enough to turn the tide of battle. Vengeance, which lacks scientific facilities of any kind, DEFINITELY wouldn't.

Assymetric warfare has that inherent feature of nullifying the advantages of a technologically superior opponent. An enemy that has superior weapons and superior firepower can be soundly defeated by an inferior weapon employed in overwhelming numbers.

I'm also highly interested in getting a transcript eventually. From what I recall, though, the vulnerability of Yorktown was not said to be due to the type of the threat

The "type of threat" was well established; the vulnerability of Yorktown to Krall's attack, doubly so. That is NOT up for debate: unless you're writing your own fanfiction for STB, there is NO ROOM for the supposition that Yorktown could have survived on its own.

Not really. Even the Kelvin could shoot down a swarm of missiles with total precision once the missiles were headed somewhere else than the starship herself...

I wasn't aware that twelve missiles constituted a "swarm."

More to the point: Kelvin WAS destroyed by that missile swarm. Albeit with far less advanced technology, but even then against a far less aggressive swarm attack. Enterprise' more advanced weapons fared much better against Nero's missiles, but they DEFINITELY weren't designed for an attack that dense. And neither were Yorktown's defenses, which -- again -- didn't seem to be doing much after the defense sats went down.

Starfleet is not hobbled by its ability to tech out all threats within 45 minutes, like you postulate

That is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I postulated: I explicitly said that Starfleet's primary advantage is its ability to quickly exploit its enemies weaknesses in a novel way and neutralize their attacks cleanly and efficiently. Krall didn't give Enterprise a chance to do this, so it failed. Yorktown also wouldn't have had a chance to do this without Franklin getting involved.

Vengeance would NEVER have a chance to do this, because a pure combatant like the Dreadnaught class lacks scientific facilities neccesary for that kind of adaptation.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And basically you are completely wrong. The current kinetic kill ABM systems are completely unable to deal with such kind of targets.

I never said they could. I said those are the kinds of targets they're designed to be used against. Just because they suck at it doesn't change their design specs.

Interestingly, the the same is probably true of most of Stafleet's weapons.

Well, at least I read) Could anyone of STB crew claim such?

They have successful careers in the motion picture industry. Ergo...

Your calculations are flawed. Oh. they are completely right - if the drone ships have ranged weapon. But the problem is, they havent.

The drone ships ARE ranged weapons (seeing how they are DRONES and all) so this is a distinction without a difference.

I.e. they need to actually close to "Enterprise" to hit it.

Which, at speed, an arbitrary number of them can do in 5 to 10 seconds. Suppose Krall ordered 1,000 of them to close and attack in any given moment; that gives Enterprise between 5 and 10 seconds to shoot down ONE THOUSAND DRONES before impact. That would require Enterprise's weapons to precisely target and destroy not less than one hundred drone craft EVERY SECOND in order to avoid an impact and then continue to do this basically indefinitely.

They wouldn't have to attack in a tight formation either; in a spherical dispersion, they could attack from all directions at once and take advantage of the delay of the phaser banks having to slew from one target to the next.

And the ammount of space to fit aroud would decrease rapidly. In 10 km radius sphere around the ship only about 126 ships could possibly fit

IF they maintained a 1km distribution right up through the final second before impact. Since it takes longer than one second to aim and fire a photon torpedo, there's no reason to do this.

And even WITH an imposed 1000m distribution, there's NO WAY the Enterprise can hit 126 fast-moving targets in a single second.

Let's assume that swarm drone have a mass about 100 tons

Why? A modern tactical fighter has a mass of about 30 tons. Even an Abrams main battle tank -- which is pretty much a giant steel brick on treads -- only weighs about 70 tons. I'd peg the drones at closer to 10 or 15 at most. In which case the actual energy of a single one is about 750MJ, equivalent to 179 tons of TNT.

Also known as "a truckload."

Of course, a 100ton metallic slug moving at 1km per second aint exactly a "broomstick" like you were claiming earlier, so at least we're making progress

Congratulations: you just blow up "Enterprise" with everything onboard to small pieces

I realize you're being facetious, but considering Krall's drones weren't moving NEARLY that fast (closer to about 1000m per second) -- and considering they DID, in fact, succeed in quite literally slicing the Enterprise to pieces, isn't that kind of the WHOLE POINT?

