The Shaitan fleet would be slowly able to attrite away the human fleet, as human ships were lost or damaged one by one. After a few runs, the Shaitan fleet would have destroyed the human fleet without taking too much risk with his own fleet. That was the plan that the Warmaster intended to follow.
The upcoming battle’s circumstances were turning out to be eerily similar to the one fought by the First Fleet two decades ago in their ambush near the asteroid belt of the three Shaitan warships heading towards Earth. For this planning conference call of all the captains, the Admiral had asked all of them to refresh every minute aspect of Operation Orb Weaver, and Admiral Francis Montero’s moves. History might be able to guide them to fight the upcoming battle better.
“So as I understand, there are two main calls that we have to collectively take about this upcoming battle.” Admiral Dar summarized after a very long and heated conference call of all the captains and the Admiral.
“First is the optimum number of missiles per ship to ensure its destruction, given the data we have about the battle that happened at the asteroid belt. Second, given whatever optimum figure per ship we come up with, what is the number of missiles out of our limited stock, which we are willing to commit for this battle. That number will determine how many enemy ships we can realistically target.” Hamid asked, trying to cool down the heated discussions.
Hamid saw four sullen captains nod on his screen, split four ways. These strategy meetings were never easy or timid affairs. It couldn’t be, when there were so many unknowns, and every decision could be a life or death decision. The final decision rested with the Admiral. This was not a democracy, but he was glad he did these meetings. He had already heard a brilliant proposal from one of the captains, which he would not have been able to come up on his own, and this one required a second hearing to clearly understand it.
“Capt. Jansen I would like you to explain the modification in the targeting program that you are proposing once again. This time do it slowly and deliberately. Remember that none of us other than you have a deep Math background, so you will have to explain in layman language. And this time we are not in debate mode, so no one is going to interrupt you. Please go ahead.” Admiral Dar said and gave an encouraging nod to indicate that the floor was open to the captain of Kali, Capt. Vincent Jansen.
Capt. Jansen took a few moments to compose his thoughts before he started. “When we performed the post-battle analysis of our first encounter, we realized that the Shaitan point defense system must be programmed to follow a certain algorithm when it feels that the number of enemy missiles aimed towards it is overwhelming, and there is no way of stopping each and every missile.
I am fairly certain that it is an automated program that takes the decision to trigger the defense algorithm, rather than some Shaitan captain or admiral triggering that algorithm. I have studied the timeline of that battle in detail over and over again. The algorithm was triggered too quickly even for Shaitan reaction time. It had to be automated.
You all know the algorithm, which we humans find heartless, but we all agree is very effective. In our last encounter, the algorithm probably saved two of the four ships we had targeted. That is 50% success in saving ships, which were otherwise doomed. That got me thinking. If a simple prioritization algorithm could be so effective in point defense, couldn’t there be a similar algorithm to beat such a point defense algorithm.
Sir, despite your praise about my Mathematical prowess, the truth is that I struggled to work this out mathematically and program it on the computer. I haven’t needed to do much original Math since college. However I have run simulation onboard Kali along with the weapons specialists, and the mathematics of the strategy looks fine. Fortunately ‘Game Theory’ may be difficult to solve mathematically, but is fairly easy to explain in plain words, so here we go.
There are two things to remember from our last battle. First is that the two Shaitan warships that we destroyed, were destroyed using far more of our missiles than was necessary. In fact some of our missile that detonated near those two ships had nothing to kill because the ships had already disintegrated and vaporized.
Yet we need to send a lot of missiles against each of the ship targeted, because we couldn’t know beforehand, which of those ships would be de-prioritized and hence did not require so many missiles. All the missiles are timed to arrive simultaneously at its target in order to overwhelm its defenses. A high speed fly-by attack like the one we had last time, this means that there is no way we can send the unused missiles to target another ship. The unused missiles would never be able to catch up.
The second thing to note is that a lot of Shaitan antimissiles were wasted in the process of protecting the ships that had been prioritized. This is bound to happen and is not a fault in any way with the Shaitan calculations. When there is uncertainty about whether the first antimissile would be able to shoot down an enemy missile, one would send a backup antimissile, and even perhaps a second backup to ensure that at least one of them got the enemy missile.
This is what the Shaitan point defense algorithm was doing. The thing is that if the first antimissile is successful in killing the enemy missile, in a high speed battle the backup antimissiles do not have time to turn and target another enemy missile. In effect the backup antimissiles go waste. On ships with higher priority, more antimissiles go waste compared to ships with lower priority simply because there are more backup antimissiles send to protect ships on higher priority. I have validated this fact from a detailed replay of our last battle.
Obviously our objective is to minimize the number of our missiles wasted as noted in the first point, and to maximize the number of Shaitan antimissiles wasted as noted in the second point. This is what my targeting algorithm attempts to do. My algorithm is a bit more complicated, but I will take a simplistic case to explain it. Let’s replay our last battle.
If we had used only 400 missiles instead of 800, then the Shaitan point defense system may have determined that it could stop all the enemy missile and not triggered the heartless algorithm of prioritization at all. It doesn’t make too much difference how many ships we targeted, since the point defense system of all the 8 Shaitan warships work as one, and hence would look at its combined capacity to stop all 400 missiles.
