Welcome to Gaia! ::

I is now back, and ready to take more questions.

HIT ME!

That's more of possibility then tutoring, but chances are, we'd have problems, because our detection systems aren't rated to detect the dolphins underwater effectively, but we'd also have advantages of missile detection systems to stop the nuclear weapons from affecting us... but really, it's a stalemate situation.

While your correct, the only major way to threaten humanity is via a aerial missile delivery, because those torpedoes wouldn't be able to reach half of the human race, as most human settlements are located inland. If anything, the coastal cities would be in danger, but unless enough nukes are fired, we humans, as we're land-based creatures, would have the advantage over dolphins simply because we ARE land-based.

ok, Modern Era calvary tactics eh?

Well, if you were using them in a field of battle where heavy armor, such as main battle tanks and the like, are being fielded, it's a recipe for disaster. However, if used in areas where it's difficult for such armor to be brought to bear, you gain a decided tactical advantage over your enemy, in that your able to move for a longer period of time, carrying more supplies and materials with you from point A to point B then your enemy, unless said enemy is currently making effective use of their rotary wing aircraft (helicopters and Osprays) meaning you just have a novel mode of transportation, it just enables you to get to more places tehn someone on foot.

As for how they WOULD be used in fighting roles, a good example would be Afghanistan during the Russian's occupation. The Taliban used horses as well a mules and donkeys throughout the mountainous region, enabling them to effectively engage in hit-and-run attacks against the far superior and more heavily armed Soviet Army. As for forcing a stalemate and winning a war using rebel forces against a effective, powerful military force, if you were against a military much like the currently deployed US Military, you would have do what could be considered a Vietnam style warfare, in that you are using the environment to your advantage, and also ensuring you use atypical combat patterns. You would strike a patrol one day, a supply base another, and on yet another day you would not strike at all, letting them walk into a trap you set up.

In short, doing things in a predictable pattern will only drag the war on longer, and eventually give the more powerful, more effective military force the ability to begin to out think you, and even eventually crush your entire force.

Still open for questions and the like!

What do you think will happen to the politics of war when our generation's MAD standoff is dismantled by the migration to entirely space based warfare ?
(nukes are only useful in space if the bomb makes a direct impact and penetrates the armor before detonation)

Interesting, but what about when we move beyond primary terrestrial habitation to the point that a planetoid lacking a survivable atmosphere, or being intensely irradiated is not a significant factor because we don't intend to live there at all; Given that we only intend to derive resources from the planet/moon it would be safe to assume that at least in military vessels but probably any vessel there would be the facilities present to extract, refine, and prepare at least the most basic resources necessary for the continuation of that vessel's operation, since it's impractical to think a reasonable warship could carry all of resources for any sort of extended deployment, or alternatively crippled limp back home.

So it would be far more effective if they could just stop off at a rock somewhere and pull out fuel and air (one would assume these facilities would be solar powered but a large interstellar engines would require something more powerful. Also given that a very large percentage of our solar system and by extrapolation any solar system is highly inhospitable and radioactive these systems probably wouldn't care if the moon has been nuked recently.

For the very reason that it is in modern day not all that difficult to make a planet inhospitable for hundreds if not thousands of years future civilizations, given violent times, will be forced to locate their population off worlds, even though a satellite station is more vulnerable to direct attack, it's almost only vulnerable to direct attack; if you drop enough big nukes on any planet you'll eventual kill a city somewhere else on it, but a with a space station you pretty much have to hit it directly in some way or another.

Sure you 'can' use EMP devices but it's going to be pretty difficult to build an EMP bomb more powerful than a solar flare or gamma burst or other natural space event any reasonable space station has to be equipped to handle, repeatedly, possibly for extended periods.

At some point I had a point and I'm not certain that I made it, but it was that in the age of interplanetary space based warfare each ship will likely be built to resupply itself from natural resources like harsh planets, moons, and asteroids, so MAD against planets, while still a major thread, is not nearly the deterrent that it is now days since it won't really be feasible for one unstoppable attack to instantly annihilate the human race.

Then there's the practicality of delivery, which becomes entirely different arguments depending on what FTL technologies you have to employ.

is it just me or do I sound like an a**? I'm on a number of things so sorry.