Military time travel - first draft

[ffutures]

Okay, this is my first pass at how to use time travel to fight wars. In this setting you can't leave weapons in the past set to attack the present (e.g. mines or naval torpedoes), and you can't rendezvous with another time traveller in the past. Comments and additional suggestions greatly appreciated:

Military uses of time travel are abhorrent, much like those of submarines. And like submarines they are being developed by every major power. What follows is largely theoretical, since to date (so far as is known) this technology has only been used in naval exercises.

The simplest use of time travel is for direct attacks; a time ship identifies an enemy craft at a distance, dives into the past while simultaneously closing with it, then returns and "surfaces" in the present for the attack. While the Temporal Displacer is working the warship is immune from attack, unless it has the misfortune to come under fire or hit a mine in the short time it must spend in the past to change its temporal direction. There are snags, of course; if things go badly wrong the warship might have to fight in the past as well as the present, without any possibility of affecting the enemy's ability to fight the final battle. Time spent in the past can't be recovered; if the manoeuvre takes five minutes, the attacker will "surface" five minutes after it vanished, and in that time the enemy may have changed course, sent a wireless message requesting help, or received reinforcements. For these reasons warships need to be big and fast, capable of closing with an enemy quickly and changing temporal "course" so far in the past that there is little possibility of hitting a mine or engaging the enemy without adding any unnecessary delay. Even then it's difficult to guess which strategy would be most effective. For example, the proposed battleship Dreadnought at 18,110 tons (multiplier 4.47), maximum speed 21 knots, might attack a target 20 nautical miles away. She could dive back into the past for 30 minutes, travelling 10.5 nautical miles and going back 14.17 years, change temporal course, and return to the present. It's unlikely that the enemy would happen to (a) be the enemy and (b) have ships or mines at exactly the right place that far in the past. The Dreadnought closes the remainder of the gap and "surfaces"... but of course the enemy has had an hour to prepare for the fight, and may have changed course as soon as the Dreadnought vanished! It might be a better idea to use short jumps instead. In the case above the Dreadnought could take some five minute jumps, closing by 3.5 miles between one sighting and the next in each ten minute jump, firing at the enemy then vanishing into the past before fire could be returned, but would only travel back 24 days in five minutes and might still be in danger when it changed temporal "course" in the past. Cases can be made for and against every possible combination of moves and it will take bitter experience, and consequent loss of life, to determine which are correct.

A less problematic use is to travel without any possibility of interception, returning to the present at an agreed place and time to rendezvous with other vessels before going into action. It's necessary to ensure that all spend the same amount of time travelling, but that's simply a matter of planning appropriate routes. For example, if the Dreadnought had to sail from Portsmouth to attack Kiel (a trip of about 1100 nautical miles) she might drop back a hundred thousand years or so in ten hours, steaming 210 miles with the temporal displacer active, steam 700 miles or so normally, then start to return to the present after passing Goteburg, finally "surfacing" well inside Kiel's outer defences. It's notable that since this technique was first suggested (in an article by Mr. H.G. Wells on the future of naval warfare which appeared in The Strand Magazine, April 1894) most of the global Powers have strengthened harbour defences, laid more mines, etc.

One technique that is theoretically possible, but hopefully will never be tried, is to carry out probing attacks against an enemy in the very near past (a figure of five or ten minutes has been suggested), observe how the enemy responds, then use the information obtained to carry out a "real" attack against an enemy who does not know that you have repeatedly attacked his shores or fleet. Of course this assumes that you are prepared to risk losses, but combined with the other techniques outlined above they would probably be light.

Some disturbing possiblities exist for espionage. Briefly, it would be possible to land spies a few hours in the past and send them to obtain any desired information. If they are caught the ship returns to the present, leaving the spies to vanish along with the world in which the enemy are aware that espionage has taken place! It might even be possible to use spies from the earlier period, so that nobody from the present takes any risk. Even in the murky world of espionage there are probably agents prepared to take this chance in the knowledge that a later version of themselves will continue to exist.


Okay - any additional tricks?

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

If this is being written as if it were a published article at the turn of the century, then it wouldn't mention 'the proposed battleship Dreadnought. HMS Dreadnought was constructed in great secrecy so as to achieve maximum impact of her revolutionary design. At the time your article would have been written, a more typical modern battleship would have been HMS Canopus, with a speed of more like 17 knots.