I know stopping a missile aimed at another ship is slightly more difficult, but in the overall scheme of things, that is not important in the calculations right now. The only thing that is important is the total volume of missiles and the speed at which they are approaching. That determines how many of the missiles can be targeted by the antimissiles.
At a certain critical threshold number of missiles, the Shaitan point defense system would determine that it is not possible to intercept each and every missile, and will invoke the heartless algorithm. We don’t know what that threshold number is, but my model makes some prediction based on the speed and angle of approach. For the purpose of our example, let us say that the number is 600.
If we were to send any number of missiles greater than 600 distributed equally at any number of Shaitan warships, the Shaitan point defense computer would have reacted exactly as it did in the last battle. We know how it turned out from the experience of our last battle. Now, let us send those 800 missiles again towards the Shaitan fleet in a replay of the battle, but this time the missiles would be sent in a different pattern.
For the sake of simplicity, I have divided the 800 missiles into two batches. The first batch consists of 600 missiles, and the second batch of the rest 200 missiles. The first batch moves about 10 seconds ahead of the smaller second batch. The 600 missiles of the first batch are equally distributed amongst the same 4 ships targeted earlier. The 600 missiles heading towards the Shaitan fleet will trigger the point defense to prioritize between the ships.
From the detailed analysis of the last battle, we know that our Q-Computers on the missiles’ targeting system were aware of the priorities for protection assigned to various ships by the Shaitan point d
efense system within 2 seconds with a 50% confidence level, and by 4 seconds that confidence level had gone up to 98%. Unfortunately our standard missiles do not have Q-computers, so that work will have to be offloaded to the main Q-Computers onboard our ships, which will add another second or two, depending on our separation from the missiles.
The 200 missiles coming in 10 seconds later would know well before they have to commit to targeting a particular ship, the order of priority the Shaitan point defense system has assigned. These 200 missile would then target the two Shaitan warships with the highest order of defense priority. Let us say 120 for the one with the highest priority and 80 for the Shaitan warship with the second highest priority.
Now the Shaitan warship with the highest defense priority suddenly has 270 missiles targeting it. That would mean that a lot of defense which in our earlier battle had gone to the lower priority Shaitan warships would have to be directed towards the highest priority Shaitan warship. This will ensure that the two warships with the lowest defense priorities would still get destroyed with just 150 missiles targeted at them.
At the same time the added attention on the highest priority warship would mean that the second highest priority warship, which now has 230 missiles targeted at it, would not get enough defense, thus ensuring its destruction as well.
I have given a very simplified scenario and simplistic numbers to explain my algorithm. In real life, it is not helpful to have two batches of missiles separated by a 10 second gap. The actual mathematical algorithm does not divide the missiles into batches, it is more like a cloud of missiles concentrated heavily in the front, and a tapering rear. Each missile is separated from another by a few milliseconds to form a continuum which gives almost the same effect as if all the missiles were arriving together, but yet gives enough time for the missiles in the rear to delay their targeting till the point defense priorities of the Shaitans can be determined.
We have run many exhaustive simulations of this algorithm on the last battle we had. In even the worst of cases we were able to destroy 3 of the 4 targeted Shaitan warships with the same amount of missiles as we expended. In almost all cases however we were not able to touch the 4 Shaitan warship with the highest defense priority. Still on paper this is a much more effective algorithm to attack a Shaitan fleet than what we are using right now.” Capt. Jansen finished.
There was a studied silence in the conference as each man got lost in his thoughts playing out what they had just heard in their minds. “I can find no logical flaw in Capt. Jansen’s line of thinking. I cannot think of a single reason why it should not work the way the good captain has described.” Capt. Wen Xu Lai finally broke the silence.
“Ditto.” Said Capt. Brogan.
Everyone else in the conference nodded as well, indicating that they were also convinced. “Good job Capt. Jansen. How confident are you about your new algorithm?” Admiral Dar asked.
“Sir, I am very confident about it, having worked on it for over 6 months now. We have run every possible simulation on Kali. However I would request that every other ship of the fleet task their weapons officers to test out the algorithms on their own simulated test beds. We still have a week before we have to act, so more eyes on the algorithm, the better.” Capt. Jansen replied.
“So be it. Captains, I take that as a formal request from Capt. Jansen to put his algorithm through the paces and poke holes into it. I am sure between the four of you, you have your system of wagers and rewards for finding bugs within each other’s work. I will let that wager system work, superior officers need not get involved in such affairs.” Admiral Dar said with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. In his younger days, he had almost continuous wagers running with Gerald on something or the other, as the two captained their respective ships in the Third Fleet. He was sure that these four had a similar racket going amongst themselves.
Admiral Dar paused for a moment and then continued. “That brings me to the other contentious topic we have been discussing. How much munitions do we expend in this battle. I have heard the case for being aggressive, and I have heard the case for being conservative. If it makes you feel any better, I agree with the arguments on both sides. However I have to take a call, and I have come to a decision. We are not going to hedge our bets, we will go all the way.”