Simply speaking: this owuld not work. All "Enterprise" need is to fire its impulse engines to completely threw off the intricated maneuvering that droneships need to close velocities with her.

Clearly you have never heard of "deflection shooting."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Hm, I found the problem in your calculation. You assumed that the Swarm front around "Enterprise" is the volume of sphere. But it's actually not the volume, but the SURFACE of continuously shrinking sphere with the ship in center.

I.e. the maximum number of drones that could attack the ship smutaneously is the number of drones that could be placed on the surface of the sphere of given radius

That assumes they must hit the ship at the same instant every single time. I am not assuming that at all. I'm assuming that the entire sphere is constantly in motion and that ANY drone within it can change vectors and dive in towards the Enterprise at full speed, striking the ship several at a time OR all at once with minimal delay between them.

And again, I'm also NOT assuming they have to maintain their minimum distribution during an attack run (that would be just plain silly) in which case the minimum distribution is limited only by the physical size of the drones. Krall's drones can fly in pretty close formation, but assuming each one is ten meters in diameter, then around 5,000 drones could physically hit the Enterprise at any given instant (accounting for the fact that the Enterprise is far from a perfect sphere).

Remember, this started with you complaining that area effect weapons should be useful against the drones. I told you the obvious countermeasure against that is to enclose the torpedo with a tight formation of drones (a few dozen or so) and move the rest to a standoff distance at the moment of detonation. There's no reason to assume they would need to MAINTAIN that standoff distance at all times, especially after the initial attack when they've already disabled the ship's targeting systems (which, let's face it, would have been Krall's FIRST objective).

 

[Dilandu]

I never said they could. I said those are the kinds of targets they're designed to be used against. Just because they suck at it doesn't change their design specs.

The intercept of basically ballistic warheads have nothing in common with the attack on torchship. The delta-V supply of torchship is MUCH greater, as well as ability to accelerate.

The drone ships ARE ranged weapons (seeing how they are DRONES and all) so this is a distinction without a difference.

No, they are hit-to-kill weapons. If they were armed with Casaba warheads or X-ray lasers, they would be ranged.

Which, at speed, an arbitrary number of them can do in 5 to 10 seconds. Suppose Krall ordered 1,000 of them to close and attack in any given moment; that gives Enterprise between 5 and 10 seconds to shoot down ONE THOUSAND DRONES before impact. That would require Enterprise's weapons to precisely target and destroy not less than one hundred drone craft EVERY SECOND in order to avoid an impact and then continue to do this basically indefinitely.

Or they could use photon torpedoes to make drones disperse. After which, they would be forced to deal only with a few drones per second.

If they maintained a 1km distribution right up through the final second before impact. Since it takes longer than one second to aim and fire a photon torpedo, there's no reason to do this.

For one thing, they have no way to knew, was torpedo already loaded and aimed, or no. For second, the blast of unaimed torpedo would work perfectly well too. Again, we are talking about the weapon with TNT equivalent of freaking 50 megatons, mostly in pure X-rays and neutrons.

Why? A modern tactical fighter has a mass of about 30 tons. Even an Abrams main battle tank -- which is pretty much a giant steel brick on treads -- only weighs about 70 tons. I'd peg the drones at closer to 10 or 15 at most. In which case the actual energy of a single one is about 750MJ, equivalent to 179 tons of TNT.

Because they have strudy. durable hull, thick skin and quite a lot of equipment. Look at the design:

https://fsmedia.imgix.net/10/20/c1/...w=700&dpr=2&auto=format,compress,enhance&q=75

Their outer hull is at least 30 cm thick, in comparsion to the trooper inside.

I realize you're being facetious, but considering Krall's drones weren't moving NEARLY that fast (closer to about 1000m per second) -- and considering they DID, in fact, succeed in quite literally slicing the Enterprise to pieces, isn't that kind of the WHOLE POINT?

Their actual velocity was perhaps about 200-300 meters per second, or lower.

And considering this, we could only conclude: this whole scene is rubbish made by peoples who have no clues about the space at all. Frankly, it is pretty obvious due to the look of the "nebula" through which the "Enterprise" moved: this density is simply ridiculous.

That assumes they must hit the ship at the same instant every single time. I am not assuming that at all. I'm assuming that the entire sphere is constantly in motion and that ANY drone within it can change vectors and dive in towards the Enterprise at full speed, striking the ship several at a time OR all at once with minimal delay between them.

