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Walter Jon Williams' Rock War tactics

redwalker

SOC-12
Here is another example of how seemingly obvious ideas make me want to re-design Traveller.

Many have heard of Niven and Pournelle's "Thor" system -- tungsten rods the size of telephone poles in orbit, just waiting for a U.S. launch code to send them down on evildoers. Sometimes the proposal is called "Rods From God."

Viewed in that light, it sounds like a high-tech weapon, one that the U.S. could use to maintain unilateral supremacy over Earth.

Walter Jon Williams had a very depressing take on this. He wrote (in Hardwired) of the Rock War. The Rock War was very cheap and efficient. Just go to the Asteroid Belt, tugboat some big rocks over to orbit, and drop them on cities you don't like.

It makes nuclear terrorism look easily preventable by comparison.

Terrorists might use very efficient means to get a planetoid on a collision course with a planet. Given a planetoid large enough, one could break it down for fuel, but still have enough mass left to cause an extinction-level event. Even if it gets fragmented, the fragments could cause problems.

In a Traveller universe, of course, a daring party of adventurers would be rushed to intercept it and turn the engines around so that it narrowly missed the planet. That would work the first time.

But there are so many opportunities to turn asteroid mining ops into terrorist opportunities that the mind boggles.

Somewhere in the Books (I think Book 0 but I can't find the reference) Marc Miller says something like, "Don't let the players do implausible things. In the real world, commandos couldn't storm the USS Nimitz from a tramp steamer, defeat the Marines on board, and capture a hostage."

Well, the crew of the USS Cole wasn't boarded, but they took some considerable damage from a bomb in an inflatable boat. The guys who did it probably had no training to speak of.

The initial design of Traveller failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, IMHO. (I am *not* an expert on military affairs of any kind.) The scary problems of the current GWOT make me think that my old campaign designs for Traveller couldn't fly against a half-way realistic depiction of terrorism (i.e. 4th generation irregular warfare by motivated ideologues).

Another weakness of Classic Traveller games is that they are vulnerable to suicide tactics. Since characters don't progress by experience points, any player who decides to use suicide bombing isn't losing out on experience points racked up over a long series of games. He can roll up a new character in a short time. This isn't usually a factor in normal games, but in the context of GWOT, it makes me wonder whether the Imperium in Traveller would be greatly threatened by suicidal terrorists.

In general, I guess I'm just speculating in the absence of definitive knowledge. I could be totally wrong. Asteroids might make lousy terror weapons and the Imperium might be great against terrorists.
 
Even the Third Imperium had the Ine Givar. And the Tanoose Freedom League.

And planetary bombardment by rocks accelerated to relativistic speeds has been a holy hot-button on the venerable Traveller Mailing List for a long, long time.
 
Well, I haven't read Rock War, so I don't know the tech level of the story, but currently, the Rod From God system is technologically feasible, if not practical (how much would hoisting telephone sized tungsten rods into orbit and placing them cost??)
Tugging asteroids and planetoids into earth colliding trajectories is an altogether different matter. First you have the cost of the tug. Let's assume it's automated with preset commands and limited AI to make base decisions that allow it to complete it's mission. Then there is the fuel requirement. How MUCH fuel will it actually require to get there. Then theres the engines that have to be mounted if you want to reuse the tug. If the tug is disposable, then no worry. BUT, you still need fuel for the return trip and if the NEO is nickle-iron composition, then you need even MORE fuel.

I think it might be easier and cheaper to launch a missile that stays in orbit and attacks on command.
 
<Smacks forehead> Still looking for that edit button....

Most importantly, there's the time factor. How long will it take to get out there and back and A) can your mission of destruction be accomplished before then for the same cost or less? and B) will your target still be relevant by the time the big object reaches it. If it takes 14 months to drop a rock or chunk of ice on Tripoli, Libya and in the meantime they've made overtures of peace by settling claims against them and dismantling weapons programs and generally apologizing and trying to be all-around-nice-guys, do you STILL want to annihilate half of the Libyan coast?

You might not be able to prevent it...

Just some thoughts.
 
