Orbital Bombardment | Effectiveness against hostile vessels?

[cxado]

I dunno if those of you that don't know what this is is a number of significance, but just for a quick run-down of the concept, it's artillery in the orbit of a planet. Such conceptual vessels have been featured in a number of media areas recently and over the years, such as ODIN/LOKI in CoD: Ghosts and Project Zeus in GI Joe: Retaliation (film). The idea has been present in science fiction since the 1950s and has at one point been reviewed for possible implementation (deemed inefficient) by the United States Air Force.

There's a forum post discussing Orbital/Kinetic Bombardment here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/45331-GI-joe-retaliation-zeus-weapon

Down to the reason I'm making this post. So I'm a die-hard fan of the Mass Effect series, and I thoroughly enjoy implementing new and innovative methods for planetary defence and interplanetary fleet construction in Kerbal Space Program, for I live in fear of the eventual implementation of Multiplayer, and the consequential inevitable result of players going to war with other players for reasons unbeknown; therein I'm utterly obsessed with being able to defend myself militarily whenever doom day arrives.

Alright enough rambling, I was pondering about the events of Mass Effect 3 regarding the invasion and fall of Earth and I was just thinking, with Reapers being in such a stationary (relatively) and vulnerable state while they go about their business on the Earth's surface, I was just wondering how effective, if at all an Orbital Bombardment weapons platform with any kind of armament (possibly tungsten rods, or simply some variation of a Tactical Nuke or otherwise missile) could/would be against a Reaper down on the surface busy going BAWWWWW at things might be, or for KSP, any form of hostile vessel within the atmosphere, below the Weapons Platform and in range of the aforementioned weapon system (hostile vessels of significant mobility would probably require a very accurate Guided Missile of some description as opposed to tungsten rods).

It just feels like if a guided tungsten rod, launched through the atmosphere at a target at speeds in approximation of Mach 10, it feels like such a projectile could have blown the living (or lack there of ;D) daylights out of a Reaper about as fast as they could be fired until ammunition runs out. Just saying.
It took the entire Quarian Migrant Fleet about 15 seconds of constant precision bombardment to KNOCK a single DESTROYER class Reaper ONTO ITS KNEES. That thing still had enough Magic Space Juice inside it to have a highly linguistically and philosophically sophisiticated chat with CMD Shep. It wasn't even a Capital Ship. And it took about 5 minutes to lock on the precision guidance system in Shepard's possesion onto that reaper. Gosh. I think the whole plot of ME3 would be drastically different if even one or two of these stations were in service above Earth. And given that on Earth in the ME universe, the Systems Alliance is only a charter organisation of nations, albeit with an officially reconised parliamentary system and authority to consider itself the representative of all humankind (I guess it replaced the UN's role for some nondescript reason, as the UN isn't mentioned once in the entire ME Universe history as far as I know), it would technically be much more feasible for such a system to be in service above Earth as assumingly there would be resistant states remaining on Earth that reject the authority of The Alliance for whatever reasons.

In most if not all of the recent media examples of an Orbital Bombardment station, the purpose of the craft's armament was to annihilate earthbound targets typically of an enemy faction or nation-state.
In my thinking, the reasoning behind the implementation of such a platform in Kerbal Space Program, where in my somewhat Roleplayed save file the governing and representative body of Kerbin is singular and unified as caused by inevitable political advancement and from acknowledgement of and in preparation of "First Contact", would be to fulfill the purpose of discouraging any spacefaring hostiles from attempting an operational attack within Kerbin's atmosphere. Deployment of such stations would therein practically require the enemy to first engage and disable those stations in order to render Kerbin viable for conventional and largely unhindered operational attacks within the atmosphere, which on the part of fleet-wise defence, posting of guardian vessels in a protective formation around these stations would be technically the only required areas for Kerbin's ships and vessels to defend, as opposed to every possible entry point to the atmosphere.
Alternatively, the enemy could use quantified overwhelming force as a strategy, I.E. send tens of thousands of fighter craft or some such in Swarm formation at the atmosphere simultaneously, giving the Orbital Bombardment stations far too many targets to fire at and for the most part be able to entirely ignore the stations & their defensive ship garrisons at least for a short while.
Though I doubt any unified hostile force would even consider such a radical strategy unless their sole existing purpose was to annihilate all organic life.
Yeah you'd have to be pretty dedicated to destroying all Kerbals if you were gonna risk outragous numbers of offensive vessels to just achieve Kerbal extinction. I doubt even hate in it's purist form with the backing of Satan would drive one to consider that strategy.

ANYWAY.
TL;DR - How effective would Orbital Bombardment be against hostile vessels in Kerbin's atmosphere?