Wireless signalling only had limited use even as late as WW1. Even then, it was mainly used for sending long-distance messages; tactical communication between ships was by signal flag or searchlight that could be directly read by bridge staff. The idea of having critical signals pass through some glorified electrician in the radio room was long an anathema to the Royal Navy!

MC

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'd forgotten how secret the Dreadnought was. Which is stupid considering it was mentioned in Massey's book. Okay, Canopus it is.

I'll change the "wireless message" to "signalled". A bit vague, but it could be by heliograph or flag.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

I don't see mines being a concern unless you are trying to use your timeship to sneak into one of the other guy's harbours, blow up his ships at anchor, and then slip back out before he can do anyting about it. They wouldn't be a matter of concern at all on the high seas. There's too much ocean for there to be much chance of hitting a mine.

As I understand it, as soon as the time drive is activated, the ship using it instantly vanishes from the present. A sea battle between two timeships would be interesting. Both ships juggling back and forward in time, trying to catch the other in the present. Each ship would be trying to predict when and where the other guy will show up in the present again, so that they can already have fired on that location, and then ducked back into the past. The only way to actually have a battle would be if *both* ships wanted one. Unless you've got some way to track another timeship through time, any ship that wanted to avoid the battle would simply vanish.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I don't see mines being a concern unless you are trying to use your timeship to sneak into one of the other guy's harbours, blow up his ships at anchor, and then slip back out before he can do anyting about it. They wouldn't be a matter of concern at all on the high seas. There's too much ocean for there to be much chance of hitting a mine.

That's exactly the tactic time ships would be ideal for. I'm visialising a war beginning with large-scale mine laying, with each side knowing where - and when - its own mines were laid, then keeping its ships inside the mine fields except for short forays to attack the enemy harbours etc. Lots of torpedo boats etc. for defence (but they're too small for time travel which needs ships of 2000 tons +) Since time ships are VERY difficult to attack your main targets will probably be shore defences, support infrastructure, etc. - in other words, high civilian casualties.

Incidentally, convoys wouldn't be needed, since any freighter large enough to carry a worthwhile cargo can slip into the past pretty much as soon as it leaves harbour.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

How large is the engine for a time ship? And can its 'soft bits' be easily protected?

Since if it's very large or requires alterations in the design of the ship it might, by some, be considerd an unaaceptible loss of structural integratity. Or real world speed.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I wanted to avoid all of the game design "you can only build this so big" problems, so regardless of the size of the ship the actual time machine is teeny in shipbuilding terms - for a liner it's about the size of a large fridge, there are cable runs to the hull but there's lots of redundancy - you could lose 50% of the cables before things stopped working, by then that'd be the least of your problems.

The main weakness is power - needs electricity generated by the ship's engines, but even then there are accumulators sufficient for a few minutes in most time ships. A military design would add more.

[madbaz.livejournal.com]

If the time drives on two ships are synchronised can they intercept each other? If so could torps be fitted with short duration time dives. Or possibly there might be temporal depth charges or mines that can detect a ship passing through time "nearby" and flip themselves into the time stream and detonate.

I have visions of ships pushing themselves by diving deeper and faster into time in order to get out of synchronisation with an incoming enemy or weapon.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

About the ony way that could happen is if the ships were in physical contact, e.g. one rammed the other and activated the time drive. Which might be quite an effective tactic given the Victorian obsession with torpedo rams. Hit the enemy and drag him into the past, then sink him where nobody can come looking for survivors. Nasty but effective.

Mines, torpedoes etc. are WAY too small to mount a time displacer, a destroyer is about the smallest time-capable military unit.

[madbaz.livejournal.com]

You can imagine coming across the long fossilised remains of a ship destroyed by this technique embedded in a mine somewhere.

How about dropping an explosive off the ship or firing the guns while while it's in time drive, do the released units drop into real-time as soon as they exit the field? If you could overcome the mega-precise timing required you could "time bomb" locations without ever exposing the firing ship to danger. And how about accidental superimposition of matter on matter. Can that happen and what are the effects if it does?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

None of that works, or appears to anyway. See the posts yesterday re. time travel and law enforcement for the reasons, but they're major spoilers for the setting...