And again, I'm also NOT assuming they have to maintain their minimum distribution during an attack run (that would be just plain silly) in which case the minimum distribution is limited only by the physical size of the drones. Krall's drones can fly in pretty close formation, but assuming each one is ten meters in diameter, then around 5,000 drones could physically hit the Enterprise at any given instant (accounting for the fact that the Enterprise is far from a perfect sphere).

But the density of sphere would increase with the diameter reducing. I.e. the dispersion effect would quite soon be lost - and again, we have the perfect target for photon torpedo blasts.

You see, everything of this would work perfectly - but only if drones would have some ranged weapon. In that case, this tactic would work perfectly: the drones would stay dispersed, and pound the "Enterprise" with beams, or slugs.

P.S. Also, it's pretty hard to understood, how could "Enterprise" let drones to came so close. They have no cloack devices - i.e. they would be visible from lightminutes.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The intercept of basically ballistic warheads have nothing in common with the attack on torchship.

Enterprise is not a torchship.

No, they are hit-to-kill weapons. If they were armed with Casaba warheads or X-ray lasers, they would be ranged.

That's like saying cruise missiles aren't "ranged weapons" because they're not equipped with machineguns.

Or they could use photon torpedoes to make drones disperse...

From a 1km radius directly around the detonation site, for a period of a few seconds at most. It would probably buy them some time (it probably DID buy them some time) but wouldn't change much.

For one thing, they have no way to knew, was torpedo already loaded and aimed, or no.

Yes we do. Enterprise fired SEVERAL torpedoes before its targeting array was disabled. The broadside tubes present in STID may or may not still be equipped (probably not) but without a firing solution they'd be firing blind.

For second, the blast of unaimed torpedo would work perfectly well too. Again, we are talking about the weapon with TNT equivalent of freaking 50 megatons, mostly in pure X-rays and neutrons.

There is nothing whatsoever in canon that suggests torpedoes have anywhere near that kind if yield. And even less in canon that suggests that the deflector shields of an average shuttlecraft can't hold off a sudden flash of x-rays (again, that kind of energy is MINISCULE compared to the stresses of FTL travel).

And there are two good reasons to think otherwise. The first is that two different times in TOS the crew deliberately sets up an antimatter bottle for use as an explosive and makes no attempt to extract a photon torpedo warhead. Most obviously, in "obsession" it's suggested that an antimatter bomb would kill the cloud creature while photon torpedoes have almost no effect. This CANONICALLY establishes that AT LEAST in the 23rd century, photon torpedoes are NOT based on antimatter.

Scondly, Krall's ships are capable of penetrating Enterprise's shields effectively enough to smash its deflector dish and remove its defenses. Enterprise's shields are capable of protecting the ship at superliminal velocities, where a space rock the size of your fist has the kinetic energy of a tactical nuke. This tells us that the drone shielding is MORE than capable of deflecting that kind of energy without suffering any meaningful harm.

So "x-ray flash/glorified nuke" probably isn't how torpedoes really work anyway. It's more likely they're designed to more effectively pierce a target's shields and wreak all kinds of nastiness with its internal systems, not totally unlike Krall's drones.

Because they have strudy. durable hull, thick skin and quite a lot of equipment.

So does an Abrams tank, but it still only weighs about 70 tons.

Their actual velocity was perhaps about 200-300 meters per second, or lower.

Using YOUR assumptions (which are terrible), then at 300 meters per second a 100ton craft would have the kinetic energy of 4.5MJ, or a little over a ton of TNT. They are hitting the ship at a rate of about 20 per second, which is the equivalent of 20 tons of TNT being detonated against the hull every second for minutes at a time.

Still not the "whack it with a broomstick" you were complaining about earlier. But that's also a low-ball figure when you consider their actual velocities were almost certainly higher than that; Enterprise is 750 meters long, and it takes FAR less than two whole seconds for a single drone to cross its length.

But the density of sphere would increase with the diameter reducing.

No, just the number of ships WITHIN that diameter.

And again, that assumes they maintain their dispersion at all times. Since Enterprise can only fire so many photon torpedoes at a time, there's no reason for them to do that. They can disperse in reaction to a torpedo and then quickly reform after detonation; and even in that case, only the drones IN THE TORPEDO'S PATH would need to evade.

