Space warfare
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
Space warfare is the conduct of conflict between belligerents in space. The scale of space warfare ranges from exoatmospheric fighter skirmishes and boarding actions to battles between fleets of warships, which often decide the outcome of a given engagement or conflict.
History[edit]
Space warfare evolved from engagements on a world's surface or in its atmosphere. With the invention of human space travel in the 20th century, many organizations and nations began to consider or invest in possible military operations conducted in space. In the late 21st century, humanity had become an interplanetary-faring species with colonies established in their home system. The new outlet of travel and exploration would eventually lead to conflict.[1] The dawn of the Interplanetary War and its associated engagements saw the formation of the United Nations Space Command's Navy following the Mars Campaign. The campaign marked a turning-point in space warfare through dedicated utilizations of Marine forces in ground assaults and ship-boarding operations that would follow during the war.[2]
In the late 23rd century, humanity invented and began to utilize the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine on their spacecraft, allowing human ships to travel through slipstream space to reach destinations light-years away.[3] The UNSC Navy only conducted low-level operations, such as anti-piracy actions, until the Insurrection, which forced the Navy to develop a modern space warfare doctrine. Following the Callisto Incident of 2494, the numerous small-scale space engagements occurred between the UNSC Navy and Insurrectionists across human space.[4] While Unified Ground Command (UNICOM) oversees planetary campaigns, orbital defenses and space-based combat is directed by UNSC Naval Command (NAVCOM).
The Covenant races, meanwhile, have been spacefaring for significantly longer than humanity. The Sangheili had been a spacefaring civilization for some time by 938 BCE, when they encountered the San'Shyuum. The resulting conflict was fought on both planetary surfaces and in space engagements, where the San'Shyuum held the distinct advantage due to their use of the Anodyne Spirit, a Forerunner keyship fitted by the San'Shyuum with offensive armament. In 1342, the Covenant fought the many Kig-Yar pirate and militia groups around Eayn, including naval engagements against space-based raiders in their homeworld's asteroid belt, where their smaller ships and intimate knowledge of their environment benefited the Kig-Yar until they agreed to be employed by the Covenant. Covenant warships also took part in the glassing of Balaho during the Unggoy Rebellion, though likely faced little serious naval opposition. The Jiralhanae were a spacefaring species, before they were reduced by their Great Immolation to a pre-atomic stage, and it is likely that this war included space combat.[5]
Technology[edit]
- Main articles: UNSC Navy, Covenant fleet, Forerunner fleet
As with warfare in general, the level of a given polity's technological advancement plays a considerable role in space engagements, and a technological edge can easily overcome superior tactics once the technological gap is substantial enough. During the Human-Covenant War, UNSC warships and weapon systems were decidedly inferior to their Covenant counterparts. This has changed in the post-war era with the introduction of new, more advanced technologies to UNSC Navy service as well as the Covenant's reduction into various smaller splinter groups with lessened access to the bleeding edge of Covenant technology.[6]
Weaponry[edit]
Human starship weapons follow a similar trend as their ground armament and are largely based around ballistic impacts and chemical reactions. Meanwhile, Covenant weapons employ directed energy weapons, such as magnetically-guided superheated plasma, in their various weapon systems, a major contributor to their significant edge over the UNSC during the Human-Covenant War.
Human starship weapons are, for the most part, projectile-based, consisting of guided missiles with variable conventional or nuclear warhead yields or magnetically accelerated unguided projectiles. In combat, UNSC warships employ Magnetic Accelerator Cannons as their primary armaments, powerful coilguns built into the superstructure of the ship capable of accelerating a ferric tungsten shell to a significant fraction of the speed of light.[7] These are supplemented by a range of missile types, from smaller-yield ship-to-ship Archer, Rapier and Howler missiles to more powerful nuclear Hyperion, Rudra, FENRIS, HAVOK or Shiva missiles.[8][9][10][11] UNSC naval strategy emphasizes massed firepower to overwhelm the Covenant's powerful defenses - typically an initial missile salvo to penetrate Covenant point defense, followed up with a timed MAC strike against the vulnerable ship. Single MAC strikes by even smaller UNSC warships are capable of crippling or destroying an unshielded Covenant vessel. The velocity of a MAC round can be adjusted to deliver ordnance from orbit against planetary targets, though the still-powerful kinetic energy they impart on impact means their use is limited.[12] UNSC prowlers are the only known UNSC warship class to use pulse laser turrets, though as stealth ships their primary offensive role is their ability to lay HORNET space mines.[13]
The Covenant, on the other hand, employ more arcane weaponry derived from even more advanced Forerunner technology. The typical offensive armament for a Covenant warship consists of plasma torpedo turrets and energy projectors to engage enemy combatants. Plasma torpedoes are a form of superheated plasma contained and shaped by a magnetic field and guided to the target.[14] While the magnetic field has been created by the ship, plasma torpedoes have been known to continue tracking their targets after the destruction of the warship that launched them.[15] A single plasma torpedo is capable of burning through UNSC hull plating and even through several deck layers in a matter of seconds.[16] Energy projectors are powerful particle accelerators, akin to a larger focus rifle, typically used as long-range armaments.[17] They have been known to cut through even UNSC carriers with little difficulty, but require more power to operate, especially on warships with more than one energy projector.[18][19] Both of these weapons systems can be used by the Covenant to bombard planetary positions from orbit, in a process known as glassing.
Defenses[edit]
UNSC warships use various forms of Titanium-A armor (an enhanced form of titanium) as their exterior battleplate.[20] Covenant vessels are covered in nanolaminate hull plating, which is significantly stronger and more resilient.[21] Most Covenant ships are further protected by energy shielding, which has seen limited adoption among UNSC Navy warships—including the UNSC Infinity and the Strident-class heavy frigates—in the post-war era.[6] Both sides also make use of point defense weapons, designed to target and destroy singleships and missiles. UNSC ships use a number of different magnetic-accelerator point defense systems