Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Aye. The only way Nukes do not play a role in any hypothetical WW3 is if the technology to reliably shoot down ICBMs becomes very common. Which will eventually happen, in the form of lasers and railguns, and it would reduce nuclear weapons to being used on a tactical level only since any strategic use of them would have a poor chance of success. Such technology would also be the death knell of combat aircraft and short range missiles too, so warfare would regress back to a weird hybrid of WW2 and WW1 tactics.

Tanks would make a huge comeback without aircraft and missiles to destroy them. Aircraft would be of very limited use, mostly for reconnaissance while trying to remain undetected. A detected aircraft would be very quickly a dead one due to lasers and AA railguns, so they'd be unmanned drones operating a long way away from any combat zone. Or in a combat zone as small remotely operated by troops on the ground, but they'd be purely for getting visual on targets. They wouldn't be able to contribute much in terms of actually causing damage. That would have to be done with ground troops, conventional artillery, and tanks.

Nuclear weapons would probably also see a huge shift into being used as tactical devices, much more than we saw in the Cold War. We'd see nuclear artillery rounds, nuclear railgun ammunition, etc...

In naval warfare, battleships would come back as well. particularly Railgun armed battleships, as they would become the ultimate force projection system. Easily able to mount plenty of long range AA lasers and railguns to intercept any aircraft/missiles, and large Railguns to bombard targets hundreds of miles away, they would replace aircraft carriers as the main threat of a navy.

It seems you overestimate the value of railguns.
That said, i'd rather not see an conflict of this scale ever started.

In what way?

Rail guns will be able to do tons of things.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

I've always wondered why the Soviets never took advantage of American difficulties in Vietnam, during or after the conflict,

pelicaniforce wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
I've always wondered why the Soviets never took advantage of American difficulties in Vietnam, during or after the conflict,

Hans, are we the baddies?

Didn't they try to do more subversive stuff then?

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Aye. The only way Nukes do not play a role in any hypothetical WW3 is if the technology to reliably shoot down ICBMs becomes very common. Which will eventually happen, in the form of lasers and railguns, and it would reduce nuclear weapons to being used on a tactical level only since any strategic use of them would have a poor chance of success. Such technology would also be the death knell of combat aircraft and short range missiles too, so warfare would regress back to a weird hybrid of WW2 and WW1 tactics.

Tanks would make a huge comeback without aircraft and missiles to destroy them. Aircraft would be of very limited use, mostly for reconnaissance while trying to remain undetected. A detected aircraft would be very quickly a dead one due to lasers and AA railguns, so they'd be unmanned drones operating a long way away from any combat zone. Or in a combat zone as small remotely operated by troops on the ground, but they'd be purely for getting visual on targets. They wouldn't be able to contribute much in terms of actually causing damage. That would have to be done with ground troops, conventional artillery, and tanks.

Nuclear weapons would probably also see a huge shift into being used as tactical devices, much more than we saw in the Cold War. We'd see nuclear artillery rounds, nuclear railgun ammunition, etc...

In naval warfare, battleships would come back as well. particularly Railgun armed battleships, as they would become the ultimate force projection system. Easily able to mount plenty of long range AA lasers and railguns to intercept any aircraft/missiles, and large Railguns to bombard targets hundreds of miles away, they would replace aircraft carriers as the main threat of a navy.

It seems you overestimate the value of railguns.
That said, i'd rather not see an conflict of this scale ever started.

In what way?

Rail guns will be able to do tons of things.

And the development of other branches just magically goes puff?

 Grey Templar wrote:
The same applies to aircraft, and though they can usually take a little more of a beating than a missile they still won't like their wings getting deformed or hypersonic flak, and some planes can't take any beating at all(just look at the F35).

