This article is perhaps odd, since it’s not about how to wage war, but war would look like in its final and most extreme technological forms. There are some core concepts, but the ideas in this article are somewhat loose.
The greater the scope you consider, the greater the powers that can dwell within it. When considering an infinitely large reality, the disparities in technology and force should become incomprehensible. It is guaranteed some power out there is arbitrarily greater than yours, no matter what. When the gulf of power is severe enough, there is absolutely no chance for resistance.
Examples of severe disparity:
- Using thermobaric weapons on a castle guarded by knights and ballistae.
- First-strike nuclear capability is a marginal but significant example of disparity at the heart of Cold War technology races. If you could deliver a nuclear payload to a target faster than the target could deploy a response, then you would be able to attack with impunity: mutually assured destruction would fail.
- Orbital bombardment of a society that cannot reach the stars.
- Wielding weapons that cannot be built within the constraints of the universe they are being used in.
- Scanning space in all direction for heat signals, only for dust to fall from the sky, but each grain of dust becomes a warhead by dint of what we’d consider magic or exotic physics.
- The ability to alter the physical laws in which the war takes place.
- Being attacked by a higher-dimensional entity: imagine how much a 2-dimensional force could do to you, no matter how sophisticated they are, as long as you stand to the side of them in a 3rd-dimension. A 2-dimensional weapon of mass destruction could be sidestepped, while you’d be able to touch their internal organs at will. We are similarly vulnerable to 4th-dimensional attacks.
War by unmaking
War by unmaking is a method of war that relies on categorical technological superiority. Unmaking is done by a total saturation attack, completely destroying the target civilization. The territory can then be rebuilt. So, a war of unmaking requires massive military superiority and the ability to efficiently undo the damage you produced. If you could efficiently terraform, for instance, orbital bombardment of an entire planet wouldn’t be too big a deal and would eliminate even powerful, subterranean defenses. Wars of unmaking can happen on relatively minor advantages, so long as they grant sufficient disparity.
At the highest point, one party savagely obliterates another, even destroying planets or planes or what have you, and then brings in a planesmaker to mold the plane into a favorable shape and erase unfavorable conditions.
Limitations:
- Unmaking requires total destruction and reconstruction. There is no recycling, no occupation.
- Destruction is easier than construction. If the targeted territory is to be occupied after, you have to be able to undo the damage you inflict.
- The expense is considerable.
- It may not be possible to guarantee no survivors, especially if the targeted class has wayfaring members.
- War by unmaking is an atrocity by any standard. If a civilization possesses the power to unmake another, the other can only survive so long as a moral leader is in place. The mere possession of this power creates fear and animus (a benefit to some). It creates enemies, even besides survivors.
- It takes time. If we do assume there’s an entity that can unmake us, we survive either because it is moral, its conquest hasn’t reached us, or it does not care to conquer us.
- Expansion risks running into more powerful civilizations. Encountering a more powerful entity that can unmake you is not a desired result when unmaking.
Alternative theories
Other models of war arise from what parts of unmaking you cannot or will not perform:
- Being sane
- The inability to restore conquered territory if you’re seeking expansion
- Territorial occupation as a goal/nonreplacement of the conquered population
These qualities lead to different needs in war. An occupying force, for instance, must identify targets, whereas a saturation attack need make no distinctions. Exerting control over a population requires all kinds of alternative considerations, like judiciaries and guards and postings and schedules and whatnot. Beyond-Visual-Range combat is also generally impossible for an occupier: someone has to be in range to identify targets and hostiles will force conflicts only if they can actually reach you. It’s not on your own terms.
Other Notes of Final War
- Whether the target is aware of an advanced attack or not is mostly an aesthetic choice. If they cannot defend, it may not matter much (except, perhaps, for reasons like propaganda).
- Almost all warfare would be beyond visual range and, certainly, at great enough ranges that counterattacks are not possible. These ranges may necessitate their own exotic technologies to mitigate the effects of distance: a war is not terribly effective if, in the millions of years it takes your missiles to travel between stars, the target invents adequate defenses.
- Within visual range, intercept should be essentially instantaneous. A computer can be trained to destroy anything that moves if target identification isn’t a concern. With basic data integration, a computer should even be able to destroy targets mixed in with friendlies. Adequate scanners and high speed technologies should make intercept at greater ranges incredibly swift. This note is largely based on an issue I have with scifi films: laser cannons shouldn’t miss. There is no reason for their aim to not be computer-aided and, seeing as modern targeting isn’t that far off from being able to do this, there’s no reason to believe a scifi civilization wouldn’t be able to. While missiles, railguns, and the like have issues such as the need to lead shots and adjust aim based on the target’s evasive maneuvers, weaponized lasers have no such issues. Even accounting for things like atmospheric refraction, humidity, and other factors, sufficiently intense lasers will be less affected. But a sophisticated targeting system would be able to fire off a few high-speed shots and use the errors to rapidly correct targeting, even in an unfamiliar environment. In a familiar environment, such factors can be directly integrated into the targeting.
- Battles where there is no disparity advantage or disparities balance each other out can be planned out months or years in advance. Generally, this makes human control unnecessary, but that depends on how the final moments need to play out. Missiles, for instance, are unlikely to be bothered by evasive maneuvers at long-range, but may not be able to correct their targeting at short ranges. This can be mitigated by implementing a massive warhead, but this can be countered by destroying the missile, etc. So, battles at parity are all about the ability to one-up the other and anticipate the other’s technologies and moves.
- Targeting systems may be essential, making spotters, hacking, terminal guidance systems, and the like important. These may be much more vulnerable than normal weapons installations.