You see, everything of this would work perfectly - but only if drones would have some ranged weapon

The drones ARE ranged weapons, that's the entire point. Saturation attacks involve the deployment of MANY weapons striking a single target en masse.

Photon torpedoes could be used in saturation attacks too, IF they were area effect weapons (which they're not). If they had a blast radius of, say, 10km, then Enterprise could safely detonate them around 11km from itself with no ill effects. A defensive saturation attack would see the torpedoes deployed to a sphere of 22km in diameter, which would require the ship to launch 150 torpedoes EVERY SECOND in order to keep the swarm at bay.

Even in STID, the Enterprise does not have that many launch tubes; I'm not even sure it has that many torpedoes.

P.S. Also, it's pretty hard to understood, how could "Enterprise" let drones to came so close. They have no cloack devices - i.e. they would be visible from lightminutes.

Not in orbit of a planet, where the line of sight is limited by the horizon; at an altitude of around 300km around on Earth-sized planet, Krall's ship would come over the horizon less than 2,000km from the Enterprise.

 

[Dilandu]

Enterprise is not a torchship.

It is capable to sustain large acceleration almost indefinitedly... what is she, if not a torchship, while on impulse engines?

From a 1km radius directly around the detonation site, for a period of a few seconds at most. It would probably buy them some time (it probably DID buy them some time) but wouldn't change much.

It would buy them time to accelerate and blast out of here, leaving drones behind.

Yes we do. Enterprise fired SEVERAL torpedoes before its targeting array was disabled. The broadside tubes present in STID may or may not still be equipped (probably not) but without a firing solution they'd be firing blind.

Bascially this means that their tactical system is REALLY stupid - much dumber that 1950s vaccum-tube "Talos".

There is nothing whatsoever in canon that suggests torpedoes have anywhere near that kind if yield. And even less in canon that suggests that the deflector shields of an average shuttlecraft can't hold off a sudden flash of x-rays (again, that kind of energy is MINISCULE compared to the stresses of FTL travel).

Again contradiction: the shields of average starship during the FTL travel must comprehend much more powerfull stresses that a few drones bumping in them on ridiculously low veloctiy)

I.e. if the shields are so powerfull, then the ramming would not work at all. Basically navigation deflector should do all defense.

So does an Abrams tank, but it still only weighs about 70 tons.

Is the difference between 70 and 100 ton so important? I think not.

Using YOUR assumptions (which are terrible), then at 300 meters per second a 100ton craft would have the kinetic energy of 4.5MJ, or a little over a ton of TNT. They are hitting the ship at a rate of about 20 per second, which is the equivalent of 20 tons of TNT being detonated against the hull every second for minutes at a time.

Yes, something near that. In other therms - this attack is possible only against immobile target, when the attacker could completely control all dynamic. If "Enterprise" would accelerate forward, the drones would be forced either ram on higher velocities (which would mean ship total destruction with superweapon aboard), or try to attack while chasing - and this would basically gave "Enterprise" all advantages.

And again, that assumes they maintain their dispersion at all times. Since Enterprise can only fire so many photon torpedoes at a time, there's no reason for them to do that. They can disperse in reaction to a torpedo and then quickly reform after detonation; and even in that case, only the drones IN THE TORPEDO'S PATH would need to evade.

One additional problem - the torpedo blast would influence their communication systems. Of course not as significantly as high-altitude explosion against planetary communication, but still all communications on drones would be either fried or at least temporarely silenced.

Not in orbit of a planet, where the line of sight is limited by the horizon; at an altitude of around 300km around on Earth-sized planet, Krall's ship would come over the horizon less than 2,000km from the Enterprise.

So on their relative velocities of about 0,5 kilometes per second they would need... almost a half of hour to reach the "Enterprise")

 

[Crazy Eddie]

It is capable to sustain large acceleration almost indefinitedly...

Is it? Because last time anyone checked, impulse engines will move the ship at a set velocity through space, usually some multiple of sublight speed, not unlike a warp engine. The ship will accelerate to a "terminal velocity" probably balanced by drag from interstellar gasses and/or subspace mumbojumbo, but "one quarter impulse" is a measure of velocity, not acceleration.