That brought out smiles in the face of Capt. Sequeira and Capt. Brogan, who had been advocating the aggressive line, and frowns on the face of Capt. Jansen and Capt. Lai from the conservative camp. Admiral Dar continued. “I know that our inventory of nukes cannot be replenished, at least not in the foreseeable future. However this is the only battle worthy Shaitan fleet in this system. If we can neutralize this fleet, then our need for nukes is not so critical.
This is perhaps the last chance we will have to take the Shaitan fleet by surprise. It is also possibly the last time we will be able to engage this Shaitan fleet without putting our own ships too much in harm’s way. I am extremely keen to use this opportunity to eliminate as many of those Shaitan warships as possible.
I am hoping that after this battle, if we still have to face this fleet, it will be us who would have the overwhelming numerical advantage. If we are to engage this Shaitan fleet again after this battle, I want that numerical superiority because I want to ensure that we don’t lose any of our own ships. Remember that if nukes are irreplaceable for us so far from home, then an entire ship is far more irreplaceable. I would rather trade some extra nukes to ensure the safety of my ships. As also the fact that I want to continue seeing all your ugly mugs on my screen for all future conferences.” Hamid said with a smile and a wink.
“We have 1400 nukes each in our inventory. We will keep 400 in reserve and make available a 1000 each for the purpose of this battle. That makes a total of 4000 nukes, which probably is an overkill. I am not proposing that we use all of them, but that is what I am going to make available to Capt. Jansen, who is now responsible to come up with an attack vector and a missile deployment plan, using his new algorithm.
Capt. Jansen. Although this battle is not going to be as high speed as our first one, but it is going to be a fairly high speed battle. In fact the Shaitan fleet would be moving at a far greater speed than even the ambush at the asteroid belt executed by the First Fleet. The Shaitans will figure out the decoys, and realize that this is an ambush some time before they reach the Watering Hole.
At that point I expect them to use emergency thrust to move as far away from the Watering Hole as possible as they go past this comet, in order to avoid an ambush. Since we won’t know which direction the Shaitan fleet will veer off as they try to avoid the ambush, we cannot place our missiles such that they will meet the Shaitan fleet head on.
Our missiles will have to chase the Shaitan fleet from here behind the comet in order to intercept them. This means that our missiles will be trying to target the Shaitan warships at a 90° angle to their line of motion. Again this is very similar to the ambush at the asteroid belt. I am sure you all know the difficulty in targeting something at a 90° angle. Expect a lot of targeting failures, especially since these are the regular missiles with no Q-computer navigation system.
If you remember the ambush at the asteroid belt, there were only 3 Shaitan warships, and the First Fleet had released 320 nukes and another 160 dummies to confuse the point defense system. Despite targeting only 2 ships, the 480 missiles were able to destroy only one ship with just 3 Shaitan warship point defense system. I expect a 6 Shaitan warship point defense system to be not twice but more like 3 to 4 times more effective.
Keep those factors in mind when you compute your missile deployment. You have 4000 missiles at your disposal, and I want you to go for broke and target all 6 Shaitan warships. Use as many missiles as you want, but I want this Shaitan fleet finished here. That is your brief. You have 36 hours to make those plans and send a copy to all of us. We meet again in 48 hours to finalize our battle plan gentlemen. Till then I believe we all have our work cut out. Thanks you all, and dismisse
d.” Admiral Dar finished and did something which was uncharacteristic of him. He saluted. The captains reciprocated, and the conference was over.
When they met again after 48 hours, the conference ran for many hours, but this time it was more about covering contingencies to the overall plan that had been made. The enemy rarely did what one predicted they would do, and a battle plan had hundreds of contingencies to work out how to react if the enemy diverted from its expected behavior.
After all the activity and hurrying up planning and practicing, came the wait. Waiting was the inevitable part of any space war. Space was such a large place that getting from anywhere to anywhere involved a lot of waiting. Ironically, when it comes to the actual battle, it happens so fast the sometimes human eyes and human mind cannot keep track of it in real time.
It was the reason admirals and captains considered a battle to be won or lost a long time before it actually happened. Space battles were all about planning and counter planning contingencies to be programmed into a computer. It is almost always a computer which executes the actual maneuvers of a battle. The 5th fleet was in a period of such waiting as the Shaitan fleet closed in. The captains and the XOs kept the crew busy and sharp with routine drills.
The first indication that the Shaitans suspected something fishy came when the Shaitan warships lit up the decoys with their main laser, known to the navy as the ‘Death ray laser’, although now-a-days the navy was no longer as afraid of that laser as the first pioneers had been over Titan, in their tin can ships. The Shaitan fleet was still too far away from those decoys for the laser to be an effective weapon.
The Shaitans would not be expected to use a weapon at an ineffective range. The Shaitans never did anything randomly on a whim. If the Shaitans were using their laser on what they thought as a human ship, which they could not expect to hurt at this distance, then they must be using the laser for some other purpose. The purpose was obvious. The Shaitans were lighting up the decoys! They wanted a better look at the decoys.
Retribution (Shaitan Wars) Page 23