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Aye. The only way Nukes do not play a role in any hypothetical WW3 is if the technology to reliably shoot down ICBMs becomes very common. Which will eventually happen, in the form of lasers and railguns, and it would reduce nuclear weapons to being used on a tactical level only since any strategic use of them would have a poor chance of success. Such technology would also be the death knell of combat aircraft and short range missiles too, so warfare would regress back to a weird hybrid of WW2 and WW1 tactics.

Tanks would make a huge comeback without aircraft and missiles to destroy them. Aircraft would be of very limited use, mostly for reconnaissance while trying to remain undetected. A detected aircraft would be very quickly a dead one due to lasers and AA railguns, so they'd be unmanned drones operating a long way away from any combat zone. Or in a combat zone as small remotely operated by troops on the ground, but they'd be purely for getting visual on targets. They wouldn't be able to contribute much in terms of actually causing damage. That would have to be done with ground troops, conventional artillery, and tanks.

Nuclear weapons would probably also see a huge shift into being used as tactical devices, much more than we saw in the Cold War. We'd see nuclear artillery rounds, nuclear railgun ammunition, etc...

In naval warfare, battleships would come back as well. particularly Railgun armed battleships, as they would become the ultimate force projection system. Easily able to mount plenty of long range AA lasers and railguns to intercept any aircraft/missiles, and large Railguns to bombard targets hundreds of miles away, they would replace aircraft carriers as the main threat of a navy.

It seems you overestimate the value of railguns.
That said, i'd rather not see an conflict of this scale ever started.

In what way?

Rail guns will be able to do tons of things.

And the development of other branches just magically goes puff?

Missiles and Aircraft right now are pretty much at the limits of what can be done with them. Certainly nothing, short of developing a material that violates our current understanding of material science and physics, can make them immune to a powerful laser or a hypersonic slug.

Missiles in general are quite delicate affairs. Even a slight shift in their weight distribution or aerodynamics will shatter a missile in flight. A laser doesn't have to completely melt through a missile to destroy it. It only has to slightly heat the surface to cause the whole thing to destroy itself. Likewise, a railgun could simply blanket the missile's path with flak to achieve the same goal. The tiniest of impacts will destroy any missile. The railgun's ammo will also be dirt cheap compared to a multi-billion $ missile.

And you can't just "add some armor plating" to a missile. That adds dead weight to a very finicky flight system for no real gain.

The same applies to aircraft, and though they can usually take a little more of a beating than a missile they still won't like their wings getting deformed or hypersonic flak, and some planes can't take any beating at all(just look at the F35). And all of these weapons can hit them from far beyond the range of any weapon they could carry. Both Railguns and lasers are also much faster projectiles than the missiles a plane can carry, they'll kill the plane long before its any threat to them.

Lasers and railguns that can do this are coming in the next few decades. Nothing to counter them is on the table to prevent them from making missiles and aircraft untenable.

 Vulcan wrote:
You're overlooking one significant weakness of Railguns and lasers that your opponents will not - Line Of Sight. Something coming in a couple meters off the surface will be below the horizon until the last few miles, and if it's coming in hypersonic your railguns and lasers may not be able to bear on it in time.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
You're overlooking one significant weakness of Railguns and lasers that your opponents will not - Line Of Sight. Something coming in a couple meters off the surface will be below the horizon until the last few miles, and if it's coming in hypersonic your railguns and lasers may not be able to bear on it in time.

Railguns will be used for point defense and anti-aircraft, but their ultimate application will be for extreme range artillery, striking from 100s of miles away. That's a true NLOS application

 Vulcan wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
You're overlooking one significant weakness of Railguns and lasers that your opponents will not - Line Of Sight. Something coming in a couple meters off the surface will be below the horizon until the last few miles, and if it's coming in hypersonic your railguns and lasers may not be able to bear on it in time.

Railguns will be used for point defense and anti-aircraft, but their ultimate application will be for extreme range artillery, striking from 100s of miles away. That's a true NLOS application

Fair enough. But indirect fire probably won't be accurate enough for anti-air applications....