In Trav you don't need rocks. A captured vessel loaded with inert cargo and a Black Globe is effectively indestructible and capable of automated fractional-c kamikaze missioms.
 
Great example of dropping something from orbit in that time-honored anime Mobile Suit Gundam. The evil Zion captured an orbital multi-million ton orbital habitat, and dropped it on Australia. Left behind a crater about 1/6th (or so) the size of Australia, and forming a new inland sea.

Not necessarily realistic (I would imagine that such a drop would rupture the Earth's crust), but visually striking.

I've run a few games where the players have either (1) dropped a ship onto a world from orbit or (2) diverted a suicide ship that's on an intercept course. Terrorists IMU use that ploy on occasion - not very pretty when they succeed.
 
Originally posted by Spyder:
Still looking for that edit button...
In case you're still looking for it, it's on the top row of the post, to the right from the date, the one with a pen and paper icon.
 
If it's a Balkanised world, and/or it's TL is less than 9 and/or it's population is less than 1 million yeah then maybe someone could drop rocks from orbit.Any world with a population and TL greater than those would have Planetary defence capability. Including at the very least planetary to orbit missiles and more likely planetary to 1 light second missiles similar, if not the same, to standard starship combat missiles. These alone ought to be able to destroy any rocky body put on a trajectory to the world otherwise CT planetoid starships, like those able to be constructed with High Guard/LBB 2 etc, would be invincable. In addition to planetary or near orbit based missile defense systems many planets will have spaceships and starships of their own patroling both near orbit and the asteroid belts preventing by intercepting whatever ship or other item used to give those large rocky bodies their change in direction/momentum.

So my short response, sure you can drop rocks on a planet, if you have the capability and if said planet has absolutly no defenses. If it has no defenses though it's probably not a viable/significant target for war or terrorism IMHO.
 
Originally posted by Straybow:
In Trav you don't need rocks. A captured vessel loaded with inert cargo and a Black Globe is effectively indestructible and capable of automated fractional-c kamikaze missioms.
Which is one reason why I've moved to re-mass requiring thrusters IMTU. With reactionless thrusters every ship is a potential planet killer.

I'm using super-efficient plasma rockets(*), which are a bit less of a handwave than reactionless thrusters, but still nowhere near hard science. However, this has a good enough realism-to-playability ratio for me. Going fully hard science with "thrusters" would be too much of a hassle and would make the game something that wouldn't resemble Traveller anylonger, IMHO.

(*) No, I'm not using HEPlaR, not that efficient. By cutting down the jump fuel requirements, one gets re-mass tankage "for free". Still, burn endurance is at best around 10 hours (effective, double that for absolute). IMTU, ships make an acceleration burn of an hour or two and then coast the rest of the way to jump limit. All in-system travel (planet to planet) is done by micro jumps. And so on and so forth, yadda, yadda...
 
Originally posted by Red Walker:

Walter Jon Williams had a very depressing take on this. He wrote (in Hardwired) of the Rock War. The Rock War was very cheap and efficient. Just go to the Asteroid Belt, tugboat some big rocks over to orbit, and drop them on cities you don't like.

It makes nuclear terrorism look easily preventable by comparison.
OK, it's been at least a decade (probably longer) since I read "Hardwired," but weren't the rocks used in the Rock War mined from the Moon and hurled at Earth by mass drivers? That cuts down on the prevention time considerably.

Also, I believe some of the rocks had already been moved into place by the megacorporations based in orbit around Earth. They used the threat of rocks dropped from orbit as a means of getting the nations of Earth to cooperate with their wishes.

Yes, this tactic wouldn't be useable against a unified planet with high enough tech level to install its own orbital defenses. But it could be used as a setting for an adventure -- a system in which the main planet and its entire population is held hostage by a small group of wealthy businessmen/nobles and their employees, all living in orbit or in other parts of the system.
 
Thanks TJP! I'm not very icon-friendly.
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R.A.H.'s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress has a group on the moon using a Lunar catapult to fire metal wrapped rocks at Earth, some hitting and doing substantial damage. Earth used nuclear tipped high speed missiles to intercept/deflect some of them (but those that were deflected only missed their intended targets, they still hit somewhere).

The book is Copyright 1966.
 
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