On 6/25/2015 1:37 AM, Greg Chalik wrote:
Dan,

The asteroid belt is very neat :-)

I see a vastly more 'populated' system.

In any case, perhaps I'm overstating that part.

But, what if "if a squadron of warships appears, you should be able to ID and track them when their EM wave front crosses your sensor
pickets.", but its not a squadron of warships?

What if the ships are not even a squadron?

What if they don't even look like warships?

What if they appear at different times and for different reasons?

By the way, where would you suggest looking for affordability calculations?

Greg

Workout some volume calculations for space and then take another look at what it takes to be as 'populated' as you imagine. If it is not as dense as nested Dyson Spheres it is really open. Consider also that further improvements in cameras will mean that it is cheap to set up pickets with the capability to just watch for changes over arbitrary periods of time to catch things that are moving out there. We have a system now that will take a scan of the entire sky from Earth and check for Near Earth Asteroids once a week. By Traveller (or 2025 (if Man is still alive....)) that will probably be  a continuous real (light lagged) -time  process. Your objections are basically up against the 'Hot Equations' concerning detection in space and those have been debated here for a decade or more.

>What if the ships are not even a squadron?

Doesn't matter - either they are going to concentrate at some point or they don't.

>What if they don't even look like warships?

Doesn't matter - ramming planets is such a concern that it gets tracked and size calculations alone will be used to rate it's potential for trouble. And of course there is the problem of form following function and how much you can tell at a distance. And in the 3I the fact that they have had 1000 years of space warfare. Q-ships have been tried. Protocols have likely been created.

>What if they appear at different times and for different reasons?

If the 'fleet' straggles in looking like liners (that have never shown up before) and subsidized merchants that pass boarding inspections and is successful in taking a planet the new plan for other planets is to keep traffic the hell away from the planet until each ship is boarded or otherwise made a non-threat. I like a hefty nuclear mine attached to the hull over the bridge. Deviate from flight plan, look suspicious, disgorge fast attack craft, or tamper with the mine and things will not go well for you.


(PS - Your analyses of Soviet doctrine match nothing that I can find and I doubt that you were given access to anything classified by the military on the subject. You are missing some points like - "Filling the soft shoulders of a flank" does not match with throwing the BTR s and BMPs of a Motorized Rifle Regiment into the first echelon right behind the tanks. "BTRs are for use on roads to give operational agility" ignores the fact that BMPs and BTRs are used in the same regiment. The regiment will move at the pace of the slowest part and if you put the slower BMPs off-road (for that flank protection) you get yet slower advances. It looks an awful lot like you want to be creative with the research and derive function and doctrine from looking at the vehicle rather than taking what we have that the Soviets have written at face value or digging into actual AARs.)