(I use the LAZOR mod and it's respective missiles and lasers for weapons, at this point)
(At least I think it's called the LAZOR mod. It's on the spaceport and has missiles n' cameras n' lasers n' stuff.)

For the sake of details, the specs of the missile in question are the following:
Range - 90km
Explosion Radius - 2km
Top Surface Speed - 2,000m/s
The missile is outfitted with guidance capability, which when utilized has a 100% accuracy rating as far as I've seen.

P.S.
I endurely apologise with all my heart and soul for going off the rails and writing a novel where I intended to pose a single paragraph concept question.

Much love,
Some random ♥♥♥♥ on the internet.

[Ulrin]

Hi, u should look at the skillful mod, which enable damage parameter, parts resistance and break..., and give's lots of turret lazer and others.
Im not a specialist, but im not thinking a kinetic orbital bombardement will be the good solution for shooting moving target, or maybe lots of small parts like machine gun...it seams uneeficeint, cauz u cant accelrate so quickly that seams to be instantanly, and so, ure target will flee !
Lazer seams better for orbital destruction, and for atmo, homing missiles !!
Orbital bombardement is good for ground destruction

[tom23456]

I made a stock SSTO that fired 2 jumbo tanks as missiles from orbit once, that was...tricky

[cxado]

Yeah I've seen the Skillful mod, but for now I think Lazer will suit my needs.

Heheh before I found a mod with missiles in, I did have one of these stations in orbit just with rockets strapped to decouplers. It was appallingly inaccurate and at times turned itself back around and blew up the station. Then again, I haven't even slightly mastered the art of deorbiting a craft in such a way that it will land at a desired location.

[Gralzeim]

How effective? Not very. You'd have to rely on luck, more or less. Now, something like a slow moving air transport laden with cargo, that might be easier to hit. Would still be difficult because not only is the target moving, but so is the launch platform (and the launch platform is moving far faster).

You'd have a very narrow window of opportunity to fire, before you'd have to wait for the platform to orbit around again, unless you're really high up, and that would increase the delay between launch and potential impact even further. Even at the lowest alttitude you're already at 68-ish kilometers up, and even if the weapon can maintain a velocity of 2 kilometers a second the whole way, that's still a 34 second delay between launch and arrival.

A miss would further complicate things, as you'd have to wait for another pass, so around 15 minutes or so, during which the target would have plenty of time to maneuver to become harder to hit (lower to the ground, increase speed, erratic maneuvers).

It would be difficult. Not impossible, but there's a reason orbital bombardment concepts usually only talk about stationary targets as their objectives.

[cxado]

@Heimdall
I understand what you're saying, but when I speak of armament for such a station I would be utilizing modded-in armaments; in the mentioned Lazer/LAZOR mod, there is a very big missile with a range of 90 kilometers and a surface top speed of 2,000 m/s with a 2 kilometer blast radius, so as long as the launch platform is within the orbit height of 90km, and the target is more or less directly below the station, it should work in such a way that doesn't require much timed accuracy at all. All the missiles have a button to upon desire detonate the missile prematurely, which would serve to wistfully deal with high-flying aircraft.
There's another item that if placed on your craft, grants the missiles lock-on guideance along with a very large array of other useful amenities.

[Gralzeim]

Was just saying it'd be difficult, not impossible, due to physics. I don't know how good the guidance system is in that mod, as I don't use weapon mods, so it might make it easier, especially if you can rig a proximity trigger rather than requiring contact.

[cxado]

So far as I've noticed, the lock-on system is entirely unhindered in any aspect so long as you don't fire for example a long-range missile when you're in short-range; there's a specified distance required to be between your craft and that of your target with each missile.
It might be OP for the moment, but right now, so long as you fulfil the launch requirements, it pretty much has a 100% hit-to-kill accuracy rating. I assume at some point a flares/countermeasures system will be implemented into the mod.
Unless you're fast enough to fire a reactionary missile at the incoming missile.

[El Rushbo]

Missiles may not be practical but a laser based weapon might be. The partical cannon from C&C: Generals, or the ion cannon from C&C: Tiberian Sun come to mind. Or the crossbow project from Real Genius which was a laser fired from orbit designed to vaporize a human target. That last one would be impractical for war but was determined to be the ultimate weapon during peace time. As far as missiles are concerned, I make my own:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=307495587
Stopping power is rather limited requiring a precise hit on a vulnerable spot to do damage, this one was not such a precise hit. FYI: Hitchhiker containers are very fragile.