Not that it SHOULD work that way (I've been saying it shouldn't since since at least the first season of Enterprise) but that's the way it DOES.

Bascially this means that their tactical system is REALLY stupid

I'm sure the one YOU designed is way superior in every way.

Again contradiction: the shields of average starship during the FTL travel must comprehend much more powerfull stresses that a few drones bumping in them on ridiculously low veloctiy

Of course. The thing is, the same can be said for the DRONES' shields (those drones are definitely capable of FTL flight in order to make the flight to Yorktown in a reasonable amount of time).

The result is that a multi-megaton nuclear device used against the Enterprise would barely even scratch the paint; it would probably do even less against the drones, whose shields are more powerful still.

X-ray based weaponry is probably an anachronism in the 23rd century, what Spock described as "primitive" in balance of terror and even the Romulans called "old style" weapons used only for self-destruct (and not proper "weapons" at all). Deflector shields can efficiently turn that kind of radiation away from the ship, so a weapon that deploys those energies would be less than useless.

Yes, something near that. In other therms - this attack is possible only against immobile target, when the attacker could completely control all dynamic. If "Enterprise" would accelerate forward, the drones would be forced either ram on higher velocities (which would mean ship total destruction with superweapon aboard), or try to attack while chasing - and this would basically gave "Enterprise" all advantages.

Which is exactly what Kirk was probably thinking right before Krall sliced them in half.

"Oh, we'll just accelerate forward! Surely the swarm won't be able to follow this masterful and totally unexpected tactic of MOVING DIRECTLY FORWARD! Now let's just fire up the impulse engines and.... aw crap."

One additional problem - the torpedo blast would influence their communication systems.

Not in the absence of a powerful magnetic field, no. The EMP generated by a nuclear detonation is caused by the interaction of x-rays with charged particles in the ionosphere; the pulse is directed TOWARDS, perpendicular to magnetic field lines, towards the ground. This is the reason why detonations at higher altitudes affect broader areas than detonations near ground level. It is also the reason why a nuclear detonation in a vacuum would produce little or no electromagnetic pulse.

So on their relative velocities of about 0,5 kilometes per second they would need... almost a half of hour to reach the "Enterprise")

Or at an orbital velocity, about 2 minutes (which is what we saw) plus a few seconds for a breaking maneuver to match velocities and begin their attack.

 

[Dilandu]

Is it? Because last time anyone checked, impulse engines will move the ship at a set velocity through space, usually some multiple of sublight speed, not unlike a warp engine. The ship will accelerate to a "terminal velocity" probably balanced by drag from interstellar gasses and/or subspace mumbojumbo, but "one quarter impulse" is a measure of velocity, not acceleration.

Yes, but it was clearly stated as a fairly high percentage of speed of light velocity. As far as I recall, full impulse is about 0,25 of lightspeed, and the "full impulse" could be achieved in mere seconds. I.e. it's millions of "g"

Definitedly torchship.

The result is that a multi-megaton nuclear device used against the Enterprise would barely even scratch the paint; it would probably do even less against the drones, whose shields are more powerful still.

Then basically we have the situation where no ramming attack could be even maginally effective) The whole Kraal armada, ramming at once, would not be able to even detach a single molecule of paint from the hull of "Enterprise". Clearly contradiction.

"Oh, we'll just accelerate forward! Surely the swarm won't be able to follow this masterful and totally unexpected tactic of MOVING DIRECTLY FORWARD! Now let's just fire up the impulse engines and.... aw crap."

No. The problem is, that the Kraal plan was dynamically overcomplicated in therms of maneuvering and closing velocities. If "Enterprise" accelerated forward, the whole ballistic solutions would be thrown away.

Not in the absence of a powerful magnetic field, no. The EMP generated by a nuclear detonation is caused by the interaction of x-rays with charged particles in the ionosphere; the pulse is directed TOWARDS, perpendicular to magnetic field lines, towards the ground. This is the reason why detonations at higher altitudes affect broader areas than detonations near ground level. It is also the reason why a nuclear detonation in a vacuum would produce little or no electromagnetic pulse.

As far as I recall, I mentioned exactly that:

Of course not as significantly as high-altitude explosion against planetary communication, but still all communications on drones would be either fried or at least temporarely silenced.

 

[psCargile]

Couldn't Krawl have taken out the Yorktown during its construction without the need of the bioweapon?