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Dog Fighting in Space




Not two dogs fighting but the combat between two or more small, agile and swift moving spacecraft.
Not that it won't work, but the days of two craft closely fighting (like in the movies) is already gone! Dog fighting is not a thing of the past, it has just changed from it's original form. Not so simply here's why:

Suppose your space-fighter is moving at mach 3 (a little over 2,000 MPH), and you are firing a weapon that has a range of a mile. OK, your radar can find and identify a target at 300 miles, but at your speed and with your weapon's range you have .58 seconds (yes 58/100) to react! The quickest a human reflex has been measured at is about .2 sec. So, .58 - .2 = .38 seconds to perform an action, while you could get off a shot in that time it would be just ONE. After this one shot you would pass your target and once again be out of range. It would take you a couple of melee rounds to reposition your fighter for another shot! The higher the speed the worse that this will become and the more unlikely to prove useful.
Missiles!, that’s the new way to combat. Lasers and similar weapons are good for 'strafing' large ships that would take a melee or two to cross, but as you can see not very good for close one on one combat at any real speed. So you can see that dog fighting is not really plausible any longer.