[madbaz.livejournal.com]

Ah well...

Hey does the time drive allow you go move SLOWER through time, or hang in a state where no time passes outside. Be great for reloading the guns. You could "stutter" forward in time, apparently firing your main guns every few seconds.

This works in reverse too mind you, a ship that's just been fired upon makes a jump to get out and find a better position, but is the other ship can guess correctly where it's going to reappear it can have it's guns set and aimed, so the first ship gets hammered twice in quick succession. Does the time drive have any audible or visible signature that occurs that might reveal where a ship is just about to drop into real-time (tardis "vworping" noises, Philadelphia Experiment sweeping silvery beams etc)?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Subjective time aboard the time ship is equal to elapsed time in the present. E.g if you spend ten minutes travelling to the past, ten minutes in the past making repairs, then ten minutes returning to the present you will emerge in the present thirty minutes after you vanished.

No Tardis noises etc, just a vanishing ship (as far as everyone else is concerned), while those aboard get to see Time Machine style sun whizzing across the sky etc.

To answer one of your earlier questions, if you fall overboard while the ship is travelling through time you vanish, forever so far as those aboard the ship are concerned.

[madbaz.livejournal.com]

How about the displacement of water/air? HG Wells' time machine causes a gust of wind as it vanished. Or does the water around the ship and the water in the space it's materialising into seamlessly merge without any fuss?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The ship will be in motion when it's activated, so the wake will just vanish. It takes the air and water in its immediate vicinity with it, but molecules move in and out so you don't suffocate or choke on smoke that can't escape.

[pmcray.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit concerned about the ships going back in time 100,000 years. OK, this might have been during one of the previous interglacials, but what happens when the ship passes through a period when the English Channel/North Sea was dry land? Does it run around if it is traveling through time? I guess the Hydrographic Survey sends teams back to suit periods to ensure that there is enough water around for the battleships to float.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You have to be careful of that sort of thing, of course. But it isn't like you're travelling blind, the ship is steaming along as it travels though time, so you can see if the sea is getting shallow or an unexpected volcano is appearing etc. and change course accordingly, or drop out and travel a few hundred miles in real time if necessary.

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

Is it possible to take an additional time drive into the past? I'm thinking of the instant multiplication of your forces. Your time ship takes a spare unit into the past, meets up with it's recent past self, replaces the divergent ship's drive with the spare unit, then jumps both ships back to the present. It would make technical sense to make the drives as modular as possible, after all. You could do this trick with destroyed vessels as well, instantly replacing your losses.

Heck, the multiplication trick works with fuel convoys too. You only ever need to take a single fuel barge or cargo ship somewhere, then temporal multiplication provides the required quantity.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You can certainly keep going back to the past and keep loading with fuel (subject to the stuff I explained in the law enforcement post). Instantaneous reinforcements seems a neat idea, don't see any reason why not given the way it's supposed to work. Of course in reality you're not getting something for nothing, you're depriving your alternate self of a warship in the middle of a war!

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

"depriving your alternate self of a warship in the middle of a war": a thought. If a nation makes the decision to pursue this as a strategy, the various parallel timelines created by time travel will presumably still be pursuing this plan. Wouldn't that make the number of warships borrowed by alternate timelines about the same as the gains made by the same method, eliminating the benefits?

(and, incidentally, making strategy very difficult)

[dsample.livejournal.com]

Could you fit the time drive into a Zeppelin? The Graf Zeppelin had a mass of about 70 tonnes, tiny by ship standards, and you aren't going to get much of a mass multiplier from it, but for a warship that doesn't really matter. The important thing is having it be able to fly undetected to its target, drop some bombs, and then fly home again.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've said that there's a lower mass limit of 2000 tons or so, that pretty much rules out land or air transport in the late 19th/early 20th century. It ensures that adventurers will go back into the past with plenty of supplies, which is useful because the time machine doesn't work quite the way that players should initially think it does, and gives the players a few problems they wouldn't have on land. For example, there are lots of interesting places to visit that aren't islands or on a coast, so they'll have to go inland on foot or horseback (or in some kind of steam ATV) before they can meet Buddha / steal the Green Eye of the Little Yellow God / whatever.