Let’s talk about ammo for a second. Specifically, ammo in space. Most visions of the future of warfare in space envision massive ships moving slowly and shooting lasers and explosive torpedoes at each other from relatively close distances. The actual likelihood of a lot of that is difficult to predict because so much of it depends upon things like the resources available to the military forces, the nature of faster than light (FTL) travel (i.e., are we talking wormhole style travel or just really fast linear travel?), and the nature of defensive technologies such as shields or armored hulls. Having said that, there are certain aspects of space warfare that we can predict given the nature of warfare in an environment such as deep space.

For one, space is frictionless (or nearly so). So much of the warfare that has been undertaken in human history between large ships has involved projectiles that were designed to deal with the challenges of flight through an atmosphere full of friction. This necessarily meant that the velocity of any projectile would begin diminishing from the moment it stopped accelerating. This meant that purely kinetic projectiles like cannonballs immediately began losing effectiveness the moment it left the barrel of the cannon. More modern projectiles attempted to make up for this loss in effectiveness by adding explosives to the projectile.

In a frictionless environment, however, there would be no appreciable loss in velocity, even over vast distances. As a result, the impact velocities that could be achieved in space warfare would vastly exceed those achieved in atmospheric warfare. In such a case, explosive projectiles would be unnecessary, and warfare would return to the days of solid, purely kinetic projectiles. Imagine a weapon that could launch a solid projectile the size of say, a Buick, at a velocity beginning to approach the speed of light. Such a projectile could punch a hole through almost anything, and it is hard to imagine any kind of shield or armor that could withstand such a punch.

Furthermore, in a frictionless environment, the projectile would not lose velocity even at vast distances. As such, spacecraft would likely conduct their warfare at massive distances. Light travels at over 186,000 miles per second. That means that with weapons that could launch projectiles at such massive speeds, the moon could conceivably get into a shooting war with the Earth and not have to involve the travel of warships, but could actually just shoot at each other directly, with impact occurring a mere second and a half after firing. Of course, in this horrific case, projectiles impacting the Earth and moon at such high velocities would likely lead to extinction level events on both celestial bodies.

Of course, launching any projectile at near the speed of light is far easier said than done. The energy necessary to achieve that kind of velocity is literally incredible. The suggestion of such a weapon is not meant to predict that weapons of the future will achieve that kind of velocity. Rather it is to demonstrate the extreme point of the overall intention of this article, which is that extremely high velocity projectile weapons are more likely to be effectively adopted in space warfare than energy based weapons like lasers, or explosive weapons like torpedoes. Present day technology is capable of launching a projectile, in atmosphere, at around 5,000 miles per hour (see the US Navy’s new rail gun technology). It is not outside the realm of possibility to suggest that by the time we achieve FTL travel, would will also be able to hurl a solid object at one hundred or even one thousand times that speed through space.  The destructive power of such a weapon would be incredible. Perhaps paralleled only by its implications on society…