[Jarjarstar]

In ksp this concept wouldnt work to great considering that we dont have computers and such to do stuff for us. However in reality with the help of computers this wouldnt be so hard. If you had a large pod of missiles in space you wouldnt be able to fire missiles straight from it. so you would have to propel the missile forward out of the tube, then the guidance computer in the missile itself would have to fire the missiles engine to start the decent to earth. A much larger and more powerful computer somewhere else would have to calculate the decent path and stuff to end up as close to the target as possible, but then just the computers inside the rocket would be able to crash it into its target. The rocket wouldnt need very much fuel and could have a massive payload as it would have tons of speed from its deorbit and the guidance computer could instead control it with flaps. This might be possible in the real world but in KSP we dont have computers so yes we can crash fuel tanks into kerbin but doing it with precision would require a god.

[A Fat, Angry Serval]

The main issue with orbital bombardment using missiles/rods-from-god is actually that every form of media we've seen this in gets it wrong and launches whatever they're using straight down. Realistically, you'll want to fire along the retrograde vector, and then have the projectile face towards the target during re-entry.

Originally posted by JarJarStar:

Doing it with precision would require a god.

I wondered about that divine aura that surrounds me whenever I do something like that...

[[OTG] Idemus]

to answer the Mass Effect reference...the reapers took out satellites before they invaded, so that would have been out of the question for that reason.

As far as COD, unguided projectiles and real-world application...If you have ever gotten that kill-streak you certainly know that it is difficult to hit something moving around at a relatively slow speed on the surface. Probably most kills from it are because of the explosive radius, I know mine were. With an unguided weapon and low travel speed, it would be impossible to guarantee a hit (even with computers) on something which could easily be in a different place very quickly (ie aircraft of any kind). The projectile would have to have a very large explosive radius to ensure disabling or destroying the object would be possible with an unguided projectile. As far as guiding such weapons, I think it's a bit wasteful to launch them from space. Essentially the same payload could be launched from ground for cheaper. Look at something like a PATRIOT missile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-104_Patriot and everything that comes with it. What you see with any given PATRIOT emplacement is not all that it needs to function either. Then imagine all that has to go to space. The other problem with orbital ballistic weapons is, inertia. As I'm sure you already know, inertia would be created when the missile/projectile is launched from the satellite, bumping the satellite off its orbit unless countered. So the weapon would need extra fuel to ensure it stays on course...not a big deal, but this thing is beginning to be a pretty heavy satellite at this point with all this baggage.

I'm certainly not saying it's not possible, but I think we'll see it stayin in the realm of sci-fi for a bit longer.

In KSP, I think it's possible, as certain aspects can be fudged a bit to make things work easier. For instance, just saying 'we can use the KSC radar tracking' is easier than the truth that NASA's radar is insufficient for guiding a missile to a fast-moving target. Some corners could easily be cut without detracting from either realism or fun. That being said, I think if you have an orbital defense satellite of any kind when multiplayer comes, if war is a thing in KSP MP, you should really consider keeping it well protected. I suspect they would be a quick target.

[[OTG] Idemus]

on the issue of a tungsten rod type weapon...wouldn't it impact the ground at termal velocity like anything? Or because of its mass, the high mass/drag ratio would cause it to decelerate slowly enough that it would maintain a high velocity to the surface? I know I have never seen anything break terminal velocity for long in KSP without thrust...but then again, I have launched a really long skinny landing pod made of tungsten ;)

[craftwork1]

BOMBARDMENT!!....BOMBARDMENT!!

[Itching Pain]

damage = damage. Hiting a moving target in space, vs hitting a still target on the ground. A hit is a hit.

[Surimi]

Actually, KSP is a really good example of why this concept fundamentally doesn't work, at least not with today's technology.

Consider how big your rocket has to be relative to the size of its payload in order to reach orbit. Then once in space, you have to assemble your launcher (and bring up all the tools and materials to do so) and keep it supplied with ammunition.

When in fact, all you actually needed to do was to build a suborbital rocket and put the payload inside. Humans managed that in the 50s, it's called an ICBM. Even then, there's a reason we don't generally put anything less than nuclear weapons inside the warhead of an ICBM, because it's still a pretty huge investment of money.

As for KSP, unless you actually switched to and followed each projectile to the ground the concept is impossible because objects in the atmosphere just disappear outside of the render distance. Also, without some kind of guidance or control system to correct the flight, actually hitting a target would be the most incredible act of skill/luck ever. Again, you're back to just launching a rocket, which you could do far more easily from the KSP command centre.

Not to mention that actually intercepting the launch platform with a ground launched "missile" would be easier than doing the reverse. No gravity or resistance to mess things up.